In 1993 we travelled for five months. Since then we have settled with one or two week long breaks taken from the six week holiday allowance that came with regular work, bringing up kids, paying mortgages, grown-up stuff, the stuff of life until now. Things have changed since then. Not just our being physically 30 years older, although that’s certainly a significant change. The logistics of carrying medication that needs to be kept at between 2-12 degrees, whether to risk getting this through security with a mini fridge buzzing away, or go for a freezer bag and hope the drugs survive. The letter from our GP explaining that we are not actually planning on drug dealing in Argentina but that the vast amount of pills falling out of our luggage are simply keeping us alive. Some of these – antibiotics for delhi-belly, cellulitis, and/or any other infection we might develop stranded up a Patagonian mountain, anti sickness patches, diarrhoea/constipation/allergy meds, may well keep a lot of people we meet alive on our travels alive too. Our entire first leg will take around 20 hours with a brief 2 hour  New York stop-over. Neither of us had a monday to sunday medication box back in the day, now we both neck at least 5 things daily. I didn’t have a supply of Naproxen at hand in case my hip/back/entire body aches too much. 

  But that’s why we’re here, doing this now. 30 years ago we were doing it pre-babies. Now, friends are dying, and it feels imperative that we do this soon. But the fearless 29 year old I was then no longer exists. I’m pretty scared to be honest. Of being robbed at knife point. Of falling over and not bouncing back up with nothing broken like I have the last  4/5  times I fell (another thing I never used to do – thanks to my right hip replacement not getting the memo about changes in levels when I am walking fast to whatever I am aiming for. I need to stop walking so fast, and perhaps look where I’m going would help?) More mundanely of staying in a series of low budget hotels eating junk food with chronic constipation. Yup, another thing I couldn’t care less about and is now a preoccupation.

  We have switched roles 180 degrees, and while I was the agitator in 1993, desperate to see some of the world before settling into domestic life, now it’s Clive blowing the trumpet for the road less travelled while I have at least one eye on the unplanted allium bulbs I have not had time to plan a place for  in my garden,  a yearning to pore over seed catalogues in front of a log fire, to book tickets for winter theatre, to sign up to singing classes.

My packing has changed too – 30 years ago I am pretty sure I just bunged in a pair of jeans, some shorts, maybe a few t-shirts, Now we have a 15kg limit on some legs of the journey, and the case weighs 3kg, so for simplicity I’m channelling a monochrome black, white and grey palette and plan to bring colour into the mix using jewellery. I have already googled “threading, Buenas Aires”. Tracy has ceremoniously stripped my fingernails bare of nail varnish, the first time I’ve not had varnish on in years. In the space of 30 years, I have become high maintenance, and hairier. Also unlike 30 years ago, I have chargers for my chargers, a crazy number of wires and plugs and devices, although we both still have books, just in case. 

We leave in a few days time.