Here are some links to help discover articles we’ve written by region and country.
Hopefully, that’ll steer ya toward some posts you may be searching for. However, it’s an unfortunate reality that we often don’t have a chance to write detailed articles about the many, many places we roam around. So, if curious to see where we’ve traveled, keep on scrolling.
Where We’ve Been
We’ve been all over the map, visiting 83 UN-recognized nations, which are over 40% of the world’s 193 countries. When factoring independent territories (e.g., Zanzibar, Reunion Island, Bermuda, etc.), we can tally 100 countries visited!
Here’s a map of the countries we’ve visited, as of February 2020.
Some fun travel stats:
In addition to visiting six continents, we’ve also traveled by ship entirely across three of the world’s oceans: the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific.
Mexico has been the country we’ve spent the most time in. We’ve now been to more than half of Mexico’s 31 states while exploring the country off-and-on for over a year’s worth of time. You can read more about our Mexico adventures: here.
After Mexico, these are the top ten countries we’ve spent the most time exploring:
- Mexico: 492 days (16+ months)
- Ecuador: 155 days
- Canada: 77 days
- Spain: 63: days
- Japan: 62 days
- South Africa: 51 days
- Malaysia: 50 days
- Thailand: 43 days
- Argentina: 42 days
- South Korea: 38 days
- Philippines: 37 days
- Morocco: 33 days
- New Zealand: 30 days
Here’s an archive of our travel routes over the past five years of roaming around the world.
Year 1 (2014): Roaming Around Central America & Europe
Route from Birmingham, MI on December 15, 2013 to Valparaiso, Chile December 20, 2014. ~40,000 miles total.
Segment 1: Central America
The first leg of our global tour was Central America in which we made our way from Mexico down to Colombia, entirely overland and water. Check out our top adventures, eats, and drinks in Central America from the awesome first three months of our trip!
Segment 2: Morocco + Europe
Then we crossed the Atlantic by sea snagging our first repositioning cruise deal so we could get down to exotic Morocco for a month. That was a prelude to exploring all over Europe during the summer and fall of 2014 again taking a lengthy overland journey from Spain to Turkey, taking in nearly a dozen countries in between. Spain was our favorite. We swooned over beers in Belgium. Couldn’t get enough of the Alps in Germany & Austria. Meanwhile, Ukraine was the most interesting. Turkey was the most surprising (in a good way). And we still dream about all the delicious Greek food.
Repositioning Ourselves from Europe to South America without Flights!
We grabbed another last minute cruise ship deal in the Fall of 2014 to cross back across the Atlantic to visit the States. So our visit back to the States would be a short one because we’d soon set sail yet again! This time we went through the Panama Canal!
Year 1 Highlights: These were our favorite experiences from our first year roaming around the world.
Year 2 (2015): Our 1st Trip Entirely Around the World
Segment 3: Southern South America
That last cruise positioned us to explore the very southern reaches of South America, which began our second year of this zig-zagging trip around the world. We started in Chile and crossed back and forth into Argentina making our way to the southern tip of this continent, AKA the end of the world! Making our way through the Andes of Patagonia really satiated our craving for adventure.
Segment 4: New Zealand & Australia
After 3 months exploring Chile & Argentina, we took a 5 day flight (no, really) over to New Zealand, where all the crazy adventures continued. New Zealand has been our dream destination so we tried to pack in as much as we possibly could within the 28 days we spent there. It was awesome! We then hopped over to Australia for just a few quick days before transferring to our next continent.
Segment 5: SE Asia
We landed in Bangkok, which began a great month of recharging our batteries in Thailand. Then we popped down into Malaysia and finally over to the Philippines.
Segment 6: Middle East to Middle Europe)
We caught a flight to Dubai then spent a few very interesting and hot weeks in Egypt. From there it was time to return to Europe to see some new-to-us countries starting with Hungary. We then traveled through SE Europe visiting Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Slovenia before finally making our way into Germany to investigate How To Travel to Oktoberfest on a Budget.
We then made a beeline to England where we caught our 4th repositioning cruise, this time returning to the US, which marked the completion of entirely circumnavigating the globe!
Year 2 Highlights: These were our favorite experiences from our second year of roaming around the world.
Year 3 (2016): Slowing Down in Mexico before a Grand Africa Adventure
Here is a video recap of our third year of travel:
Segment 7: Slowing Down in Mexico
We began our third year with a bang, by taking a trip to Cuba before it had officially opened up to the rest of the US!
We then tried to slow our travels by enjoying some longer stays in Mexico. We stayed for a month each in Merida, San Cristobal de las Casas, and Oaxaca, with many adventures in between. Next we roamed back around the US for a little while and took the brand new Fathom cruise to the Dominican Republic.
Segment 8: Repositioning to Portugal & Spain
We then took yet another repositioning cruise, this time from Panama to Portugal on the Pullmantur Monarch, our cheapest cruise yet – only $159! (Read Pullmantur Monarch Review.) We then enjoyed exploring Portugal and the Andalusia region of Spain.
Segment 9: A Grand Adventure Across Africa
We ended our third year of travel with one of our biggest adventures yet – a 3 month trip across Africa. We started in Kenya and hopped on a 56-Day Oasis Overland Safari from Nairobi to Cape Town. We then spent a month traveling across South Africa on our own.
Year 4 (2017): South American Exploration, Summer in Canada & Off to Asia
Segment 10: An Andean Adventure
We spent the first few months of 2017 exploring Ecuador. That’s where we investigated How to Travel to the Galapagos on a Budget. Back on mainland Ecuador, we took a series of boats down the Amazon to get to Peru. Of course, we had to see Machu Picchu and so we went the most adventurous way possible: The Jungle Trek. We continued southbound on this Andes adventure into Northern Argentina and Bolivia, where we had our most scenic journey – taking a Salar de Uyuni tour. Yet ultimately we returned to one of our favorite countries: Mexico, to explore the city of Guanajuato for a month.
Segment 11: A Summer Celebrating Canada’s 150 + the Start of Circumnavigating the Globe w/o Flights!
We then spent the summer in Canada, staying for a month at a time in Halifax and Montreal, with many adventures in between as the country celebrated its 150th anniversary. Ultimately this is when we decided to pursue a dream of traveling entirely around the world only by land and sea. So Halifax became our starting point for this flightless journey around the world!
After accomplishing a goal of finding a moose in the wild, we departed Canada and crossed the US by Amtrak from Chicago to Seattle. We ultimately popped back up to Vancouver so we could cruise across the Pacific all the way to Japan! Of course, we stopped throughout Alaska along the way, and cruising through Glacier National Park became a clear highlight of the voyage.
Segment 12: Roaming Around Northern Asia
We closed out the year by spending nearly two months roaming around Japan and really enjoying it there, before crossing by ferry to South Korea. It’s there that Year #4 ended, but our flightless trip around the world continued!
Year #5 (2018): Completing a Trip Around the World without Flights!
We took an incredible monthlong trip through China and then hopped on two repositioning cruises that took us for 42 days, all the way from Asia to Europe! We settled into Italy for a few weeks before taking a road trip across Europe that ended in England to catch a final transatlantic cruise back to Halifax.
That completed our mission of making it entirely around the world without flights by forming a cheap world cruise!
Here’s the highlight reel:
After all this fast travel around the world, we’ve since retreated back to our beloved slow travel destination of Mexico. From there, we briefly visited the US and took a Caribbean Cruise for two weeks. That rounded out the year this big year of cruises by visiting another six countries!
Year 6 (2019): Our Third Massive Trip Around the World
For our sixth year of travel, we returned to Ecuador for another 3-month trip across the country. We eventually traveled overland up into Colombia, where we dove deep exploring the capital, Bogota.
We then returned to the comfort of our beloved Mexico for another prolonged stay. That gave us time to plan another trip around the world. This time, we formed the ultimate babymoon, a round-the-world trip while pregnant!
Year 7, 8, 9, and beyond:
We slowed down significantly in 2020 to create another little traveler to join us roaming around the world. Yet we still managed to take some domestic trips here in the US, most notably driving the entire extent of the Blue Ridge Highway, in addition to trips to Colorado and the Florida Keys.
In 2021, we took our one-year-old on a three-month cross-country trip across the US! Later that year, we spent a month introducing her to Mexico and then finished the year with a cruise to the Bahamas.
In 2022, our travels slowed even more as our family expanded further. Yet we still managed to squeeze in several months of travel exploring the Southeast US.
What’s next in 2023 and beyond? We’re still figuring that out. So in the meantime, we cordially invite you to follow along with our adventures as we figure out where our next destination will be.
To see where we’re currently roaming around be sure to join the thousands of travelers on our Facebook Page which is where we usually try to keep the most up-to-date of our current whereabouts, although we’ve been a little quiet lately.
The 56 day over land safari from nairobi to cape town sounds awesome. You guys sure had lots of fun on your vacation.
Thanks! That two-month overland safari remains one of our favorite travel experiences during the past five years. 🙂 We’ve been craving returning to Africa ever since.