Getting ready for a long trip

Pack a couple of t-shirts, sunscreen and let’s go? Hardly! What do the preparations for a trip that is longer than two weeks in Croatia look like? Dom thought there was no difference in it. However, approximately half a year before the trip, Dari brought him back to the ground when she mentioned the vaccination that is needed. If you start with it a month before your departure, there is no chance of getting it all.

You need time for vaccination

So Dom made an appointment for the first dose of yellow fever vaccination, and the doctor arranged another 8 sessions, at which she injected him every time. He was lucky, he came exactly to the day as the last injection was planned for the day before departure. It is necessary to count with a minimum time of 14 days between doses, for Japanese encephalitis, it is even one month. We simply do not want to risk our health. Dot. And although the chances of getting for example meningitis are minimal, the consequences can be fatal, and we did not want to take this risk. Supporters of natural medicine may argue that vaccination is harmful to health, but a healthy adult individual can handle it playfully.

And how much such vaccinations cost and what diseases can affect you? Look at the graph below. We were vaccinated at the Avenier vaccination centre, where we managed to get a quantity discount. However, there is a lot of similar centres.

Do you know how to survive in the wild?

Another such preparation was the survival course in nature.  To survive in nature, one should go to a seminar, ideally only theoretical (not to be harmed before the trip). So, Dom has taken this course with a few friends in the Krusne Mountains. They learned how to make fire using stones, made their own bow, tried how their bodies react to subcooling, went across the river using the so-called French method, ate the pet shop grasshoppers and learned to work with a compass.

What about the pictures?

Dom took a course of travel photography by Pavel Svoboda. The course was about taking pictures. How to make a nice photo. How to shoot sharply. How to make interesting pictures. He does not say he already knows it. He just knows what the picture should be like. How to actually do this is a different thing 🙂

Dari also wanted to learn how to shoot nice pictures and visited Jaroslav Hora’s photo course from horoviny.cz. She learned the basics of what the aperture or shutter is, and what they are good for, but she also tried out some techniques like portrait rules.

All in all, Dari sees the composition, Dom knows how to press the button. If we put it together, maybe the pictures will be worth something.

What clothes should we pack?

Getting all the necessary equipment took us the longest time. We wanted to have the lightest backpacks, and our existing clothing was definitely not ready, so we were looking for the lightest mat, sleeping bag, tent, pot, just everything you need. We will make a report and put it in a sheet as soon as we have a complete list, we will add a link here.

Home flee market

We are moving. Boxes fill the cellars and attics of our relatives, but we still want to get rid of some extra things. So Dari, with a heavy heart, decided to sell part of her wardrobe. Visited a flea market and offered her dress online. If you are interested in a piece, look at vinted.cz.

Paramedic of the trip

Dom realized that he would like to be safe on the road, so he sent Dari to a . Under the guidance of Martin Vaša from kurzprozivot.cz, she learned not only basic life-saving activities but she also theoretically prepared herself for the situations she might encounter. So we already know how to pull the tick properly, how to insert the nasal airway or make a punction. We just hope we will never have to try it.

The underwater life

We want to try as much as possible on the way. One of the activities that attract us is diving. So we got ready for it at home. At the quarry of Srni, we tried to breathe in a diving suit and greeted local residents – carp, pike and catfish.  

Marker, watercolor and pencil

We started to create a blog with the preparation for this trip, but we have written travel diaries since our first holiday. And we not only wrote them but also drew pictures there. You know it, a scribble where you can hardly distinguish a tree from a road sign. In order for our diaries and not just those, to look nice, Dari signed up for drawing courses. She took her first course – Drawing by the right brain hemisphere in autumn, and a while before leaving, she enrolled in the Sketching course at the Draw Planet Art School. See if it was worth it 🙂

Uno – Dos – Tres – Cuatro!

If everything goes as planned, we would like to end our (two-year) journey on Cuba. We are attracted to Cuban culture, people and nature. But above all, we want to dance salsa with locals in a rum bar. And that’s what we were doing in spring at the Voila dance school under the leadership of the instructors Jonas and Misa. But if we remember something from their lessons, who knows 🙂