How did you plan your trip? Did you have anyone help you?
We spent a ton of time pouring over guidebooks (mostly Lonely Planet – we found a brand that worked and stuck with it), studying maps, reading travel blogs, watching travel shows, listening to podcasts, researching Dept of State website on different countries, and on and on. We started really, truly planning about 12 months before our anticipated departure date to come up with our first stab at an itinerary. It included just about every country in the world crammed into 6 months. That only took about a hot second to realize it was too much! We also had to consider COVID requirements that were (and still are, but less so now) constantly changing at that point in time. From there, we spent some time talking about each of our priorities and expectations for the trip and what places or things we absolutely had to see (we each got one). We kept planning and rerouting until we ultimately came up with our planned itinerary. We think…it’s all subject to change until we take off or land!
For our overland in Africa portion, we opted to go with a company vs drive ourselves – https://www.africanoverlandtours.com/. Common sense said that was a better idea than trying to figure out how to drive overland in Africa across multiple borders! We found a company that had several different trip options and varying budget levels to choose from. We went for the 40 day camping overland from Cape Town to Nairobi. Our contact (Reshma) working with us has been amazing – she answers every time we call with our multitude of questions.
For New Zealand, we also opted to have a local company in Christchurch help us book apartments and some excursions – https://www.realnewzealandtours.com/. Knowing we were going to be bouncing around the South Island spending only a night or two in each place, we went for the easy button to give us one less thing to worry about. Geoff and Libby have been wonderful to work with.
Totally old school, but one of our favorite planning tools has been a giant laminated map of the world! We hung it up on the wall in our entryway and were constantly drawing on it – circling places we wanted to go, highlighting routes we could take, and always being inspired by some new places we want to travel to in the future. Also was really helpful for the boys to understand where we were going and getting a lay of the world geography they’ll be traveling.
Are you going to homeschool your kids?
Yes, as scary as that sounds both for us and our kids. The pandemic confirmed that we are not educators and reaffirmed that we love our public schools and teachers (high fives to LCPS!)! However, for 6 months, we figured we can give it a go and found all sorts of resources available to us.
We realized that several of our colleagues homeschool their children, so we talked to them about the programs they use (apps, resources), how to frame homeschooling for our trip, and got suggestions and ideas. They were a treasure trove of information and incredibly helpful. We are using Teaching Textbooks for Math, which was a priority for us. Of all their subjects, Math is the one that we couldn’t skimp on and had to make sure we had a solid program so they can keep up and not fall behind. From there, we’re bringing Spectrum Science workbook, a few Key to Math workbooks, a whiteboard, an empty journal, and the Libby app from our public library. All of that, together with out in the world experiences, will be our educational plan.
We also reached out and asked our public school for help. We talked to their teachers, the principals, and counselors who have provided us so many resources, suggestions, sketched out lesson plans, reading lists, math reviews, and on and on. Their support will make all the difference in our experience for the boys! They were all incredibly supportive and helpful with ideas not just for academics, but also for social/emotional ideas to keep the boys connected to classmates and friends. We really hadn’t considered this, nor understood the importance of it, until the teachers brought it up. When we told the boys their suggestions and how they can stay connected, they got even more engaged and excited about the trip. Once they knew they could keep in contact and not be isolated, they’ve really gotten excited about our planned experiences.
What made you want to take a sabbatical? How long have you been planning this?
We watched a documentary on Netflix back in 2018 called Chasing Coral (it’s still available on Netflix – worth the watch. It has a sister documentary called Chasing Ice you can find on YouTube as well). It follows scientists, divers and photographers as they document the disappearance of coral reefs. Besides from being horrific to watch reefs disappear in the blink of an eye, it also brought home the realization that our kids will never have a chance to see some of these places before they disappear due to climate change. Their world 15-20 years from now may be drastically different than it is today – reefs, glaciers, lakes, islands, rainforests, ice fields, barrier islands – you name it, it’s being impacted by climate change in some adverse way.
Is this possibly a bit dramatic and doomsday feeling? Of course, but it seems very possible that our world and theirs will be vastly different. That sparked the idea – in 2022, we’d take them around the world to see places that are likely to disappear due to climate change. We set our sights on 2022 because of their ages (5th and 7th grades) – not yet in high school, old enough to remember, thoughtful enough to understand the gravity of what they’d be seeing – plus it gave us a few years to save up funds. Our hope is that they will have memories and experiences of the world today, but also be inspired as they grow up to do something that will make a difference.
Where are you going? Why aren’t you going to Antarctica and Great Barrier Reef?
We are going south and then west around the southern hemisphere. Our travel plans changed about once every other day for about 6 months as we investigated locations, read guidebooks, scoured the internet, and attempted to understand the COVID requirements in each country. Originally, we were going to skip South America, New Zealand, and Australia altogether – famous last words as they say. Still staying core to our intentions, we’ve landed on Chile (Patagonia and then Atacama Desert), Peru, Ecuador (Galapagos), Fiji (a sustainable island where all energy is solar plus a reef), New Zealand (all South Island), Australia (Perth, Exmouth and Coral Bay), South Africa to overland from Cape Town to Nairobi, and Kenya (Tsavo East and West).
As for Antarctica, we would love to step foot on the continent just to see it – how amazing would that be? However, given our budget and chunk of time dedicated to getting to and from Antarctica, we decided to pass for now. We opted to dedicate more time in each location instead and will come back when the boys are older.
We decided to visit the Ningaloo Reef on the west coast of Australia instead of the Great Barrier Reef. It is a fringing reef (close to shore) that is on the UNESCO World Heritage list with whale sharks, manta rays, turtles, and humpbacks migrating if you catch it right. The reef caught my imagination as soon as I saw pictures and its location on the map. It seems so remote, like it’s on the edge of the world, and untouched. We decided we had to make it part of our trip and will make it back to the Great Barrier Reef (fingers crossed) as soon as we can.
