We’re halfway

Although our blog may be stuck back in June, we continue to move through time at the standard pace. In fact we have moved through exactly half of the time we managed to convince our work to let us have off. While we do hope that our blog will one day catch us up, we thought some things we have counted, lists and our future plans might help you feel right along with us for the journey.

COUNTRIES*: 18

In order, we’ve been to: Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, Thailand, England, Germany, Italy, Malta, Spain, Iceland, Canada, USA, Bermuda, Peurto Rico, Haiti, Portugal, Greece

One day, hopefully, you’ll read about these places on the blog, but in the mean time our top 3 favourite so far:

Maderia, Portugal: rugged, mountainous and full of tunnels. Every time you enter a tunnel the other side is an entirely different landscape.

Rhodes, Greece: an incredibly cute medieval town. The only problem with this town is the cobblestones are very cobbly so you need to watch every step. And it’s much too cute of a town to be watching your steps. So Keelie trips a lot.

Gozo, Malta: an amazing coastline, citadel and baroque buildings and one of the best meals we’ve had this trip.

Close contenders: you didn’t think a top 3 list would only have 3 did you?

Catania, Sicily: for some inexplicable reason we weren’t expecting Catania to be an enjoyable city, but it made sense to fly from here to Malta. As such, we ended up with very little time here and will be kicking ourselves about that until we finally return.

Bagan, Myanmar: we’ve actually written about this one! You can read why we liked it here.

Vermont, USA: Vermont is very adorable, very green and the home of Ben and Jerry’s. What else could you ask for?

CURRENCIES: 11

Not only have we used 11 currencies, we also like to keep some small notes or coins as a momento of our trip. So we’re actually currently carrying 11 currencies with us.

The prettiest currency by far is the Bermuda dollar, and as we sadly learnt, the hardest currency to exchange is the Myanmar Kyat.

STEPS: 2,384,397

Myles got a Fitbit right before we left on our trip. As such we have no true way of knowing if this is a lot more steps then we normally do, but we’re pretty sure it is. Our latest Fitbit badge states that we’ve walked the length of New Zealand. Most of this distance has been covered in our ever faithful Havaianas (actually Myles’s latest pair had a chunk fall out after the first days wear, so they’re not always faithful).

Our biggest 3 days:

30,775 while hiking the Samaria Gorge on Crete, Greece: 18km trek finished before lunch. That’s a win in anybody’s book.

30,605 in London, England: all day sightseeing and dancing all night, it was just a shame our flight the next day was super early in the morning.

28,971 in Yangon, Myanmar: we really wanted to take taxis since it was 40 odd degrees, but we just couldn’t find a taxi who wanted to take us.

STRANGEST FOOD WE’VE EATEN: Hakarl in Iceland (shark meat which has been buried, rotten, fermented and dried). Our first taste wasn’t nearly as bad as we expected, somehow the ammonia taste gives you a bit of a buzz. Myles decided to go for a second taste which resulted in him nearly vomiting in the street.

Close contenders: 
Horse in Catania, Sicily: why on earth was everyone complaining about IKEA’s meatballs containing horse? It’s actually much more delicious than beef.

Puffin in Vestamaayer, Iceland: they’ll pretty much eat anything in Iceland apparently.

White Castle, Las Vegas, USA: seriously America, why do you continue to let it be a thing?

THINGS THAT ANNOY US: 

While not working and drifting across the world is totes amazeballs, it’s not all sunshine and roses. Here are the top three things that annoy us:

1. Wearing the same clothes all the time: the same 10 or so outfits are getting pretty dull. However, we literally have no more room in our packs for anything else, so they will have to suffice for now.

2. Taking photos for other tourists: whenever someone asks Keelie if she can take a photo for them she cringe (although outwardly she says “sure”). I hate taking photos for other people. It’s super stressful. What if I get it wrong and you hate it? Why do people always want their shot taken in a place with really bad light? What ends up happening is I take 10 slightly different shots, and it’s probably the last one that is the best, but by then everyone’s smiles have faded and/or are fake.

3. Tourists taking photos: I don’t know if digital cameras or Instagram that is to blame, but people seem crazy obsessed with getting the perfect shot. These are things we have actually witnessed:

• a women asked other tourists to move out of the theatre to take a tourist free snap. Shockingly people actually moved.
• a group of people taking beach snaps with a drone. (How few outfits they must have to be able to pack that!)
• so, so many, generally women, getting their very sad looking boyfriends to take pictures of them and then giving them very detailed feedback after each shot and making them try again. And then again and again. (Actually this is kind of fun to watch as long as you have drinks).

And yes, we miss you all but that doesn’t annoy us per se. (Well we probably don’t miss all of you, but we’ll let you decide which list you fall on).

WHAT’S NEXT? 

We have another 5 weeks left in our European oddessy, at least half of which will be spent in Turkey. We can feel the weather slowly start to turn cold, which means it’s a good time to change continents!

At the end of October we’ll be flying into Nairobi for the start of our African leg. So far we’ve booked ourselves onto an overland tour through East Africa during which time we’ll mainly be sleeping in tents, as well as helping with day to day chores! Travelling is so glamorous. After that our plans start to get a lot vaguer, but travelling down and across until we make it back to OZ seems like a sensible idea.

* counting countries is not the easiest thing in to do, depending on the criteria used there is somewhere between 193- 324. We’ve decided to use this list for obvious reasons.