Around the world in eighty days…

Well it’s 84 days actually and in exactly one month’s time we’ll be stepping off the plane in Rio, on our way to Guapiassu bird lodge in the Brazilian atlantic rain forest – the first stop on our big world birding adventure! Absolutely no cycling and very few medieval churches involved either!

Our trip, which has been built on a ’round the world’ air ticket with a number of supplementary internal flights, takes us from Brazil to Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Chile – for the wedding of our son Joe, and then on to Australia and finally Thailand. Most of the itinerary is ‘self-guided’, with a little help in the three tropical destinations in South America, son Dan in NSW and the assistance of our good friends, Neil & Eunice, in Thailand. I’m not really sure what to expect in terms of birding totals – could perhaps be up to 1200 in all, but having been to a few of these countries before, I guess that the number of new species might be in the region of 450? I’m taking plenty of photographic equipment so hope to come back with a good record of our adventures and provide some interesting images to illustrate this blog along the way.

In planning and preparation terms we’re 95% there – just a few more transport details to attend to and then the meticulous packing process. Twelve weeks away without some ‘essential item’ doesn’t bear thinking about! Mind you, my packing list doesn’t look any different than when we go away for a fortnight – am I missing something?

Must go now – trying to get my existing world ‘life list’ into shape before the ‘tsunami of ticks’ descends! I’ll let you know how the preparations are going before our grand departure – after that it’ll be down to the vagaries of the world wide web…!

A taste of things to come……