So, Mont Blanc then.....

One of the most difficult and least expected challenges Sherridan and I have faced since deciding to do a 'big trip' next year has been deciding where to go. A least, that's been my biggest challenge anyway.

You see, I want to go everywhere. Everywhere. I want to go to Iceland, Yosemite, Borneo, New York, Cape York and everywhere in between. Choosing just one place to visit means having to pass up every other place I want to go until their turn comes around.

I know, it's a good problem to have....... "Hmm... where in the world would I like to go next....?" and I'm well aware of the privilege of being able to choose any part of the world to travel to, but I still have to make the choice.

To narrow things down we decided to try and distil what it is we most want to experience while we're away - relaxing, adventure, culture, or something else. We decided we both wanted to spend the time away being active in some way, probably hiking. We also wanted to visit a country we could immerse ourselves in culturally by experiencing local life as intimately as possible with the local people. Finally, we wanted to come home with a feeling of having achieved something for ourselves.

In September we spent the weekend camping on a favourite beach at the Bay of Fires and decided we wouldn't go home without each creating a shortlist to share with the other in the hope we had one common choice between us which should make deciding easy. That turned out to be less helpful then we hoped - we ended up working through all our ideas together and created a shortlist of three great destinations we agreed would be perfect. But still no actual decision.

Our choices were Patagonia in South America; Banff and New York in North America; or the Tour Du Mont Blanc in Europe.

So, one morning as we sat in the sun in our kitchen and enjoyed our traditional lazy late breakfast I showed Sherridan a photograph of the Torres del Paine in Patagonia. It looked magnificent in the early morning sunlight with snow laying on the slopes of the peaks and before we knew it we had decided that was where we were going. Decision made.

A week or so later a friend from Queensland came to stay for a few days. Tania had been to Patagonia a some years earlier and told us all about how heavily touristed it is, how the country offers little in the way of interesting culture and how the cities and towns of the region are no different to anywhere else in the lesser developed world. The mountains we really nice though, she said.

Hmmm.

Later we got to thinking about how similar our trip to Patagonia might be to the trip we just completed to Everest Basecamp in Nepal - walking, climbing and more walking to a mountain then turning 'round and coming home.

Hmmm again.

Days later we're talking about it again and Sherridan's reflecting on how the Tour du Mont Blanc takes you through 3 different countries - Switzerland, Italy and France. She also mentions we could maybe see the Trummelbach Falls in Switzerland while we're there. In a moment or two of synchronised thinking and talking we somehow came out the other side of a conversation having decided we'd go to Europe instead of South America. Did we just change our mind and decide we're doing the Tour, I asked. Apparently we did.

So, Mont Blanc then.