It’s here. Just about impossible to believe, but our trip is here. Bags are packed, goodbyes were made, and we’re sitting on Lufthansa Airlines flight 463 on our way to Johannesburg, South Africa via Frankfurt, Germany.

For roughly three days my parent’s living room was ground zero for our packing efforts. We had generated a spreadsheet weeks prior to serve as our checklist. This was a pretty good tool, because we were able to organize bits of equipment in kits (e.g med kits, camera kits, camping, etc), but it didn’t help much when it came to clothes. All of this was flanked by notarizing power of attorney forms, last minute shopping, canceling insurance & cell phones, filing tax extension, plugging in phone numbers and GPS coordinates for the sites we’ll see the first week. All the little details that can come back to bite us later needed to be attended to.

Packing went right down to the wire and we could feel it. We had to pack all of our belongings for 5 months into 2-backpacks and one suitcase. We had prepared for this moment a long time and it was about to happen.

My parents gave us a ride down to the airport (thanks mom & dad!), and the whole way I kept waiting for something to go wrong. Is there traffic? Did we remember both passports? Did we bring enough clothes? Did we pack those quick dry towels? What about the foreign currency we have and want to exchange, where’s that? My wallet is too big, what should I do with my credit cards?

I kept telling myself that as long as we had our camera and passport, we’d be fine. If we’re missing something, we could pick it up in South Africa. It’s not like we’re going straight into the jungle- we’ll be in a major city for the next couple of weeks.

With this thought replaying in my head, we checked into our flight and handed our bags over to the lovely agent at the desk who patiently clipped our backpacks together because we forgot to and fastened a luggage tag to Nick’s bag at the last moment before it was whisked away.

Security was a breeze. Apparently not many people travel on Wednesdays out of Miami. We were sitting in our terminal with more than an hour and half to spare before our flight. We lasted sitting about ten minutes before deciding that we’d be sitting for the next nine hours; we needed to walk about. Good thing we did, because Nick lost the rubber earpiece to his earphones somewhere between security and our terminal. We sought out a Brookestone who, after asking nicely, was quick to supply Nick with a replacement bud, free of charge. How’s that for good luck trip mojo?

We’ll be landing in Frankfurt 08:30 local time, 01:30am EST, so I think it’s probably a good idea to get some sleep. Tomorrow we have a twelve hour layover in Germany complete with a trolley tour and plans to hit up a biergarten. So the adventure begins! Can’t wait!