Merry Christmas to all our readers!!

Sucking a honey and lemon locket, chewing a Mars bar and shielding ourselves from the icy rain, we traipsed across town to meet up with David, our humorous travel agent, for what will probably be the penultimate time.

After securing ourselves a free cup of tea it was down to business as we had much to discuss.

First up on the agenda was solving the issue of getting from Cape Town to Quito. Initially the thinking was that we would have to return to the UK (Heathrow) from South Africa and fly out to South America (probably via Spain or the US) from there. However after some time researching we discovered another option which is not only cheaper but saves us a day hanging out in airports. So our new route is.....deep breath........fly from Cape Town to Johannesburg then to Buenos Aires, on to Lima and finally to Quito! Starting at 6am and arriving at midnight (albeit in a time zone six or so hours behind the one we started in!). What a day of travel that will be!

Secondly we wanted to book the famous four day trek along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Again we had an idea of what we wanted, however after speaking with David we decided to book ourselves onto a slightly longer organized tour of Southern Peru. This longer experience will include the Machu Picchu trek but will also take in various highlights from Lima to Cuzco before starting the Inca Trail. This means after spending four weeks in Quito, we will have a couple of weeks to get ourselves south through Ecuador and Northern Peru before arriving in Lima and starting the tour.

Thirdly we booked ourselves some mixed dorm accommodation for three nights in Moscow. These will be our first three nights of the trip.

Finally, we had some boring stuff to attend to. So, taking advantage of the sales so prevalent at this time of year, we have paid for our travel insurance for the trip getting a whopping 15% discount!

Having left David a couple of hours after arriving and a few pennies lighter, we arranged to reconvene at the beginning of February to crack on with our visas for Russia, Mongolia and China for starters.

This week I also popped in to my local travel clinic to discuss vaccinations with the nurse (having previously submitted a travel questionnaire a month ago) only to be given a couple of website resources to research for myself what jabs I think I need. I'm not quite sure how I qualify as a medical professional but it's a whole other story I don't really want to bore you with right now. Suffice it to say, I have done the necessary research on behalf of the NHS both this week and previously so am in a good position to demand my necessary inoculations when I pop back at the beginning of January.

We wish you all a Happy and Prosperous 2012!