Let me take you back to November 2021. Dubai is a great place to be that time of year; 30-ish degrees, sunny, and one other thing that got us excited… The World Expo. As a travel-loving duo, we had to visit this city-sized exposition at least once during our stay. So we did. Twice.
For anyone that’s unfamiliar with a World Expo (as I was before we planned this trip to Dubai), it’s an international exhibition where each country can ‘create’ a pavilion where they showcase what they have to offer. In our experience, most of them showed off their natural beauty. As they should.
But, anyway, back to the story. During our second visit to the Expo, somewhere in the Mongolia pavilion, while I was taking in an incredible picture of a yurt placed smack-dab in the middle of one of those typical Mongolian landscapes. Some cattle around it, a local standing in the doorway, clear blue sky. That’s when he decided to turn around and say: “Maybe we should travel for a longer period of time”.
I guess this doesn’t explain much for most of you, so let me give some background. My plan after graduation was to travel. Buy a one way ticket to Asia, and see for how long I could make it last. But, you know, life happens: we met, we moved in together, we built a life. So instead, what I got after graduation (next to my diploma), was a job. We still travelled every chance we got, and the ‘travel for months’ idea was always there. Sometimes all you need is time. And I guess the loading bar hit 100%.
That was the cue for this ridiculously happy grin on my face that was bound there to stay for the rest of the trip. With each pavilion we visited after, he became more excited. I became more excited.
So here we are, several months of giddy excitement later and after having told our family, close friends and colleagues, planning a trip that will bring us to some of the most spectacular places on this beautiful earth. We can finally say that we’re leaving the Netherlands to travel the world.
We leave in 6 days.
The plan.
No plan.
Well, okay, we start in Brazil where we’ll stay for around 2 months. We have a wedding to attend, friends to visit, caipirinhas to drink.
Then, on the 6th of January 2023 (!), Argentina’s next. Here we can really still say, there is no plan. Buenos Aires, and then we’ll see. Maybe south, maybe north, everything is still wide open. And I think and hope that will sum up the general vibe of this… new life. No ‘need to’, ‘have to’, but ‘want to’. And we’ll see from there 🙂
