Category — Useful Stuff

Entering in a country is like to enter a house, you’ve got to respect the owners and their rules. For countries, who takes care of the entry is immigration and each one has its own rules.Many Brazilians complain that the Brazilian passport is not welcome in some countries, one of the causes could be the excess of Brazilians trying to immigrate illegally.

I disagree, as we have no enemies, we pass smoothly by almost all countries, but of course those who try to go through tourist taking 10 copies printed cvs in the bag and a lot of tools probably will have the visa denied.
As our case is just visiting the countries and spending our money there, I believe the majority would be quite happy to give us visas. But we still must respect the rules of each country to avoid problems at the airport.

See what each country requires for Brazilian tourists:

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Today at work I was chatting with Cam, a friend who is about to leave on a trip greater than ours, about what is the best way to earn points and miles with a trip like this. After all, spending so much money with airlines (and being faithful to a group) has got to have some benefit.

Coincidently (or not) on the same day we received a comment from Tuca, suggesting a post about how we are getting benefits from it. Thank you for the suggestion, Tuca! Here we go…

Felipe and I were already part of Lan Chile’s loyalty program, which is the most common airline that flies Brazil-New Zealand. But the points that we had accumulated with Lan going back and forth from Brazil, were not yet sufficient to do anything.

The major airlines here in the Pacific are Qantas and Air New Zealand. So all the loyalty programs partners over here are related to one of them. We wanted something more than simply flying with Lan, we knew that several credit cards and other things also give points, then we decided to ‘abandon’ the points that we had already earned with Lan and join the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, as Qantas is part of Oneworld group.

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We’ll try to put here in the blog everything we are taking, what we think might be useful in the journey, how we are preparing, etc.. If anyone has any tips, please send us a comment!

Yesterday we did some shopping (by the way, shopping now, only for the trip!). See what we bought:

1. Elastic clothes line. It comes with the clips! I found this super useful, not only for travelling, but also get to use at home.
Brand: Kiwi Camping
Price: NZD 6.99 / US$ 5.30

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I think any surfer dreams of making an endless summer style trip, seeking the perfect wave in tropical paradises around the globe.

Of course, surfing is not the only thing I want to do, but for me it is still one of the highlights of the trip.

The initial idea was to do a surftrip in Australia, Indonesia, Morocco, Brazil and Peru. For a long time I was searching only the best surfspots of each country, the right season, maps of swell and car hire in each place, so far so good.

But the problem are the baggage excess rates, take them by train from Singapore to Bangkok, and Madrid to Agadir in southern Morocco, how often would have to pay storage in the airports which probably would be the case in Hong Kong, Delhi, London, Paris, Brazil (Rio), Peru and Chile, not counting the possibility of breaking and crushing the boards in all of these flights .

I asked Rodrigo, Cris’ brother, how is to ship the boards from bali to morocco, he told me there is a great risk of breaking the boards and I would have to organize and store the boards until I get there.

He suggested that it would be better send by some courier like fedex or ups and organize the storage of them, but this is more expensive than buying new boards (something around NZD 3000.00).

So until now the best option is the best lead the boards to Indonesia, sell them there and try to buy a used or rent in other peaks.

If you have any suggestion please help me!

Setting up the bags to 6 months off, getting the heat of the tropics and European winter is not a simple task. Our goal is to get as little as possible and to have maximum mobility.

I found a sleeping bag large and unnecessary, since we have no plans to go camping. But after reading a few blogs and chatting with a friend about it, he referred to it as a mandatory item made me think about it.

As we’re going to use different ways of transport we might end up sleeping in an airport or trainstation, there is also a guide about sleeping in airports that is sensational

We will be more flexible to sleep in our friends houses or local families if necessary.

It is a good plan “B” if we sleep in a place cooler than imagined or in questionable hygiene conditions .

We were on the way to Taranaki, and on the way stopped in a camping store, we found the most compact and accessible price sleeping bag that had ever seen here (NZD 75.00), it was the first thing we bought for the trip.

I hope that it may be useful even if only to cover the floor for a picnic.