Almost a year ago, Tyler and I sat down in a neighborhood coffeeshop and individually brainstormed our top 20 places to go on our still fantastical round the world trip. After seeing what matched up and what one or the other of us had overlooked, we crafted an initial itinerary. Basically, we decided to go places neither of us had been before (so no Thailand, Bali, or Argentina); that wouldn’t be too expensive (knocked off Japan, Scandinavia, most of Europe); and that seemed like a logical route, so nothing too far north or south or out of the way (took out Estonia and Patagonia). And then a few locations (like Easter Island!) got added along the way due to fortuitous flight connections. So here it is:
February 14-March 15: South America (Peru, Bolivia and Chile)
March 16-March 23: Pacific Islands (Easter Island and French Polynesia)
March 24-April 29: Oceania (New Zealand and Tasmania)
April 30-May 28: Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos)
May 29-July 1: India
July 2-August 11: Africa (South Africa, Kenya and Egypt)
August 12-September 12: Europe (Turkey and Croatia, flying home from Munich)
Our itinerary matches our goals for the trip—we want to spend chunks of time in different parts of the world (about a month or so per continent traveled to), but we also wanted to see a fair amount of the world.
People often ask what location we’re most excited about. Because of the way we really crafted our itinerary to exactly what we wanted to do, it’s a hard question to answer. When pressed, I’m tempted to say Easter Island. It’s a place I never imagined I might ever go to, and I grew up thinking I wanted to be an archaeologist, so I can’t wait to check out the moas (big, giant stone heads that scientists still can’t re-construct without modern tools).
But I can get easily just as excited and starry-eyed about Tasmania, South Africa, Turkey……
Two and a half weeks and counting!
Next blog—logistics.
2 comments:
If you can get a copy before you leave you might want to check out Diamond's book "collapse." It has great stories about Easter Island and its demise that might make that part of the trip even more interesting. I think you could find it at any english language bookstore, even in airports, and you will have a lot of time on planes.
Hey Jamie, funny you should suggest that, because literally last night Sarah was mentioning how she wanted to read that while on the trip. I thought Guns, Germs and Steel was pretty fascinating.
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