Just Breathe

What can be seen swimming in the Nile, or what animals live in the water at Galapagos? How amazing would it be to eventually swim in a cave and to finally explore the Great Barrier Reef up close! We have booked ourselves in for Scuba Diving training before we head up to Townsville, so maybe we can see some of these things or something completely different. We're too big to swim with our fish in their tank, but there's plenty of room for us in the ocean. There's a world that we've only seen in aquariums or on the TV, so to see it with our own eyes in nature will be a dream come true. If we do decide to dive overseas there are plenty of places we can hire out gear which is great 'cause we are not carrying flippers with us around the world!!

Theory classes start on 9th July Friday night and pool practice will be Saturday and Sunday, then  Open Waters the following weekend!! We need to get back to the gym if we're going to feel comfortable in our sexy wetsuits and we're really hoping they are very warm - seriously, who learns to dive in Winter! We're crazy but if we don't do it now, we never will. We have a DVD to watch as homework and some light text book reading.


Speaking of cold weather, Melbourne has been freezing lately which has been a perfect motivator to buy more than one pair of thermals for our trip. Kathmandu has been our life saver lately. We scouted around for zip-off long pants and warm shirts, and even our backpacks we might buy from there. We're considering going very very light with only 40L bags...so maybe only 3 changes of clothes and toiletries, 2 pairs of shoes, first aid kit, small laptop, external hard drive, photography gear (just our 18-200mm lens and four 4GB cards + two 4GB for the video recorder) and some other small stuff like a book, maybe two, and maybe chocolate, actually definitely chocolate.

We're thinking that if we can get away with only carry-on luggage we won't lose time by having to wait at the carousel or be victims of yet another luggage horror scenario. Packing light has really made us evaluate what's really important to us and how much crap we've accumulated over the years. We'll have to have a huge clean out before Paul and Anita come to live at our place while we're away. We promise there will be space in your closet for clothes guys. That might also help us sort out our tax before we go. This year we're rolling the dice for a huge return. There's nothing better than spending fresh Government dollars. Cha-Ching!!

The medication side of travel to the countries we are going is about $1,000 more expensive than we had initially thought and that's not including the cost for the GP consults. Thankfully we can claim some of the medication costs through Private Health and Medicare. Our Saturday was very interesting, actually, we were very pissed off. We stood around in our pharmacy for 45 minutes while they tried to find somewhere that supplied one of our vaccines because they didn't order it when we asked last week. Because the Rabies vaccine is not common we had to go to the emergency department in the city hospital then down to their pharmacy to pick up the needles and pay a lazy $320 (again) for the two shots, then back to emergency for the nurse to inject us. We lost four hours when it could have all been over in one. Our next $320 day is scheduled for the 6th July and we can't wait! We'll be ordering our next medication the week before, then confirming the day before that it's actually in. Two more GP visits then we will have so much medication pumping through our veins that a shark could bite off our legs and they would miraculously grow back. Bite us hard bats and monkeys!! (not to test fate...)


Slowly our wedding list of things to do is shrinking. Invitations are now out so we can start grouping seating placements soon. Catering is now booked, the guy's suites are organised and we just need to decide on ceremony wording and program printing.


We've decided to drive around some parts of Europe on our Honeymoon and maybe the UK as well, so we are now both holders of International Driver's Licenses. RACV can make IDL's for $31.50 each and although they aren't essential to have in every country, it translates details of our Australian license and saves international authorities time if they need to check it. We have also found a fantastic Lonely Planet translation book of basic phrases for eight languages which will come in handy when we have to ask "Which way to the scuba diving boat?"  So much to look forward to.
 
xx Love Ev & Dan.

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