About the blog

About the blog
Hanging poolside at our pousada in Angra Dos Reis, Brazil 🇧🇷

OYOTR 2024

Hi there! We're Alex & Fernando and this our blog, Our Year On The Road.

We are once again quitting real life & jetting off around the world to explore new places, eat lots of new foods and meet up with loved ones along the way.

This time round we have carved our 9 glorious months that will span across Asia (East Malaysia and Japan predominantly), Europe (including the Olympics in Paris and road trips along the Adriatic Sea and Italian coastline) and finally a long stint in Brazil, with a cheeky stopover in the US & Mexico before heading home.

We are doing less this time round, dedicating more time to get to know fewer cities and countries whilst enjoying meaningful time with our loved ones who are scattered across the world.

Follow along as we endeavour to keep this blog updated as we continue our adventures "on the road".

đŸ—ēī¸
We are now onto our third iteration of "Our Year On The Road" Read below about our first and second adventures!

Back in 2018, when the word 'coronavirus' made you think of beer đŸģ and travel was (relatively) easy and a lot cheaper, we embarked on a year-long sabbatical to travel the world and see lots of family & friends along the way.

How did we do?

Well, by all means, it was a huge success! In just over a year we:

  • Visited all the continents (except Antarctica!)
  • Travelled to 24 countries and 94 cities đŸ—ēī¸
  • Got 6 approved visas and 1 failed visa (no Canada for us â˜šī¸)
  • Took 37 plane trips âœˆī¸
  • Had 2x bouts of bad food poisoning (both from Alex, in India and Peru đŸ¤ĸ)
  • Took one trip to the hospital (thank you to the amazing hospitality in Japan!)
Our first dinner of the trip in Udaipur, India đŸ‡ŽđŸ‡ŗ

📖 Read more about our trip highlights here

OYOTR in 2023

It's now a post-COVID world, we are five years older (and hopefully a bit wiser), and we have cooked up our next plan: OYOTR v2, around Australia!

The idea came to life on one of our many lockdown walks in our neighbourhood of Naremburn, dreaming of the day when we could leave our 5km radius and see more. Dreaming of another international trip felt too farfetched at the time, so we settled on the dream of travelling around Australia, living in different cities and experiencing different living situations.

There are three main differences this time round:

  1. We are staying in Aus! It's a HUGE country (something you really start realising when you track km's from city to city). We have never been to WA and we have both only ever lived in Sydney.
  2. We are going to keep working: we find ourselves in the fortunate position where we both have jobs that are remote-first and have been very open to our plan of travelling and working in different cities around Australia.
  3. We are not just 2 anymore: We are so excited to take our family dog Summer on the road with us this time. She is jumping into the boot and coming along for the ride, sniffing her way across Aus.