It's a Wild Life! - Getting there!

Maybe it sounds simple: pack your bags and just follow your dream. But it took us quite some time to make our world travel dream possible.

First, we made a plan to save money about five-six years ago. The plan was to travel the world for about one year without the need to work during traveling. We also saved money for when we would return to the Netherlands. We wanted to be able to pay the rent and food for at least half a year without having a job.

Second, we made a list of countries we wanted to visit. For example, Australia, Patagonia (Chile and Argentina) and Malaysia (Borneo) were high on the list. Rob put a lot of time and effort in making a plan for a route. He looked up when it would the best time to go to a country for birdwatching and mammal spotting. He made multiple big Google My Maps with hundreds of points per country with information about good birding and mammal places, general information, climate information etc.

During these preparation years, we were able to buy a house. After our world travel, we really wanted a place to go back to, because without having a job it's apparently quite difficult to rent or buy something ;). Furthermore, because we took some years to prepare, we were able to get some work experience, which would help in getting a job once back home. Suddenly Covid-19 kicked in and all our plans were not so sure anymore. What countries could we visit? When would borders be open again? When would we be vaccinated? Are we sure it is a good idea to quit our jobs and rent out the house?

Despite our doubts and questions we kept searching for possibilities. This summer we got our vaccines and countries were opening up their borders again.

So, we decided to start our world travel in October and made everything ready for renting out our house and to quit our jobs.

Last Sunday we took an airplane from Schiphol, Amsterdam to Santiago; a 14 hours direct flight with KLM airlines.

So here we are in Santiago in an apartment for a mandatory 5-day quarantine. We have a nice apartment with a balcony and a view on the hillsides. The first morning an Austral Thrush was our wake-up call and the first bird on our world-travel list!

We get checked every day by a civil servant to make sure we are in our hotel room. So we just stay inside, eat nice breakfast, enjoy the sun and search for the first birds from our balcony.

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