Sweet Home Chicago!

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RTW trip Aug 07 - April 08 After 246 days of travel through 30 countries we flew back into Chicago last Sunday afternoon. We are so excited to be home but will definitely miss our long lazy days on the beach and exploring new cities.


The big question we get asked is... so how was it? These past 8 months have been an absolutely amazing part of our lives. We have spent our days diving in the Caribbean, climbing up volcanoes in Guatemala, trekking through the Amazon, white water rafting in the Andes, biking and tasting wine at vineyards in Argentina, hiking up glaciers in New Zealand, sailing in the Whitsunday Islands Australia, riding elephants in Thailand, smoking Hookah's in Turkey, eating cheese and drinking wine in Italy, and drinking our way through Amsterdam, Berlin and Prague with some of our friends from Chicago who met up with us to finish off the trip.

As many highs as there are to traveling some parts of it are not so glamorous. I think we knew we had pretty much become numb to roughing it when we were in Cambodia and as we were walking up to our room we saw some cockroaches in the hallway and neither of us blinked an eye. To put this in perspective the room was only $5, and I think we even upgraded to a room with cable TV for an extra $1, and we never did see any large bugs once we got into our room. Other rough moments include finding scorpions in our room in Uruguay, waking up with about 100 bug bites all over the back of my legs in Malaysia, drying off from a shower with a bandana for about 2 weeks because we didn't have a towel and spending 2 nights in a row on a bus from Venezuela to Brazil.

A sobering part of our travels has been visiting some of the poorest places in the world. I think we would agree that Cambodia was the most poverty stricken place that we saw. One of the saddest moments in the trip is when we were eating dinner and 3 young boys came up to us to try and get us to buy something, when we said that we couldn't the boy looked at us and put his hand to his mouth to indicate that he was hungry. We passed the boys our plates full of food and they finished it all off in probably less than 2 minutes. It was a place where we would have liked to hand out some money to every person that came up to us but in the 8 days that we were in the country there were probably over 100 people a day that would come up and beg and its just impossible to give to everyone.


Favorite Places
Thailand for the beautiful beaches
Argentina for the fantastic steak and wine


Places we would never go back to
Venezuela did not feel like a free country, the military searched our bags many times and it just felt dangerous
Bratislava, Romania felt like we had been the first travelers that had ever been there, it felt like everyone wanted to rip us off and it was not a pretty city

Scariest moments
Being lost in the Cartagena harbor in Columbia and the Columbian Coast Guard coming on to our sail boat to search us at 2 in the morning
Running down a street with our backpacks on to get away from a cab driver in Romania who was demanding about $40 for a 5-minute ride. We only gave him about $3 and just took off running

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Photos

Elephant Riding
Mike and I in Northern Thailand on a 2 day 1 night trek through the jungle. Part of the excursion included elephant riding.

Our Wicked Adventure in Australia
This is the "Wicked" van we drove from Brisbane to Cairns. It was Return of the Jedi themed. It managed to break down only 3 times in the 2 and a half weeks we had it, even though this made for a few days in the shop, we will never fogort camping our way up the east coast of Australia in this thing.

Sailing
Our 3 day 2 night sailing trip in the Whitsunday Islands, Australia. Though we didn't really do much sailing because there was not much wind, we had a great time swimming, diving, and snorkeling in this beautiful place. The only downfall was the huge jellyfish everywhere which is why we had to wear stinger suits.

Just Hangin Out
We visited a crocodile farm in Queensland, Australia and we were able to feed and pet kangaroos.

All Wrapped Up
We bought a bushel of bananas that we wanted to give to the elephants one at a time but this elephant wouldn't let Mike go until he handed over the whole bushel. Mike said that an elephants trunk is a lot stronger than you might think.

Another Beautiful Sunset
This picture was taken on an island called P. Tioman in Malaysia. There was only 1 bar on the part of the island that we were staying on so we we able to enjoy happy hour beers while watching the sunset for the 4 days that we were there.

Singapore
You know your in a different world when you see a sign like this at a business and it's probably not a joke.