Oh, the Places You’ll Go… (Seven Continents, Fifteen Countries, and Counting)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Free Range Hobo, re-reading old posts and taking the time to remember all the fun I’ve had since this amazing adventure began in earnest in 2014… after over fifteen years without an international trip. This post started as a 2017 recap, but during all of the reflection I thought it would be good to share just how I ended up making it to every continent in the world. Here goes:

 

North America

North America was by far the easiest trip for me to take, seeing as I live in the United States, and between personal travel and work I’ve been to a good number of states around the country at this point. Having spent nearly thirty-two years here now though this is to be expected! When I was growing up this was mostly road trips to Oregon, with the occasional circle down to California, San Francisco, and back through Las Vegas. Over the many trips, I remember seeing things like the Redwood Forest, and Lombard Street, camping on the beach in Oregon, putting our arms and legs in different states at Four Corners, and seeing a great deal of canyons from Bryce to Zion (I know, these are actually very close to each other but the ‘Almost-A to Z’ thing was too good to pass up!).

As I’d grow older, I would spend time visiting Boston and Salem on a school trip. We learned all about the town, saw whales (where I got terribly seasick), visited torture museums and learned all about the history of the Salem Witch Trials. An affiliation with our school’s Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) would take me to Florida and Disney World late in High School as well, learning all about how Disney makes their magic. The only geographic extreme I hadn’t visited by the time I was leaving high school was the far Northeast of the United States (I still need to make it to Maine, I’ve heard great things! Soon!). Also by this time I’d had my first international trip with People to People, but I talk about that below.

 

As I grew into a young adult, a relationship would lead me to New York City in my early twenties to meet a girl’s relatives and spend time in “The City”. We enjoyed a “behind the scenes” tour of the Javits Center, and meandered through some areas the general public never sees. We devoured some amazing Italian food. After nearly a full day inside the walls of the museum, this trip also began my lifelong infatuation with The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). I’ve been in museums throughout the world since, and it is still my favorite. The same relationship would lead to me sitting behind the wheel of my Dodge Magnum after a short night of sleep, beginning a road trip that I can only describe in hindsight as being very much like my own version of The Cannonball Run (but without… you know movie-stars, excitement, or really anything fun… and THEN we ended up in Oklahoma). To be fair, every state seems to have its little wonders and architectural baubles, and most of them are worth a visit, but it’s still Oklahoma. My most-recent road trip, on the other hand, was straight North. I spent some time in Wyoming and slept in a motel that I would be doing a favor by calling “quaint”, and I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. I have pictures of a 40-foot tall Virgin Mary statue from just outside of Cheyenne, and that was worth the trip all by itself.

 

Work would later expose me to more of California both through attending a work-friend’s wedding and visiting our corporate campus in Palo Alto outside of San Francisco. It would also send me to Minnesota, Costa Rica, back to Boston, and outside of The Americas eventually (but we’ll get there). Year after year, my employer (VMware) is on Fortune’s “Best 100 Companies to Work For” list, and this is the first company in my employment history that I truly believe rewards hard work. Each time I turn around there is a new opportunity and something to explore, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In short, work, school and life experience have sent me all over the United States, and there is still so much left to see even so close to home (Glacier National Park is next, I think). Throughout it all, however, I’d always wanted to see more, to travel, to grow.

 

Europe

I think a lot about where my wanderlust originated. As a child, as much as I complain about road trips, I loved the journey just as much as the destination. As a young adult my wanderlust was growing steadily when my older sister went first on a People to People trip to Asia, and sparked the idea that it would be possible for me to visit the far corners of the world. As soon as it was my turn (I had to wait a while to be old enough), I agreed to go without a moment of hesitation. I was in middle school at the time, one of the first instances in which the organization had a middle-school-aged trip, and I joined a group of about 30 students with local three teachers as our chaperones and guides.

Throughout, we would cover seven total countries (including some like Vatican City), touring Italy, France, and Spain. There were months of planning meetings where I got to meet my fellow travelers, learn about the countries, and spent time becoming familiar with the art and culture I was about to experience. The trip would be my first experience sharing a hotel room with people outside my family (even with pre-trip meetings, they might as well have been strangers), and as expected when you put up to four teenage boys in a room there was more than one noise complaint. My older brother also went on a trip with the same itinerary, but in a separate group for older boys. We found some time to connect and hang out when our paths crossed, though if I remember my timeline right now they took the reverse direction from start to finish (my trip toured from Italy to Spain) so the overlap was somewhat minimal, but memorable!

 

 

Looking back now, I wish that I had spent more time on the history and education portion, but as trips go I still think of this one as a success. I’ve seen the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, entered the Vatican and walked through Saint Peter’s Basilica. I met new people,  some government dignitaries, and I made lifelong friends. I even played hooky from a hotel room after curfew, wandering the streets of Spain late at night (early the next morning, really) to get french fries from McDonald’s with the cutest girl on the trip. When I tell that story today, I call it my “first date”, though I think we were both too young to really think of it that way at the time. Yep, I was pretty smooth as a middle-schooler. I even ordered her food for her in Spanish.

This trip was really the first one that left me with strong lasting memories, and a quantifiable amount of wanderlust. I’ve since discarded the notebooks or I’d share a page or two where I wrote in a journal about wanting to live in Spain and feeling like I didn’t quite belong where I was. Looking back as high school progressed, I chalked that feeling up to teenage angst… but hindsight has me reexamining those feelings. I was beginning to feel the pull of the world calling me. I moved away from home shortly after turning eighteen for a number of reasons, still searching and trying to quell the feeling of discomfort I had when I begin to feel “stuck” in a situation. In the end it didn’t work, it never has. No matter what I’m doing today, you will find that I am more interested in tomorrow, and what’s next. Wanderlust is a part of my soul, it lets me wake up every morning with the understanding that if I end up somewhere else entirely unexpected that’s a good thing, but it’s not without its negatives. Down-time is almost painful. There’s a reason I haven’t worked a 40-hour work week in nearly fourteen years: I’m never, ever satisfied with now (especially not when I’m bored)… at least not unless I’m traveling or have plans to do so. With Wanderlust, motion isn’t just possible it is inevitable, and the time between adventures almost is almost cruel by comparison. I can ask for nothing more from my life than one filled with adventures, it’s why I breathe, and it all began in Middle School.

 

Africa

As I grew older, responsibilities started to take over and for a good number of years I focused on college, and all the normal things one does in their twenties. I won’t say I wasted time, but I pursued a sense of what would be normal for most people. I put down roots, I planned a life, and though those things did not last I grew and learned a lot about the depths of my convictions. Throughout it all, today was a struggle and tomorrow was always the goal… I wanted to visit all the continents and so far I wasn’t even halfway there. It took until 2010 (2011 really), when I met Jen, to get me to a place in life where I could start planning again. There’s a speech by Denzel Washington in which he states “Dreams, without goals, are just dreams”, and Jen was the embodiment of this philosophy that I needed in life. We spent a few years becoming great friends, and during that time I shared my dream with her. “I want to visit all the continents”, I told her, “I want to go to Antarctica.”

“Cool!” Jen replied, “When do we go?”

So we started planning, and saving money. Jen had already been to Asia and Africa, two continents I had not, but we had both been to Europe and we spent time deciding what our next trip should be. Even having been to Europe myself, I’ve always wanted to go to Russia and that seemed like a reasonable trip to begin traveling together, so we began planning. We set a date and savings goals, and worked with a travel agent (Trevor, who has since retired but is and was amazing) to discuss putting it all together. About the time we were ready to put down deposits, however, Russia crossed the border into Crimea. With the Presidents of both countries threatening to cancel Visas, we decided to revisit our plans. One of Jen’s dreams in life was to visit Africa again, and go on a safari, and given that we were already planning a rather large trip this fit perfectly in the ballpark. We rearranged our plans, keeping the same date and monetary goals, and two years later we were sitting together in the terminal of Denver International Airport waiting for the longest flight we’d ever been on. Jen helped along the way by begging our way into bulkhead seating (Did I mention I’m 6’5″?), and after nearly twenty-three hours of total flying and one, nineteen-hour flight (with a refuel where we could not exit the plane) I hope to never repeat, we arrived at our destination in Cape Town, South Africa.

 

 

We would spend the next few days visiting Cape Town’s wharf, enjoying wine along the southern part of the continent and seeing the Cape of Good Hope. From there we’d go on to our first safari at Kariega, spend time in Johannesburg to learn about the history of the country, and finish off with another safari in a more desert-like environment at a reserve called Kapama. The same day we flew back, I petted, fed, and touched the tongue of, a very large elephant and had a great time asking the customs guy on the way back “It says here I’m supposed to state if I’ve been near livestock… does that include elephants?” (it didn’t). I now had three continents down, and it was only feeding my wanderlust even more. I’d set a goal and achieved it, walked further down the path to what would become my obsession, I was on the way to visiting all the continents. I would come back to Colorado and show friends and family my photos, and tell them about these blogs posts, and a phrase I heard over and over was that I had just taken “The Trip of a Lifetime”. I replied the same way to each person: “Whoa! I hope not!”, there was still so much more to see, and do!

 

Asia

Over the next year (2015), it was time to start saving again. Jen and I set the goal, and we were talking about the “big trip” by that point. Antarctica, and by proxy South America, were next. As the year rolled by, I was working toward building a travel reserve (savings) while my work was ramping up a new group of employees within our offices in India. Rumors of potential travel to “train the new team” turned into my company booking plane tickets, and after saying I’d go for as long as my work needed (I’ll agree to travel at the drop of a hat, really, for as long as someone will let me) I had six weeks of time ahead of me in Bangalore, India and a few months to plan a trip and explore while I was there.

 

 

India wasn’t exactly the path I had planned to check out Asia, but I was going to make the most of it anyway! Nepal was nearby as an option, and I would be staying only a short flight away from New Delhi which meant the Taj Mahal was reachable. I contacted our travel agent (who referred me to VJ’s Exotic Safaris), and I planned a “trip within a trip” to see one of the Seven Wonders. When I wasn’t working (which would end up being weird, as I worked night, swing, and day shifts over the six weeks so that I could speak to all the teams), I was exploring. I toured around Bangalore, walked the streets and got lost with my coworker Brian, raided a small snack-shop filled with so many mosquitoes it made my skin crawl with my coworker Jim, and even with a few bites… I generally enjoyed my time there.

Five weeks in, I kicked off my extended adventure. I took an extra day off from work and combined it with the US Memorial Day holiday to ensure I didn’t miss too much work… and flew to New Delhi. I met a representative from the local travel agency there, and climbed into a van for my ride to Agra. The ride would take much longer than anticipated due to construction, and I’d see the back-roads and small villages of rural India as we wound our way around the construction and back to the highway. While we didn’t really have much time to stop, this is where I got some of my favorite pictures of the trip save only for those at the Taj Mahal. There was a quiet elegance to the country as we wound through, me with my camera trying to catch every moment I could. We pulled into Agra as temperatures were topping 115-degrees Fahrenheit, and after stopping briefly in the hotel it was on to the Taj Mahal and Red Fort. I took a great number of pictures, had an awe-inspiring moment at the Taj Mahal due to its sheer beauty and presentation, and would go on to enjoy local culture, food, and art in Jaipur before heading back to work in Bangalore.

 

 

India was my first trip while traveling alone. I had a guide for all of my excursions really, but it was my first trip where I didn’t have someone there with me to share the experience. Traveling alone is different, but to me just as meaningful, and something I will likely do in the future from time to time.  To a degree, this trip to India was a trip about proving to myself that I could do it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the result. With Jen having already been to Asia prior to us becoming friends, we were now equal in our number of continents visited as well. The wanderlust continued to build, the road became more clear, the path just a little bit shorter now. Four down, and three more to visit; one more step down the road to completing my quest.

 

 

Note: To further my visit to Asia, I traveled to Tokyo for a few days for work just in the past few months, and spent some time (though not nearly enough) touring the city. There’s so much to see! I will likely be back within a year or so.

 

Antarctica

To be completely fair to this post from a timeline perspective, I suppose I should put South America here first because we really stepped there prior to Antarctica, but our excursion into both Argentina and Peru came second to our trip to the bottom of the world (or as close to it as we could afford!). When your goal is to head about as far south as possible before most directions will take you back North again… and you live in the Northern part of the world already… you’re going to have to stop in a few countries along the way to get there. The planning for the trip was extensive, years of saving money away and months of discussions around what we should bring, how we should dress, whether or not we’d camp in the snow after digging our own shelter, and what the best experience would be.

 

We settled on traveling with Poseidon Expeditions, and we could not have made a better choice. Our ship housed just below the maximum number of travelers who can disembark on to Antarctica at once due to environmental restrictions, and the crew and vessel were outstanding the entire way through. I can’t say enough good about Poseidon here, I really can’t. The crew and people were amazing.

 

 

By the time we left for Antarctica, Jen had already moved for her work and our plans and preparations had taken place mostly over the phone, and within brief visits to a corner-table of Smelly Cat Coffee House in Charlotte, North Carolina when I would visit. After a plane ride to meet her in Miami, we flew South to Buenos Aires, Argentina before continuing on to Ushuaia to climb aboard the boat. Somewhere along the way I’d pick up a cough, but nothing could bring down the level of excitement surrounding where we were headed. We spent an afternoon meandering around Ushuaia looking for food and finding a place that served fried food (that tasted mostly like fry-oil) before calling it a night. The next day, we met the team from Poseidon and got our reservations set. They’d take care of our luggage and all of the required baggage, we just had to make it to the dock area by the afternoon. I spent the morning sleeping in a chair and feeling miserable, and Jen spent it right alongside me bringing me coffee and water. Over the next few weeks Jen would end up playing the role of caretaker as I fought to both experience the trip and get better. I think I finally started feeling better our last day in Peru some weeks later. Prior to that, though, there are so many memories.

 

 

I’ve never spent an extended amount of time on a boat before, but I’ve always wanted to own one. When we first saw the ship in the harbor on our first day, I was surprised by just how big it was and yet how small compared to the luxury cruise liners around it (Ushuaia is a cruise destination, and some of the ships even head down to the Antarctic). We’d climb on board the next day and the entire crew was there to greet us. After ensuring our luggage had made it, and exploring our cabin at the bottom of the boat, we got our orientation briefing, safety drills, and the lay of the “land”. I watched the dock workers unravel the moorings, I watched as Ushuaia fell away behind us, and I kept standing out on the front of the ship facing South (well, once we were out of the Beagle Channel) as Patagonia fell away behind us and we sailed into the open ocean. It would be days before we’d see land again, and when we did it was covered in ice, feet upon feet of snow, and thousands of penguins.

 

 

I tell people that Antarctica is life-changing. It is. Whatever I write here will pale in comparison to the views you see in the Antarctic. It’s vast, so very vast, and yet somehow it’s also elegant, quiet, astounding, and regal. I have never experienced anything like it. Stepping off of the landing Kodiak boat and onto the continent itself felt almost spiritual each and every time, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I’ve never been so awed by something. Sitting on the side of a mountain in Antarctica was worth it, worth the cold, and worth the cough. It was worth the money, worth the time, worth the planning, worth the seasickness, worth all the hours in the airplanes to get there, and worth all the conversations I’d had with friends and family that started with “you’re going where?!?”. It was worth all of it, and up to this point it has been the highlight of my life. Coming back would lead to shell-shock to some degree, which seems silly after only a few days… but the Antarctic stays with you. It calls you. Once you’ve been… you’ll know. I’ll end here the same way I ended my post summarizing the trip: Start Planning, and go. Go now. Just go.

 

 

 

South America

We’d land in Ushuaia again some twelve days after we left, and this gave us a few days exploring the national parks of Argentina, a chance to ride “The Train at the End of the World”, and to eat way too much ice cream and coffee at Freddo in downtown Ushuaia.  We also used this time to see the southern-most post office in South America, and I’d learn that Argentinians really dislike the British and the idea that the Falkland Islands are anything but the Malvinas… and that they remain a part of Argentina regardless of what the British (and the rest of the world) thinks. We’d walk all over Ushuaia, coming to know the local layout and find a great seafood platter on our last day there where I’d venture into things that still had shells, and eyes (the foodie in me is still blossoming, what can I say?). Eventually, we’d head North to Peru with a long layover in Buenos Aires where we played Uno for hours and hours in the airport.

 

 

In Peru, we would spend a few days exploring the area around the Madre de Dios river near where Peru borders Bolivia, and I added “trekking through the Amazon” to my list of things I’ve done in my life. South America may have been a freebie trip on the way to Antarctica, but we were determined to make the most of it. I drank more Pisco Sours than I really should have (this may have delayed my getting better, really), and enjoyed the trip as much as possible. With no air conditioning, clouds of mosquitoes so thick you couldn’t see your travel buddy only a few feet in front of you (I wish I were joking), and temperatures exceeding 100 Fahrenheit every day, I’ve had more fun… but climbing into a hammock overlooking a quick-running river in the Amazon while drinking clean water and considering another Pisco Sour is something everyone should try to do in their lifetime.

 

We’d spend close to a week overall between Argentina and Peru, and while there is still more to do there (like seeing Machu Picchu, and spend more time at Freddo, [okay I admit I have a problem]), I got to practice my Spanish and we spent the trip enjoying ourselves and reflecting on our experiences. I also got to feel proud and translate phrases like “jugar” meaning “to play”… and then guess that a “Jugaria” was likely a toy store (it was!). Jen and I successfully rode in a canoe together without ending up in the water (something we had failed to do in Africa), and we climbed along the Rainforest canopy in a rope bridge through the Amazon Rainforest. Most people don’t see more than few continents in their lifetime, South America for me was continent number six. The goal was even closer now, even with the shell-shock from the Antarctic still firmly in place… I started thinking about Australia before we touched down on American soil again. The goal was achievable, the quest was possible. I was going to make it to all seven… and I began goading Jen immediately into completing it with me. I didn’t even want to wait a year, I wanted to spend just enough time saving to make the trip, and then go. It was time, the wanderlust overbearing, we were so close I could taste it.

 

 

Australia

I don’t think we’d been back from Antarctica for even a month before I started pestering Jen about our last Continent. We were at six out of seven, and for some reason there was even a little bit of fear that somehow, even though we’d made a pact years ago to complete this journey together, life was going to get in the way if we waited. Jen moved on to another position within her company, and so did I. We were moving up, moving on, and I was beginning to feel like even though I had four years to complete my goal by thirty-five… now was the time. If we waited… something else was going to get in the way. As the anxiety grew, so did my pestering, and while it almost felt disrespectful to our last vacation to plan another one so quickly (especially with how deeply the last one had affected me), we started anyway. It would be just a bit over three years since we first set out together to South Africa, and already I felt like much more of a traveling professional than I was when we began this journey. Jen originally made fun of me for getting lost in airports (okay, she still does), but that hardly happens anymore. By comparison, I figured Australia would probably be one of the safest, and easiest places we had ever visited. Heck, even the signs are in English!

 

Once we landed, however, we saw the Great Barrier Reef, and spent time in the Daintree National Rainforest… two of the world’s “Natural Wonders of the world” and we visited them in just under 48-hours. I held a koala, rode in an amphibious vehicle, and at one point had five birds perched on my head, shoulders, camera, and camera bag. Australia is not something to skip! It would turn out to be easy, and even “relatively” safe. I won’t go so far as to say boring, but I might use the word “familiar” to describe it.

 

 

Another thing that happened when we landed was that I learned very quickly on the trip that my idea of travel was changing. We have always had “tours”, we try to take a half-day and see the local sites in cities and countries we visit, but after the intimate and somehow “small” feeling our tours took in Antarctica even a group of 8-10 seemed large, and buses and shared events like boat rides through the Milford Sound with 190+ of our closest strangers were downright unbearable. In our own way, Jen and I both wanted to see more of the towns, and the people. For me this is through things like food, art, museums… for Jen this means walking nearly everywhere and sometimes 15+ miles a day. Some days we’d even split up, and while I’d take it easy she would tack on an additional 10-15 miles all by herself… but it’s all about findings how you personally enjoy traveling and findings the experiences that can give that to you. Since high school, I’ve always wanted to climb the Sydney Harbor bridge, Jen on the other has always been looking for one from which to jump.

 

 

We planned the trip so that it would give us both. In Sydney, we took a nighttime climb to the top of the bridge with BridgeClimb Sydney, and about a week later we both jumped from the Kawarau Bridge with AJ Hackett Bungy. We’d stay in a beautiful ski town in New Zealand, buy cookies from a 24-hour cookie shop, walk a good deal of Auckland and drink local wine, and explore as much as we possibly could about this amazing last Continent within the limited time we had there. We found a small cafe for breakfast, visited an amazing art museum, saw a military parade, and had a great time. Even with the big tours, it was quite a trip.

 

 

The Goal Achieved

Today I still travel a great deal, mostly this year for work but trips are in the planning stage for destinations as routine as Washington DC, and as exotic as the North Pole (someday!). I sometimes stand in airport security lines and I just can’t help but smile. To the best of my abilities so far, I have been on every corner of this Earth… or at least near it… and looking at all the travelers in front of me I’m likely one of the most broadly traveled people in any security line (if not the most broadly traveled!). Sure, I have a lot more countries to visit, fifteen really doesn’t sound like too many and a quick Google search will show you that there are people far younger than I that have traveled “far more”. Day-to-day I don’t compare (just briefly in security lines when I need a smile), but there is something to be said about those who wander. I’ve mentioned it before in this blog, but I truly believe we share a kinship. It’s funny how initially I would have called myself a tourist, and today I would take offense to be called that (though Jen still says I look like one). I am a wanderer, a traveler, an explorer, and a student. I have so much more to learn and so many more ways in which to grow.

 

Visiting all the continents has not satiated the thirst for travel, if anything… it has made it worse. I think every day about the places I could go, and how to make that thought a reality. I dream about selling everything I own, just packing up one day and pointing my future toward a horizon with no regard for direction. I want to drive the Pan-American Highway end to end and return to Ushuaia. I want to ride the Orient Express. I want to watch the Northern Lights from the top of the world and see polar bears in the wild. I want to learn about architecture in Istanbul, and St. Petersburg. I want to see rain so thick I can’t see my hand in front of my face in Vietnam. I want to (and will) live abroad for a few years… and that’s just the start of the goals I still have, and the travel I plan to continue to do throughout my lifetime. In fact, I may have found next big life quest… but I’ll post more on that once I’ve decided it’s for real, and I promise it means there will be a lot more travel and a lot more Free Range Hobo posts.

 

Thank you all very much for reading along with me, and know that this blog will continue to catalogue it all.