Logistics
There are several components to a logistical team. Indeed when you are traveling you are losing all the convenience you have when you are at home. A simple banking operation can become a nightmare (security requires a number of steps to be taken) and mail becomes a whole new ball of wax (mailing things is mostly possible, but receiving mail is a different story).
Let’s not forget the trip planning: when you plan on traveling to less developed countries, you want to make sure you have not only all the relevant information (where is it safe to go, what border will be open, what paperwork has to be prepared, etc.) but also the local support of people who can step in and provide assistance.
Four years ago as we were planning our first long range trip, we interviewed a number of travel agencies to determine which would be best suited for our needs. As part of the criteria, we wanted an organization that:
ü was not afraid of breaking new grounds,
ü was comfortable taking us to many countries, with local people on the ground,
ü was ready to be flexible, as opposed to selling pre-canned trips (you know, the “sell what’s on the truck” syndrome), and
ü would be focusing on less mainstream aspects, interested in cultural dimensions beyond the “I’ve seen Cheops, how about you?” show-and-tell approach…
We talked to the leaders, and after this
fairly complete market review (of course, the leaders, ashamed, will deny
having talked to us), we selected R. Crusoe & Son. We encourage you to pay
a visit to www.rcrusoe.com: you will see
that they are a different travel agency altogether. The site shows you that
their goal will be to show you a number of more subtle dimensions of the
cultures and people you will visit… and
all this with first class service, of course!
March ’06 update: Thanks to David Weber (R. Crusoe & Son’s Managing Director and a close friend of ours) and his daughter Katie, our trip has been going extremely well so far and we are confident that they will keep pushing all the potential major hurdles out of our way. They have managed to solve all the paperwork issues before our arrival into each country (in particular those related to Waka Iti), so that we never had to spend more than a couple of hours at any border (this may sound a lot, but given the borders we are talking about, that is very reasonable!).
In order to plan our visit in a country, many elements are essential but difficult to get: shape of each portion of road, driving time, availability of good quality diesel, insurance for Waka Iti, detailed road maps, etc. David and Katie have managed to get those to us soon enough for us to be fully prepared by the time we showed up at the borders.
Mail is especially important for us because our daughters are “home-schooled”. We have the privilege of having a couple of friends who volunteered to collect our mail back home, sort and store it, and forward it to us when we provide them with an address they can use. They will also open urgent mail and fax it to us so that we can take immediate action. How can we receive faxes while traveling will you ask? Well, we are using an electronic fax service called e-fax. We suggest you take a look at www.efax.com…
We don’t have a miracle solution to this problem. We suggest that you pay particular attention to the following:
ü Use a bank with many international partners to facilitate fund transfers
ü Make sure to develop a secure means of communication with your banker to prevent fraud. Allowing transactions to take place on the simple basis of an Email would be taking huge risks. Fax is a bare minimum, and we would recommend that in addition to a fax, a voice conversation with someone who knows you and your voice be necessary to trigger any operation beyond a simple transfer between your own accounts.
ü Give power to your banker to perform a number of operations for you such as cutting a check on your request. This will greatly simplify otherwise intractable situations such as paying your taxes.
ü Use a bill payment service. We have been using with great satisfaction the services of Paytrust (www.paytrust.com) and suggest you investigate whether they would provide the services you might need.
ü Have a Master Card as well as a Visa Card as in some countries, one or the other might not be of much use (Cambodia did not take Master Card the first time we were there, in 2001…)
ü Have at least two different cards of each type: one on which you have your standard recurrent bills charged, and one (considered as disposable) that you would use for any expense where you don’t have the highest level of trust in the seller. This way, if you have to cancel it and have one re-issued, you won’t have to go through the hassle of adjusting all the automatic payments…
Of course, nothing replaces applying the proper level of good diligence, or counting on a trusted friend to do that. Religiously checking your credit card statement every month might pay dirt…