Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka Ora! Ka Ora!

Lately, one of the best things is to check our email in the morning and almost every day find a message from Down Under. Leah asking us if we need help to find a school for the girls in Brisbane, Francesca wanting to know when we'll get to Melbourne, Ludi and Gary who are waiting for us with 'gallons' of Australian wine on their sailing boat, Duncan warning us not to book anything else without consulting him first, but then admits that even left to our own device we didn't do too bad (G'day mate! How come you leave comments on the hubby's blog and not mine??).

A few days ago we had a surprise: finally living things to fate started to pay up and luck came our way. A couple from Christchurch contacted us for a house-swap, starting to make our staying in New Zealand more real. The website they used is Home4exchange. Louise and Ray are interested in spending a few months in Europe and include this part of Ireland in their tour. After having swapped a few emails we agreed on the details of the exchange and from April the 12th, our arrival date in NZ and Sara's birthday, we'll be using their house as a base for the lentgh of our staying on the South Island, until the beginning of June. They'll do the same with our place in Cork.

After we introduced ourselves and we agreed on the exchange, we both offered our availability to help the other discover the area. At present we are swapping notes on bridge clubs, restaurants, pubs and stone circles (stuff they're into), and what interests us in their area. We have learned that there is a swimming pool near their house, as well as basketball and tennis court (Nina will be happy), a playground and lots of lovely walks. We've heard that ChCh has an important art gallery and that the Anthartic Centre is worth seeing. There is also an ice skating rink nearby, which both girls are delighted with, and Arthur's Pass and the skiing slopes are only a day trip. The house is big, on three levels, with a stunning view of the Alps. With the house come 2 cats, that for my daughters deprived of the joy of a pet by cruel parents who drag them around the world instead, is a welcome surprise.

We would have liked a swap with Sidney, in January, but honestly, nobody in their right mind would swap the Australian summer with the worst of the Irish winter! We didn't stand a chance!!

Calculating our expenses for three months in Australia and three in New Zealand was, still is, much more complicated. The first thing we had to decide was: what do we want from the experience? Seeing as much as possible for sure, but not only. Above all we want to experience everyday life Down Under to see if it suits us, in case one day we came across the right opportunity to move over there. With this in mind, we have divided our staying both in Oz and NZ in three parts, 2 standing still in one place and 1 traveling around.

In Australia we'll be spending 5 weeks in Sidney, 3 on the road and 4 in Brisbane. Once again we started form the Rough Guide and budgeted the 3 weeks on the road as tourists. After that we had to look into cost of living in the cities we picked as bases for the first and the last month. Thanks to the guides, internet and above all our Ozzies friends we came up with an australian budget of 15 thousandE. Thanks to Simon and Leah who generously offered to us the use of a granny flat in their house, Brisbane was the easy part (Thank You guys, I'll never say it enough :-)

For Sidney, we had hoped to organize a house-swap by joining two sites that specialize in these kind of holidays: Homelink and Home4exchange. We came close a few times but in the end we never found an ideal partner. Part of the problem is the precise idea of what we want from Sidney: a real city experience. We want to enjoy the place fully with all that has to offer, with the possibility of spending a few days on the beach but not forced to do so by an accommodation too far out. Time was running out, so after some research on the internet we booked a place (Take a look!) in Randwick, 20 minutes from the center and 10 minutes from Cogee Beach. It will become home for 5 weeks where we hope to mingle with the locals and live like real Ozzies, barbecue and all.

New Zealand is still in the planning stages. We know that our bases will be Queenstown in the South Island and Wellington in the North Island. For the moment we trust the guides and the fact that the NZ dollar is cheaper than the Australian one. Our budget for NZ is 13 thousandE, we can only hope!

At the end of the trip I will publish a spreadsheet with a detailed account of our expenses, divided in categories and countries, only then we'll be able to see how accurate (or not!) our forecasts were. To the travel expenses we'll have to add our fixed costs back home, chiefly the mortgage and car insurances, considering also that we won't have an income until the end of September. We are going to cancel phone, broadband, gas and electricity. Our total budget, considering even a contingency fund, is 60 thousandE. On top of it, we'll add a safety net of another 20 thousand, thanks to a special loan for emergency available through AIB Bank that doesn't charge interest until the money is drawn. If in the end of the trip we won't have touched it, we'll be able to give the money back the way we got it. We both agree that when we'll start dipping into this fund, it will be time to turn back (or rather keep going as you can back track!). We hope our budget will hold so as to arrive to Buenos Aires in the end of August, but if it won't never mind. Even if we had made a gross mistake and were to run out of money halfway, we'll have always seen China and Australia, there are worse calamities. Sure what else would we be doing?

Listening to The Killers: Bones