For some reason we can't quite put our fingers on, we've found stealth camping in Italy to be incredibly easy and rewarding. Last night's location and the views it provided this morning were no exception. We love Italy!
After lazily packing up from our beautiful oceanfront camp, we cycled a short 6km back to Salerno where we spent the rest of the day working at Caffe Love Story.
For the last few weeks we've been trying to firm up plans for the conclusion of our cycle tour abroad. We're aiming to be in Malaysia this time next year, ready to fly home. Due to our self imposed "time constraint" of one more year, we won't be cycling across Siberia to get there.
Here is our current plan:
Cycle across Italy to Bari, taking a ferry to Greece during the first week of February.
From Greece, work our way along an undefined route northeast, arriving in Russia in early June.
Rendezvous with a distant cousin in Moscow, somehow purchase a car, put our bicycles in the back, and drive across Siberia. We recently confirmed with Rob over at the Mongol Rally that the roads are well paved and serviced between Moscow and Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia!
Arrive in Ulaan Baatar roughly one month later.
Cycle across Mongolia to Beijing, China. From here, if we have time and decide we want to, we'll cycle through China to reach Southeast Asia. The alternative would be taking a train to Vietnam.
Spend the winter of 2011 cycling in Southeast Asia
Return home, either ending our trip, or starting "edition two" of Going Slowly, a kitchy whirlwind tour of the United States! Does anyone know where the world's largest frying pan is?
It is a lot to digest, but for the moment we're focusing on being thankful for every non-freezing, non-raining day as we slowly creep towards a much anticipated spring and the longer days that come with it.
In other news, I finally got a field recorder! Tomorrow we're cycling back along the Amalfi Coast to record a tunnel we camped near several months ago. Hopefully my Zoom H4n will be up to the job. At the moment, I know nothing about audio editing but our journal will be rife with sound clips from around the world as I learn!