James World Travels

We are starting with two weeks of Spanish lessons for the entire family in Costa Rica at:

http://www.cosi.co.cr/

Then we have a Gap Adventures family tour booked for Peru & Ecuador (the Galapagos Islands):

http://www.gapadventures.com/tour/PF07F

For Australia we Have a camper van booked for six weeks starting in Sydney and finishing in Brisbane. We have no idea of a route and are still toying with the possibility of a super long (and straight & boring) drive to iconic Ayers Rock. Any suggestions or comments of worthwhile sights in Australia are heartily welcomed. Please send any comments to: travel (at) noe.ca The Toyota van we are renting is from:

http://www.britz.com.au/campervan-hire-australia

After that we have no major tours or “equipment” bookings. We’d like to have one through Egypt & Jordan but no tour companies that we have found on the net are interested in taking bookings from families this far in advance for the time frame we will be there. Other than that we’ll probably rent a small car from Rome through Europe until Paris. We’re still looking into the possibility of some helpX or woofing farm stays depending upon how our money is holding out by the time we get to Europe. After the grand old Chunnel ride we’ll rent another small car in the UK to tour around there until we hit Dublin and then fly back to Halifax in Canada.

There are an abundance of travel reference websites (commercial & private) which Claudette & I have devoured. The most recent one I stumbled upon is from a family that most closely seems to resemble ours & our situation & goals than most others that we have encountered. They traveled for ten months back in 2001 & 2002. The main difference is that they schooled their three kids for the duration and with their comments it strongly solidified our feelings of not wanting to bother with “official” curriculum while we’re traveling. Too funny that the wife/mother’s maiden name is also James…

http://www.alljames.com

And we all can’t wait! A couple entries of our previous BLOG I had set up were reanrranged when I transfered over to wordpress. At least we weren’t part way into the trip when it happened.

We don’t have renters for the house yet, but there are a couple of good prospects. We do however have our plane tickets for the first half (time wise) in hand though, and all of our passports! We have the Spanish school in Costa Rica booked and are pretty excited about the beach school being our first stop. Rick is going to take scuba lessons in Edmonton first and Claudette, Alex & Luke will be taking snorkeling lessons as well.

Claudette & I have decided to not bother with taking a laptop computer. instead we’ll buy a PDA with a fold out full-sized keyboard. This will easily suffice for blog entries and our individual daily logs. Every week or two when we get handy to an internet computer we’ll publish the blog entries and backup picture and journal files.

Several friends and family members have made plans to meet up at various spots along our rough route as well. There’s always room for more though! The latest addition to this list is Rick’s Dad & his wife Dianne who have secured a friends villa in Greece for us to share for a couple weeks in the Spring of 2008.

So plans and bookings are progressing well. Our itinerary is at the list page, (link available from the main http://www.jamesworld.ca website). Any suggestions or comments anyone has for spots to see or places to stay along our route are welcomed by way of the comments section or by email.