To realise their dream of a Bolivian jungle dorado trip, two young finance bros, Stenton McKenzie and Kyle Harrison, decided to bust out their Excel spreadsheets and get organised. Fresh out of the jungle, Stenton sums up how it all went down.

“Wisdom is wasted on the old, and youth is wasted on the young.” – George Bernard Shaw 

Take a look on social media at the people enjoying stellar fishing at some of the world’s best destinations and you will see that, on average (and excluding the trustafarians), they’re either middle-aged or older. That’s because top shelf bucket list trips often require a lot of money. It’s the cruel joke of both life and fly fishing that older anglers have the money to get to these destinations, but less time and energy to enjoy them to the absolute max, while younger anglers have the time and energy to get the most out of a destination, but lack the money to get there. If you’re young and in the infancy of your career, a big money trip simply seems like a non-starter.  

To get around this, in early 2022 a good varsity mate of mine, Kyle Harrison, and I decided to set up a “stokvel” account. If you haven’t heard of a “stokvel” before, it comes from the Afrikaans for ‘stock fair’ and essentially, it’s a joint savings account which takes equal contributions from all parties on a monthly basis (and the occasional ad hoc top up when possible). The goals for people who use stokvels are varied, from saving for funerals, wedding and birthday fund to, in our case, collectively saving towards a big tour or travel trip.  

At just over 30 years old, we had always had our eyes set on experiencing that once in a lifetime destination fishing trip before the pressures of life like home loans, marriage and kids etc. became a reality. After spending many months browsing various social media platforms and fishing mags, we finally made our call. We were going to save to go to Tsimane Lodge (pronounced “Chi-ma-nee”) located deep in the Bolivian jungle to catch golden dorado. 

Given that we both have careers in finance, we were quick to put together the classic Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all variables. We ran the numbers, agreed on our monthly contributions (and top-up amounts) and worked out that, if we stuck to it, – we could get ourselves to Tsimane in about four years’ time.  

Fast forward to today and we are freshly returned from the jungle. While we had high hopes before the trip and for every one of the 1500-odd days we spent saving for it, neither of us knew what a truly spectacular trip we were in for.  

Continue reading The Dorado Stokvel in issue 54 of The Mission below. It’s free!