After about 5 years of always having a CC balance in the thousands, it is currently at Eur 42 !! Will be paid off in full by next Friday all going as planned :-)

Anyways, the big 3-oh next May - have been thinking about making a memorable trip to celebrate the cutting loose of the boy Shane and the welcoming of the man.

What I have planned is as follows:

Take approx 3 weeks off work end of April/start of May 2009.

Fly Dublin to New York - spend 2/3 nights there visiting family and friends.

Fly New York to Lima/Cusco in Peru.

Spend 3/4 days trekking on Peruvian horses (luv horses !! ) getting down n dirty in the Peruvian countryside - trying to breathe in as much beauty as possible.

Wanted to visit the famous Machu Picchu site - but then I have read on the net that it is being damaged by tourism so might not visit for that reason- jury is out at mo.

3/4 days white-water rafting - never done this before.

Then rent an apartment in Lima for 6/7 nights to enjoy the city culture and nightlife.

Then back to Ireland.

I want to have all flights, horse trekking, white-water rafting and Lima apartment paid for before I leave...without borrowing in any way. I also plan to have all spending money saved b4 I go.

How to do this ? Well, I have a savings account with Eur 270 in it for overpaying my Personal Loan (I got a Loan of 13,400 last March over 5 years at 270 a month - my plan was to save 270 a month so that I pay it off in 2.5 years). However when I listed out my monthly outgoings, looked at my spending diary since April 1st and looked at my normal salary income... my outgoings are actually higher than my income !! It must be the overtime I've being doing at work that is keeping things pretty balanced.

Anyway, no room for further savings. So basically I've decided to change the Loan Overpayment savings to the Peru savings.

For spending money, I am going to buy $150 dollars every payday ( every 2 weeks) so I'll have $3,300 spending money when I leave... which will be LOADS n LOADS..

This will mean spending Eur 200 more per month than I currently am so I'll have to look into where I'll get this.... it's just occured to me that I won't be paying approx Eur 45 CC interest anymore :-) so that'll help.... more Overtime I guess... if it's going.

Details aside, I really feel I will get a lot from this trip on a personal level... so I consider the saving effort worthwhile and a positive thing as I can focus on improving the things in my life that money can't buy....

Would love to hear from any of you that have been to Peru/ South America with any hints/tips....

Guess I'll have to dig out the Do-it-self Learn Spanish tapes !! lol

btw... I'm also interested in learning to dance the Salsa in the near future... does anybody know if the Salsa is big in Peru ??