Frugal to a Fault

I like to pride myself on being creatively frugal, however, I often find myself in a pickle because of it. For example, last month I decided to teach myself to use Google flights to its full functionality, and thus flush out some great value flights for our trip. After days of research and flight checking and comparison shopping I purchased our tickets to Cape Town, South Africa, and I was feeling really good about what I had paid. I knew my tickets were ones that allowed carry-on luggage only, and I was not worried about it. As I mentioned in my last blog we always travel light. So yesterday, before we did our packing "trial run," I figured I better check our carry-on baggage restrictions for each of the airlines - just in case it was different from Westjet. Well, it turns out I did not just buy the cheap ticket that only allows carry-on, I bought the cheap, cheap ticket that allows a total of only 7 kilos (15.4 pounds) between BOTH the standard carry-on bag and personal item (usually a supersized purse stuffed to the brim). Now let me put 15 pounds into perspective...Stephane's sandals weigh 2.5 pounds, the binoculars and ipad total almost 7 pounds. Our afternoon went something like this:

Steph groaning sits on his bag, zips it up and weighs it. 25 pounds. This is ridiculous, I already eliminated a pair of shoes and my electric razor.
Me: Do you really need three dress shirts? We are going on a safari!
Steph: I need long sleeves to keep the mosquitoes off me!
Me: Which weighs more, a bottle of DEET or three dress shirts?

I then see a flurry of clothing fly across of the room, more grunts and a few hurumphs, and then

Steph: Fine. I got rid of a pair of shorts, two t-shirts, and my bandanna. He weighs the bag. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD it still weights 22 pounds! This is impossible. Why can't we just pay for a bag?
Me: Because 1) I don't want to stand around waiting for my bag after 22 hours of flying, 2) I don't want to chance my bag getting lost, 3) I really don't want to be around you if YOUR bag gets lost, and 4) Seriously Steph, are three pairs of dress pants really necessary?
Steph: MOSQUITOES!!!
Me: Maybe if you pack ankle socks instead of tube socks?

More packing, more clothes flying, more weighing, Still 18 pound. ARRRGGGGGGGGGGGG! More repacking, then weighing, then repacking and weighing.
Steph: I'm done. I look in the bag and see one pair of very large sandals, one bathing suit and some KY jelly.

Me: KY instead of DEET??

I am kidding, of course, Steph would never give up his hair products for KY! Besides, it was entirely impossible to get the weight down, so I reluctantly got online and went to pay for an extra bag. That is when I choked. 89 EUROS for 1 checked bag...PER LEG OF THE FLIGHT! That's 160 Euros ($234 Canadian dollars) FOR ONE BAG OF LUGGAGE! I just couldn't do it.

More packing, weighing, clothes flying, repacking...Steph begins to wimper...

WAIT!! I've got it. I dumped everything out of my bag and weighed it. 7.5 pounds! That's the answer I exclaimed exuberantly. Ditch the hard shell bag with wheels and use the lightweight fabric bag I bought to use as my personal item. Sure enough, Steph's stuff fit in it, tube socks and all, and now I don't have to choose between sex and malaria.

So we now have matching pink bags, and I have learned a lesson about cheap tickets. A cheap ticket is not cheap if you have to pay $234 for a checked bag, not to mention the additional $272 dollars it cost me to choose our seats. And to make matters worse, I went online after all this was done, and the cheap cheap ticket I bought is now $200 cheaper AND it comes with - you guessed it - 1 free checked bag.

Pack Rats

I love to travel and have done a lot of it. I have visited over 40 countries in the past 12 years and I have learned many important things like: Don’t over plan, stay long, and pack light. I write this knowing full well it is definitely easier said than done. For example, we are going to South Africa in high season this winter, and unfortunately that requires advance booking, otherwise we may find ourselves without a place to stay. So being spontaneous is out of the question this trip. Also, in a country with so much crime, being well prepared, and knowing where you are going at all times is probably diligent. Most challenging however, is taking only carry-on luggage for a four month long trip.

I am certain organizing our bags for this trip to Africa will take a few trial runs. For Stephane the task is monumental given the size of his feet: one shoe takes up half his carry on! Then there is all his hair products. Funny thing that is.

There is one good travel tip I try to keep in mind when packing: unless you are heading out to the far reaches of the Amazon, almost anything can be purchased once you get there (except maybe super large shoes in Latin America...).

Another trick I have learned is to keep a small zip up bag in your small carry-on personal item that has the following items in it: 24 hours of medications (if you require them), earbuds, a credit card, lip balm, eye patches, ear plugs, 1 mg Ativan, toothbrush, Clorets, and reading glasses if you need them. These are all the things you will likely need when on a long flight. The whole zip up case can be placed in the seat pocket in front of you thus avoiding the nightmare of having to crawl over two people to drag down your suitcase and dig through it to try to find what you need. Unfortunately, no one has yet solved the issue of how to not have to pee once an hour on a long flight...

In general, I try to avoid overnight flights, but when going to South Africa from North America it is quite unavoidable if you want to arrive there during the day. I have also learned that more often than not, aircraft entertainment systems are broken and it is worthwhile to have some movies downloaded onto your tablet or phone. Steph and I always carry an earbud splitter so that we can plug into the same movie. Syncing our seat back screens has become an art and we are quite good at it (I know, our talents are endless!).

A few years ago I bought a kindle which takes up less space than a book and can be read on the beach without glare. It took some getting used to, but means I can carry several books with without the weight and space issues. Alternatively I have found that no matter where I have travelled to, there are always good books to be found...books other travellers have left behind.

All in all, packing light requires thought, but has so many benefits...no lost luggage, no waiting around on arrival, allowing you to get through customs first before the long line ups form, and less back aches dragging all that weight around.

Now if I could just solve the shoe issue...

Two Star Retirement - Part Two

I first started blogging about our two star retirement in October 2017, and after nine glorious months of travel, we had to come home to renovate our house which had been trashed by some unsavory tenants. It was a horrendous and infamous renovation from hell, so I stopped writing for the better part of a year while I finished the house and got my vacation rental business up and running. Now, after an eventful summer, I am ready to start writing again.

Discovering Stephane and I were not cut out for renovating houses together, did not kill our two star retirement plan altogether: It simply helped us define and clarify what we each needed, and what we each could or could not tolerate. So ultimately, while that was a difficult process to go through, we are now back on track with new clarity. No more renovating houses - together! That means if I find a great house I just have to buy and renovate, Steph will gladly go hang out in Montreal with his family, and when it is all over, he will return. Having said that, I am in no mood to do this again anytime soon.

The house turned out fantastic, and the yard is amazing (if I do say so myself), and even though it was our first year, the vacation rental unit upstairs was solidly booked, bringing in about 25% more revenue than I had expected. Next summer should bring an additional increase of 25%, so I am very pleased. This was our yard in March

And this was our yard two months later

Living below the rental unit, in our newly built "owner's suite" was comfortable, and not as bad as I thought it might be. People are generally pretty quiet, and with the exception of two groups who were quite loud, our Safe and Sound insulation did a good job of buffering the noise.

Now that it is fall, we are back upstairs, and have a six month tenant in the basement. He is here on a temporary contract with the prison, and will be leaving about the time we return from our winter travel and are ready to move downstairs again for next summer. We also found a short term tenant to move into our upstairs unit for the four months we will be gone. That was always the plan: have short term rental income coming in up and down, and that effectively pays for our winter travel.

Last winter, Stephane had decided to go back to work, and so he spent a fair bit of time this spring looking for employment. Eventually, in August, he was offered work - doing the same kind of work as he had before retiring - but he decided to turn it down. After a lot of thought he chose to work instead in the spring, summer and fall for a friend - working on pools, leaving his winters free to travel. This of course delights me, and will mean far less stress for Stephane, which we think is a good idea.

This summer we sold our secondary property here in Oliver. My son and his wife had lived there since 2014 but decided to buy a house of their own in July. After a quick, very minor face-lift reno, we sold it in one day, without realtors, for almost full price! This left us with a tidy profit which we promptly used to pay off the line of credit we grew during the renovation on our house. So Stephane's summer job, combined with my vacation rental income, should be more than enough money to live on. Especially now that we are effectively debt free. We won't have the additional bonus money that house flipping would have provided, but at the end of the day, we do not live large (except for travel), and I believe we can keep our day to day expenses well within our budget.

Our travel budget, is our biggest expense, and I am always looking for creative ways to do what I want to do without breaking the bank. In 2016 I rented a 3 bedroom place for 3 months and rented out the other two rooms on Airbnb, then in 2017 we tried renting for 6 months at a time which generally reduces the cost of accommodation significantly, and this year, we are simply going somewhere where the Canadian dollar goes a long way: Africa.

I have always wanted to return to Africa. In 2007 I spent several months there with my oldest son - visiting Morocco, and volunteering throughout Ghana and Kenya. That was an amazing trip - part of a four month journey around the world with my eldest. I blogged the whole trip and it is a good read - so be sure to check it out at http://corrieandjoelstrip.blogspot.com/2007/09/ After doing a camping safari in Kenya I knew I would safari again - only the next time I would do it in luxury and with Stephane.

So in January, after a couple weeks of visiting Cape Town and its surrounding wine region, we will head to a private game reserve called Timbavati, and will stay at a luxury camp called Simbavati River Lodge...check it out...this is the room we booked. It opens onto the Sabi River where wildlife come to drink. This reserve is the only one in Africa with white lions...and this year there are two sets of babies!

Since we can only afford to stay there three nights (it is over a $1000/night) we will afterwards be staying in a lovely 2 bedroom unit at the Sabi Sun resort - which I got through my travel club for only $400 for the whole week! This resort is near Hazyview, South Africa right beside Kruger National Park so we will spend an entire week doing self drive safaris! After that we will head to the Dolphin Coast for some beach time, then onwards to spend a few weeks driving the famous Garden Route. We have decided to leave the month of March unplanned to give us some flexibility.

We are considering going to Zimbabwe (I have always wanted to see Victoria Falls), Botswana (I really want to do a boat safari in the Okanvango Delta), and Stephane wants to go to weird places with weird names like Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Bujumbura, Burundi, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Flic en flac, Mauritius.

I will, as usual, post blog entries on Facebook and Twitter, and hope you will come along for the adventure! We start our travels on Dec 6 - heading to our favorite place in Conchas Chinas (Puerto Vallarta) for three weeks before heading overseas, and as always, I love your feedback and comments.