In Case You’re Wondering What We’re Up To

Oh gosh.  We made ourselves a promise before we left to keep up the blog and now here it is, nearly two months since we’ve posted anything! 

So here’s what we’ve been up to: We landed in Africa in the beginning of October and have been on the run since.  We arrived in our eighteenth country on New Year’s Eve and spent a couple weeks exploring Cape Town.  From here it was an amazing, whirlwind road trip along the Garden Route and Wild Coast of South Africa with my parents.  In February we went to Mozambique for ten days of scuba diving in Tofo and from there we headed off to Nepal.  We had only made it through our second of three flights when I got extremely sick.  We missed the flight to Nepal and I spent one day in the Dubai hospital and then two more days in the bathroom of the nicest hotel of our trip.  Luckily or unluckily it was just a case of an extremely nasty bug and not malaria or parasites or amoebas. (They checked!) The hospital was amazing and it was comforting to know I didn’t have something worse so it was actually nice in a weird way.  When we finally got to Nepal we set out on a hike through the Himalayas, spending 17 days trekking the Annapurna Circuit and reaching heights of 17,770 feet or 5,416 meters.  Standing on the pass and still having to crane my neck to look up at the mountains surrounding us was surreal to say the least. 

After a little time spent in Pokhara and Kathmandu we left Nepal and shortly thereafter got on the second longest flight in the world (16.5 hours which ended up being closer to 19 after a 2.5 hour delay!) from Dubai to Auckland, New Zealand.  Here we picked up our campervan, which is really just a minivan, and set out to explore Middle Earth for a bit more than five weeks.  I’m writing this from Oamaru, New Zealand now and on the 14^th of April we head for Sri Lanka for a month or so before we hit Indonesia.  Wow I’m exhausted just writing this!  I think we’ll spend the rest of our time in South East Asia after that but we hope to be home by August to enjoy a little bit of summer in the USA!

TLDR; Went to Africa, never stopped moving and still have tons to share from it, got sick in Dubai, hiked in Nepal, arrived in New Zealand; next up is Sri Lanka, likely coming home in August. 

Sorry we haven’t been posting more but will be trying to slow down over the next few months and get caught up!