Day 1, this is where we are and this is how we got here

So, after very little planning, many, many queues, a couple of hiccups and pushing the boundaries of the "expedited process", we are finally here at our first destination - and what better place to start than New York City.

It's been a little over a month since we paid for our "round the world" tickets and since we really started working on our tour. During this time we managed to organize Schengen, UK and China visas - and probably for the first times in our lives we regretted having so many public holidays. We applied for Schengen visas through the Spanish Embassy to avoid having to book interview appointments and on the recommendation of the company we used to schlep our applications. It took 7 days to get the visa (including two stuff up days thanks to the schleppers we used). The next day it was off to the UK embassy with a further 4 day wait till we got these visas - thanks Will and Kate for getting married while we were waiting for our visas. We had to delay our interview appointment by a day but this was done easily on the excellent website. And lastly, to China. This was a crazy embassy that was pretty much like a Chinese market but at least they have a "fast fee" where you can pay a bit extra and get your visa the next day. The process worked brilliantly, but we learnt the hard way that you can't apply for a Chinese visa more than 3 months before your intended trip to China…so we'll be doing this one again from somewhere else in the world closer to landing for China in October. Finally, on Thursday, 5 May 2011, we had all visas in hand and we were ready to leave…at least on paper.

In between the visa applications, we were finalizing things at work, attending a few farewell parties, setting up this fine blog, moved out of homes, gained open-water diving licenses and international driving licenses, got to gold vitality status, had a few medical checks, got disability insurance (yes, that's the actuaries in us), had many injections from the travel clinic, sold a car (need to know how, just ask), arranged some (ok a lot) of forex, renewed driving licenses, did some travel shopping and definitely did not sleep enough.

Alas, after stressful last minute packing (and first hotel booking) and sad goodbyes, with mixed emotions we boarded SAA's new direct flight headed for JFK. The flight was as good as a 16.5 hour flight can be and was helped by a sleeping pill to ensure we got some sleep. Inflight entertainment and movies were great and the food was surprisingly good. Landing with much excitement we started thinking about how we've just arrived here and having not checked at all whether we needed to do anything in SA with regard to visas and entry into the US - even though we both have 10yr tourist visas. Turns out you can just rock up and rock in with a little chit-chat to the St Lucian passport controller about cricket and people abusing wheel chair courtesy. A couple minutes later, we were safety-wrapped-backpacks in hand and exiting the terminal doors to face the big apple. We took the train into Lower Manhattan. It took $7.50 and about an hour all in all to get to Penn Station - which in comparison to a $45 taxi or $25 shuttle, both of which would be subject to traffic, was a pretty good and easy choice.

Our hotel, Hotel Pennsylvania (http://www.hotelpenn.com/), is a block away from the station and a couple blocks away from Times Square - making it really well located. As for the hotel itself, the lobby would lead you to think you've just entered a major commercial office park, but the rest of the hotel and the rooms are fairly old-school. It's a 2* hotel but its clean an comfortable and for the low price of under $100 a night/person, it seems like very good value for money - at least for NYC. Before we were able to get into our rooms at the afternoon check-in time, we had a couple hours to kill and managed to organize sim cards and mobile access. We tried Verizon and T-Mobile and chose a T-Mobile plan which gives us unlimited calls and sms's as well as 2gigs of data for $70 a month pre-paid (be careful of an additional $30 charge for the sim card and a further $15 for activation). We now have access to the telecommunicactivity and interweb worlds on:

Brett: +1 347 441 7134

Darren: +1 347 757 8836

This means we're up and running on Whatsapp and email:

Brett: [email protected]

Darren: [email protected]

but unfortunately BBM doesn't work…will try see if I can get this to work at the wifi spots in town. We can also be contacted via sms on our South African cell phone numbers.

We finally managed to get into our rooms and had a good shlof (had a good sleep for you non-Jewish talkers) before hitting the streets again for some Starbucks, Burger King and free wifi.

So there you have it, the very condensed approach to how we got here and where we are. We're still not sure where we'll be next but more is nog a dag (tomorrow is another day for you non-afrikaans talkers) and we'll try get some plans of action together for ourselves and you all.

Trek on… Brett and Darren

P.S. Late night music at the 24 hour McDonalds on 34th Street and 7th Av is fantastic!