10 year plan update: Travel (Visit all 7 continents by 2022)

If you recall, the first leg of this was to make it to South America by 2015. The disheartening part of this is how we seem to keep planning for everything else.

We just got back from Alaska (preceded by Mexico), we really need to get Mom to see her family in Italy again, and Julie’s sabbatical plan (2014) is various European countries, though we will not be able to get them all. It will probably feature Spain (including Gibraltar), France, Austria, and Montenegro. The British Isles will have to be a separate trip, but maybe we could get Poland and Czech Republic into the sabbatical. Scandinavia would have to be it’s own thing, but we could probably combine it with Saint Petersburg to take in the Hermitage. The Netherlands is also it’s own trip, but I think we could do it as kind of a long weekend.

Also, I just figured out a great itinerary for Costa Rica, where we go to the sloth sanctuary in Limon, visit a beach with sea turtles just down from it, get in whale sharks, and hop down to Panama to get a look at the canal. Although we are not warm weather people, the sloths and turtles, along with the relative shortness of the trip, convinced my sisters to buy in. We are also looking at Yellowstone, and Anaheim again.

Fortunately, I would not feel complete without a trip to Central America, so Costa Rica is cool. I knew right when I was planning it that all three of the continents I have visited would have other places that I would want to see. And, even after I hit every continent, there will probably still be more places that I want to see.

Here is the short list for South America. Well, actually it’s the long list, but as I do more research, it’s probably going to expand, and then this will seem like a short list. Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca in Peru of course; Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Galapagos Islands; Rapa Nui (Easter Island); Tierra del Fuego; Isla Chiloe, and it just seems like it would not be complete without seeing the Amazon and the Orinoco, though I am not sure what I would do with them. I’m not terribly drawn to Rio or Sugar Loaf.

Now, Tierra del Fuego is a common departure point for Antarctica, and probably the most logical one for me, so that is less of a worry. And I don’t have to see all of these by 2015—even just one of them would count—but I do get ambitious.

Also, I suspect that after seeing Mayan ruins, and then Incan Ruins, that I will probably feel a need to go back to Mexico to see some Aztec ruins, and then maybe Egypt is next, but that’s Africa, and I would have until 2018 for that.