Our first complete circumnavigation of the globe! Los Angeles never looked so good! We left from Los Angeles on a cruise to Australia on November 11, 2018, and headed west for 13 months. We hit Hawaii, Samoa, Western Samoa, Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji, New Caledonia, Australia, Tasmania, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, Andorra, France, Portugal, Canary Islands, Bahamas, Florida, and flew back to Los Angeles on December 6, completing one entire circle of our beautiful, diverse planet in 13 leisurely months. We used cruise ships, tenders, airplanes, buses, trains, ferries, rental cars, and mostly our FEET to complete our travels. For the two most significant distances, crossing the Pacific and then the Atlantic, we used cruise ships rather than airplanes. It meant no jet lag, as it is a slow, gentle progression of miles, and you get to see islands and features along the way rather than buzzing by them overhead. We only flew when it was the off-season for cruise ships in the areas we were in.
We weren’t able to photograph much, as we were at Los Angeles International in the rain, then in a shuttle bus, and then it was dark! So, just a few photos at the airport, but California is our former home state and our old stomping grounds, so we are calling it home for the next month. But as we traveled, we would say, “let’s go home,” after a long day of sightseeing, and it meant our hotel for the night. We feel we are always at home when we are together. It doesn’t mean a place, but a state of being… that wonderful comfort of facing the world together and knowing everything is fine.
One fellow traveler asked us, “Okay, so after your hundreds of thousands of miles of travels…what is the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” He and his wife had their own tale of disaster that made for a bad day of travel. But we were stumped! Maybe we plan everything too well, maybe we are lucky, maybe we figure things out quickly before things get worse….but we couldn’t think of a single incident over our many years of travel. The best we could come up with was that we took a subway that ended up going the wrong way, discovered it by the next stop, got off, reboarded, and went the correct way. That took us about 10 minutes out of our way. So, no good stories about what went wrong….yet!
We are back to see all of our doctors, get another year’s worth of prescriptions, and see family and friends before leaving again. For the first few months of 2020, we would like to visit South America, but planning is still ongoing. Then, more of Europe, please!…and likely back to Asia (Vietnam and a return to glorious Bali and its lovely people). Australia might possibly also be in the works!
