With only 3 weeks to go before our family departs South Africa to travel on a cross global blogging adventure to Canada, we have been busy little bees sorting out all the technicalities of taking a family of 5 halfway across the world.
Never mind climbing the Rockies, ploughing through this mountain of red tape makes Mount Robson look like a molehill. Here are 5 things that are enough to put anyone off doing an international family trip:
First off, we have had to work through the passport and visa logistics. Ralph and the boys are Canadian citizens, so we had to apply for their Canadian passports. Think forms as thick as Roget’s Thesaurus, and multiply that by 5. Add to that triplicate copies of strange-sized photographs, with very specific and rather hard to follow instructions and then getting an attorney to certify every single thing before couriering the lot to the embassy in Pretoria.
Right there you have the stuff that nightmares are made of for admin-free spirits like me.
Just to add insult to injury, I had to renew my British passport, and then the cherry on top, an electronic travel authorisation for Canada. I am so proud of this bundle of official documents – they might not look much to you, but to me they are hours and days and weeks of hard work, made even more precious by the financial investment it took to get them. Luckily I was already in possession of unabridged birth certificates for the kids, as I think it may just have pushed me over the edge if I had to get those too.
An impressive pile of precious passports
Speaking of financial investments, it is absolutely no fun changing your hard earned Rands into any other form of currency. Add to this an exchange rate that bounces up and down (and down and down) on a daily basis. It’s like gambling. And I am so NOT a gambler. Which is probably a good thing, as we have managed to exchange our money on the two days that the SA Rand was the lowest in history.
Just this afternoon I cringed as I transferred money to American Express, in exchange for other money with one less zero at the end.
No sooner than the deal was done, and the Rand is steadily gaining strength. The only way I can cope with the stress is to forget about the Rands and think only in Canadian Dollars. I will grieve my empty bank account later, but for now I will dwell on my Amex card and shiny new plastic Canadian bank notes.
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Do we take hard cash, which is comforting and probably the least expensive in terms of bank fees? But what if we get mugged, or robbed on the plane while we are sleeping?
Then we are up the creek without a paddle.
So how about a global currency card? Besides the fees seeming quite steep, every time we visited to do the deal, we were missing a vital piece of documentation. As I am allergic to financial institutions, the anxiety of it led me to the easiest to deal with operators, American Express. OK so now I have a card loaded with American instead of Canadian Dollars, but a card I have. The easiest would have been to just load my budget onto my South African Mastercard, but economic soothsayers are warning of junk status ratings for the country, which would plummet our little Rands into even littler Cents, and potentially mean no food for us in Canada.
Then there are the risk issues. What if one of us falls ill over there? Will the credit card insurance or our medical aid cover it? At this point, I was just too overwhelmed and left the decision making to our fantastic travel agent, Kathy (from Pentravel Walmer). I trust that my lengthy policy document contains words of comfort, and have packed it to read on the plane, it is bound to help any insomnia on the long flight. YAWN….
The next worry is the packing. I need to work out a balancing act between packing light, and having enough clothes not to have to wash too often (another allergy of mine). For my boys it’s easy – pack the fishing paraphernalia and if there’s space, throw some clothes in.
I am torn between leaving it to them and risking our family looking like hillbillies, and micromanaging each person’s suitcase.
Aaah who am I kidding, I am a complete control freak and will micromanage each item that makes it into a bag, and then give them a weight limit for the fishing stuff.
Jacob has been getting lots of fishing gear ready
Hopefully when we return from our adventure, I will be able to write a fabulous blog post called “5 Tips for Planning International Family Trips”. For now, I take comfort in my rescue remedy and glass of wine.
If you have any international travel tips that might help alleviate my pre-trip panic, or words of comfort, please feel free to share them with me in the comments section below.
Yours in travel
Kathy says: Since I have done the trip the other way. 2 Canadian grown ups, 3 Canadian kids and 1 Canadian dog to South Africa on a 2 year expat assignment I completely understand. One thing I will suggest is that you check 6 times as to where you pick up your luggage. The first time we flew to PE on our house scouting trip out bags were checked all the way through from Canada to PE via England. Our official arrival with 3 kids, 10 suitcases, 5 carry ons and a car seat via Atlanta (USA) the bags were only checked through to Joberg. We went to check in for our PE flight and they asked where our bags were. Talk about panic since it was the last flight to PE that night and we were 38 hours into a 40 hour travel ordeal. The staff at OR Tambo was amazing and we made our flight, but I really could have done without the surprise amazing race through the airport.
Thanks Kathy. That’s a great tip and although it can’t have been funny at all for you, the sight of your menagerie running across OR Tambo in search of all your worldly possessions must have been very amusing for others. Now thanks to you I know how to avoid being so entertaining, and will make sure to check where we must fetch our bags!
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