London, UK to Lisbon, Portugal

It feels like we’ve been planning, talking about and working towards this trip forever so I think we are all in slight disbelief that we are actually leaving today.  All of us are feeling a mix of emotions – nervousness, excitement and a little sad.  I think Mel and I have been too busy over the last few weeks to really take the time to digest the enormity (or stupidity!) of what we’re about to embark upon.

Our close friends – the Abbotts – kindly let us use their home for our final few nights in London, and it is from there we set off to Gatwick airport.  Our first 5 weeks or so will be without Miss Adventure (the campervan) as we backpack through Brazil towards Argentina.  As we were now backpackers, we decided to take public transport to the airport, starting off with a 3 minute walk to the nearest bus stop. 

I’ve labelled our stops on the walk to the bus stop in the above map.  As I’ve said many times before, this is a “character building” opportunity.

We arrived at the airport with only a small number of further complaints and are now enjoying our first night away – transiting in Lisbon on our way to Rio, the starting point of the trip.  As part of our planning, we carefully budgeted for all aspects of our travel – fuel, activities, food, accommodation, etc.  This works out to a daily figure we just need to ensure we stick to.  Easy peasy.  Today we are 312% over budget.  Obviously this is because Western Europe is much more expensive than South America, and not at all because of a formula error in the budget spreadsheet.

Tomorrow morning we fly to Rio. Both Mel and I have carefully read the various travel advisories about Brazil and Rio enjoys a significant amount of coverage in all of them. One very helpful pointer from the UK government says “if using GPS navigation, make sure that the suggested route doesn’t take you into a favela“.

I’m guessing the “avoid favelas” option is only available on the iOS version. Typical. I’m hoping favelas are well signposted in that case.

Nick, 30th December 2019

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