I find that traveling is full of meeting incredible people, but for every hello, there is always a goodbye. These meetings are usually brief, but meaningful, and farewells feel like little pinpricks stabbing at my chest. The smiles and generosity of these people from across the globe have left lasting touches on me, like fingerprints indented on my heart.

But as a traveler, I've become aware of the cyclical pattern of constantly leaving, of constantly saying hello and goodbye. And a part of me prepares myself, fortifies myself whenever I meet someone, because I know that I will soon be leaving them, and perhaps it will be the last time we meet. It's like a little hardened barrier I build up inside myself, always reminding me that this is temporary, and that all great things will come to an end.

Yet there is no barrier that I could build up within myself that would prepare me for saying goodbye to those who have been in my life throughout all the hard times: my family and close friends from home.

This is of course the most difficult goodbye of them all. Though I know it's only temporary, the idea of being gone for an indefinite amount of time weighs heavily on me. Unlike last time, our trip to Africa has no end point, and I don't have a clear idea of when we'll be back since our plan sort of dead-ends when we get to Europe. By then, our savings will have run out and we'll be looking for work. What we find, where we'll end up, and when we'll get the funds to fly back are all unknowns.

All we know for sure is that we're leaving for the other side of the world, and it's going to be a while before we find ourselves at home again. A long while.

There are so many people from home that we are thankful for and indebted to: from friends who have helped Tim with preparing the bike, to family who have housed us, fed us, and brought us laughter, and even strangers who have contributed to our travels. I hope that even if I can't thank each and every one of you individually here, that you know how grateful we truly are.

And so the day for us to leave came: September 4th, 2019. We packed up the bike, Tim petted his cat and hugged his dad with tears in their eyes, and we rode off with a wave and an unbearable heaviness in our chests.

Our first step was to ride to Montréal, Canada where we would be flying ourselves and the bike out of. This is because flights for motorcycles are much cheaper from Canada than from the States, and Montréal offered the best deals for us.

​It was only a few days' ride to Montréal from Chicago, and along the way we got to visit Tim's little sister in Michigan, as well as our motorcycle traveling friends Phil and Sapna near Toronto. We had first met them in Mexico and we crossed paths several times in Central and South America, so it was incredible to hang out with them in completely new surroundings, being able to once again share stories and reminisce.

From Toronto, we headed to Montréal, which is Canada's second largest city and the largest city in its French-speaking quarter of Quebec. But being in Montréal meant business for us more than sight-seeing, since there were a lot of logistics, paperwork, and payments involved in getting the bike on a plane and then ourselves on another one.

​But North America wasn't going to let us leave without one last surprise.

Caroline Lunnen is her name (handle: funsmazwas), and she'd just spent 14 months riding around the world and this was to be her last day before flying back home! I couldn't believe our fortune, and we spent hours at dinner sharing stories, travel insights, and basically just bathing in the bliss of knowing that we were all the same type of crazy.

The next day, we brought our bike into the cargo area of the Montréal airport, weighed it with all its stuff on (we now know it's 323 kg), got our gear scanned, and said our goodbyes to the bike and almost everything we owned as the cargo crew got ready to fly it out to Heathrow. We took one last look at the bike, then hitched a cab to the departures terminal of the airport, and waited for our flight to Qatar.

Since there are no direct flights from Canada to South Africa, we had to have a layover somewhere. The bike was taking a different path from us and would be transferring in London. But Tim and I were going to have a long layover in Qatar, and I was excited because my plan was to actually leave the airport and see something of the country.

After 12.5 hours of being cramped in a plane, we were not feeling our freshest when we arrived in the Persian Gulf country of Qatar (said like “cutter", but “kataar" is also accepted). And actually, the Doha airport turned out to be so nice, there was almost no reason to leave it (the best airport I've ever been to), but I'm so glad we did. Because our few hours in Qatar equated to a real feast for the senses.

Qatar is a tiny oil-rich country sticking out like a thumb between Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Best known for its state-funded news network Al-Jazeera, and its award-winning airlines Qatar Airways, the country is ruled by a young king called Emir Tamim Al-Thani in an absolute monarchy.

​And although the majority of the people living there are not Qatari (88% are foreign workers coming mostly from India and Pakistan), Qataris are classified as the richest people on earth. Qatar will also be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which will mean it's the first Arab country to do so, but that honor has been tainted by allegations of bribery.

Soccer aside, because Doha is clean, safe, and was a historic port known for trading incense, silks, and Persian rugs, I had the feeling that I was going to enjoy visiting it.

At last, we made our way out of the souq (market) and toward the oceanfront where traditional wooden boats called dhows were moored. Because Doha is situated on a small bay, we could actually see the skyline of the modern downtown area across the water of the bay, the lights of its skyscrapers glittering along its placid waves. Behind us, the golden-lit minaret of Fanar Mosque called out the last prayer, and the nearly-full moon rose up beside it. I felt like I was in one of the thousand-and-one Arabian nights.

And so we left Qatar, thankful for our tiny but impactful experience there. And back at the airport we got ourselves ready for the last leg of the journey.

After our 9 hour layover in Qatar, we were looking forward to (not really) another 10.5 hour flight from there to Cape Town, South Africa. Since we can't sleep well on flights, we arrived so exhausted, I didn't feel human anymore, like I was just a ghost walking around.

A cab took us to our Airbnb, and we took a much-needed shower and nap. Actually it was a seventeen hour nap. Yes, that's right. 17.

Since our arrival, it's been a few days of resting and trying to get on the local schedule as we wait for our motorcycle to arrive. Maybe it's still in the cargo hold of London's Heathrow Airport, or maybe it's on a plane right now 36,000 feet in the air crossing the Sahara... but it will meet us here soon and we'll be reunited with our trusty steed that will take us across this great continent.

Our next post will be about our first impressions of South Africa, from tasting the local food to taking in the views from Table Mountain, plus we've have our first encounter with African wildlife!

So stay tuned!

I would like to thank all of our subscribers, readers, and followers for being a part of our journey and of our lives. Because just as we try to inspire others to live out their dreams, it is all of you out there who help us get through the tough times by your constant support.

A special thanks this week to Shaun Sartin and Brandon Lever. Your contributions to our journey will fill both gas tanks and bellies.

After twenty months of being on the road, going from our home in Chicago all the way down to the southernmost point in Argentina, I’d say Tim and I have learned a thing or two about living as travelers. Especially since both of us have to pack everything we’d ever need onto one motorcycle, we really have gotten to know what’s absolutely essential, and what isn’t worth its weight.

I haven't written a post in a while, but that's because we're back home in Chicago for a break before heading off to Africa, and life here has been pretty normal. 

The regular American grind used to be our daily reality: waking up to the sound of the alarm, getting the coffee machine brewing before our eyes were properly opened, running from an air-conditioned building to an air-conditioned car, then coming home to turn on Wheel of Fortune or some other brain mush show until falling asleep. It's not a terrible existence, in fact, there's something very comforting and lovely about it. It's predictable, controlled, and best of all, here in Chicago, our friends and family are always close by, and weekends are spent visiting one another with good food and laughter.

Two years on the road are now in the books (and soon to be in physical books). From Chicago to Ushuaia, and back up to Iguazu Falls, the questions are now: what worked and what did not?

As I write this sitting on my dorm bunkbed in Buenos Aires, I'm coming to the gut-stabbing realization that this is the end. Well, at least it's the end of South America for us.

Because in a few days we fly ourselves and our bike back home to Chicago for a few months' rest before we then head on to Africa. But as I reflect on all that we've seen and done not just in the past two years of travel, but also in the past two weeks here in Argentina, I know that at least we ended our Great Americas Journey with a bang. Or a splash I guess I should say.

Traveling is not always easy. It's not like the eternal vacation we all had in our minds when planning things out, and sometimes it can beat us down.

After having a slew of bike issues in the flat and windy far reaches of Patagonia, we were just about ready to give up and go home. Tim and I weren't exactly enjoying ourselves anymore, because if you could see our faces from inside our helmets as we strained against the relentless wind, you would've noticed that we were grimacing and probably swearing with every bad word we could think of.

Intense winds are awful, but our motorcycle falling apart brought us to a whole new level of frustration. The worst was the day after I wrote my last blog, March 3rd. We'd just spent $1,000 on bike repairs, got new tires, a new chain, an oil change, and we were thrilled to be back on the road again... until we got to Puerto Natales, Chile, and noticed oil dripping out of every spot on the engine that it could find. It was a disaster, and we felt defeated.

We've made it to the end of the world: the most southern point that you can get to by road on the planet, which is quite an accomplishment, but it has not been without its obstacles. We've had one bike problem after the next, so much so that we are now stuck in Punta Arenas, Chile until we can get the proper parts flown in to this section of the world.

More than a month ago in northern Chile, the engine started overheating on crisp and cold days. So we took it in to the KTM workshop in Santiago where they fixed the water pump, changed out the coolant, and we figured our bike issues were behind us.

Riding along Chile's Austral Highway wasn't just my dream, it's been a dream of the Chilean people to connect the remote villages of western Patagonia since the 1950's. Completed in 2003, the highway is now called Route 7, or the Carretera Austral (meaning the southern highway), and it passes through mountains of snow, lakes of fresh glacial water, and it goes from temperate rainforests to desert bluffs in 770 miles (1,240 km) of weaving and winding paved bliss.

​Of course, we had to go.