After Portugal, Priscilla and I flew back to the States for Kate and David’s wedding in San Diego and then spent a month easing back into the thought of settling down and planning our next move. We drove back up to New England to check out some potential cities to settle in and caught up with friends and family.

Some Reflection

After being away for so long, spending our days outside and active, on our own schedules, just the two of us… it’s an adjustment coming back to the USA. But we just threw ourselves into the next thing, and both landed jobs we enjoy in Portland Oregon; which was at the top of our chosen cities. We drove across the continent (again), taking the southern route to avoid getting caught in some snow storms in the Rockies and arrived in Portland in March. It’s been a whirlwind of activity since then, which hasn’t really given us much time to dwell on any of these changes. Jumping straight into our next adventure was incredibly important; it was easy to feel aimless upon returning and important for us to just keep moving forward.

We happily reminisce about our travels frequently, and I wanted to do a bit of a wrap up before moving on to our more current activities. More on that later. Since we did a breakdown of things like steps/distances on each specific county/monthly summary, this is just the basic logistics of our how it all worked.

When we initially set out, we hadn’t made a plan for returning and thought we might be gone anywhere from 1 year to forever. After about 6 months, we adjusted our expectations, changed our method (we slowed down more and more over time, and wish we’d slowed down even more). While we both love traveling, we doubt we’ll return to full-time travel. 3-6 months at a time would be perfect next time around. We made a lot of adjustments while traveling, but there isn’t much we’d change if we could go back.

Perhaps the most common question we get is what were our favorite activities and countries. The answer usually depends on my mood. I probably won’t return to India, Australia, or Morocco anytime soon, and my favorite countries are usually Japan and New Zealand. Some of my best memories were our Great Barrier Reef liveaboard scuba diving, campervanning through New Zealand’s South Island, surfing in Costa Rica, camping in Saranac Lake and Baxter, and taking the train through Japan. My favorite city in the world is Tokyo.

I also get asked sometimes what I got out of it, so I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. I realized the other day that traveling itself isn’t particularly important to me (thought it IS super fun). Traveling just allowed me figure out what my top priorities really are. Turns out my favorite parts of traveling were:

1. Spending all day, every day, with my best friend
2. Being physically active and outside
3. Pushing my limits and learning new things

I don’t need to travel in order to do any of these things, but it sure helped uncover them. Plus, did I mention it’s fun?

Summary Stuff

We were traveling from August 2017 until January 2019, for a total of 507 days. During that time, we made it to 6 continents, 12 countries, and 30 states. While traveling, we were constantly changing our plans. We had planned to spend over 6 months in South East Asia and China, but ended up changing our plans less than 2 months in. We hadn’t planned on going back to the Americas, or to Denmark, Morocco or Portugal at all. Things happened.

In addition to the below tables, we used 340,000 Star Alliance frequent flyer miles. We accrued them via one 50k signup bonus, and simply not using our credit card points for a few years, then transferring them to United miles.

Here’s what we spent. This includes absolutely everything from pre-trip expenses (~$1.5k), to scuba diving ($2k), road trip gas and a stolen $20 in India.

Category	Spent
Lodging	$23,220
Food & Drinks	$17,771
Activities	$8,708
Campervans, Taxis, Car Rentals, Gas	$6,989
Planes & Trains	$4,604
Health Insurance, Doctors, Vaccines	$3,359
Public Transportation	$2,206
Visa Fees, mobile plans, misc	$1,438
Total	$68,295

It came out to $135 / day. When we were initially planning for all of this, we were hoping for more like $100/day. We changed our plan, and so consciously decided it was OK to increase our spending (more long distance flights, more time in expensive countries). The primary reason it wasn’t more like $150 is because we traveled through New Zealand, Australia and the USA on camping/campervan roadtrips and kept spending pretty low during those periods.

It’s tough to link every dollar spent to a specific country, but here’s a decent approximation. This includes every dollar spent and spreads out random overhead costs, weighted by time spent in each country. We did better the longer we stayed in a country, but you can tell that our budgets were pretty far off.

Country	Days	Spent per Day	Budgeted per Day
USA	189	$107	$150
Thailand	45	$117	$65
India	36	$123	$65
Nepal	24	$96	$65
New Zealand	42	$162	$170
Australia	48	$177	$170
Ecuador	12	$27	$65
Costa Rica	22	$155	$80
Japan	42	$226	$170
Denmark	27	$145	$170
Morocco	14	$168	$80
Portugal	6	$216	$100

Now that we’re back (and have been settled in Portland for a few months), I’m excited to get into what we’ve been up to more recently.

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