Collecting Continents

One of the most frequent questions I got last year was “after you’ve been to every country, what will you do next?”

Over the last two years, the only community of “Country Collectors” or “Competitive Travelers” (take your pick) has actually come together quite a bit more, thanks to a combination of Facebook and various other websites. It’s a small club of 200-300 people by most accounts, and it’s been interesting to watch how people travel after going to every country.

Many people can’t stop collecting, so they go for the Travelers Century Club list of 325 distinct places. Others start ticking off US States, or Russian regions, or the UNESCO heritage list. There’s an endless number of possibilities for those of us who are list focused.

My plans were to at least take the next year to revisit places I had enjoyed, and spend a bit more time doing fun trips. My results at that have been decidedly mixed. Due to heavy work travel, I found myself in Croatia, Thailand, and Vienna over the last year – getting to see all three more in depth due to spending a week at a time in one city. I also made a round the world trip back in February, returning to places I’d already been and flying a variety of fun routes.

Then of course, I got sucked into the “list” thing a bit in the spring, when Ian convinced me to go to South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Abkhazia since they are quasi-independent. I’m still very interested in doing more of these autonomous places, but happy to take the pace slower.

So, with that, I figured I would celebrate the one year anniversary of going to every country with a bit of a fun trip. The routing would be somewhat determined for me, since I had a few tickets I had bought over the past year which would soon expire if I didn’t use them (non-refundable, but date-changeable) so it became a matter of piecing things together to make those work.

I toyed with all kinds of routings. I wanted to take some “fun” flights just for the experience. I wanted to try and get to some places I hadn’t been in a long time. Due to the existing tickets, I also had to go to Sydney, Singapore, and Helsinki. Yeah…not exactly on the same side of the Earth, eh?

So, this is how it all shook out. I didn’t set out to hit all six permanently inhabited continents, but that’s how it’s going to happen. The final routing looks like this, barring any surprises:

You might notice the trip ends in Detroit. Thats because I land back in the US on not only the one year anniversary of my getting to every country, but also the day before my NEXUS membership expires. …and just my luck, they’re requiring an interview for me to renew.

That puts me in Detroit/Windsor at the front end of a long holiday weekend before my birthday…so who knows where the last five days will take me. I’m intentionally leaving it open-ended for another week or two at least.

The start is also a little uncertain. I’m considering being brave and flying non-rev down to Santiago to start the trip, but fortunately I have a backup refundable award ticket booked on another airline just in case. So the front and end are a little questionable, but the middle is solid now. Who knows, since I’ll be in Detroit maybe I’ll make a quick two day hop to Europe or Asia at the end. All depends how things shake out!

Rather than go through all the details, I’ll just highlight a few of the flights/travel parts I’m really looking forward to:

• Air Canada 787 from Santiago to Buenos Aires
• The Private Room in the AmEx Centurion Lounge in Buenos Aires
• My first South Atlantic crossing: Sao Paulo to Johannesburg
• My first South Indian ocean crossing: Johannesburg to Perth
• Singapore A380 suites from Sydney to Delhi, with a 23:55 connection to enjoy Singapore and the Private Room
• Uzbekistan Airways 767 and 787 from Delhi to Moscow with stops in Amritsar and Tashkent
• Russian SAPSAN train first class from Moscow to Petersburg
• Allegro train from Petersburg to Helsinki

Feel free to share any must-see things to see/do along the way. Leaving in just a couple of days now…