July 27, 2007
In a few days we'll have been out of the States longer than any previous trip we've taken. And yet we've been in Madagascar for less than half our stay here. We'll have been here five weeks this Sunday, but we have six more weeks from this Saturday. Time seems to pass in a different way when traveling. We end up quite isolated, operating in a small space consisting of finding food, lodging and transport. And with little access to news sources, the outside world really fades away.
This all came up because we did a big money count last night, checking that we have as much as we thought we did and trying to plan how much we'll spend in each country. Our daily allowance is roughly $30 total. Not much, especially for two people, but the fact that we love camping helps enormously. And fortunately hiking is cheap no matter where you go. We will, of course, go over our daily allotment in some places. Italy, Australia and New Zealand will be burdensomely expensive, but then its cheap here and we hope to recoup in India and Argentina. Malaysia seems like it could go either way: we could blow our budget or save a lot.
But with 294 days left (don't ask: David is always and forever an engineer and he just knows these things) not only is the trip going well, but we're set, more or less, for the next forty-two weeks. Wow.
