Sometimes we like to kid ourselves that we’re slowing down but in 2025 we managed to visit 4 continents, 23 countries, and travel over 95,000 miles! That’s 30,000 more than last year and we even had more months at home. It feels like we’ve slowed down some but the numbers sometimes say differently. Join us as we dig into just how many beds we slept on in 2025, some financial statistics, and breaking down how we travelled all of those miles.
Where Did We Go Again?
I know, it’s been awhile since the last Year-in-review post so I’m sure a little refresher on what we’ve done since then would be useful. If you recall in 2024 we did a lap of the northern hemisphere from Eastern Asia and worked our way West. Then we had a few months at home catching up with family and friends over the holidays and swapping out gear for the next travel segment. We decided to use the next three “semesters” of travel to explore the southern hemisphere exploring South America (with Antarctica), Africa, and finally Oceania with trips home in between each one.
In late January 2025, we made our way south with some friends to visit a dream location: Antarctica! Since our cruise was out of South America, we explored four countries across the continent before getting back in time so that I could take a quick trip to Europe with my sister. We wanted more time with family and friends so we stayed around home in the summer catching up with everyone and planning the reception for our wedding, and even did a road trip to Colorado!
By August it was time to make our way to Europe and then start the African semester. We visited a few countries in northern and central Africa with Mr. Wander’s family, seeing everything from cheetahs to camels. After a break from the heat in the UK we joined a four country overlanding adventure in Southern Africa where we completed the Big 5. We finished the year with another experience high on our list: European Christmas markets! We had a few weeks to quickly visit family for Christmas before flying to Sydney, Australia for New Year’s Eve.
Other than the US, Peru is the only country where we spent over a month this time. We weren’t staying in one place but it was really nice to get a full spectrum of the country, from the Andes to the Amazon and a few cities in between. I color coded the countries according to their continent and South America and Europe are both at about 2.5 months while we spent just over a month in Africa. We wanted to spend more time at home but I didn’t realize it added up to 167 days! We still traveled a bit domestically and ended up visiting four new states together. Out of the 22 countries, 14 were new for both of us but in this I am not counting Antarctica as a country. Norway also doesn’t count yet since Mr. Wander was not with me, but soon that will be corrected (spoiler!). Taking the day trip to Sweden helped bring our total country list up to 50 as we touched down in Australia on New Year’s Eve! Here’s our updated map and the year we first visited each country (and a few non countries) together.
Transportation
I know what you are thinking, 95,000 miles is a lot! The circumference of the globe at the equator is only about 24,000 miles, and just flying alone we flew the equivalent of three times around!
I looked into last year’s numbers and it was strange to realize that the number of miles traveled not by plane are almost identical: 18,457 in 2025 and 18,368 in 2024. Those numbers are so close they seem intentional, but between these categories we travelled by train extensively in 2024 thanks to our time in Japan, a few overnight journeys and travelling across Europe. In 2025 we made up for the lack of trains across buses, boats, and cars, with the vast majority of our car travel happening in the US on our road trip to Colorado. Our time in boats increased thanks to the Antarctic cruise taking us 2000 miles across the Drake Passage and back and having two overnight ferries instead of just one. Lastly, in just the Southern Africa overlanding journey alone, we travelled 2573 miles to account for our increase in bus mileage – even though it’s not a bus, it’s a lando.
Now lets look at our flights, as we flew more this year than we had traveled by any means in 2024. The biggest reason for this is we decided to come home in between South America, Africa, and Oceania. Flying back to the US from the Southern Hemisphere usually means the flight is at least 10 hours and in some cases requires connections into Europe, so that mileage adds up fast!
The other component is the availability of flights between countries in both South America and Africa. In SA, you often have to fly back to the capital of the country you are in, before you can fly to a different country, often the capital, and then to whatever part of that country you want to visit. This was partly why we didn’t end up going into southern Argentina after visiting Southern Chile, other than when we were boarding our cruise. In order to travel from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia by flying, you’d have to fly back to Santiago, then Buenos Aires, and only then could you get to Ushuaia. It’s actually faster to take the 10 hour bus journey but that isn’t always the most comfortable. Even for the flights we did, it nearly always required a connection in a capital so we ended up with a total of 15 connections in 2025!
In the case of Africa, often you need to fly back into Europe or the major hubs like Doha, Dubai, or Istanbul to transit between places like Tanzania and Morocco, for example. We used Europe as our base for visiting Africa but then you are also getting into 8-10 hour flights especially for our Southern Africa adventure. In 2025 we ended up crossing the Equator 7 times! In 2026 we’ll cross it for the first time in something other than a plane, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
In 2025 our longest flight was the one from Los Angeles to Sydney of 9027 miles, but there you are crossing both an ocean and the equator. Our shortest flight was the small propeller plane from Puerto Williams to Punta Arenas, the 182 mile return leg after the 30 hour ferry! Overall we flew on 15 airlines a total of 46 flights, which funnily enough is the same number as 2024. I really don’t plan this, I promise!
We did have an unfortunate experience this year, our first luggage delay. It was a strange one though, for whatever reason they decided not to load any of the bags on the plane! The plane was coming from Zanzibar in Tanzania and landed in Arusha quite early in the morning. Some people got off the plane and we got on. Whether those who got off received their luggage, I am not sure, but the ground crew didn’t load any bags headed for Istanbul and the plane took off. We landed about 6 or 7 hours later and there wasn’t even a message in the baggage claim. It took awhile to get an answer and we ended up losing our transportation I had pre-booked so that was quite frustrating. We are still happy checking our bags, as this is the first incident in over 90 flights and two years and I like not having the stress of dealing with finding a spot for it on the plane. The bags did show up a few days later, delivered right to our hotel, so it is a great reminder to make sure you have medication and important things with you on the plane in case it takes a few days to get luggage!
With all those long flights, we did allow ourselves one nice experience, again using points to enjoy upper class on the Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa. It was an 11 hour flight overnight so that made it really nice to get some sleep and even have your feet up. The food was quite delicious and it was fun chatting to people at the bar in the back of the Upper Class section of the plane, it was easy to forget you were in the air!
Miles to Go Before We Sleep
While the number of miles doesn’t show that we are slowing down, this next statistic proves otherwise. In 2024 we slept in 141 unique beds for an average of 2.6 nights per bed. This year we managed to bring this total down to 126, I would say that is progress! If you look at our time in Minnesota, however, we rarely stayed somewhere longer than a week at a time, usually only 3-5 days.
| Accommodation Type | Number of Nights |
|---|---|
| Hotel | 155 |
| With Friends/Family | 106 |
| Airbnb | 36 |
| Tent | 23 |
| Cruise | 22 |
| Transportation | 11 |
| Retreat | 7 |
| Adventure | 4 |
We stayed in a variety of accommodation types: from upright seats on various forms of transportation, sweating in canvas tents in Namibia, hanging off a cliff in Peru, to the lovely balcony cabin on our Antarctic expedition. Hotel is our go-to and while at home staying with Family and Friends works best. It is so nice getting to know people even better by spending more than a few hours with them at work or family functions!
Image: Serengeti tent, our tent, and canvas tent
The 23 days we slept in a tent includes the cheap one we had brought to Chile for the W trek in Torres del Paine National Park. Most of it are the 16 days we stayed in the canvas tent we had to put up and take down nearly every day of the overlanding tour in Southern Africa. There are a few nicer tents though, the most extravagant was the one on the Serengeti, put on its own platform and we had our own bathroom and even an outdoor shower! That blew my expectations out of the water, I was not expecting something that fancy!
The retreat includes the camp we went to last summer and when I went to a quilt retreat with some of my friends in January. Lastly the Adventure category has all three of the pods we stayed in during the Salkantay trek through Peru, but the most adventurous this year was the Starlodge that we had to climb via ferrata to access! It was a little nerve wracking when you would hear it make noises in the wind, but I just had to remind myself just how many anchors it had holding up the pods so I could settle into sleep.
Not the Most Frugal Year
I think given a few of our experiences, namely the Antarctic expedition, most of you would correctly guess that we spent more than last year. However, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t just the cruise that was higher, our average spent per day was considerably higher than last year. You can really see that looking at the countries. Last year it was decently spread out from some below $100 per day for both of us up to $600 per day in a place like Switzerland, but now most countries cost us over $300 per day!
I almost changed these buckets but if you were interested in comparing to last year’s post then at least it would be apples to apples. The only country in the sub-$100 category is known to have a fairly high cost of living: Sweden. We didn’t stay overnight there (same with Norway) so I would imagine it would cost at least $150-200 for a hotel room, again pushing the $300. We will get a more accurate view of this soon during our in-depth exploration of Scandanavia. France as the second most frugal is a good example of how combining slower travel and off/shoulder season keeps a lower cost of living.
| Multi-Day Tour | Cost per Day per Couple |
|---|---|
| Seabourn Antarctica Cruise | $2000 |
| Amazon River Cruise – Peru | $1,455 |
| Holland America Cruise – Northern Europe | $616 |
| CampFI – Midwest | $333 |
| African Safari – Tanzania | $324 |
| GAdventures – Bolivia | $298 |
| Salkantay Trek – Peru | $273 |
| GAdventures – Southern Africa | $233 |
Many of the other countries in Africa and South America seem high to me, but we did so many multi-day tours which raises the costs in a country that is normally a low cost of living. Most of these tours are all inclusive except the two GAdventures had some meals that were not included. The Southern Africa GA tour was the most economical, even if you could probably do the trip yourself for lower cost I really do value the experience from a knowledgeable guide.
This was especially true in this case as our two guides made us their favorite home cooked meals and gave us detailed history and context about the countries that you wouldn’t find unless you researched yourself or visited several museum.s Last year a few of the places we visited, namely India and South Korea, I wish we would have planned more tours with guides, even if we are very skilled at logistics of travel I have been discovering an interest in history, mostly piecing together the development of cultures all over the world and how they affected each other to get where they are at today.
Like I said, multi-day tours greatly affected our budget this year, as we did eight to last year’s four! The next few categories track last year’s expenses: lodging, flights and food. This year our experiences edged out local transport, but they are still pretty small percentages. If we were looking to lower our costs I think reducing the bigger tours each year is a good start and filling in with single day tours when we are wanting more insights about the country’s history, culture, and of course, the food! We can’t forget the elephant in the room that is the Antarctic cruise, at $2000 per day for a couple it is a significant cost. It was always in the plan but perhaps not for at least five years. However, when we were invited by my close friend who ALSO loves penguins, it really was a no brainer to say yes! It really is such a special place that if you ever have the opportunity, especially if you have any interest in penguins, whales or seals, I highly recommend taking this kind of opportunity!
A Few Thoughts About the Past Year
While there’s plenty to track and analyze, we decided to add a few qualitative questions we could answer. Let me know if you think of any more questions!
Of the places we went in 2025, where do we want to return to spend more time?
South Africa: We barely scratched the surface and the Garden Route is supposed to be stunning.
Argentinean Patagonia and northern Chile: Mostly the areas we missed, but I would take any opportunities to see the Andes again, they might be my favorite mountain range.
Scandanavia: It’s been on the list for awhile and the little tastes I’ve had just makes me want to go and explore more in depth!
New Favorite Foods?
Empanadas and Alfajores from Argentina
Eierpunsch/Eierlikör and Handbrot from the Christmas Markets in Germany
Most eye opening experience?
Seeing the miners in the Potosi silver mine. It was nicknamed the “mountain that eats men” as so many workers died working in the often dangerous conditions. What for? So the Spanish became rich with silver while the workers were basically slaves. Today they still have a very hard life, their small wages are dependent on international values for silver and they have to find a certain quantity just to hit their minimums to get paid for the week.
Any new discoveries about yourselves?
A new passion for wildlife! Before we left in January, I had encouraged Mr. Wander to get the zoom lens for his camera he was thinking about, knowing it was going to be a year with special opportunities to capture wildlife in both Antarctica and Africa. I did not realize how much it would infect both of us with such interest in all kinds of different animals!
Next Time
And now back to some regularly posted travel journaling! After having returned from the Christmas Markets in Europe, we had just a short two weeks at home with family and friends to celebrate the holidays and catch up. Then we drove through a blizzard to catch our flight to country #50: Australia! We’ve wanted to visit one of the major cities known for their New Year’s celebration, so we decided to visit Sydney! So we flew over 20 hours, lost a whole day somewhere over the Pacific, and landed in the middle of the Australian summer on New Year’s Eve. After a few days in the city, we rented a car and started driving South along the coast on the first of what became four road trips in our last continent to explore: Oceania. Until next time, Cheers!
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