A Bit About Us
We are a married couple living in Cheshire, UK. Terry is 50 something and I (Tracy) am hanging onto my 40s by a thread. We also have a place in Portugal and have just managed to get digital nomad visas so no more eating into the 90 out of 180 days, post Brexit rule for entering Europe. We have no kids or pets so when we aren’t in UK or Portugal, we like to spend as much time travelling as possible.
Terry took early retirement in May 2023 and I finished my job marketing Compeed in Dec 2023. I haven’t decided what the future holds workwise for me so plan to take 3 months out enjoying myself whilst waiting on some kind of epiphany. My plan B is to keep doing the Euromillions and entering the Omaze prize draw!
Our passions are; travelling, eating great food, socialising with family and friends and welsh rugby. Terry is from Newport, S.Wales and my family all hail from S.Wales so in keeping with modern speak, I identify as Welsh!
South America is our 1st big adventure together, if you don’t take into account marriage and hopefully this trip will be the 1st of many. Fingers crossed next year will be the Lions Tour in Australia.
Thanks to Andy, my brother, for house sitting for us to enable us to go on these travels with peace of mind.
The South America Trip in a Nutshell
We are book-ending the trip with Madrid and Lisbon. Flying from Madrid to Columbia and returning from Brazil to Lisbon. We are away for 53 days, staying in 21 different hotels / Airbnbs, going on 13 flights, 2 return boat transfers, 2 ferries and have 2 car hires. For those of you who know me, you know I am a travelling Jonah and have many tales of travelling mishaps. In hindsight, 13 was probably the wrong number of flights to book! It’s a lot to cram in but according to trusty online blogs, it’s do-able. I don’t think Greta Thunberg would take kindly to our trip but I will find other ways for us to improve our carbon footprint. We plan to make memories and loads of them and hopefully this blog will be a great way to capture and share those.
Starting in Cartagena, Columbia, we will be travelling to a few different places, namely, Santa Marta (a city on the Caribbean Sea and 1st Spanish settlement in Columbia), Medellin (home of the notorious Pablo Escobar) and Bogotá, the capital. Should we make it through these 2 weeks without finding ourselves trafficked or forced to carry Colombian marching powder in an orafice that is normally used to one way traffic, we will hit the dizzy heights of Rio Carnival in Brazil. For the record, the negative connotations associated with Columbia are largely a thing of the past. Tourism is on the up and the country has some stunning places to visit. However, out of the 4 countries we will visit, Columbia is the one that has caused our families the most concern and our friends much merriment with the abundance of material for jokes.
After Rio, we will have 3 more stops in Brazil before heading to the Iguazu Falls. These waterfalls are the largest and most spectacular in the world according to UNESCO. They are on the border of Brazil and Argentina so you get mind blowing views from both sides.
Naturally, we will continue into Argentina and visit Buenos Aires, Mendoza for lots of steak and wine, did I mention there was lots of wine? After immersing ourselves in the Argentinian culture, namely drinking Malbec in numerous vineyards and celebrating El Tel’s BIG birthday, we will head to Uruguay. In Uruguay, we will start in Colina del Sacramento, one of country’s oldest towns, before heading to Montevideo (the capital) and finally Punta del Este (South America’s Monaco). My money is on it has bugger all resemblance. That’s what we are banking on or we will stand out like the Clampett’s on tour.
After Uruguay, we head back into Brazil to Florianopolis. Other than having a cracking name, it has lots of lagoons and beaches so will be pretty chilled. Finally, we end our South American adventure just south of Recife, in Porto de Galhinas, one of the most easterly points of Brazil so closest to home. It has lots of beaches and history due to Portuguese and Dutch colonisation of the region.
Our aim of the blog is to take you vicariously on our exciting adventure. The 1st update will be from Madrid.
It’s all in the planning
We have done all the planning ourselves. Technically speaking Terry has done the lion’s share. He took early retirement in 2023 so has spent the last 3 months as a slave to the iPad. He has read 100s of blogs and websites to help plan the route, decide where to stay, what to take and where to visit. I have basically done all the booking so if anything goes wrong, I’m pretty confident the blame will be laid firmly at my door. As part of his research, he likes to share the horror stories he has read. This has lead to numerous additional tasks i.e. me buying double the amount of Imodium versus what I had originally planned and Terry having a decoy wallet!
Terry, aka El Tel for the purposes of this trip and I have had very different occupations. He was a plumber and I work(ed) in marketing, spending most of my day sat in front of a laptop. Therefore, we have different ways on how we approach things. A good example of this is, I have a spreadsheet with our itinerary detailed and he has a little black book where he has handwritten our route and has lots of restaurant recommendations.
I now have countless new apps on my phone:
(1) google translate, with Spanish and Portuguese saved as an offline version.
(2) Duolingo. I have been learning Spanish for 3 weeks so will be able to book tables in restaurants, buy tickets, ask where the loo is, tell people my dog’s name and that I have a cheap watch (so not worth mugging me). I also learned how to say my brother is interesting and elegant. Neither of which is true so don’t see much call for that in English or Spanish.
(3) XE currency converter. You can save multiple currencies in the app so can see how quickly your £ savings are dwindling. We have already used it 100s of times when deciding what accomm and restaurants to book. A bit like Goldilocks, we are not having it large, nor are we backpacking so will be hopefully getting it ‘just right’.
(4) Solis lite. A mobile wi-fi hotspot so we can switch off roaming. We have a handy gadget that is a “you’ve been tango’d” coloured, pocket sized disc which apparently is lightning-fast and secure.
(5) maps.me. This app is basically a navigation tool which works offline. However, nothing will prevent the argument which will happen as I use it to give Terry directions to return the hire car in Sao Paolo.
(6) WordPress. This is the platform I’m using to regale you with our tales of much merriment and hopefully little woe and numerous selfies in exotic locations. That’s assuming I don’t get my phone nicked!
I toyed with the idea of CamScanner, recommended by some posh bird in a blog to store copies of all your ID’s and important docs all for £35 per year. However, I decided to just photo all our docs and save them in a folder on the iCloud for free.
TNT Travels 