So the day finally came round to departing, which I never thought would come, and suddenly reality hit home that I would not be seeing any of my friends or family for a whole year :-( As I'd been planning this trip for so many years, I guess I just didn't expect the time to come round so quickly and be setting off on our travels. 

I had hoped to be organized and packed in plenty of time before we departed, but with working right up to a week before, having many farewell parties and a wedding to attend doing bridesmaid duties, I was only able to pack my stuff 2 days before we were off! I spent the whole day packing and organising my things wondering how I was going to fit a years worth of stuff into my backpack! When I laid everything out in the bed I thought I was being good by not taking a lot of stuff . I arranged everything in some kind of order using packing cubes, kind of like mini suitcases to organize all my stuff. It was only when trying to pack all those packing cubes in the pack did I realize that perhaps I might be taking too many clothes. I couldn't even fit in my heated rollers, so had to leave those behind, unwillingly. I hardly took any toiletries, and the ones I did take were solid shampoo and soap bars that I took in my hand luggage anyway. I managed to pack all the cubes in but with no spare space what so ever, so I doubt I'll have space to buy anything on route, unless I throw some stuff away or send some back home. Once all was packed, I weighed it and it came to 16kg, which I know for a rucksack is a lot for little me! Although John's weighed nearly 23kg which seems like it weighs a ton, so rather him than me. At least when I tried mine on, I didn't fall over backwards which I thought I would do. It's heavy for me but I can manage it just about.... We'll see what I write a few months down the line!

As we had a really early flight on Friday, we had to stay at an airport hotel Thursday night . Susie and David my aunt and uncle drove us to the airport and we said our goodbyes which was a bit emotional. I'd been getting upset each and every time I had to say goodbye to family and friends. But we are away for a year so I'm sure the time will soon fly by. Once they left, we had a drink in the bar and went off to bed, ready to rise before 4am for an early start.

 The next morning we awoke really tired, having had around 3 hours sleep and started to lug our packs on the airport shuttle bus to go to terminal 5. I'd not flown from Heathrow for a long time and never seen this terminal before, but it's pretty impressive. It was a relief to check our rucksacks in and we were just left with our day packs which was more manageable to carry. We left Heathrow for a connecting flight to Madrid where we had to wait for a few hours before departing our flight to Bogota. First we flew with British Airways to Madrid, and then on the long flight we flew with Iberia. On the flight to Bogota, I thought I was sat next to a Spanish girl, however she stated talking in English and was actually English. She was a school girl travelling to South America alone as her mother was from Colombia, and she goes there for school holidays. So if a girl of around 15 can do this, surely it's going to be ok for myself and John travelling together as a couple. This did give me some reassurance that we were going to be ok, as I had been more worried than excited in the upcoming weeks before we departed. They fed us well on the 11.5 hour flight to Bogota and for flight food, it wasn't too bad. I'd never been on a flight this long and time did pass slowly at first, but we slept some of the journey which broke it up a bit. After watching the landing on the in flight screens, I realized we had arrived safely in Bogota. Now the journey begins.....