So, initial stages of planning

i am looking at a similar trip starting oct. I fly into rio on the 4th and then head North for six months. before booking my flight I was nose deep in travel guides trying to work out a (rough) schedule that would seamlessly link up to 16 countries with the best weather for travel when I was planning to be there. i quickly learnt this was impossible! south America is vaster than vast, immensly topographically varied and spanning so many climatical zones that no matter when your trip (unless you have a couple of years and don't mind an exceptionally convoluted route) you are going to experience the full gamut of weather.

The best you can do, as I've attempted, is to select the type of activities/terrain/places that are absolute musts for your trip and then try to make sure that the weather for these, when you are there, is potentially going to be as good as it can, and then attempt to fit them together into a viable schedule!

This question is always one that i fret over in the months leadind up to a big trip. I mean, I invest so many months in saving and preperation, spend so many hours dreaming that i expect, no demand, absolute perfection in the weather when I arrive! What I have learnt from previous trips is that although the weather plays a massive part in the tone of a trip it is nearly always for the best, no matter how inclement.

Weather, especially that of the extreme variety, is always exciting and frequently beautiful. Everyone wants clear blue skies and a gentle breeze when luxuriating on a Thai beach but it is the monumental thunder storm and torrential drenching that broke over your beach shack during a party that you'll remember!

Three sodden days in the rainforest wading through bogs to view orangutan; circular rainbows in a frozen Ladakh; sitting in a pavement cafe eating Pad Thai while watching streets become rivers; a sandstorm in the desert; a bus that brakes down in a qaugmire in the freezing north of a Vietnam winter, necessitating a ten hour wait in a wooden shack round a log fire, eating pho in the company of several silent vietnamese farmers smoking opium pipes; perfect weather would be perfectly boring so for my next trip I'm hoping for snow in Rio, balmy heat on the Altiplano and an English winter in the caribbean! I'm always slightly suspicious of people that are constantly, unremitingly happy; I now feel the same about the weather on my travels, balance and variety is everything.

Hope this ramble helped, it did me!
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