Our second passports have arrived! And, they are good for 4 years. In the past they have only been good for 2 years at a time. So this is a pleasant surprise.
Why do we need a second passport? Shouldn’t one be enough? When we travel to other countries, most visa’s can be done online such as Australia but there are countries that require you to hand over your passport and they keep it until the visa is approved. What we don’t want is to be in a country without a visa on our person at all times. You never know what can happen and getting out of the country might be a priority at any given moment. So, two passports it is! We had to send our itinerary and our original 10 year passports to request a secondary passport under special circumstances. We were waiting on pins and needles hoping we would at least get our originals back (before our December cruise) but also hoping they would approve our need for another one. Our secondary passports arrived first. Good for four years. We were excited but then wondered, OK, now where are our original passports? 2 days later, they arrived. Whew! One set arrived from Arizona and our originals from Virginia. We started the process by sending them to Texas. We are still trying to figure out how the originals got from Texas to Virginia. It’s a relief nonetheless. One more hurdle out of the way.
We are working on spraying a lot of our clothing with Permethrin, an insect repellent for clothing. Not something you want to use on your skin.
I used gloves to spray it on. It even says to keep it away from cats, in its liquid form, because it’s not a good mix with their nervous system. Pretty powerful stuff. After it dries you cant tell you did anything to the clothing. It doesn’t smell and there’s no chemical smell.
We sent some off to a company to be treated and they’ll be good for 70 washings. That was about 3 complete outfits each. I’ve decided to add a few long sleeve t-shirts and pants to the mix so that’s the reason for the spraying. The bottles I bought are only good for 6 washings and you must use 3 ounces per garment. Meaning, if I spray a pair of socks, it’ll have the same amount as one shirt or pair of pants. It says it takes 3 ounces before the chemical molecules will work effectively. Its not too terribly expensive so I bought two bottles. At 24 oz each, that means 8 pieces of clothing per bottle. We should be OK. I’ll probably spray our hats as well. Chuck thinks we are going overboard but I would rather be safe than sorry. He wants to go to all warm climates and be near water. 2 items of criteria for mosquitoes right there! Some diseases spread by mosquitoes are Malaria, Japanese Encephalitis, Zika, West Nile and Yellow fever. A few of these we are receiving vaccines for but you need to also be as protected as possible. We’ll take/purchase Deet spray and cover any areas of exposed skin as well on a daily basis. That will be a struggle for my husband, he doesn’t even like to put on sun protectant!
Weather is starting to cool down here in Florida. It’s been it the upper 80’s this last week and will continue. I cant believe its coming up on November. We will be biking and walking more now that we can tolerate the temperatures a little better. The breeze off the water helps considerably and we are very thankful its here. There are lots of festivals going on in Dunedin this time of year. We are really enjoying this community and its very difficult NOT to buy a home right now. Doesn’t make sense until we are done traveling. When and if that time comes. Wherever this journey takes us, we are along for the ride as long as we are able and as long as we enjoy it.
Just wanted to throw out the fact that we were spared the wrath of Hurricane Michael. Thank You Lord! This Category 4 hurricane caused some deadly and unbelievably devastating damage to the northern peninsula of Florida. Our thoughts and prayers go out to our fellow Floridians.
Until next time, May God bless you always!
Chuck & Lea Ann
WorldTravelReynolds 