Mid-Brel-Adventure Review
It´s hard to believe, but the Brel Adventure is half over. Seems as good a time as any to take a look back:
Random Stats
- Countries visited: 7
- Cities visited: about 30
- New passport stamps: 23
- Favourite countries: Costa Rica and Argentina
- Favourite city: Buenos Aires
- Number of flights: 20
- Number of hours on a bus: 95
- Total spent: about $12,500 each (not including freebies and shopping)
- Weather: -2 degrees to 39 degrees
- Photos taken: 12,000
- Modes of transportation: plane, horse, van, taxi, canoe, sailboat, yacht, speedboat, ferry, catamaran, shuttle, bus, subway…
Brel Chronicle Stats
- Number of posts: 88
- Total hits: 15,047
- Total hits from unique computers: 2,432
- Highest one-day hits: 192
Random Mel Facts
- Fears overcome: Water, heights, small enclosed spaces, unemployment
- Number of books read: 47
- Pounds gained: about 15 (though working hard to lose them)
- New experiences: caving, hang-gliding, paragliding, snorkeling, birding, speaking Spanish, tango, merengue, monkey spotting, Malbec wines, too many random foods to name….
- Number of times I wanted to go home: 5
- Number of times I regretted the trip: 0
Mel´s lessons learned:
- Traveling with your partner (or maybe just Brendan) 24/7 isn’t easy and we should have planned more time apart.
- Being away from home is hard-missing important dates and events even harder.
- Work isn’t life, and adjusting to travel was easier than I´d expected (minus a few bad days).
- I like bacon more than I thought I did. Not having it for 3 months was killer.
- The world is huge and one year will not be nearly enough time to make a dent in it.
- I hate living out of a bag. And 6 outfits is not nearly enough to get by on.
- I have absolutely no sense of direction and while statistically impossible, I guess wrong about 85% of the time.
Random Brendan Facts
- Countries visited for the first time: 2 (Uruguay and Chile)
- Number of books read: 2.5 (been working on 100 Years of Solitude for…about 100 years now)
Brendan’s Lessons Learned
- Working remotely is possible – although no matter how much I tried to prep Mel, she still got annoyed when it interfered with monkey-watching
- Compromise sucks. I don’t really mean that. Ok, maybe a little bit.
- Manipulating Mel into facing her fears is fun. And actually works sometimes!
- Alcohol isn’t always your friend.
Tags: Final Thoughts, Travel
pichemelanie
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
It was great to be able to follow your adventures after meeting you in Belize. I can’t believe that it is over already. I will miss not reading about your adventures. It was like I was there. You did a great job.
Jan
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Happy to hear you’ve been following us. We are actually in Turkey now, just starting the second half of our trip. Next up: Greece, Italy, South Africa and Morocco!