2022 has been a whirlwind of travel! We started out the year with a few week road trip from Virginia to Florida and back. Then we spent 10 weeks traveling around Latin America. Almost immediately after returning from Latin America, we hit the road to Alaska where we spent the summer working part time and exploring. This included the road trip to and from Alaska, through Canada & the US. After that, it was a week in Las Vegas for a conference. Soon after, we spent a week in Acapulco, Mexico. With all the traveling combined with trying to keep up with the growth of our online business Travel Therapy Mentor, this year has felt rather hectic. In total we only spent about 7-8 weeks at home cumulatively during the first nine months of 2022. Even so, we were anxious to embark on a new international adventure to round out the year and keep making up for lost time due to not being able to travel during as much as we wanted during COVID.
Initially we thought about visiting some more countries in Latin America that we originally had planned on our 2020 trip that was cancelled due to COVID, since we only made up for a little bit of that earlier this year. But we decided to put that off for a later trip, potentially in 2023. We switched gears and started planning to return to Europe for a couple of months to visit more countries that we missed on our 2018 and 2019 international trips. Spending the fall/winter in Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Switzerland sounded like an amazing trip. After some additional contemplation though, we decided to plan something a little more ambitious. The reason for this is that Europe is a pretty easy place to travel with kids in the future, while other places we want to visit won’t be so convenient. Since we aren’t getting any younger, kids could be a factor to consider sooner than later. The thought of flying to the other side of the world to visit Australia and New Zealand with a baby sounds like a difficult undertaking… so we decided to go ahead and do it now instead!
Trip Outline
After the issues we had planning out everything and then having to cancel everything (and lose a lot of money) for our Latin America trip in 2020, we learned our lesson. We no longer book the majority of our long trips before leaving so that we’re more flexible in case of any unforeseen circumstances that may arise. Because of that, we have a general plan and outline, but things could certainly change while booking things as we go.
Right now, here’s the plan:
- Greece: ~2 weeks
- Egypt: ~5 days
- Dubai: ~5 days
- Singapore: ~5 days
- Australia: ~2 weeks
- New Zealand: ~2-3 weeks
- American Samoa: ~3-5 days
In total we plan to be gone for about 9 weeks and back in time for Christmas, although we haven’t booked the return flight yet so coming back later is always possible. A pretty big downside of waiting until a couple weeks before to book everything is that options are more limited and costs are higher, so we have to be flexible based on price and availability.
These are all places we’ve wanted to visit for quite a while, so we’re very excited to jump back into more international traveling.
Trip Goals
Unlike prior trips, I don’t have many goals in mind other than just to see some amazing sights, visit some awesome places, and have fun. I’ve been fortunate to do very well this year financially, despite the market turmoil and relatively expensive trips we’ve already taken, so expenses aren’t nearly as much of a concern now as in the past. I do plan to keep track of all of my expenses and write a post outlining everything at the end again for this trip though. Ideally, I’d like to keep total expenses under $100/day, but that’s flexible on this trip. With travel hacking some flights and hotel nights, it should be doable though.
One of the more important things we plan to focus on for this trip is to not fall too behind on our online work. Updating social media, responding to emails and messages, writing articles, making occasional videos, business calls, and keeping up with accounting will take more time than it did on trips in the past, so we have to have some time planned out to get things done while traveling. I’m optimistic that we’ll at least be able to keep up with the most important things to keep everything running smoothly.
Recommendations
If you’ve been to any of the countries on our planned itinerary above and have recommendations, let me know in the comments! We’ve talked to many friends and followers about places to go, but we’re always open to learning more and hearing about the experiences of others.
Whitney will be posting pictures regularly on our Instagram if you’d like to follow along with our adventures!
Fifth Wheel Physical Therapist 
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