Day 3 swim count = 2. Yes! We are here. After our night and day in Houston, a night near the airport in Liberia we have transferred out to Playa Hermosa where we get to hang out for the next 5 days.

Day One - Swim count = 1. Big tick for the first swim. It was 31 degrees and the first thing we did once we checked in at our airport hotel was all jump in the pool. It is HOT! My perfect swimming weather especially as it's too hot to do much else especially for 6 year olds who have already said the one thing they don't want to do on holiday is walk anywhere.

Woah, somehow we are here checked in and ready to start our first leg. It is only just feeling real right now which is super exciting. A huge thank you to all the help from Mum in the final rush this morning, all the last play dates which meant the girls were entertained and to our house sitters who are looking after our home for us. Bags are on the way to the plane soon we will be!

We now have a travel plan for 105 days. We have kept the later half a bit more flexible so we can see how things go and change it as we get closer to that time. So if you want to know what the start of our plan looks like: 

The first thing we had to do was read lots of books. Lonely Planet, Fodor's, The Rough Guide and Auckland Public Libraries were invaluable. From there we started pulling together a travel path and rough outline. Then it was on to booking.com and actually making some bookings for where we would be heading. Booking.com was great as we could make bookings with easy cancellations. 
That meant we could change our length of time places really easily as we made changes based on what we wanted to do in each place. 

The hardest part so far has been actually taking the first steps to making the whole plan start to become real. So far in no particular order:

This summer was our longest on the boat yet with us getting to spend over 6 weeks all up. Our longest stretch was 14 days and that included a few 24+ hour stretches when we didn't leave our 38 foot home on the water. Time slows down and we get so much more real time together. It was when Sophia cried when we came home that I felt something had to change and we had to find ways to get more time all together...thought maybe not in the confines of a boat. Especially over winter.