Travel insurance is pretty easy to get for a short term holiday, say, anywhere between a few days to a few months. But not once you start getting into a long trip, and a trip where you're not 100% sure you will be away for a year or more, or less. Due to these reasons our travel insurance options were pretty limited.

We ended up going with World Nomads which offered us flexibility, yet had some pretty crappy payouts if we had any problems.

World Nomads
 

Pros

• Allowed us to extend our travel insurance whilst overseas (pretty much the reason we bought it).
• Allows you to buy cover for up to 18 months in one go.
• Covers most backpacker adventure sports, like rafting, diving & skiing.
• Can claim online.

Cons

• Quite low payouts compared to a lot of other insurance companies. For example, $200 maximum per item on stolen luggage. This means that we had to add extra insurance to our items such as the laptop and camera (at an extra cost). Even then, they will only pay a maximum of $1000 per listed item (not great if you have laptop/cameras worth many thousands).
• No cover on rental car excesses.
• Not covered on stolen items from cars or dorm rooms. I think this is ridiculous; as a backpacker you sometimes have no choice but to leave your things in your room or car. It's also an odd policy given that world nomads seems to be targeted at backpackers.

Some of the other plans we looked into:

Budget Direct

• Could not purchase more than one year.
• You cannot extend policy once you had bought it.
• Could not buy a policy if you are not in Australia even if you are an Australian citizen, returning to Australia with an Australian address.
• Has rental car cover and OK payouts.

1 Cover Direct Insurance

• Cheap!
• They have a 12 month policy.
• They have an "already overseas" policy, however this policy has a 7 day waiting period, which means if you bought a 4 week policy you are not covered for the first week, not giving you great value for money and leaving you at risk.
• Covers car rental excesses.

I can’t stress enough how important i think travel insurance is. I spent two nights in emergency in a USA hospital when I was working at a summer camp in 2006. It could have cost me tens of thousands had I not had good insurance.

There are tonnes of policies out there, my advice is to make sure you read the fine print!

Travel insurance - just in case a bolt comes loose in Costa Rica.

I had read that Oaxaca was a well known culinary sensation, especially famous for its Mole sauces (pronounced moll-eh). Mole is a complex sauce that accompanies meat (it's often said that the meat plays a secondary role in the dish). Mole sauce ranges greatly from a green mole to a red and a yellow mole (yellow being the spiciest). However the most famous mole in Oaxaca is the mole negro (black). Made of dried chillies, tomatoes, plantains, spices and a dash of famous Oaxaca chocolate.

I had also read in my travel bible that Oaxaca is a great place to take a cooking lesson and learn some of the secrets to Mexican cooking. So I twisted Dan's arm into doing the class with me.

We started with a visit to the local market to buy the ingredients. The market was teaming with beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables, mountains of bread and loads of dried chillies (especially for making mole).

Left: Crunchy fried crickets...yummo. Right: Fresh market veggies.

We took all our ingredients back to Casa de Socorro (the beautiful kitchen of the Socorro Family) and began cooking up a storm with Gerard and his mother. With all our ingredients well underway, we popped a few blocks over to the local tortilleria and had a go at making some tortillas.

Aztec Soup

Dan making the perfect tortilla.

Sitting down for our meal of Aztec soup, Chicken Mole with prawn rice, tortillas, guacamole, fresh made lemonade and topping it off with a desert of apple walnut cream.

We are good students (darn, I need to learn to not squint so much in photos).

Here it is, the Mole Negro, rich and tasty!

Probably one of the best meals we have had in Mexico and we even made it ourselves with a little help from La Cocina Oaxaqueña

I have just finished reading Unlikely Destinations, the Lonely Planet Story, written by the founders of Lonely Planet (who still own part of Lonely Planet today). It was an inspiring read, a real grass roots company that started in Australia.

There is something about Lonely Planet books that for me conjures up adventure. I remember when I was young and flicking through my parents' very old copy of Lonely Planet: South East Asia on a Shoestring. It was probably back when they didn't have individual destination books for Hong Kong and the Philippines (the places they went to).

I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with our Lonely Planet books on this trip. As the first 4-5 months of our trip was in Europe we needed a Europe guide, but we also weren't 100% sure of the places we were going so we decided to buy the massive Europe on a Shoestring, which covers Western & Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Morocco and Iceland. The book weighed about a tonne and really just ended up being a pain. It was thin on information because it covered so many countries. Nonetheless I held onto it until Canada because it was expensive, but once I passed it on, my backpack really did seem lighter.

Our Central America on a Shoestring has been an excellent source of info and gotten us out of trouble a few times when we arrived at a bus station disoriented; their maps can be a godsend. Travelling around Central America you do see loads of travellers clutching their Lonely Planet books, so often the hotels and the restaurants in the guide books are overwhelmed with backpackers.

In Belize we managed to trade in our Central America on a Shoestring guide book for the latest Mexico guidebook, it was an excellent swap (although I do usually like to keep copies of our guide books so I can look back at the little notes and the dog eared pages and remember back on our adventures).

It's our second time to Belize, we visited in 2009 on an intrepid tour of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. We loved it so much it was definitely on our itinerary for this trip.

Belize is quite different from the other Central American countries as it was a British colony so English is the official language. It also has a high population of Creoles, descendants of African slaves. It has a Caribbean feel, Bob Marley and reggae are god here. 

Belizeans know how and like to party hard, this time our visit has fallen in Easter and while the countries of Guatemala and Nicaragua are having holy procession in the street, Belize just turns the beaches into massive clubs pumping out loud music and the rum flowing.

One of our favourite stops on our previous trip was Caye Caulker, it's a little sand island home to about 500 people. Here no cars are allowed only golf carts or push bike. The streets are made of sand and coconut trees reign supreme. The island's motto is "go slow" and if you're seen walking too fast, people will often call out "go slow mon".

Caye Caulker - Belize

Caye Caulker probably couldn't be any more of a perfect idyllic tropical Island, but it does get better. It has the second largest reef (after the Great Barrier Reef) sitting off its coastline, with an abundance of marine life. Green turtles, grey nurse sharks, sting rays and loads of colourful tropical fish. This visit has also coincided with the manatee mating season and we even managed to spot one while snorkeling.

Left: Cool sign     Right: Me, checkin out the fishes.

Can't recommend Caye Caulker enough!