Starting in August 2024, we will begin another year of travel. In 2013/14, we travelled the world for 13 months and then again in 2019/20. Through our job, we average our pay so that we are paid four years of salary over a five-year period. It is called a four-for-five, income averaging, or deferred salary leave. Basically, we get 80% pay for five years and take the fifth year to travel the world. Nicola is about to start her 4th deferred salary leave. However, Jeff is retiring in June 2024.
That does not mean that we do not travel for four years in between. We have had some amazing adventures over the past four years: Azores, Portugal, Mexico, Germany, Amsterdam, Scandinavia, Egypt and more.
Nicola has been travelling the world a lot longer than Jeff and was the one who exposed him to exploring the world. She has been to more than 130 countries and territories (using the criteria established by Travellers’ Century Club). Jeff has now been to over 100 using the same list. {Note, that the TCC list includes countries and territories}. Nicola has now been to over 100 of the 195 member and observer states in the UN. Jeff has only been to 78 of them.
Our style of travel is not for everyone. We would not describe it as budget travel (anymore anyway). However, it is far from luxury travel. We stay in hostels often but mostly because we want to meet other travellers and share travel experiences. Rarely do we stay in dorm rooms anymore. We have stayed in more AirBNB places lately and we look for comfortable places in good areas for our travels.
We search long and hard for good deals on flights, trains, buses, boats, etc. We only pay for tours when we figure we cannot do it alone or should not do it alone (i.e. safety reasons mainly). We have found some good websites for searching out our travel plans and are flexible sometimes about where we will go next. Usually, we have a general idea of where we are heading but usually allow ourselves some latitude in the details.
We hope you will follow along with our next adventure: World Tour Take 3 – August 2024 to July 2025.