A Grand Adventure

Where would you go and what would you do if you could have a grand adventure anywhere in the world? This is what the people at MoneySupermarket.com are asking in a competition to win £1,000. All you have to do is say where your adventure would be and how you would be frugal in order to make your money last.

'Hmmm, a Grand Adventure,' I thought - definitely a question for my two boys, who visit any number of exotic locations in their imaginations on a daily basis. So, I sat down with them both and while my five-year-old didn't appear to be all that interested when he realised that a trip to the moon probably wasn't possible just yet, my young seven-year-old Indiana Jones was full of enthusiasm. Here is what he suggested for his 'Grand Adventure'.

'I would love to go to South America. First, to Brazil to explore the Amazon. I would go looking for a few different animals that I am interested in, like a jaguar.' [at this point, he runs off to grab his World Atlas and returns with the page for South America]. 'OK,' he continues, in a very serious voice, 'so, I would also like to go looking for anacondas and maybe see a toucan. We could camp to save money - although rattlesnakes might go into your tent so you'd have to be careful. And I might like to go and see a gold mine [random, but why not?]. And I would like to go to Machu Picchu and explore inside it. I think that is where the Incas lived a long time ago. [I explained to him at this point that you have to do a very long trek to get to Machu Picchu. He was OK with this, although I suspect that there would be requests to be carried on shoulders before the car park was out of sight]. Oh, and it would also be great to go to Rio to see the Olympics in 2016 and if I was in the Olympics it wouldn't cost anything at all.  

I would like to bring back a souvenir of my trip, like maybe a key ring or something small. It would also be really cool to see a southern right whale or a humpback whale. And I would like to try some peanuts and maybe go and see a few pelicans and I'm really interested in chinchillas [really?! I did not know that.] I would go by boat most of the way to make my money last, but maybe I'd have to fly some of the way on a jungle plane. I would call this 'My Adventures of Brazil'.'

So, there you go. Sounds like a pretty epic adventure to me, although I'm not quite so sure about encounters with jaguars and anacondas and I have no idea how much peanuts cost in South America, so this could end up blowing the budget instantly, unless, of course, you can buy them for ... erm ... peanuts. Groan.

To enter the competition yourself, visit this link and start planning your own epic adventure.

A Grand Adventure