About Us

We are a family of four hitting the road for 8 months.

Neil and Yolanda

Oscar and Ruby (with a favorite food)

We left Brooklyn in December 2013 to spend 6 months in South America and then 2 months in Asia.   It isn't easy extricating ourselves from work, school, and our daily lives.  Why are we doing this?  For Neil and Yolanda,

1.  We want to have a family adventure.
2.  We want to learn and practice speaking Spanish.
3.  We want to expose our kids to life outside the United States.

Oscar wants to go to beaches and learn how to surf.  Ruby wants to go to the rain forest and try ice cream in every country.  We hope to do all of this and more .....

Our Plans

With 8 months to spend abroad, our first decision was to travel rather than to stay in one place. Everyone told us that 8 months simply isn't long enough to put down roots in one place.  That made sense.  Next, we picked South America as the focus of our trip.  Why?  We are fascinated with the Andes and the mix of peoples and cultures in South America.  And learning Spanish is a big draw.

Our plans are to go to Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, China, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Japan.

The exhausting list of countries is a bit deceptive.  We start with 3 months in Ecuador, one of the smallest countries on the list.  We'll only be in China, the biggest country, for 10 days.  Brazil, South Africa and Japan are transit points where we will stop off for 1-2 weeks.

We also built in a lot of flexibility to linger if we want to, or even skip places if we get tired of moving around or run out of time.  In South America, the only set destinations are a rafting trip in Chile and a Suzuki violin training for Yolanda and Ruby in Buenos Aires.

Originally, we weren't even sure we wanted to go to Asia.  But we decided to go for it because Yolanda's sister and kids can join us to visit cousins in Hunan, China, who we haven't had a chance to spend time with since 1979.  With that in place, it was easy to decide to visit friends in Singapore, visit Neil's old haunts in Thailand (he lived there in 1990), and check out Angkor Wat and Laos.

This is the thinking as we set forth from New York.  Stay tuned for updates ....