Where we will be next (last updated 21 May 2017)

Those of you who know us - or have seen our photos in some of the blog posts - will know that Nic and I are, well, let's just say on the large side! We've made some efforts to lose some weight before, but never really had the motivation or determination to succeed. However, since we 'retired' to be travelling most of the time, we notice the effects of the weight a bit more. Sometimes it is the smaller things, like low energy levels, difficulty buying clothes in some countries - Asia in general is not good for me, or that the simple fact that larger clothes makes limiting ourselves to carry-on luggage pretty difficult.

The bigger problem is that there are trips that we want to do, that we realistically can't. With Nic being a firm fan of lemurs, we'd love to spend time in Madagascar, seeing them in the wild, but we know that we just aren't physically capable of the level of hiking involved to get to the best places. We keep putting it off, telling ourselves "We'll wait until we're a bit fitter", but of course, we never are. We'd quite like to see gorillas and orangutans too, but the same issue arises.

We got to talking about all of this, and realised that we had finally reached the point where we were ready to really do something about it.

So we decided that, we would put our usual kind of travelling on hold, and instead of another trip like our previous ones, 2017 would be the year we get fit. And whilst Nic doesn't have as much to lose as me, so will get there much quicker, the reality is that, even with being very determined, it is going to take me well over a year to get to where I want to be, so we needed to get a good start in to have any hope of keeping the motivation going. Nic has decided that, in order to keep the pressure on him to stay well behaved once he's finished but I'm still going, he's going to run a marathon in 2018 too. I'm not!

As a result, our plans for the next year or so are long stints in places where we can have decent weather, get to gyms, perhaps do outside exercise, and most importantly buy and cook lots of healthy food, interspersed with some shorter periods of more usual travel, but still with the aim of being able to eat well and get some exercise, even if that is just walking around.

We knew we couldn't face the idea of diets and exercise in the gloom of a UK winter, so we decided to take ourselves off to the southern hemisphere. We booked ourselves a flight to Chile in January, and figured we'd spend a couple of months in the southern lakes area, staying six weeks each in Pucon, which we had been to before and Puerto Varas.

Then we'll have a couple of months in Argentina, and a short break back in the UK, before doing the same kind of thing again in the northern hemishere's summer, this time in Canada.

We plan to spend a dedicated period in Victoria, Vancouver Island first, then travel around the rest of the island and hopefully see a few bears, before heading across the country by train. Amongst other places, we'll stop off in Jasper for the scenery, Churchill to see the beluga whales in Hudson Bay, Ottawa, Halifax and Quebec, before finishing in Montreal.

After that, we've planned a few weeks out on a trip to Jordan in October, primarily to see Petra, and then well be back in the UK until after Christmas, partly because we need to get new passports.

Then we will be off to New Zealand in January 2018, where hopefully after a few more months there, we will both have reached the end of our campaign to get slim and healthy. After that, well we'll have to wait and see, but if we've done well, I'm sure we'll want to reward ourselves with something good!

Wish us luck!