Planning My Route

GENERIC:

WHAT ROUTE SHOULD I TAKE?

I want to plan my route so that I am in each country at the right time to:

Avoid rainy, monsoon, typhoon, and hurricane seasons
Avoid Peak Seasons in the more expensive countries
Get as much sunny weather as possible
Minimise travel distances (and costs)

In this way, I hope to get the best out of each country that I can.

WHAT ABOUT THE WEATHER?

There are many websites that provide good detail about the climates in each country and the regions / cities within each country.

I used ClimaTemps.com to get the detailed information that I needed and copied that information into a spreadsheet.

I know it sounds a bit ‘anal’ but I am visiting so many countries over the next 5 years that it made sense (to me) to get it right.

So, I also checked with a few travel sites to find out what the best time to go was; the best time is not always the middle of summer – things like Peak Season and humidity also need to be taken into account.

Against each city / area I graded the months from:

Dark Green: the best time to go
Mid Green: good times to go
Light Green: OK times to go

On the same row I also added:

R if this was a Rainy Season month; r if it was going into or out of Rainy Season
H and h for Hurricane Season
T and t for Typhoon Season
M and m for Monsoon Season
$$ and $ for Peak Season

Once in a spreadsheet, I could play with various combinations until I felt that I had the route optimised.

I ended up with several different options.

SO WHAT ROUTE WILL I TAKE?

It is now August 2016. My last month in The Philippines was spent in the rain. My first month in Mexico was spent in the rain. I’ve had enough of rain. I had to re-plan.

The Central American countries are so close together that they share the same summer and rainy seasons. It was not possible to do them together and avoid rain. I needed to split them in two.

The route that I decided on was:

2016: Start in Vietnam followed by The Philippines. Fly to Mexico. From central Mexico, loop through the Yucatan peninsula to Belize.
2017: From Belize, head to the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and Mexico. The trip back into Mexico gives me a renewed C4 3 month visa to enter back into Guatemala to do the Guatemalan and Honduran Caribbean coasts. I need to pop back into Belize so that I can get a fresh 3 month C4 visa to head down to El Salvador and on to Nicaragua.
2018: I will flit in between Nicaragua and Costa Rica so that I get a renewed C4 visa to get a good look at Nicaragua before heading south to Panama. I then hop over the water to Colombia and continue south through Ecuador to Peru.
2019: Finish off Peru before heading further south to Bolivia and Chile. Fly to South East Europe. Spend a long summer in South East Europe before heading to India.
2020: Finish off India and head for Sri Lanka.

Decide what happens next.