Results matching “Jenss Family Travels” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Rainer Jenss, his wife Carol, and their sons Stefan and Tyler, are just back from having spent a year traveling around the world, and we were able to follow along as they blogged about their journey for Intelligent Travel and National Geographic Kids. Now that they're back and adjusting to a static existence, we asked Rainer to reflect on his trip and share some of his favorite moments.

Wellfleet was abuzz with customary summertime activities just as it was a little over a year ago. We were last here at the very start of an around the world trip that would span exactly one year and cover 28 countries. Now we are back on Cape Cod as part of an annual family summertime ritual we've honored since the children were born.  

Not much appears outwardly different. The bluffs of White Crest Beach have the usual stream of families and surfers tramping up and down its steep dunes. Swimmers bob in the Atlantic, which has warmed just enough to allow for some brief bursts of body surfing for those of us not in wetsuits. The local drive-in continues to feature the same intermission film clip; complete with dancing popcorn boxes and juggling soda cups, just as it did when it first opened in 1957.  

Yet so much has changed since last July. The global economy and American leadership have radically altered and there seems to be a prevailing sentiment of unease about what the future holds. There's also no doubt my eyes see things quite differently than they did twelve months ago. It was enlightening to learn how people from all corners of the globe are influenced and affected by what happens in America. With the possible exception of Bhutan, there seems to be an almost universal fascination with our politics (yes, the election of Obama greatly improved the perception of Americas almost overnight), celebrities, and general lifestyle. As such, I've found it hard not to walk around comparing life in the U.S. to the rest of the world, for better or worse.

For the past year, Rainer Jenss and his family have been traveling around the world and blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. This post marks the last dispatch from their journey, and the end to an incredible year. You can see where they've traveled by going back through the archive of their posts, or look to the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. If you have questions for the Jensses, they'll be writing a few follow up posts in the coming weeks about the transition back home. Email questions here, or leave them in the comments below.

Flashback to April 2007 - I'm staring out into the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, perched on a large piece of driftwood that washed up on a desolate strip of beach off the northwestern coast of Bocas del Toro, Panama. In my meditative state, I envision the end our pending yearlong trip around the world finishing up right here on the unspoiled island of Bastimentos. I'm with my friend Greg who claimed this piece of tropical paradise for himself when he bought some property on this archipelago back in 1996.

Now I'm with my family at the last stop of our incredible 52-week adventure, and my premonition proved spot on. I really couldn't think of a more fitting place to conclude our journey and put this whole trip into perspective. Since we set out last July, we have been housed by people we'd never met before, lived in a camper van, slept in tents, overnighted on trains, and stayed in some of the nicest hotels on the planet. I figured spending our last few days in a hut with pretty much no creature comforts - not even a bathroom (au natural was the only way to go) - would be a perfect setting for us to reflect on the events of the past year and start thinking about a re-entry strategy.

In preparation for our time on the island, we had the assistance of one of the local Ngobe Indians who I had met when I was last here. Joey--his nickname--helped Greg secure his land purchase in the first place and now acts as the caretaker of his property. Without him, there's almost no way we could have pulled this off. Firstly, Joey lent us a hand in buying all the food and rations we'd need for the week. More importantly, he transported us and all our provisions to the island with his dugout canoe. Then after the 45-minute motor across the Bastimentos Marine Park, he and his wife Maria helped set up all the essentials, including four hammocks. For refrigeration, we used three big blocks of ice in an extra-large cooler which would last us about 4-5 days, while two five-gallon jugs provided us with our fresh water (showers were taken from rainwater collected by a water tower in the backyard).

Rainer Jenss and his family are wrapping up the final stops of their around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Most travelers have probably heard the expression, "It's not the destination, it's the journey." But this doesn't always resonate with me when I'm in the throes of trying to get our family from one place to the next.  It's usually well after the fact that I realize the proverb's true wisdom.  Not knowing how we'd end up getting to our final destination of the trip - a remote hut on the island of Bastimentos off the coast of Bocas del Toro in Panama - I envisioned a journey that might just be as adventurous as the destination itself, and it was.

When I told a friend, Lynda Gerhardt that we were going to Panama, I was strongly advised to try to visit a wonderful eco-lodge she knew of in the highlands of Chiriqui Province.  The owner of the Los Quetzales Lodge & Spa on the Panamanian side of the 407,000-hectare Parque Internacional La Amistad was a good friend of hers and I was guaranteed to have a fantastic experience in what she simply called a 'magical place.' (Having arranged our extraordinary visit to the Cheetah Conservation Center in Namibia back in February, Lynda had a pretty good track record with us.) Since we would be down on the Osa Peninsula in southeastern Costa Rica, where the Panamanian border was just a short ferry and taxi ride away, we decided to take the overland route to Bocas del Toro via the Los Quetzales Lodge--it would be a much cheaper and more interesting option than flying.

The wonderful thing about the Osa Peninsula is that it's a throwback to the way life was in the country before mass tourism infiltrated many of its pristine forests and coastal towns. Similarly, I've heard that Panama's oceans, mountains and jungles are still relatively undiscovered and less frequented by the eco-tourists that Costa Rica now attracts in droves. As we would learn, this makes for a much more bona fide natural experience, just the way we wanted it. 

Inspired by the Jenss's blogs from Costa Rica? Now you have a chance get there yourself. Sign up to win a free vacation for two to Costa Rica with National Geographic Expeditions. And check out our National Geographic Traveler guidebook to get behind the scenes information about the country's culture, history, and people. It features insider tips from National Geographic experts, must-see hot spots, off-the-beaten-path excursions, and more.

Inspired? Check out our list of the top ten places to visit in Costa Rica, like Jaco (above), Parque Nacional Corcovado, and La Paz Waterfall Gardens. See the full list after the jump.

Rainer Jenss and his family are wrapping up the final weeks of their around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Of all the things we've experienced over the course of this yearlong world tour, I must confess that it's been the scenery and wildlife that's often left the biggest impression, and Costa Rica didn't disappoint. Mind you, this is a broad generalization and we've encountered some of the most generous, interesting, and unique personalities I've ever met, but the abundance of natural splendor this world contains is probably what I'll most remember from this trip.

Our next stop on our Costa Rican adventure would certainly validate this assertion. The Arenal Volcano and its constant ash column and nightly spewing of fiery red lava rocks was a must-visit because Stefan's third grade science curriculum required instruction on volcanoes. We have had ample opportunity to cover this subject throughout our travels, most notably in Hawaii and New Zealand (not to mention Santorini), but this is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and there aren't too many places to get a show like this... if the weather cooperates, and that's a big "if".  

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

When our TACA flight from Lima finally touched down in the capital city of Costa Rica, it marked just the first time on this entire world tour that we arrived in a new country without any game plan whatsoever. Admittedly, we aren't exactly backpacking it around the planet, so this was new territory for our family. This was also intentional because we wanted to add a twist to the final month of the trip so we wouldn't get too caught up in counting down the days until we had to go home. The only arrangements we had made were to spend a day in San Jose with a Lonely Planet guide to get our bearings and devise a strategy for the next two weeks.

The first of many spontaneous decisions was made before we even checked into the hotel. Driving from the airport, I noticed several street vendors selling Costa Rican soccer jerseys. The taxi driver explained that the U.S. was in town for a World Cup Qualifier match that very night, and the stadium was only 10 minutes from where we were staying. Never one to pass up an opportunity to attend a major sporting event, I scalped myself a ticket and jumped right into the local culture by watching Costa Rica embarrass the U.S. 3-1 in front of a jubilant sold-out crowd.

To my surprise, there were more than a handful of Americans in attendance, a precursor of sorts to the large number of U.S. tourists and expats we would encounter throughout our stay. I subsequently found out that a sizable contingent of Americans have come down here in recent years to retire, start up businesses, or relocate to a tropical paradise. Their large presence also served as a reminder that we were not too far from home anymore, a thought that didn't actually excite us. For this reason, we made a conscious decision to try to avoid the more commercialized and developed areas of the country and stick to the more natural, unspoiled terrain.  

The Costa Rican tourism business seems to cater to three distinct groups of travelers: eco-friendly, wildlife enthusiasts; adventure seekers; and sea, surf and sand lovers. The latter has certainly contributed to the increased number of tourists and resident expats from the States. It's also blamed for transforming several of the country's laid-back beach communities into Miami Beach-style resort towns.  Although many people like ourselves could easily fall into two or more of these categories, we opted to pursue the exotic wildlife and natural beauty that put Costa Rica on the tourist map in the first place, while sprinkling in a little adventure and surf every now and then for good measure.    

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

"Welcome back" were not the words we wanted to hear with six weeks left on our year-long journey, but there was no avoiding it unless we didn't tell anyone about the forty-hour layover we had in New York before flying on to Peru. "We're not finished yet," we had to say again and again. Carol and I were actually quite apprehensive at the thought of breaking up the flow of our trip to spend two nights back where we started last July. The benefits of doing this, besides seeing some family and friends, were that the boys could play with their long-lost buddies while Carol and I seriously downsized our luggage for the trip's final leg that would be spent mostly in tropical climates.  

As far as how it felt to be home for the first time in ten months, it was actually quite revealing. If there's one thing I've realized throughout all my travels, it's that your senses are elevated. Food, fashion, architecture, language, landscapes, wildlife, smells--you are much more aware of everyday details whenever you leave the familiar surroundings of home. Since I've been in this heightened state of awareness for almost a year, it didn't go away when we landed in the U.S. Just the opposite. I seemed to walk around in an "all that's old is new again" frame of mind.

Meanwhile, our trip to Peru would also be a sort of homecoming, for we were joining up with the winners of the National Geographic Kids Hands-On Explorer Challenge, which would reunite me with fellow staff members and other colleagues from The Society.  It also meant that Tyler and Stefan would have plenty of peers to share the experience with, a huge bonus for two boys who only had sporadic interaction with other kids their age in the last year.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Most of the correspondence we've received from friends, family and colleagues in the States during the ten months we've been traveling has referred to the terrible economy, the awful mood back home, and what a different country we'll be returning to. Literally everyone has told us we couldn't have picked a better time to skip town for a year.  

As mentioned in my previous post, we couldn't have chosen a better time to go to Greece, either. The big advantages to visiting in May are the weather, lack of crowds and ease of traveling from place to place. So with two weeks to play with, the challenge was figuring out where to go from the multitude of recommendations we received, many more than I had anticipated.  

Going to the Acropolis in Athens is pretty much mandatory, but can easily be done in a day. There are lots of other interesting things to see around the city (a newly refurbished museum opens in July), but with two kids in tow, we didn't feel compelled to seek them out. Albeit among the most famous historical sites in the world, the Parthenon and surrounding ruins did not inspire us as much as others throughout the country.  Most of the site was covered in scaffolding and if you didn't have a tour guide like us, it's hard to make out exactly what happened here in its peak period some 2,500 years ago. By contrast, we had the archaeological site of ancient Corinth almost all to ourselves, while the well-preserved artifacts in its museum really helped us understand its significance. As a port city, the modern day Corinth also offers some nice seaside restaurants and shopping, which made it perfect for a day trip away from the congestion and big-city challenges of Athens. 

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you're checking into this blog for some guidance about travel to Greece, here's a simple piece of advice I just discovered firsthand: Pass up going in the summer if you can possibly avoid it. Shoot for May, early June, September, or October instead. Unless, of course, you prefer being with lots of other people, intense heat, and overrun tourist attractions.

I was told July and August are VERY busy here and the beaches, nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and archaeological sites are all jammed. I have to assume most visitors really enjoy themselves and have a wonderful time with so much great stuff to see and do. After all, there's good reason for all the popularity. But given the timing of our stay here in Greece (first half of May), I'd bet it would be pretty hard to beat the incredible weather, uncrowded islands, and ease of touring the sights we experienced during this time of year.

Lucky for us, we didn't even have to resort to taking the boys out of school, at least not this year, to be here before the season officially starts. Take it from someone who has spent the last forty-five weeks touring some of the world's most popular tourist attractions, it's a bonus to be in these special places without the all-too-common throngs of sightseers. And if there's any good news to come out of the global financial crisis, it's that you can now journey abroad and generally find smaller crowds. The recession has certainly played a significant role in reducing the usually high number of visitors to not just Greece, but destinations all across the world. So in hindsight, I guess we picked a pretty good year to take this little global jaunt (more on this in my next post).          

Because we want this trip to be more about education than vacation, we bought the boys a children's book about ancient civilizations to help them better understand the history behind the places we'd visit and things we'd see.  Otherwise, they're just a "pile of really old rocks." Since I was eager to freshen up on Greek mythology myself, I'm not embarrassed to admit that I found the comprehension level of this book just right (Hey, this mythology business can be quite convoluted!).  Armed with some knowledge, sunblock, a good appetite, and sixteen days before our next flight, we were ready to roll.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Every marriage has compromise.  Where to go when we had only limited time to explore Europe was just one of the challenges that put our marital conciliation to the test. When to discipline the kids; How to manage the budget; What to do about dinner. These were just some of our other points of contention . . . but I digress.  

"You only want to go because of the golf!" That was Carol's reaction when I first recommended including Scotland.  Truth be told, I am a golfer, but that's not solely why I suggested it. Come on! I figured the boys would get a thrill out of seeing where the Loch Ness Monster resides and that all the castles would be a source of unending fascination.

What ultimately persuaded my wife to acquiesce, however, was a personal invitation to stay in the home of our Bhutanese expedition leader we met back in October.  It seemed odd at first that a Scotsman would be the leader of a tour through the mountains of a Buddhist country, but it became obvious that few were better qualified than Richard Whitecross. The fact that he lives less than an hour outside Edinburgh ended up securing our ticket to Scotland.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

It might have seemed impractical to give ourselves only two weeks to visit France, Germany, and Italy on this trip, especially since we were on a one-year journey and could theoretically allocate a lot more time for each (or go to fewer of them). But these were places we definitely wanted the boys to see, so we just decided to be well thought-out with where we'd go. Besides, when you compare this to the amount of time a typical American can allot for a vacation, this didn't seem like such a stretch.   

We left France after spending three days in Paris and two in the countryside. Euro Disney was not on our agenda. Instead, we opted for the real-life place that in part inspired Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty castle: the Neuschwanstein Castle, nestled amid the stunning landscape of southwest Bavaria. The traffic was extra light on Easter Sunday, so we got to the German border relatively quickly, but not after having to dish out over 60 euro (about $90) in tolls that covered only about 200 miles of roadway. Then I was forced to break my vow not to use any GPS on this trip, not because I wanted to, but because our rental car had it installed. This proved not to be such a bad thing since the roads around the Alps are tricky and one wrong turn could end you up in a different country. Furthermore, reading a map while trying to negotiate hairpin turns wasn't the best idea.    

After choosing one of several pleasant outdoor restaurants for lunch along the bustling shores of the Bodensee (Lake Constance), we got back in the car and followed our trusty new navigation assistant straight to the castle.  Arriving without any prearranged accommodations (which is inadvisable in the busy summer months), we discovered that the Akzent Hotel Muller right at the base of the castle had a family suite for the same price we'd pay for two modest B&B-type rooms found in town. Even though it's catered specifically for tourists, which is something we generally try to avoid, it was a treat to be within easy walking distance of the castle and not have to spend any time in the car the next day, so we booked it.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Nine months and six days after pulling out of our driveway to start this year-long journey, I found myself back in familiar territory. Since I'm originally from Germany and have traveled extensively throughout the Continent, I feel very much at home in Europe. Even though I had spent just one day in Paris prior to our arrival, there was little concern with logistics or getting oriented to what would be the seventeenth country of the trip. In fact, after spending the last three months in Africa, it felt rather comforting to be here.

With just a few exceptions, we had most of the previous sixteen countries pretty well planned out before we got there. Generally speaking, Asia is not a good place to just wing it with two kids in tow. In New Zealand, we had a camper van to call home, and since Australia is so darn big, we'd have been crazy not to map out a route in advance and make sure we hit the spots we were most interested in. Even traveling across the U.S. required advance reservations if we had any intention of staying within the national parks in the height of summer.      

The only problem was that we had just a little more than six weeks to explore Europe before we were due in South America for the final leg of our voyage. The upside was that we didn't have to subject ourselves to the high cost of being here for very long. Everything seems more expensive in Europe (the weak dollar doesn't help, even though it's strengthened about 20% against the euro since we left last July). Car rentals and gasoline prices makes traveling by train a serious option, although that's not cheap either. We even had to dish out more than 60 euros in tolls just to get from Paris to the German border. Ouch.  

Without trying to sound too much like the Griswalds from European Vacation, we embarked on an ambitious plan to cover France, Germany and Italy in two weeks. We picked France because it was pretty much the only choice we had flying from the Seychelles. Besides, we're talking Paris, so there were no complaints here. Better still, my sister and her family were just a short Eurostar train ride away from their West London home, so they planned to meet us for the long Easter weekend. This meant we had to figure out what to do with four kids, not just two.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you've been following this blog since we left on our around-the-world trip back in July, you might have noticed that we haven't exactly had any serious mishaps, accidents, illnesses or diversions to our original plan for any reasons other than personal choice (yes, I'm knocking on wood big time).  Compared to most travel stories I've read, our journey thus far might seem quite uneventful in comparison.  I just finished Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, and he had all kinds of amazing tales from his Cairo to Cape Town overland trek. The biggest drama of our travels between these two points came when a herd of elephants trampled through our campsite one night in Tanzania. Interesting and memorable, but not exactly New York Times bestseller material.  

Not that this is a bad thing, mind you. When traveling with two young children, you tend to plan things out further in advance and take more precautions for anything and everything that might go wrong. This is not to suggest that a little improvisation every now and then wasn't necessary or welcomed. For various reasons, not the least of which was logistic, we decided to forgo a visit to India - opting instead for a "spring break vacation" in the Indian Ocean aboard the new Lindblad National Geographic Explorer. This meant two weeks of prearranged activities, destinations, and all our meals accounted for. Boring? Maybe for some, but we were thrilled to have nothing to plan for or have to handle ourselves for two whole weeks! The only major decision we had each day was whether to snorkel or scuba dive.

What caught our attention about this particular cruise was its amazing itinerary: Zanzibar, Mozambique, Madagascar, and the Seychelles. As a scuba diver, I've heard that the Indian Ocean offers some of the best marine life found anywhere, so we were intrigued. Couple that with the famous beaches of the Seychelles and exotic wildlife of Madagascar, and we were sold. Our sojourn to Europe would just have to wait fourteen more days.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

On the remote chance that someone from the Ministry of Egyptian Tourism might be reading this post, I urge you to gather up all the street vendors and merchants from around your country, put them in a room, and send them a simple message: If you ease up on constantly harassing tourists to buy something from you, we might actually purchase something!  

It's staggering the amount of time and energy we spent fending off souvenir salesman during our two weeks in the Middle East. We actually started to devise strategies on how to minimize the pestering, and even though the boys are just 12 and nine, they were not immune to being hounded. Don't make eye contact, don't say a word or answer their questions ("Where are you from?", "For you my friend, no charge to look", "How much you want to spend?"), don't stop to look at anything, and whatever you do, don't ask how much something costs. If you do, you better have a sound exit strategy.    

I remembered this side of Middle East travel clearly from my first visit there some nine years ago, but it still didn't make the situation any less irritating. One positive aspect of all this, however, is that it kept our shopping in check, something that had challenged us since we stepped foot outside the U.S. seven months ago. We needed to try to keep our spending down, and buying stuff for a house we don't even have yet, no matter how tempting, was becoming too frequent an occurrence.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

One of the benefits of having traveled throughout Africa for the last two months is that it has kept us in an information void for some extended stretches at time (Carol fondly refers to this as being in our little bubble). We did manage to watch Barack Obama being sworn in just a couple hours after we toured a township in South Africa, and I was able to retrieve sporadic e-mails in the bush from friends and family raving about how lucky we were to be on this trip while filling us in on the happenings from back home.  And it seems like every correspondence we've received has made some sort of reference to the lousy economy and how ominous the mood is in the U.S. I'm quick to reply that the places we've been to are feeling it too, proving that there's truth to the saying that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.

From what we've experienced, I can attest that one sector deeply affected by the global financial crisis has been the travel industry. This was evident from all the empty hotel rooms and sparse crowds we'd seen in recent weeks. Although it's true that countries like South Africa, Kenya, and especially Zimbabwe have been impacted by social unrest and political instability, the economic slowdown has clearly compounded the fact that traffic is down as much as 60% in some places.  

One country that didn't seem as affected was Egypt. If they've lost business as a result of people cutting back on vacation spending, it was hard to notice. The same seems true for Jordan, which found us in full planes and sold-out hotels for our excursion to Petra. Maybe not as many Americans are there as formerly, but the usual mix of German, French and Japanese tourists appeared well represented. We also heard plenty of Indian, Russian and Chinese accents, and from what we can gather, travelers from these emerging countries might be compensating for any drop off from our part of the world.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

If you want to know the three most important factors that will likely determine the quality of your experience on an African safari, here they are:

1.    Skilled guides/trackers
2.    Location & time of year
3.    LUCK!

After spending almost two consecutive months touring the southern half of the continent, I actually feel pretty qualified on the subject.  And if you don't want to take my word for it, my wife and sons would be more than happy to offer their insights on African wildlife viewing, having now become quite knowledgeable in their own right.

We landed in Nairobi having notched about 30 game drives in our belts in the six weeks leading up to our arrival. Back when we finalized our plans for this trip, there was some legitimate concern that maybe we were overdoing it with all the back-to-back safaris and that fatigue might become an issue, particularly with the kids. No problem! As it turned out, we were probably even more jazzed about our upcoming final week in the bush then we were when this whole whirlwind began back in South Africa. Sure, a little R&R after two weeks of camping in Tanzania might have been nice, but we were booked on a Micato Safari, considered to be one of the finest tour operators and safari outfitters in the world, so there would be no downtime. Lucky us, indeed!

What also made this week so potentially exciting was the fact that we'd already spotted almost every possible mammal, bird, and reptile one could reasonably expect to find in this part of the world, so everything from here would be gravy. For us, all the natural beauty and drama we had already seen only increased our appetites and we were hungry for more, especially for the one thing that remained elusive: a kill. We watched cheetahs as they stalked gazelle in Tanzania, saw lions chasing zebra in Botswana, and tracked down wild dogs hunting impala in South Africa, but seeing a predator actually take down its prey had remained unseen. This was the challenge we presented to our guide shortly after he picked us up from the airport, an invitation he gladly accepted.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Talk to anyone who's been on a safari, and you're sure to get a detailed commentary on their amazing animal sightings and hear vivid stories behind the hundreds of photos and hours of video they shot. If you have followed my recent postings (note: the peregrine falcon is the world fastest animal), I intentionally tried to stay away from too much narrative about the specific animals we've seen on our safaris and avoided drawing comparisons between our experiences in the different countries visited. That might change with this report, however, now that we've successfully completed the two-week camping portion of our two-month circuit around southern and eastern Africa.   

To put this in some context, our first game drives were in South Africa's Sabi Sabi ultra-deluxe private game reserve, where we were spoiled in the lap of luxury. From there, we went to three different 'semi-luxury' Kwando Camps in Botswana, staying in cabins with running water, solar power and plush beds. Although we were well protected, the grunting sounds of resident hippos and nearby roaring lions could be heard throughout the night, reminding us that we were now firmly in the wild. In Tanzania, our accommodations were definitely more in line with what most people envision a camping safari to be, with little protecting us from the wildlife of the African bush at night other than the lining of our tents.

We planned this latter portion of our trip with another family of four from Long Island who we go camping with every summer. When they found out we were breaking this tradition to go on an around-the-world trip, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to take our outdoor adventures to the next level, and booked a mobile safari in Tanzania.  We chose this spot because it was where the massive wildebeest migration would be this time of year and a mobile safari would be our best bet to find it.

We rendezvoused with our friends near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where we met our guides/drivers Raymond and Onesmo from Wild Frontiers. They explained that our itinerary would take us to Tarangire National Park, Lake Manyara, Lake Eyasi, the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti over the course of the next twelve days, and we were raring to go.

If there's been an added benefit to home schooling the kids during this trip, it's that Carol and I have had the chance to learn right along with them. I haven't personally watched "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader," but it sounds like a pretty clever premise for a game show to me, especially after looking over the materials Tyler is expected to master as a twelve year old. I can admit that this stuff isn't exactly at the forefront of my memory, particularly sixth-grade math, so after plodding through the core curriculum of their academic studies, we were all excited to get to the more hands-on lessons that this trip was meant to provide in the first place. Nowhere would this opportunity present itself quite as appropriately as in our visit to Namibia.

When it comes to a general understanding of cheetahs, I can proudly say that I had the basics pretty much down.  Over the past few years, I've had the pleasure of working with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organization I learned of through my job at National Geographic. Before being introduced to its founder, Dr. Laurie Marker, I was ignorant to the fact that cheetahs were even on the endangered species list. Three years later, I now found myself in Namibia, at the base of the Waterberg Plateau in the Waterberg Conservancy near Otjiwarongo, the cheetah capital of the world and home of the CCF Research and Educational Center. And because this country has more of these majestic cats than any other in the world (about 3,000, or 20% of their total estimated population), it's only fitting that the world's leading efforts to save and understand them be located here.

We arrived to a warm welcome from the center's director, Bruce Brewer, who together with Dr. Marker, helped launch the CCF program in 1990. Even though Laurie was back in the States during our visit, it didn't detract at all from the incredible time we would have here over the next three days. We had barely put our suitcases down when Bruce announced to the boys that we'd just made it in time to feed their three resident cubs--"Cubby Time" as we grew to call it. In hindsight, I was grateful that we'd seen cheetahs in the wild before our arrival, because it made this experience all the more profound. It's hard to truly describe the sensation of what it's like to be this up-close and personal with one of the wildest creatures on earth, but I couldn't help being overcome with emotion. Not only are they incredibly majestic animals--and particularly cute when they're young--there's an almost ethereal feeling you get when you can actually touch them.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids. This is the second of a three-part blog post. You can catch the first installment here.

Almost two weeks after saying our farewells to the Coates and Lorenz families in Zimbabwe, we found ourselves on the eve of joining up with some more friends from back home who had children around our sons' ages. We had just arrived in Tanzania after having completely immersed ourselves in African wildlife during our visits to Botswana and Namibia, so at this point, the boys were getting quite proficient in their knowledge of the bush and understanding of the animals found in it. Because this had become the center of their universes over the last few weeks, I was curious to see how they would carry on with their friends who were coming from a world of homework, organized sports and American Idol.   

It's certainly not difficult to get caught up with all the amazing wildlife found in southern and eastern Africa. For Tyler and Stefan, the bush became their classroom, the guides and trackers their teachers. And just like going to school, their days started early - 5 a.m. to be exact! Granted, all they had to do was get themselves out of bed and into a jeep, but still, it would be a full day of immersion in zoology, biology, geology, and photography - with a little bit of sociology and sex ed thrown in for good measure. That's right, because Stefan (age 9) kept hearing about (and in some cases witnessing) animals mating, I thought it was an opportune time for our father-son chat about the birds and the bees, which actually seemed to resonate in this environment. Now we just needed to come across some mating lions.

In addition to learning that lions mate about every fifteen minutes for two to three straight days, our designated ranger Charles, who guided us around Botswana's Linyanti swamps and Okavango Delta, kept the boys engaged during the eight or so hours we spent bouncing around in the jeep each day.  Because he knew we were home-schooling the boys for the year, we took full advantage and allowed him to substitute for us to his heart's content.  Besides just observing the likes of lion, cheetah, hyena, baboons and a plethora of other mammals, birds and reptiles, Charles taught us all how to recognize certain behaviors and what they meant. He also made it entertaining by injecting some fun facts like baby elephants having milk tusks which fall out when they are about one year old or that a group of zebra is called a "dazzle," while a herd of rhinos is referred to as a "crash."

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

It's strange, but we're seven months into our trip and I still get a bit flustered filling out the immigration forms upon our arrival in a new country. This has nothing to do with being worried about getting through or the process itself.  It's that darn line that asks for your current residence! Carol and I still deliberate whether we should use the old address of the house we sold in New York before leaving or my parents' in New Jersey where we forward our mail.

The truth is that we don't have a home right now. To honor this state of affairs, I bought one of those "Life Is Good" t-shirts with a sketch of planet Earth on it that says "Home Sweet Home," which seems only fitting for what we're doing. I've also told the boys that "home is where the heart is," and when someone wants to know where we live, they can simply answer, "right here." So when people ask us what we are doing about the kids' education, it's not really accurate to say we are home schooling them. Instead, they are being taught on the road. They are not being "schooled," they're getting educated, and there's a subtle difference.

In the event that anyone from Tyler and Stefan's old school district is reading this, I'm happy to report that Carol has been very diligent in keeping the boys up to speed with their 3rd and 6th grade English and math curriculum.  She's certainly logging in the hours with them, albeit on airplanes, in hotel rooms and during odd hours and weekends. It's nearly impossible to keep any kind of regular schedule when you're busy visiting extraordinary places and experiencing new things practically every day, so I give both the boys and my wife a ton of credit. As such, this family has very little down time. While we were with our friends in South Africa, I secretly took pleasure in watching them attempt, with little success, to get their children to do some of the schoolwork they'd be missing during the two-week trip.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

What does going to a Grateful Dead concert and a safari game drive have in common? You never know what you are going to get and each one is different. This may seem like a strange analogy, especially to those who have not been to Africa or care very much about psychedelic rock music, but as someone who attended over 100 Dead shows and was about to embark on his fourth safari, it seems like a very fitting description.

Something else I can tell you about going on safari is that it's life-changing. That may sound a bit dramatic, but I can assure you that most people who have had the privilege of viewing wildlife in Africa would rank it among the greatest experiences of their lives. It certainly was for me and Carol, and for more reasons than one. We actually got engaged on our first game drive over 16 years ago during "sundowners" (I'll explain what those are in a moment). I was so overcome with what we had just seen (a leopard stalking an impala) and the magnificent beauty of the bush, that I proposed right then and there, with little care that our ranger and two other couples were there with us.  

In August 2007, I was privileged to have joined a group of fifteen children, all between the ages of 9 and 14 from all around the United States, on a trip to South Africa. Specifically, we were rewarding the winners of the National Geographic Kids' Hands-On Explorer Challenge, a competition that looks for the next generation of future explorers. For being selected, each child and a parent got a chance to "go on assignment" with National Geographic, joining a group of photographers, editors, scientists, and the NBC Today Show.

Selecting Africa as a destination was easy enough. Nowhere on earth is as synonymous with what National Geographic does than this place. The real challenge was making it "family friendly" while still capturing the spirit of adventure and exploration that this institution is so renowned for. For this, we turned to Footprints Africa, a company specializing in travel to the continent. They suggested we sample a bit of everything: shark diving, nature conservation, cultural exchange, and of course, a safari. As it turned out, the program was a smashing success and everyone had the experience of a lifetime. The only problem was that my children were not with me. Fortunately, I secretly knew all along that I would be back a mere 18 months later with the whole family in tow.

If you're landing here, it's because you might have stumbled across a link from our old blog that's not working properly. Fortunately, all of our content was pulled into this new space, so we encourage you to enter whatever - or wherever - you're looking for into our search form to help you find it. If you're still feeling stuck, shoot us an email at IntelligentTravel@ngs.org and we'll do our best to help you.

Here's some of the posts that we've found people are most often looking for:

Exploring Armenia
An Inconvenient Risk to Great Apes
Barcelona: Be Green, Be Cheap
The Jenss Family Travels Archive
All (Baby) Bottled Up in Monmartre

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Let me say upfront that it's an incredible privilege to be able to travel around the world with my family for a year, especially during a time when there's so much economic uncertainty. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything.  But as fulfilling as it is to show the boys all the wonderful places we've been, being around each other pretty much 24/7 for such a long stretch can be quite testing at times--on all of us. That's why we were enthusiastically counting down the days to when a group of our friends (including some good buddies Tyler and Stefan grew up with) would be meeting us in Cape Town for a two-week tour of South Africa. So besides being excited about arriving in one of my favorite countries, we were getting a much welcomed release that would allow us to take a break from constantly being around each other. Plus, the boys would have kids their age to be with after more than three months without such company. Yeehaw!     

As delighted as I was to be seeing everyone, I was also quite anxious. When our friends decided they wanted to connect with us in Africa, I told them to trust me in arranging everything and that I would put together a game plan everyone would be happy with. Easily being one of my favorite places, I sold them on South Africa pretty hard, guaranteeing that it would be the best family vacation they'd ever have. Since I had been to the country on four separate occasions and had experience with the proposed itinerary, I felt reasonably confident it would deliver. So I handed a wish list to an operator called Footprints Africa, and they made all the pieces come together.  

So why South Africa? When most people consider traveling to Africa, going on a safari is usually a prime motivator. Being fortunate to have been on a few before, all in South Africa, I can attest that it is life changing and certainly ranks as a top highlight of my all my travel experiences. I haven't been to Botswana, Tanzania, or Kenya (yet), which all undoubtedly have some of the best game viewing around, but what I've heard from those who know is that South Africa offers perhaps the widest variety of wildlife, all within a relatively small space. Unlike the massive planes of the Serengeti, Kruger National Park and it's private game reserves have much thicker bush, which brings in the diversity, but not in the large numbers found elsewhere on the continent. 

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

The Jenss family holiday season extends a week or two beyond the traditional parameters of Thanksgiving and New Year's because our children's birthdays fall just before and after those two days. To celebrate Tyler's 12th birthday, we did what many locals do to escape the big city of Sydney during the first week in January--we headed for the nearby Blue Mountains. In many ways, this excursion reminded us a lot of our drives to 'the country' outside the New York metropolitan area, albeit without the dramatic scenery of Wollemi National Park as a backdrop. In our pursuit of avoiding hotels as much as possible on this trip, we found the perfect retreat in Bilpin Springs Lodge: a spacious, self-contained B&B neatly tucked amongst an expanse of gum trees and apple orchards.    

Upon our arrival, we were immediately greeted by the caretaker Tony, who showed us around the homestead where we'd spend the next three days, and the boys made a bee-line to the trampoline parked right on the front lawn. As he ran down the list of all the possible activities to consider around the area, I told him how we just wanted to take a break from the hectic pace we've been on for the last six months and just hang out. He smiled and said, "That's terrific. Not too many of our foreign guests come here and do that. They're usually in and out of here pretty quickly." I figured this was a good sign that we might have the place all to ourselves, and we pretty much did.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

As a New Yorker, I've never gone down to Times Square to ring in New Years Eve, nor have I really had any desire to do so. Call me what you will, but enduring the frigid cold to watch a ball drop is not how I wish to celebrate the turning of the calendar. I'm sure people who make the effort have a great time and it's one of those events you've gotta experience at least once, but for me, it's ultimately the thought of being jammed together with a mass of humanity that's the biggest deterrent. So why would I choose to be in Sydney on this particular New Years, especially with two kids in tow?

This year is quite different for our family, and so is Sydney. December 31, 2008 not only marked the end of one of the most memorable years of our lives, it represented the halfway point of a yearlong-round-the-world journey that began six months ago. As we were putting together the itinerary before we took off, we projected ourselves in Australia during this time frame and figured there was only one place we could possibly be to celebrate the occasion. Sure, we might have to contend with a substantial crowd down by the harbor, but at least there'd be no freezing temperatures (it's the middle of summer down under). This would definitely make the whole thing more tolerable, and besides, we'd get to watch one of the most magnificent fireworks displays found anywhere.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

I do concede that I am not a travel writer, so fluently articulating the essence of a place is not something that comes easily to me. This is a particular challenge when it comes to Tasmania, which seems to have almost too much to describe. I can say with great assurance, however, that it feels very little like the mainland of Australia we'd experienced so far. Sure, there's the rugged coastline with crashing seas and desolate overland wilderness that you would expect from an island seemingly not far from Antarctica, but in reality, closer to the equator. But we also saw stunning beaches and jaw-dropping ancient forests that we never would have anticipated. The capital city of Hobart has a thriving cultural scene, but with a real laid-back feeling of ease and contentment I haven't found in too many big cities. No 'uppity', self-righteous attitude here. So as our ten-day visit starts to wind down, I've actually forgotten that we're still in Australia.

When we eventually made it to Hobart a couple of days after Christmas, we were warned that the Australian holiday (as in vacationing) season would be kicking into high gear and to expect big crowds to be joining us as we toured around. We were certainly greeted to a festive atmosphere as the nation's attention turned to the inner harbor and Constitution Dock for the conclusion of the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, considered to be the most demanding open-water racing competition in the world.  Much to our good fortune, this coincided perfectly with our arrival.

One of the benefits of traveling with children is that you can use them as decoys for conversation starters with the locals. We were having dinner at Mures Seafood Restaurant right in the harbor, when a large group, consisting of mostly husky guys with matching windbreakers, sat down at a table next to ours. I suggested the kids ask one of them if they had participated in the race and if so, how they finished. Reluctantly, the boys did as they were told and as it turned out, were now talking to Mark Richards, the skipper of the winning boat Wild Oats. Seated beside him was the boat's owner, Bob Oatly, who happens to also own Hamilton Island, the first stop in our month long stint in Australia. They were obviously impressed with the fact that we were traveling around the world for a year because the next morning as we were walking along the pier checking out all the yachts, the skipper waved us over and suggested we come on board Wild Oats for a look around, much to the envy of the large crowd gathered around to get a glimpse of the winning boat. The boys were later further impressed when they saw Mark, Bob and Wild Oats splattered all over the front pages of every major newspaper that day!

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Ask most Americans what they know about Tasmania, and I'm guessing the Tasmanian devil will top the list of probable replies. Inquire further as to where it's located, and a correct answer will surely be less likely. Besides the fact that I could identify it on a map, I knew relatively little of "Tassie" other than it was English speaking and it was predominantly Christian. This was important because we wanted to make sure that wherever we spent Christmas, there'd be some semblance of the holiday spirit for the kids.

Once the reservations for Tasmania were booked, I started to hear nothing but good things about where we were committed to be at the end of December. 'A lot like England', 'stunningly beautiful,' and 'well-kept secret' were among the descriptions thrown my way. Since it's not too far from New Zealand and falls along the same path of the 'roaring 40's' westerly winds, I anticipated seeing more rugged landscapes and gorgeous scenery. As we would learn, untamed wilderness and bountiful wildlife are not the only treasures of this once isolated island off the southern shores of mainland Australia. Gourmet food, up-and-coming wines and a thriving urban scene are also part of the mix that I had not expected.

Poor Australia. Our family had just spent the most magnificent month in New Zealand, and none of us wanted to leave. I had anticipated this might be the case after hearing nothing but rave reviews from people who had been there. But our around-the-world ticket dictated that we had to board a plane for a short 3 1/2 hour flight from Christchurch to Brisbane. So we set off knowing that Australia would have its work cut out to match the experience we had just had.

Upon arrival, we found ourselves in anything but a Christmas atmosphere with just a little over two weeks to go before the big day. Having relatives in southern Florida, we've spent late December in warm weather before, but this was different. Instead of houses draped in flashing lights and lawns adorned with holiday displays, the kids stared bewildered at caricatures of Santa riding a surfboard and signs in store windows offering "Beginning of Summer Sales." This just didn't compute properly to a nine- and eleven-year-old, but the 85-degree temperatures and sunny weather quickly helped make sense of the situation and got us all excited to start exploring Australia wholeheartedly.

The itinerary for our time Down Under had been pretty well mapped out before we arrived, in large part from the recommendations of the national and local tourist boards. Our plans included quite a few stops to view native wildlife and take in the country's fabulous scenery. New Zealand had set the bar pretty high in this category and anyone who's traveled extensively knows it's easy to get caught up in comparing experiences and rating different places for things like food, hotels, and in this case, natural beauty. You find this on the cover of travel magazines all the time ("Top 50 Places Rated"). So when we arrived at O'Reilly's Rainforest Retreat in the heart of Queensland's World Heritage Lamington National Park, I didn't expect to find anything different or overwhelming that could top what we'd seen in New Zealand.  To my pleasant surprise, it wasn't just what we saw that impressed us (the sunset over the Green Mountains was an all-time classic), it's what we heard.

This has been a big year for our little blog. We got a fancy new home, kicked up our production levels quite a bit, and have found thousands of new readers - whom we of course adore. So in looking back through the places we've been and the posts that we've written over the past year, we had to single out some of our favorites. So here's a quick countdown for those of you who may have missed them first time around.

10. Amazing Race for Regular People - Fans of the TV show went berserk for this idea, and we can't help but think that they're on to something.

9. Up Close to the Proximity Hotel - One of our first forays into video reporting, it's a fun insider tour of this incredibly green hotel.

8. Carl Hoffman on Mumbai - Having visited Mumbai just a few days before the terrible bombing, our contributing editor reflects on the destruction that befell the popular restaurant Leopold's which is a hub for international travelers.

7. Jenss Family Travels - We've loved following along with Rainer Jenss and his family as they've worked their way around the world.

6. Plan My Trip! West Seattle with Pam - IT Editor Janelle turned the tables and went to you, our readers, for advice on what to do on her West Coast trip this summer. Here, she met up with fellow travel blogger Pam Mandel for a tour of her funky Seattle town.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

It goes without saying that not all travel destinations are created equal. Conventional wisdom says that places like New Zealand and Bhutan, for example, are best suited for adventure travelers, while China and Japan would favor history buffs or those in search of a more cultural experience. On the flipside, adventure seekers can find plenty to do in Asia, while Maori traditions and Himalayan Buddhism would appeal to anyone interested in cultural enrichment. But what happens when you travel in a group where some people are into one thing, while others prefer something completely different? Welcome to the world of family travel!

Before the kids were born, Carol and I took a vacation to Australia, and like many of its visitors, planned the trip around diving the Great Barrier Reef. While researching the area around Cairns, where most scuba excursions originate, we learned about the town of Port Douglas and the Daintree Rainforest, which offered romantic and adventurous side-trips well worth investigating. While actually there, we discovered some terrific restaurants and atmospheric pubs that only the laidback Australian vibe could supply. We also did our live-aboard scuba trip, which allowed us to immerse ourselves in the marine world with eleven consecutive dives over the course of three days and nights, all in the company of a dozen other underwater enthusiasts.         

Other than the fact that the minimum age for taking up scuba diving is twelve, even our pre-teen boys wouldn't want to be subjected to hanging around on a dive boat in the middle of the ocean for more than a few hours. And since swanky eateries and outback bars wouldn't be too appropriate either, we kept Cairns and northern Queensland off the itinerary, opting instead for the more kid-friendly southern part of the state. So while I enviously bypassed the dazzling dive sites offered throughout the country, we set our sites on the Whitsundays Islands and the Sunshine Coast for aquatic pursuits.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

It's nearly impossible to travel anywhere outside of a major city in New Zealand without catching an eye-full of sheep within easy view of your car window. It's well documented that there are about 40 million of them grazing the country, or ten times more than the four million human inhabitants of the North and South Islands. So why, after spending more than three weeks exploring this British Commonwealth nation, would we want to spend our final week surrounded by 300 more of them? Because a farm-stay offered us a chance to pack away the suitcases for a while and experience the country's traditional way of life, not to mention its heart and soul: their people.

Having searched the Internet for just the right one, we realized shortly after pulling into the driveway of Maggie's Cottage that Carol discovered a gem when she booked us on the Harris Hill Farm just outside the city of Nelson on the South Island. Unlike the countless farms we saw driving through New Zealand's countryside, this small farm was perched high over a major city and had a view that would rival any in the region.

Harris Hill encompasses 475 acres of rolling hills and native bush overlooking Tasman Bay and the surrounding mountains. It's run by Sue and Mike, along with their five children and numerous in-laws. Their guests have the option to help out if they wish, so Tyler and Stefan found their own unique way to lend a hand. After every meal, they raced to feed the resident pig with our leftovers and scraps. If this boar's size is any indication, Harris Hill's guests and residents must leave quite a lot on their plates! Although we couldn't actually participate (for fear that we might seriously do harm to ourselves or the sheep), watching Mike and his son-in-law shear their sheep was certainly an impressive feat.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

I realize I misspoke in my last blog post--we hadn't quite yet taken all possible forms of transportation on this trip--I forgot about helicopters!

For us, Thanksgiving fell during our second week of cruising New Zealand's South Island by camper van, so to celebrate, we set our sights on the village of Franz Josef to visit one of only three glaciers in the world that meets a temperate rain forest. In fact, it almost reaches the ocean. One of the others, Fox Glacier, is just 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) down the road. So to make it memorable, we treated ourselves with the ultimate way to experience these imposing ice flows: a 40-minute aerial "flightseeing" tour over Westland National Park, which included a loop past Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in the country. Simply put, it was spectacular and easily one of the highlights of New Zealand, if not the entire yearlong trip. And in a country with so much awe-inspiring natural wonder, that's saying a lot.

Now if we included hang gliders, four-wheel ATVs, speedboats, gondolas, and a luge on this list of mobile options, they too would have been checked off after our visit to Queenstown, the home of every kind of wild thrill imaginable, all amidst a magnificent scenic backdrop. The boys have never been ones for extreme adventure, so going to the top of Bob's Peak via a slow-moving gondola to see the city from a dizzying height was perfectly suited for their age level. Even better, however, was the half-mile-long winding Skyline track that hurled them down the hill on hand-controlled luge carts.

One of the city's premiere adrenaline-inducing activities, besides bungee jumping (the commercial version of which originated twenty years ago at the nearby Kawarua Bridge) is jet boating. We're not talking about simply flying down a river at breakneck speeds. Operators like Shotover Jets will launch you down river surrounded by tall canyon walls while doing multiple 360-degree spins. Although they would gladly have taken our 9- and 11-year-olds for the 30-terror-stricken-minute ride, I decided the less harrowing, lengthier and more picturesque Dart River Jet Safaris, a two-hour drive north of Queenstown in Glenorchy, was the better bet. It proved to be a wise move because the Dart River passed by several areas used in the filming of The Lord of the Rings and our driver was more than happy to provide us with the occasional full spin to add some sheer excitement into the mix.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Of all the modes of transportation we will take this year, and that very well might include them all, the campervan we had reserved in New Zealand for two weeks was easily the most eagerly anticipated. The boys literally counted down the days until they would be in their rolling mobile home. They were not too concerned about where it would actually take them, it was all about being in a vehicle that they could chill out in during long drives and camp out in at night. We even nicknamed it "Tourtelvis"--Tour for its main mission and Elvis after the pompadour-like overhead compartment hanging over its front end (not to mention the name of Dread Zeppelin's lead singer).

Seeing New Zealand by campervan is widely considered one of the best ways to explore the country. Its popularity stems largely from the fact that there's just so darn much beautiful nature to see here, and unlike in the United States, it's all compressed into a relatively small amount of real estate. Almost one-third of the country is designated as national parkland, and on the South Island, you can see turquoise blue ocean, temperate rain forest, rolling farmland, and snow-covered mountains all within a couple hours drive. The infrastructure is also quite hospitable and easily handles all the tourists who choose this option, making it very manageable and convenient for first time renters like us.   

One of the main draws, besides the fact that it would provide us with a terrific family bonding opportunity (12 months on the road together already offers plenty of that), was the luxury of having a single place to call home for an extended period of time. But I think we were smart in taking our travel agent's advice to spend a little extra money to get the six-person model campervan. There were several less-expensive four-person models to choose from, but we were urged to consider that the space in the six-person unit would be far more comfortable and accommodating. Given the amount of luggage we had along, this certainly proved to be the case, particularly given the sleeping arrangements, which included three double beds, two of which we assembled each night. If we actually had six persons on board, I think it would be quite cozy, to put in kindly.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

While researching our around-the-world trip, I read through more than a fair share of material on cultural shock.  Being a pretty seasoned traveler, I doubted that I could possibly be susceptible to the psychological or even physical effects, which include anxiety, fear, and insomnia. But I wondered about the kids, whose lives for the most part have revolved around a single point of reference: Nyack, New York.

The thought of culture shock left my mind as we said good-bye to Asia after having been there for more than two months. So much to my surprise, the first three days we spent in Auckland actually felt like a case of reverse culture shock. We all found it awkward being in a more familiar Westernized environment again. Our first case of jet lag didn't help matters either.

After we regained our bearings, Carol and I started to really savor the fact that we could actually settle down a bit, versus feeling like we were on an extended whirlwind tour. The boys picked up on this too, and appreciated that New Zealand was the ideal place to fall into a bit more of a normal routine. They didn't even protest getting haircuts, which would normally be accompanied by a lot of complaining. We also bought our own groceries, used a washer and dryer, and I turned on the TV again. In fairness, I watched quite a bit of CNN and BBC during the presidential election, but this time, it was New Zealand's turn to talk politics. After nine years of Labour Party rule, John Key of the National Party was elected prime minister just four days after Obama's huge victory. It might not have been as newsworthy around the world, but the Kiwis are abuzz at the prospect of some change of their own.   So even though we are as far away from home as we'll get this year, we somehow started feeling more connected to the lives we left behind.    

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

There's a reason Thailand has been near the top of the list of favorite places to visit by travelers worldwide over the last few decades. Not only is the scenery some of the most striking on Earth - the culture, history, food, and friendly people all combine to offer a diversity of unique and enriching experiences. Like most of Southeast Asia, Thailand's affordability seems to set it apart from other exotic destinations. The key to revealing its splendor, however, required some preparation, or in our case, a good sense of improvisation once you get there. Most importantly, it required setting priorities.  

Unless you have more than a couple of weeks to explore the country, which most Americans don't seem to have, you shouldn't expect to see all that Thailand has to offer. Since we had sixteen days, we thought we could take in a little bit of everything. As we headed for the airport on our final day after touring Bangkok's Grand Palace and Wat Pho (easily one of the highlights of our trip and a "must see" for anyone visiting the country), we seemed to have visited everywhere we possibly could, but at a price: we were exhausted!

The islands to the south, as I reported in my last blog post, can either be a party paradise or rejuvenating retreat - normally not a lot of chance for error there as long as you don't mix up the two. From Bangkok up north, however, the options become more numerous, and the distances between them far greater. At a friend's recommendation, we hired a driver to take us from Bangkok up to Chiang Mai and beyond - into the mountainous northern region of the country where they offer elephant treks, an ideal adventure for the boys. We figured this was a good idea because it 1) kept us off of another plane; 2) was less expensive; 3) allowed us to see more of the country; and 4) gave us access to a set of wheels. There were also hill tribes to visit, including those with women wearing long metal coils around their necks. There were temples to see, history to absorb, restaurants to sample and shopping to be done. Did I mention relaxing or home schooling?

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.


I've found there to be a particular pattern to going on vacation, whether it be for a few days, a week, or if I was lucky, maybe two. There's the excitement of planning a trip and the anticipation of going, which seems to only increase the longer one has until actually leaving (think Christmas morning as a child). Then inevitably, a mad rush ensues to get everything squared away before departing. When you finally take off, the beginning of the trip usually involves getting acclimated to where you are and what you are going to do. The middle part is typically the best.  That's when you're in the groove and not too worried yet about having to leave. Then time seems to start accelerating towards the end, which for me, is accompanied by the anguish of saying good-bye to the people, places and things that became core to my existence during that brief time.  All this, of course, is followed by "post-vacation stress disorder" from having to return to your regularly scheduled program.  

At the farewell dinner that marked the conclusion of our time in Bhutan, I was explaining this to one of several new friends I had made during the ten days we were there. I was indeed experiencing some sadness at having to leave. But what was really strange about this trip, I told them, was that instead of returning home like everybody else, we would be starting this cycle all over again the very next day - a pattern that had already repeated itself for the last three months and would continue through July 2009. If you've ever seen Bill Murray in Groundhog Day you know what I'm talking about, but instead of being miserable, I feel incredibly fortunate. Every day feels like Christmas.

Truth be told, we know it can't be Christmas every day. Going into this, we fully expected that there'd be times when things could get rough and wouldn't go quite as planned. If you've followed my blog, however, it might appear that everything has gone off without a hitch thus far, and for the most part, it has. This, in part, is due to the incredible research and planning that Carol put into the itinerary. But as much as we might have wanted to, we didn't prepare for everything, nor should we have. Spontaneity, they say, often provides the most memorable moments of a journey and therefore, we wanted to keep ourselves open to those special opportunities that only come about unplanned. Thailand, as it would turn out, put this theory to the test.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

I'm sure most people back home will remember October 2008 as the month the financial crisis gripped the U.S. and the rest of the world. Before our departure to Bhutan, it was hard not to be aware of what was going on. The Japanese and international newspaper headlines, along with CNN International and the BBC all seemed to have 24-hour coverage of the global economic turmoil, not to mention the pending presidential election. Our calls and e-mails to friends and family echoed some serious concern, with many of them telling us that we picked a good time to be out of the country.

So it was with this as a backdrop that we arrived in the country that measures its success by Gross National Happiness (GNH). Being on a National Geographic Expedition, we not only had a resident (and required) guide to help the group navigate through Bhutan and handle all the logistics, we also had an expert, Richard Whitecross along to provide us with a deeper understanding of the county's rich culture, history, religious practices and monarchical rule. Richard is an anthropologist living in Scotland who has been studying and doing research in Bhutan since the 1990s. Having co-authored the Lonely Planet guide to Bhutan and consulted for National Geographic Magazine's recent article on 'Bhutan's Great Experiment', he was certainly well equipped to address everyone's questions about what this GNH was really all about.

To be clear, GNH is actually more of a philosophy than a regulated policy per se (although a GNH commission has officially been formed). Established by the country's 4th King, Jigme Singya Wangchuck, it emphasizes the value of its cultural traditions and protection of the environment versus economic wealth. Not that material and technological progress is being discouraged. We all chuckled at the sight of monks chatting away on cell phones and welcomed internet access to find out if the world was indeed coming to an end. But it's the notion that a country wants to move forward under a different set of guiding principles that makes the concept so intriguing. I for one will be cheering the Bhutanese on as they coronate their 5th King on November 6th (King Wangchuck's 28-year-old son) and hope they will continue to pursue happiness over monetary gain. As the rest of the world pays closer attention to this small landlocked country, the pressure will certainly grow to resist some of the 'temptations' of the West.  One advantage they have, however, is the hindsight of learning from some of our mistakes.  Maybe our major anxiety over the stock market will serve as such an example. 

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences here at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Land of the Thunder Dragon . . . Kingdom in the Clouds . . . Shangri La . . . Himalayas . . . Gross National Happiness.

Read anything about the Kingdom of Bhutan, and these will likely be among the buzzwords you'll come across. They're what piqued my curiosity a few years ago while researching possible adventure vacation options for a friend and I. Investigating a little further, I discovered that this remote country nestled between Tibet and India only allows about 20,000 foreign visitors a year, perfect for someone like me who was looking for something unspoiled and exotic. And after being exposed to Buddhism's basic principles through years of practicing yoga, I could further explore the religion in this remote part of the world.

When our family's around-the-world trip became a reality I had to inform my trusted travel companion that the "boys only" trek to Bhutan would have to wait. But as Carol and I started mapping out our route through Asia, I couldn't resist tossing up Bhutan as an option. Was it a risk to take Tyler and Stefan to such an isolated country in a region we knew little about? 

We noticed that National Geographic Expeditions offered tours there and asked if Bhutan was a good family-friendly destination. They responded with a resounding 'yes,' and with their enthusiastic endorsement, we made it work, anticipating that this might just be the highlight of the trip.

If there were any trepidations about how we would handle Bhutan's harsh terrain, spicy food, or unique culture, we figured the six weeks spent in Asia leading up to the trip would have us prepared. The kids seemed thrilled to be going on another tour because of the positive experience they had in China, so when we met up with the group in Bangkok, I wasn't surprised to see Tyler and Stefan immediately gravitate to the trip's expert, Richard Whitecross.

Rainer Jenss and his family are on an around-the-world trip, and they're blogging about their experiences for us here at Intelligent Travel. You can keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts and following the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Week Three of our immersion into the world of Japanese culture brought us to Tokyo, the city that fueled my longing to return to this country after my first visit there some fifteen years ago. Since we had gotten acclimatized to city life from our time in Kyoto (not to mention Beijing and Shanghai the previous month), dealing with crowded train stations, especially the subway platforms of Shinjuku, which are the city’s busiest, didn’t faze us. Besides, the boys were too fixated on the various types of trains that shuttled us around the country to even notice.

So besides zipping around on the Japan Railways, we aimed to find some activities that would strike a balance between kid-friendly and culturally enriching. Sorry guys, we didn’t come all this way to go to Tokyo Disney!  Fortunately, this proved to be far less challenging than I originally thought because Tyler and Stefan were becoming fond of Japan. Furthermore, they enjoyed learning the basic phrases and didn’t seem bothered at all by the language barrier. This proved quite helpful as we headed out on our first day trip in Tokyo.

But while seeking cultural experiences, we had to admit that there’s only so much that will hold the interest of an eight- and eleven-year-old. If Carol and I had been here by ourselves, we surely would have attended the Kabuki Theatre to take in one of the oldest and most traditional Japanese art forms. Instead, we found ourselves in a place called Kidzania, a child-sized replica of a real city that enables kids to learn about the adult world, and the value of money and work, by experiencing various professions. So what could possibly be so culturally relevant about that?  For starters, I must admit that I was growing rather fatigued from continuously asking the kids to mind their manners since we arrived in Japan. After all, this is a country that from early childhood emphasizes discipline and restraint, and nowhere was this more evident than in a children’s entertainment center. With all due respect to American families back home, Kidzania confirmed that the Japanese by-and-large have their children under control and very well behaved, which only added to my anxiety of scrutinizing our children's every move. Nevertheless, Carol and I were amazed at how well they adapted to the culture. Kids are certainly known for their resilience, but I never would have imagined that they both would be eating several varieties of raw fish, pickled vegetables, soups and noodle dishes by the time we left. Stefan has even gone so far as to say he’d rather eat a meal with chopsticks than a knife and fork.  And Tyler was completely serious when he requested a heated toilet seat for his next birthday.

Rainer Jenss and his family are three months into their around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for Intelligent Travel. You can keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts and following the boys Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

Three important occasions marked our second week in Japan: a milestone, a birthday, and an anniversary.  It was also a time that brought to light the joys and unique challenges of spending a year traveling with your family. 

To celebrate Carol's birthday and our fifteen-year wedding anniversary two days later, we had made plans to be in Kyoto because I had been told, by the editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler no less, that it was one of the most magnificent places on Earth. Needless to say, expectations were high when we arrived via bullet train from Nagasaki after spending most of our first week in the rural areas of southern Japan (like the well known EuroRail pass, Japan Railways had two week unlimited travel passes available that are good throughout the country - a big plus).

Over the course of the first three months of this trip (a hint to what the milestone is), I repeatedly emphasized to the boys the importance of first impressions. "When you initially meet someone," I explained, "how you act towards them in the first few minutes will likely form their opinion about you forever."  I further clarified that this also applies to places and objects, and told them that judging something before getting to know it was foolhardy. In the case of Kyoto, I realized I needed to heed my own counseling. This was a big city. Not New York or Tokyo big, but big enough where 1.47 million people call it home and mass transit is the best way to get around. This was not the vision I had, however, from admiring so many photographs of its famous temples and gardens. It is also not the romanticized pre-WWII Memoirs of a Geisha Kyoto either.  Experiencing the tranquility of meticulously manicured rock gardens or seeing a genuine geisha was going to take some effort and experienced guidance. Or maybe a babysitter, for as the week progressed, I become obsessed with this quest for enchantment. But could it even be possible with two children and a host of other tourists to contend with? I was determined to at least give it a go.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're sharing their experiences with us here at Intelligent Travel. You can see all of their stops so far by bookmarking their blog posts here.

After we went against our instincts and booked a group tour in China, Carol and I had mixed feelings on where we should head next. Japan was another country in Asia that we didn’t think we could handle without some professional assistance. For weeks before we left, we deliberated about even including this country on our itinerary since Carol's initial research confirmed what we suspected, that Japan would be a pretty expensive destination for a family of four. After all, there seemed to be more affordable options to consider in Southeast Asia that wouldn’t break the bank. But I was pretty adamant since I had always wanted to see more of the country after traveling to Tokyo for business in the mid-'90s. Besides, I thought the boys would be very interested in the place that invented Nintendo, sushi, and origami. I was determined to make it work even though we didn’t know anyone who could help us with housing. Renting a car didn’t seem practical and youth hostels in Japan were not really an option for us. And when we looked into organized tours, they were pretty cost-prohibitive. Finally, at the recommendation of a friend who had traveled around the world with her own family for two years, we contacted the national tourist board for counseling.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but after I talked to the Japanese National Tourist Organization and explained to them our situation and budget, they seemed quite enthusiastic and confident that they could help. Specifically, I emphasized that we wanted an authentic experience – to immerse ourselves in the culture as best we could – not just stay in hotels and see all the major tourist attractions. Moreover, we wanted a relaxed schedule that wasn’t too hectic. After all, we were not your typical tourists. This was just three weeks out of 54 for us, and we had home schooling to do! So after a few rounds of revisions, we came up with an itinerary that seemed to fit the bill and budget, and on the last official day of summer, we landed in Fukuoka to begin our quest to discover the real Japan.

I’ve always thought there were two types of international travelers in this world:  those who go with organized tour groups and those who don’t. Carol and I would vehemently classify ourselves as the latter. Following a predetermined timetable or sticking to a daily schedule was not a way we typically chose to explore a new destination. Furthermore, the idea of adhering to a fixed agenda discouraged us from tours in the past.

As we prepared to tackle planning for China and other areas of Asia, however, we realized that we couldn’t just wing it, especially with two small boys in tow. For many, having flexibility is exactly what offers up the thrill of traveling in the first place, but in our case, we decided to shelve the negative associations we had with tours in favor of the security they’d give us in handling the language barrier, transportation needs, and logistics of traveling in this country as a family. So we splurged and went with an operation I know well, National Geographic Expeditions, to give us a more in-depth and inside look at China.

The night before we were to meet the other members of our group and tour guides, I warned the boys that there would be no other kids to play with on this segment of our trip and that mom and dad would likely be among the younger people in the group. This was to be a more "academically" focused excursion and I wouldn’t say it was exactly tailored for an average eight- and 11-year-old.  This was indeed the case, but as we would quickly realize, there were some wonderful personalities accompanying us. As it turned out, we were very fortunate that most of our fellow travelers found Tyler and Stefan an added bonus to the trip, not a hindrance. (This was a much welcomed relief since we were not on one of the dedicated family trips that are offered specifically during the summer months, and I was fairly obsessed with having the kids behave and not spoil anyone else’s experience.)   

Rainer Jenss and his family are two months into their around-the-world journey and they've just landed in Beijing, where they've found that they're both tourists and tourist attractions unto themselves. Follow along with the Jenss family by bookmarking their blog posts here.

As we prepared to touch down in Beijing after a long day’s journey from Honolulu, I flipped through the in-flight magazine to the section with the airline route maps just to confirm that we were in fact going to be halfway around the world from our hometown when we landed. My rough calculation had us just east of the official marker, but close enough. I did this just in case a psychological boost was needed for Tyler and Stefan - if they started getting homesick or didn’t like Asia, I could easily tell them that from now on, we’d be traveling back towards home. (Even though that’s actually not completely accurate, it sounds good.)  So much to my delight, after our first week in China, I don’t think I’ll need to pull this out anytime soon, for the boys are having a ball, thanks to some good fortune and surprises.

As the day arrived for us to leave the U.S., it wasn’t hard to notice that the kids were a bit nervous and less enthusiastic than they had been leading up to our departure. Stefan had no inkling of what China would be like and Tyler was concerned about the language barrier. The layover in Tokyo, however, turned out to be a blessing, because it gave them a very good first impression of Asia via the cool Japanese products in the terminal shops (particularly the origami store). The sushi and noodle restaurant we sampled didn’t hurt either. When finally arriving in Beijing, we were greeted by a friend-of-a-friend whom I had only met via e-mail. She’s an ex-pat living in the suburbs who offered to put us up for as long as we wanted. Having two children of her own made it especially welcoming for the boys, and for Carol and I, we had a voice of experience that could familiarize us with China and help navigate the city. 

After two days of acclimation, we ventured out on our first excursion into China, hiring a guide to assist us in experiencing Inner Mongolia (an absolute must given the immense language barrier). We were particularly intrigued with the notion of sleeping in a yurt out in the wide-open grasslands – kind of like camping Chinese style. As expected, the boys got a kick out of it, but apparently, so do a lot of other Chinese tourists. Much to our surprise, big tour buses rolled en masse into this small "middle-of-nowhere" location two hours outside of Hohhot, the region’s capital.

To our further amazement was the fact that of all the hundreds of other visitors, we were apparently the only Westerners – I mean only. Subsequently, we became as much of a tourist attraction as the Inner Mongolian countryside. This was also the case when we visited the outskirts of the Gobi desert. Our camel trek turned into a massive photo shoot, making us feel more like grand marshals waving in a parade than camel jockeys. Stefan, in particular, was in hot demand to get on film. One man even went so far as to kiss him square on the cheek.  This fascination with blonde hair and blue/green eyes even carried over when we returned to Beijing. 

For the last two months, Rainer Jenss and his family have been traveling across America on the first leg of their around-the-world trip. Bidding farewell to the shores of Hawaii, they now recount some of their favorite stops along the way so far. You can follow them on their trip by bookmarking their posts here.

For most families, Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer vacation. For us, it meant the dress rehearsal was over and the real deal begins.

It’s hard to believe that two months have already passed and with the exception of a brief interlude in Quebec, we haven’t even left the country. Sure, it’s quite a long time to be on the road and we covered many miles, but the U.S. was pretty easy to navigate, even though we had no experience with many of the places we visited. And that was precisely our intention when we mapped out the itinerary -- start with what’s familiar to ease us (especially the boys) into this yearlong voyage before venturing off to Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. There would be no dealing with different languages, going through immigration and customs, sampling new and strange foods, or driving on the other side of the road. But that all changes starting now.

We hopped a plane from Honolulu to Tokyo, where we’ll connect on to Beijing. To close the first chapter of the trip, we decided to have some fun and do a Top Ten List of the "Best of America" for the boys’ blogs that they’re posting on the National Geographic Kids website. Although our children’s perspectives were not too far from our own, I wanted to share what Carol and I found best about this country as we experienced it during the last eight weeks. Important footnote: We traveled through only 20 states, almost exclusively in the northern half, so there’s a whole lot of territory not in consideration here that could easily make it on a list like this, so this is by no means definitive.

Favorite City: Seattle was one of my favorite U.S. cities before this trip, and our stay there this time around further solidified that distinction. The laid-back vibe, excellent food, cool music scene and gorgeous surroundings hold special appeal for us. I also had never entered the city from the east, and doing so through the Cascades showcased even more of Seattle’s beautiful nearby environs that I had not seen before.

Best Beach: I added this because a summer vacation for our family would be incomplete without visiting one. To be fair, I’ll divide this into three categories. The east coast: White Crest Beach in Wellfleet, Cape Cod. The west coast: Oswald West State Park Beach in northern Oregon. Hawaii: Honokalani Black Sand Beach at Wainapanapa State Park. This is certainly not the prettiest, but we found it the most memorable and unique.

Rainer Jenss and his family are in the seventh week of their year-long around-the-world trip, and they're blogging about their journey here at Intelligent Travel. You can follow all of their posts by bookmarking the link here.

I actually found myself quite sentimental handing over the keys to the car that had just taken us from New York to California in the first seven weeks of our trip. “13,162 miles, is that the best you could do?” the dealer asked sarcastically as he took possession of the vehicle. Ah, little did he know that 8,235 of those were put on the odometer in just the last 35 days. And to top it all off, it was done with an eight and eleven year-old in the back seat.

So how did we survive all those miles and time in the car without calling it quits before we even left the States? We made it a rule that the boys could only play with their handhelds or watch videos during long car rides and plane flights during this year-long trip. As a result, they actually seem to look forward to the extended periods of inactivity we’ll face on the road. Then there’s the satellite radio. There's a station for practically every musical genre, so when driving in Chicago, the blues channel got top billing.  In Wyoming, we put on bluegrass, and as we drove around San Francisco, nothing but the Grateful Dead channel would do. I’m sure I’m not alone in the importance I place on the musical soundtrack that accompanies me on long car rides, especially on drives that are scenic and "driver friendly," i.e. open road. In fact, maybe I’ll start a book called “Roadtunes” in the spirit of “Roadfood” that helped us out so much!

Of course, then there’s the drive itself that made it all worth it. Sure, there are stretches that don’t offer much in terms of scenery or points of interest, but they’re not nearly as boring or tedious as I had imagined. Carol was fascinated by all the hay bales in the central states, while Tyler enjoyed spotting all 50 state license plates, and Stefan kept a lookout for cool vanity tags, "ICE CRM" being his favorite. And every so often, we had the opportunity to take one of those epic drives you read about in travel magazines or guidebooks. We drove classics such as the 27-mile Acadia Park Loop Road, the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park, and through the Serengeti of the U.S. in Yellowstone before we reached Highway 101 and began cruising down the famous Oregon coastline to California. When we pulled into Cannon Beach, Oregon, last Saturday night, everything seemed set for what should have been the highlight of the cross-country voyage.

Rainer Jenss and his family are in the midst of a yearlong around-the-world trip, and they're blogging about their travels here at IT. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts here.

I am a big fan of Michael Palin for two reasons. First and foremost, I love Monty Python. But perhaps my favorite work of Palin's comes not by way of his comedy, but for the series of travel documentaries he produced for the BBC over the past 20 years that feature him traveling Pole-to-Pole, Around the World in 80 Days, and Full Circle. What I'm particularly intrigued by is that he makes it a priority to travel over as much physical landmass as possible during each of his journeys and whenever possible, does so without the use of aircraft. His objective is to capture the true essence of what lies between different geographical locations, gaining the perspective that distance, space, and time provide.

In retrospect, watching these programs probably helped influence our decision to travel around the world for a full year, without stopping or coming back home for the duration, as much as anything else. As a frequent business traveler, I have taken my fair share of cross-country flights from New York to the West Coast, and noticed that rarely do passengers look out the window or know where they are during the roughly six hours on board the plane. Instead, we get in our seats, sleep, eat, read a book, work on our laptop, or watch a movie and then BAM - we step out into a different city thousands of miles away that still speaks English, and has plenty of Starbucks and copies of USA Today. Frequent flier is really a more accurate term for who we are and what we do. After all, a true travel experience provides you with a sense of place, something a cross-country flight just can't capture. Never before had I had the time or opportunity to do it the Michael Palin way, until now.

For the last six weeks, I've blogged about our family's cross-country trek that took us through 18 states (and two provinces in Canada), covered 7,600 miles, and didn't find us in a single airport. We witnessed incredible scenery, met warm and friendly people, and experienced the country in a way too few people get a chance to do, along one continuous trail from one coast to the other. As a result, I don't think any one of us will quite look at a map of the U.S. the same way again, or board a plane without appreciating the distances they cover and landscapes they fly over. So as we drove into Seattle six weeks after we left home, we celebrated the fact that we had now officially driven across the country, and there was still so much more to see and do.

In between rapids along the Flathead River, our whitewater rafting guide Nick asks our group of nine to guess what percentage of visitors to nearby Glacier National Park don't ever venture more than a half a mile away from their car during their stay. I guess 50 percent. Carol says 60 percent. More like ninety percent, he tells us, much to our amazement. Whether he’s 100 percent accurate or not, I find this figure especially hard to believe considering just the day before, I felt like I was sharing one of the park’s most popular hikes, the Avalanche Trail, with half of Montana’s population. It was so crowded (for hiking standards) when we set out on the 4.7 mile loop, that I told Carol and the kids that we were on the Disney Trail, and that we should have gotten a FastPass.

Glacier was, in fact, the sixth national park we would visit during our seven-week cross-country odyssey that begins our around-the-world trip.  That’s six of the 58 officially designated national parks in the U.S.  No wonder Tyler made the sarcastic comment that America was being overrun by national parks. “Hey, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?” I told him. But his comment made me wonder. Would this be the impression Tyler takes away from his trip across America, that the country is nothing but beautiful mountains, lakes, landscapes and hiking trails? That wildlife runs wild outside the confines of the New York metropolitan area in which he was raised? Probably not, but as I observed the multitude of other vacationing families accompanying us, I realized that many children are getting the same opportunity to see these magnificent wonders, and I hoped they are getting the full experience, which must involve getting out of the car.

So how do you make the most of your time at a national park during the peak season and with kids in tow? There are certain rules that most seasoned travelers swear by (but often break) when in the throes of a family vacation. Go to the most popular attractions early or late in the day; venture off the beaten path; and allow yourself more time to take everything in. Even though we are traveling for a year, I have to admit we didn't follow every rule every time. But here’s some of the best advice I've gathered after the final leg of our national parks tour.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently in their third week of their year-long around-the-world journey. They're blogging about their trip for Traveler, and you can read about their stops so far here.

It may sound strange, but when putting together an itinerary for a twelve-month trip around the world, you want to factor in a little vacation time. That’s right, to paraphrase the Encarta World English Dictionary definition, we’ve planned some time throughout the year devoted to rest and recreation; a scheduled period during which regular activities are suspended. I told people before we left that I don’t consider what we are doing a yearlong holiday. After all, there’s home-schooling to be done, blogs to post, plenty of logistics to work through and lots of time in planes, trains, and automobiles. So as we completed only our third week on the road, we found ourselves in Wyoming, where we met up with our first group of friends who are joining us along the way - Carol’s college roommate and her family – for our big "summer vacation".

Our ultimate destination was the 7D Ranch in the Sunlight Basin, an hour’s drive or so northwest of the “Gateway to Yellowstone,” Cody, Wyoming.  This dude ranch, which technically means a ranch that takes on (paying) visitors, probably provided us with as close of an authentic western experience as we could find for a family. Besides the horseback riding for both the adults and kids, it offered top-notch fly-fishing, skeet shooting, scenic hikes, and other various outdoor pursuits. It even included a "Wicki-Up" that simulates the Native American sweat lodge experience. Basically, guests had the choice of going into a small igloo-shaped enclosure filled with burning rocks which brings the temperature well into the mid-100 degree range. For the Indians, sitting inside it (for hours) represented a cleansing of the body and mind. For vacationers, it was a kind of test to see how long one could stand to be in an extremely hot and cramped sauna with several other dripping guests and staff members to boot. Still, there was something about this rather atypical "resort" activity that I found appropriate. It wasn’t contrived or set up solely to amuse tourists, rather it was an attempt to connect visitors with a sense of tradition unique to this part of the country.

This month, Rainer Jenss and his family started their trip around the world, and they'll be sending us dispatches from the road over the course of the next year. Check back each week to keep up with the Jensses and see where they're headed next.

“Jeez Dad . . . It’s not Americana, it’s American!” Tyler barks at me with his typical 11-year-old sarcasm and "know-it-all" attitude.  “Why do you keep saying it wrong?” Looks like we both will be learning a thing or two about the true meaning of this word during the first – and longest – leg of our round-the-world tour.

I can’t seem to remember which incident sparked this reaction during the first half of our seven-week drive across the country, there were so many occasions to have uttered it. Ever since we passed through the border patrol in Port Huron, Michigan after our brief stint in Canada, we’ve encountered one uniquely American experience after another, starting with the food.

Carol will tell you that the biggest adjustment so far to life on the road is the almost incessant need to eat out. When we were offered the opportunity to stay in a house in northern Michigan by a colleague of mine (thank you Karen), little did we realize that perhaps its biggest draw would be the chance to eat home-cooked meals for a few days. Never have I seen my wife more excited to go to a grocery store! 

To deal with the constant quest for appropriate family-friendly dining, our investment in the book Roadfood proved fruitful. Far from a Zagat’s, this book highlights some of the best local eateries along our nation’s most traveled roads, according to Jane and Michael Stern, a husband-and-wife pair who have traversed the country writing about food for 30 years.  If nothing spells America more than M-c-D-o-n-a-l-d-s, perhaps we are doing this country a disservice by not recognizing the likes of Thompson’s Restaurant in Bingham, Maine; Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria in Chicago; Bob’s Café in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and the Sundance Café in Dubois, Wyoming.  For me, these are the places that serve up real "American" cuisine. Sure, most of them offer regular menu of burgers, pizza, and greasy fried food we normally try to avoid, but it’s the atmosphere in which they are served that makes them oh so Americana.

Besides "crazy" I’ve been called lots of things for willingly leaving my job and traveling around the world for a year with my wife and two young boys. Adventurous, courageous, brave—even fortunate—were other adjectives used that I personally think better describe the situation. I prefer being labeled as an "explorer," "adventure seeker," or just plain old "world traveler" myself. The word "tourist" had never even entered the vocabulary. Well that’s exactly what we were transformed into the moment we arrived in Quebec City, staring blankly at a road atlas and asking directions in English in a French-speaking town.

Carol and I had been to Quebec City’s old town several years earlier for Winter Carnival, where the city becomes a sort of North Pole for revelers, complete with snow sculptures, ice climbing walls, dogsled rides, plenty of alcohol to warm the spirits, and a snow bath where the participants are dressed only in bathing suits. I did mention it was winter and there was alcohol involved, right? Well, needless to say, Carol and I didn’t pack the proper clothing for this event, so I think, like us, very few tourists took part. This time, we arrive in 80-degree temperatures, but still with plenty of people crowding the walled city for fun and amusement. It turns out 2008 marks Quebec’s 400th birthday, and much to our good fortune, this was the week the province celebrated with Festival d’Ete de Quebec—a music festival that culminated the weekend we arrived. 

In hindsight, we seemed pretty lucky to get a B&B right smack in the middle of town and for only $100 a night to boot. That’s the payoff for having planned this itinerary well in advance! Room number six at the Hotel La Maison Demers fit all four of us, no problem, with two queen beds, although it gave us our first true taste of quality family time. No privacy in this joint! But no need to be indoors when there was so much going on.

The words I dreaded hearing came less than one week into our yearlong journey. “I don’t want to go around the world,"  Stefan proclaimed, just hours after arriving on Maine’s Mount Desert Island, aka Acadia National Park. Then, just in time to catch my heart before it splattered to the ground, came “I want to stay right here!” With much relief, I told him that this would be the first of probably many times he would feel this way over the next year, and this was just the second of over 60 stops.

In retrospect, my eight-year-old seemed pretty intuitive. There’s a unique vibe that permeates this place, and it attracts Rockefellers and backpackers alike. With so much to offer besides its famous crustaceans—although there is a really cool lobster hatchery at the Bar Harbor Oceanarium—who could blame Stefan for not wanting to leave? In fact, it didn’t take us long to pull our first improv of the trip by adding a fifth night to our Acadia cottage rental in Southwest Harbor, at the expense of forgoing Montreal. 

Rainer Jenss and his family have just started their around-the-world trip, and they'll be blogging about their experiences here at IT. The first stop on their itinerary? Cape Cod.

“Where’s the first stop?” was one of the most common questions people asked us when they found out about our planned trip around the world. When replying with “Cape Cod,” which is a mere 4.5 hour drive from our Nyack, NY, starting point, I could sense their feeling of mild disappointment. Cape Town, or even Cape Canaveral, probably was more of what folks expected.

There is sound rationale, however, for what seems like a benign choice. First, it’s a place we’ve gone as a family every summer for the past several years. There's no reason why this one-year family adventure should get in the way of tradition. But perhaps the more important factor was the need to simply ease into this long journey, especially for the boys. The notion of leaving home for 12 months is pretty daunting for an eight- and eleven-year-old (never mind the adults), so starting with something familiar, we thought, would set the right tone.

After the mad frenzy of packing, farewell parties, and final preparations during the weeks leading to our departure, just the thought of getting on an airplane and dealing with a foreign country right off the bat could have been too much on all of us. Getting in a car and driving up the usually traffic-filled I-95 for almost 300 miles actually felt like a welcomed relief. Now, maybe we could finally exhale!

The morning we left can probably be compared to what football players feel like when making it to the Super Bowl. All they want after weeks of non-stop hype and preparation is to go out on the field and just play the game. Even Stefan, who was the most reluctant about leaving home, finally said, “Can we go already?  We’ve been talking about this for four years!”  So on the morning of July 2nd we hit the road, headed to one of our favorite spots on Earth.

Rainer Jenss and his family have just set off for their year-long around-the-world trip. They'll be sending their first dispatch from the road soon, but before they left, Rainer managed to jot off some answers to readers' questions about the logistics of making it work.

Ever get stressed about preparing for a two-week vacation, or even a long weekend getaway? Getting ready for a one-year trip around the world magnifies that anxiety exponentially. Even though we’ve been actively preparing for months (and mentally for years), when the countdown went from months to weeks to days, the to-do list seemed to grow longer somehow, not shorter.

Using an assortment of books, magazines and websites as sources, we prepared a well-documented checklist of things to pack, think about, read up on, and take care of before leaving. Some of the items are obvious: make sure you have up-to-date passports, vaccinations, and visas. 

We sorted through advice on what clothes to bring (there are mixed opinions about packing jeans, which Carol and I opted to do) and financial planning.  We used the book, The Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World, by Doug Lansky as our go-to. It is a great guide to get you started, but as with most things in life, one size does not fit all. Since we are traveling as a family, additional consideration needed to be given towards luggage, computers and electronics (especially when you’re posting blogs), home schooling options, and accommodations. 

With the latter, many places, particularly in Asia, don’t necessarily offer rooms for four people, so unless you’re extremely thrifty, you’ll likely have to pay for two rooms instead of one. And one other piece of advice I learned - not only does your passport need to be valid for three to six months beyond your dates of travel, you need to make sure to have enough blank pages to accommodate all the visas and stamps one will accumulate when visiting 24 or so countries in a one-year period before you leave. You’ll get stopped at many borders if you don’t and it’s very difficult to acquire more when you're on the road.  For U.S. citizens, one can get additional pages added directly to their valid passport, as Carol did.  As a German citizen, I needed to apply for a whole new passport to get the additional pages needed.  That meant a rush job and additional expense that I didn’t anticipate.

In just a few days, Rainer Jenss and his family will set off for a year to travel the world. They'll be blogging about their adventures here at Intelligent Travel, and today Rainer offers up his itinerary for where they're headed.

Searching for Swaziland

When putting together an itinerary for an around-the-world trip with the help of an eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old, there are going to be some pretty interesting requests. Stefan (8) learned of Swaziland through a piece of a world map puzzle we worked on together to familiarize the kids with different countries. He said wanted to go there because he liked the name. I explained that we would not go there specifically, but we’d be really close by when we visit South Africa. Fortunately, he quickly learned that saying "Namibia," "Botswana," and "Tanzania" sounded pretty cool too.

As we prepare to head out next week, we‘ve come up with the following game plan, knowing that we’ll have to comply with our around-the-world airline ticket, weather considerations, transportation and lodging logistics, and of course, budget. Here's what we've worked out so far.

July – August, 2008: Drive across the U.S. and Canada
We figured we’d start on our home turf to ease into the trip; it will provide us with a good foundation for what lies ahead. But we do plan to get our first passport stamps while visiting Montreal and Quebec City.

September: China
Arriving in Beijing shortly after the Olympics, we’ll head on a two-week “Inside China” tour with National Geographic Expeditions. This should make watching the Games a little more interesting.

Sept/October: Japan
What boy wouldn’t want to visit the birthplace of Nintendo, Pokemon, and in the case of my guys, sushi?  To do so within our budget, we visited the Japan National Tourist Organization, which helped put together an itinerary that provided us with unique access to the “real Japan.” We're looking forward to a professional Japanese baseball game between the SoftBank Hawks and Nippon Ham Fighters in Fukuoka. But who do we root for? Stefan wants to know. Good question.

Early October: Bhutan
We’ll be four of only about a few thousand visitors allowed into this Himalayan country each year.  It’s rugged, beautiful, and very remote, and it measures success not with GNP, but by Gross National Happiness.

In just a few weeks, Rainer Jenss and his family will begin their year-long around-the-world journey (which they'll be blogging about here on IT). The questions he's most often asked: How exactly do you actually plan such a trip? Here, Rainer gives us some of the lessons he's learned so far, and explains what, exactly is an ARUNK.

Designing an itinerary for an around-the-world trip for someone with wanderlust is like sending a kid into the proverbial candy store. Planet Earth has a ton of variety to choose from. You just can’t have too much too fast, or you might get a bellyache. 

Step One: Find an airline network that suites your needs. We chose the Star Alliance program because it covers most of the destinations we are interested in and  allows us to backtrack if need be (some programs require you to travel in one direction only, east or west). The rules are a bit challenging, but basically we need to start and end in the same country, travel for up to a maximum of one year, not exceed 39,000 miles, and fly no more than 16 segments. But here’s the catch: We have to be very mindful of the cities we select because if we don’t fly in and out of the same one, the miles between them go toward the 39,000 and count as a segment. For example, we want to enter China via Beijing and depart from Shanghai. But even though we don’t plan to actually fly from Beijing to Shanghai, the miles are added to the trip’s ‘odometer’ and a valuable segment (known as an ARUNK, or Arrival Unknown) is eaten up. This is a particularly important consideration, for if you take too many ARUNKS, it can limit the total number of destinations we can actually include in an itinerary.

Rainer, Carol, Tyler (in the blue shirt) and Stefan (in the green shirt).

In one month, National Geographic Kids Vice President and Publisher Rainer Jenss will embark on the trip of a lifetime. He's selling his house and setting off for a year-long, round-the-world journey with his wife and two sons, and he'll be blogging about his trip for Traveler the entire time. We asked him to offer up a bit in the way of an introduction, and to explain his reasons for leaving his current life in New York to travel the world.

It’s four weeks away from the day my wife Carol and I have been planning and fantasizing about for the last four years. The day we officially act on the most wonderful, life-changing, crazy, outrageous, and most of all, natural idea we’ve ever had: to travel around the world with our two boys, Tyler (11), and Stefan (8).

Over the next year and 50,000+ mile journey, we will all be contributing bi-weekly postings to Intelligent Travel. As such, I set out to address two of the more common questions that people like Keith Bellows, Traveler's editor-in-chief, ask us all the time: Why we are doing this and what do we hope to gain from it? I was immediately struck by a word I came across in Global Traveler magazine just the other day, a term which they've trademarked:

Globility /glo bility/ n: The quality of being open to a world of cultures and experiences.

I wonder if this is even a real word?  It doesn’t matter. Its definition alone makes it something I wanted to adopt for this trip, and in a word, provides the core of an answer that is this complex and multi-dimensional. To understand this further, we need to go back a few years.