Hi everyone and welcome to our very first entry!
It’s late Tuesday night and we’re all packed and ready to leave on Thursday morning. Only joking – we actually have climbing boots, ropes, down jackets, sleeping bags, crampons, ice axes & ice hammers, a tent, packs and all sorts of clothes strewn from one end of the house to another!
At least we’ve bought our food. During our shopping we managed to get sprung by our gym instructor precisely at the time we were buying lots of chocolates; she promptly marched us over to the health food section and pointed out a few of her favourites! We also got a few funny looks in the supermarket as our trolley was filled with nothing much else but every imaginable variety of pre-prepared pasta meals and around 100 muesli bars. We are taking lightweight food for 20 days.
Our flight leaves Melbourne at 6am Thursday morning and we fly to Sydney and then through Soul and onto Almaty in Kazakhstan. We’re a bit worried about our luggage because it looks like we’ll have 100kgs of gear. With a baggage allowance of only 50kgs in total between the two of us it sounds like the negotiation skills will be exercised straight up!
Anyway, must go now and get some sleep – we have a lot of things to finalise tomorrow – both at work, and for our trip.
Paul & Fiona.