2007
We started our travel adventure in March of 2007, writing down our thoughts and feelings on the brand-new Travelpod site to keep our own travel journal we could share. Some of our first thoughts were hectic and scared…
Cheryl
“I just left my job of 16 years to prepare for this adventure! Tampa will be where it all starts. We are just planning right now – although we are trying not to plan it too much. I want the experience to be great without so many pre-conceived notions of the where’s and when’s!”
Lisa
“I woke up from a dream so real my heart was still pounding — I was in a roller coaster car looking straight down to a 90 degree drop. We met with the realtors to put the house up for sale – yep, it’s real now. Tomorrow the sign goes up.”
2008
After 18 months of travel, we wrote this post called SO FAR to sum up a little of what we had experienced.
“In the past year and a half, we’ve traveled to four continents, twenty-seven countries, and visited over two hundred cities…
We’ve ridden camels across the Sahara, spent nights in safari tents listening to the breathing of lions outside in Africa, slept on a felucca on the Nile, and balanced (precariously!) on top of an Asian elephant…
We’ve battled tick-bite fever, gut-wrenching food poisoning, and being pick-pocketed in Paris (twice!)…
We’ve worshiped in a Buddhist temple, knelt in an Islamic mosque, and heard mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris…
We’ve sneezed at spice vendors in Nice, sipped champagne in Epernay, tasted heaven in Tuscany, and taken Thai cooking lessons in Chiang Mai…
We’ve participated in giraffe-poo spitting contests in S. Africa, munched on fried bugs in Bangkok, but balked at chicken feet in Beijing…
We’ve swapped stories with the Maasai in their cow dung huts, taught six-year-olds in a Mexican fishing village to protect the Tortugas, as well as smiling eight-year-olds in Thailand to say “nice to meet you” in English…and here we got back so much in return!
We’ve met a grey-haired angel on the streets of Athens, Guinness-wielding comedians falling off barstools in Ireland, and travelers from all corners willing to share their stories…
We’ve dog-eared guidebooks, rumpled maps, perused fish identification guides, and carried more weight in paperback books than of our clothes…
We’ve searched for sea horses in the South China Sea, rubbed the belly of manatees in Florida, and felt the ghosts hiding in the murky waters in a sunken wreck in Malaysia…
We’ve spent old holidays learning new customs, picked up a few useful words and phrases in Spanish, Thai, Italian, French, German, Mandarin, Balinese, Malaysian, Afrikaans, Indonesian, and Swahili…
We’ve walked in on a newborn cheetah in the wild, gently held an exotic Golden Baboon Spider, and spent a long night outdoors listening to the screech of baboons camped out near our African riverbed…
We’ve volunteered our time to Scuba dive the coral reef in the Mexican jungle, collecting data for research while living for ten weeks without electricity or running water, and we’ve woken at 4am for game drives to check in on a fresh lion kill in the South African bush…
We’ve taken trains with toilets that drop directly on the tracks, squatted in sweltering sheds in cemeteries, and carefully watched for marauding lions while attempting a quick bush pee…
We’ve changed quite a bit…
A year and a half ago we were two typical forty-something women, great jobs and nice homes, all the expected bells and whistles…what happened in between is our story. What Boundaries? Live Your Dream!”
2013
We just celebrated our 1-year “Back To Traveling Anniversary”! Our thoughts, fears, and questions are shared via our own web sites or on Facebook where we interact with friends and family on a daily basis. We came back home for a while to earn more money for travel, but are now back on the road. This time it was Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Next month it’s off to Tuscany, Spain, and Ireland. Because you know that once the travel bug bites, there really isn’t any cure!
So our bit of travel advice – and this goes for life, too – keep a journal. You’ll appreciate reading about your “old self” down the road, no matter which road you choose to take!
Leave a Reply