As Roama and I thought about 2018 and just where we wanted to travel and experience we got very excited! Our minds jumped all over the place. We were in 
Italy, England and the Middle East last year. Do we try Asia again as our last trip to India was 5 years ago? Do we go back to Europe? If we go to Europe, do we go to Germany? Greece? Portugal? Spain? Back to the UK? What about South America? What about Africa? How did we narrow it down?
The first thing we did was ask ourselves whether we had a bucket list. For those that don’t know what a bucket list is…well…we define it as a list of things you want to do/see/try before you “kick the bucket”. We didn’t have one bucket list for the both of us. Sure, Roama had one she created years ago but I did not have one and we certainly did not have a joint lest. We quickly put one together mentally based on Roama’s original (subsequent note that our updated bucket list can be found here). We finally narrowed it down to four places: Machu Picchu, Greece and its Isles, Spain/Portugal and South Africa.
Ultimately, we decided on South Africa and here’s why: We are not getting any younger. The flight to South Africa is LLLLOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGG. The least expensive ticket was Air France and had two stops: One in Paris for 8 hours and one in Mahebourg which I found out is on the island of Mauritius for almost 11 hours. This had a total travel time of about 45 and a half hours. Shorter flights with one stop are a bit more expensive but are in the range of 23-hours on KLM (almost 3 hours in Amsterdam) and 32-hours on British Airway (7-hours in London). We thought we would rather do this series of really long flights while we are younger. I’d rather face this at our current super-secret ages than when we are retired in our sixties. There are other reasons as well, South Africa is beautiful, and an African Safari just sounds so awesome!
So then we moved on to planning!!!
