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WORKING SEVEN DAYS A WEEK TO FUND TRAVELS WAS WORTH IT

Lara visited New Zealand on her travels where she tried skydiving

Wednesday June 4,2008

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LARA Calderwood, 23, travelled to Australia, New Zealand and South America on a seven-month trip before she settled down to concentrate on her career.

“I still can’t believe how amazing it was,” says Lara, who arrived home in Hertfordshire this February.

“Staying in the Ecuadorian Amazon jungle and going to the Rio de Janeiro carnival in Brazil were just two of the highlights,” she adds.

Lara finished university and spent a year working before she decided to travel.

To raise the £12,000 she needed, which included £3,000 for an organised tour of South America, she worked from Monday to Friday in public relations then spent her weekends waitressing.

She budgeted for about £1,000 a month in spending money but found the amount she needed varied from country to country.

“In New Zealand, I was spending about £100 a day because I did lots of activities, such as skydiving and scuba diving but in Bolivia, I was hard-pushed to spend a fiver a day,” she says.

Lara took her debit card, a credit card, traveller’s cheques in US dollars and travelled with some US dollars in cash.

To keep in touch with friends and family, she emailed from cyber cafes, and used the Skype service, which allows you to make calls over the internet.

“Even in South America, the cafes had Skype headsets,” says Lara.

“I used to speak to friends in the UK for half an hour at a time and it would only cost me about two quid.

“If the person I was calling had the same system, it was free.”