In less than a month, we will be in Africa.  I know, I kind of can’t believe it myself.  Our itinerary is far from set (note the conspicuous absence of any “Our Itinerary” posts or pages), but we’ve drawn a fuzzy, imaginary line through Southern and Eastern Africa in a close approximation of a Cape Town-to-Cairo trek.

One of the questions we are most frequently asked (besides “Have you gotten all your vaccinations?”) is how we chose Africa.

The answer: not easily.  When we first began seriously considering the idea of taking a career break to travel, we didn’t have anywhere in particular in mind.  When friends would ask where we were going, we would shrug and respond, “Anywhere but here.”  (Such responses were usually given on days when the Q train was running with delays, we couldn’t find anywhere to eat that didn’t have an hour wait, and/or some sort of cartoon character had impeded my path through Times Square to work.)  

Beyond not knowing where we would go, we didn’t know how to go about making the decision.  In the past, our destinations have been driven largely by how long we have to get away and the cost of the plane ticket to get there (see our trips to Guatemala in 2008 and Istanbul in 2013).  Now, with nothing but time and the price mitigated by the length of our intended stay, we found ourselves unable to make a decision. Continue reading Anywhere But Here: How We Chose Africa →