Our Adventures
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22.3″ custom_padding=”24px|0px|100px|0px|false|false”][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0|5%|0|5%|false|true” _builder_version=”3.22.3″ module_alignment=”center”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.22.7″ header_font=”||||||||” header_2_font=”||||||||” header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.4em” header_3_font_size=”20px” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”]Hola Amigos!
We are Duncan and Jane, a couple of “ Baby Boomers” who have left the corporate worlds and closed the nest to enjoy a life of worldwide travel. We’ve been exploring the world for over 30 years, and fulltime since 2013 in our new lives as ‘roving retirees’. We have decided to take our current worldwide travels to a whole new level to include lifestyle and travel.
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We met in Sydney, Australia in the early 80s and spent seven years working in the UK. During that time we travelled for work and vacationed in the USA and Europe.
We returned to Australia in the late 80’s when our eldest son Robert was born. Our return to Australia was a lifestyle choice which would become a theme of our current lives.
We followed the traditional path of raising our two boys Robert and James.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22.3″ background_image=”https://www.totraveltoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SEAB-Motorcycles-Laos-Buffalo-Traffic.jpg” parallax=”on” custom_padding=”200px|0px|200px|0px|true|false”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.22.3″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.22.7″ header_font=”|800|||||||” header_text_color=”#ffffff” header_font_size=”40px” header_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ header_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.05em” header_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0.05em” header_text_shadow_color=”#000000″ header_2_font=”|800|||||||” header_2_text_color=”#ffffff” header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ header_2_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.05em” header_2_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0.05em” header_2_text_shadow_color=”#000000″ custom_margin=”||” custom_padding=”||”]add picture of us as youngsters
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22.3″ custom_padding=”100px|0px|100px|0px|true|false”][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0|5%||5%|false|true” _builder_version=”3.22.3″ module_alignment=”center”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.22.7″ header_2_line_height=”1.4em” header_3_font_size=”20px” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified” z_index_tablet=”500″]Our boys are grown men now and are working hard and enjoying life to the fullest. They are both very supportive of our lifestyle of travel.
Back in our early corporate days, Jane worked in travel both in Australia and in the UK and held many different roles from travel agent to travel management consultancy.
Duncan managed international sales and marketing teams for large global companies.
Life was good. Well, we thought it was! We, like most families, struggled in the early days and tried to balance work and life.
We moved to Singapore in 2000 for Duncan’s work and this introduced us to Asia. Duncan had been brought up in Hong Kong during the late 60’s and Asia was always calling.
For the next seven years, we explored Japan, China and South East Asia.
In 2006 we returned home to Australia to help the boys assimilate back into the Australian culture for which we are eternally grateful.
A large mortgage, expensive school fees and high debt prevailed as we fell into the corporate rat race of work, life and work. Surely there was more to life than work and more work.
Rob took a late “ Gap Year” a term may be familiar to you. It’s when the young ones take off having finished their education to go and embark on a year of worldwide travel.
We stalked him on Facebook and Instagram and strangely there was a sense of jealousy – bizarre really! In reality, it was not jealousy, you can’t possibly be jealous of your children, it was, in fact, our own “Inner Child” crying out for worldwide travel adventures too before it was too late.
So in 2013, we booked our Round The World (RTW) Tickets for a journey that would take us 12 months and to many different parts of the world we had yet to travel to.
Our journey took us to Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, USA, Croatia, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Thailand and Myanmar.
Our adventures saw us soaring high over the lunar-like landscapes of Cappadocia and the temples of Bagan at sunrise in hot air balloons. We were novices at trekking but we managed to complete the 4-day 3-night trek to Machu Picchu. We travelled to places we had only dreamed of. We even spent a night in a Bedouin Tent in Jordan.
We spent a year wandering more-or-less around the world moving every three to four days. It was exhausting but it satisfied our desire to travel.
In 2014 we headed back to Australia to plan our next adventures and to continue our downsizing lifestyle. We made plans for our next adventure whilst house sitting on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
In 2015 we set out on an ambitious goal to travel on the equivalent of the Australian Aged Pension $92 per day.
We set off to Ecuador, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.
We spent most of those 9 months housesitting in exotic locations – Granada and Ometepe Island in Nicaragua, Canoa in Ecuador, Tepoztlan in Mexico and Boquete and Playa Rompio in Panama. In between our house sitting responsibilities we travelled to the Amazon and the Galapagos Islands.
Our initial plan was to spend 2 years of house sitting around the world. 9 months later we returned to Australia for family reasons.
Did we achieve our goal of AUD 92 per day? Yes, we are excited to stay that we did. That gave us the confidence that when we actually reached retirement age we could still travel and enjoy ourselves.
It did hit home though that it was cheaper to travel abroad than to sit at home on our sofa in Sydney. (If we did have one, that is after all our downsizing!)
6 months later in 2016, we were on the road again. We spent the next 18 months travelling to Thailand, road tripping through Spain, working with Visit Stockholm in Sweden, France, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and back to Spain before taking a repositioning cruise to Panama via Portugal and St Maarten.
Our adventures did not stop there we continued to Mexico, spent a month travelling Cuba, 3 months in Barbados, the UK, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Dubai, India and Thailand returning home in time for Christmas 2017.
During those 18 months, we enjoyed living like a local whilst house sitting in France, Spain, Panama, Mexico, Barbados, India and Thailand. House sitting gave us some downtime from being on the road. A time to catch our breath.
Mid-2018 we headed off again knowing that our itinerary that we had planned was against our ‘slow travel’ mantra.
In 6 months we travelled to Thailand, spent 1 month in the Czech Republic, visited Bruges and Gent in Belgium, sailed the Canal de Lateral in France with Le Boat , partied with our eldest son in Cannes, took a 2 week road trip through the Champagne Region with friends, (tasting champagne of course) and caught up with family in Germany.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22.3″ background_image=”https://www.totraveltoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5-2.jpg” parallax=”on” custom_padding=”200px|0px|200px|0px|true|false”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.22.3″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.20.2″ header_font=”|800|||||||” header_text_color=”#ffffff” header_font_size=”40px” header_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ header_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.05em” header_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0.05em” header_text_shadow_color=”#000000″ header_2_font=”|800|||||||” header_2_text_color=”#ffffff” header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_text_shadow_style=”preset2″ header_2_text_shadow_horizontal_length=”0.05em” header_2_text_shadow_vertical_length=”0.05em” header_2_text_shadow_color=”#000000″ custom_margin=”||” custom_padding=”||”]Are you exhausted yet? – add new image
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22.3″ custom_padding=”100px|0px|100px|0px|true|false”][et_pb_row custom_padding=”0|5%||5%|false|true” _builder_version=”3.22.3″ module_alignment=”center”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.0.47″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.20.2″ header_font=”||||||||” header_2_font=”||||||||” header_2_line_height=”1.4em” header_3_font_size=”20px” background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” text_orientation=”justified”]Our travel did not end there we still had New York, Finger Lakes, Niagara Falls and Austin to venture to before heading off on an exhausting road trip across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Our itinerary changed daily on that road trip as Hurricane Michael wiped out parts of the southern coast of the US where we had planned to visit.
All that was in the first 3 months. Not content with that we flew to Uruguay to join a 15-night cruise to Antarctica, Duncan’s top bucket list item.
Seeing we were at the bottom of the world after the cruise we spent the next month travelling from Ushuaia by bus through Patagonia arriving in Santiago Chile in time to fly home for Christmas 2018.
What happened to our slow travel? That went out the window from Day 1. After our first 12 months on the road moving every 3 to 4 nights, this adventure was every 1 or 2 nights, only slowing down on the Antarctica Cruise (if you could call that slowing down).
You would have thought that we had learned our lesson. We made a pact with one another – we were not doing that again. We were once again exhausted, all travelled out, and Christmas festivities kicked in as soon as we set foot back in Australia.
2019 is a year of slow travel. After spending 3 months in Australia we will be heading to Asia for 6 months. Current plans are 3 months in Thailand and 3 months Vietnam, but our plans can change!
Each year as we travel, our goal here at To Travel Too is to share our adventures and inspire you to come along and to travel too with us.
Our articles, photos and videos are our story.
We will show you how to travel safely, affordable and that age is no barrier when it comes to travel. We want to be able to pass on our experiences so that you too can have memorable adventures.