My wife and I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit many countries while working overseas as teachers. The following nations were visited. I am only including those we actually set foot in, though some were only for a brief stop on the way to somewhere else.
USA (where I was born and grew up), Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama (where we lived, first in the Canal Zone and later when it turned into Panama in the Canal Area 27 years), Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (four visits), Dominica, Antigua, Jamaica, Australia (Cairns), Japan (lived there five years), South Korea, China (Shanghai), The Philippines (Cebu and Mactan Islands), Palau, Indonesia (Bali), Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, The United Arab Emirates (Dubai), Egypt, Turkey, Malta, Greece, Italy (lived there four years), Vatican City, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, The United Kingdom (including Wales and Northern Ireland), Ireland, Spain (lived there four years), Portugal, Croatia, and Montenegro. Other places not nations: Puerto Rico, US and British Virgin Islands, St. Martin (both sides, French and Dutch), Anguilla, St. Bart’s, Saipan, Guam, Alaska, Hawaii (Oahu and Kauai), Okinawa, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Galapagos Islands, Azores.
Notable trips: After finishing my teaching credential my new wife, Diane, and I drove a VW camper down the Inter American Highway to the Canal Zone, where Diane grew up and her mother sisters lived. We camped along the way and enjoyed visiting and viewing Mexico and the Central American countries. We drove back and I looked for my first teaching job, while still camping in our VW.
After two years teaching in California and earning a masters degree I was hired to teach social studies in the Canal Zone. During our 27 years working next to the Canal we took a variety of trips: to Puerto Rico to watch our son play football with a Balboa High School All-Star team against Antilles High School in San Juan, to Bogota, Costa Rica to do river rafting and later to learn white water kayaking, to Jamaica and Montego Bay for Thanksgiving Break with the kids, and we traveled to the US on home leave and visited as many different US places as we could. My favorite long trip was with one of my sons by bus and boat from Panama to Mexico, where we finished going to California by plane, from Merida to Mexico City and on to Mexicali, finishing by Grey hound to San Jose, CA. We nudged along the Caribbean Coast, stayed in back pack hostels, met interesting travelers on the long bus trips, visited Mayan ruins, the islands off Belize, and Roatan, where we helped rescue an orphan baby whale and did some awesome snorkeling The best short trip was with Diane and a group of teachers from Panama on a cruise through the Galapagos Islands, sponsored by Panama Canal College’s zoology professor .We hung out with friendly animals, swam with seals, and I had a bird land on my foot and sit there. Wonderful experiences.
We took another long trip with two of our sons to Ecuador to take Spanish classes. Then bused to Peru and flew to Lima’s airport to connect on a flight to Cuzco .We hiked to Machu Pichu, flew to Lake Titicaca and took a boat to the island in the middle of the lake, bused to La Paz, flew to Arica, Chile, and took a taxi in the Atacama Desert back to Peru to catch flights home to Panama.
When we lived in Japan we took a variety of trips to visit Asian and Pacific nations. Short holiday trips to Shanghai, Guam, The Philippines, Saipan, Palau, Cairns in Northern Australia where we snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef and visited an Aborigine theme park, and tried bungee jumping, visited teacher friends in Okinawa, took an MWR trip to Kyoto, visited a friend in Singapore on the way to Bali and later during an around the world trip. We used a Star Alliance deal to fly from Japan to Thailand, where we trekked to the hill people out of Changmai, and rode elephants. Visited Phuket and snorkeled out of Koh Phi Phi. We flew to Gerogetown, Penang in Malaysia and bused to Kuala Lumpur and stayed near the Petronas Twin Towers, which were closed when I walked over there. From there we flew to Singapore and had dinner with a former post doc from Stanford who was a prominent statistics professor at the local university. We visited the interesting Night Zoo and an aquarium. After Singapore we flew to Dubai and stayed at a nice hotel on the beach. The Gulf waters were hot and camels walked on the beach. The hotel pools were cooled. From there we flew to Frankfurt, then Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, Montreal, and Boston, where we went to Nashua for Diane’s education seminar. I flew to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a two week doctoral seminar and a weekend canoe trip on the St. Claire River. We finished the summer in California and then returned to Japan, after circling the globe. We made several trips to Korea, where our son was teaching English and married a Korean beauty. We also took a women’s volleyball team to a high school tournament there.
From Italy we took trips to Barcelona, Prague, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Sicily, Malta, and the sights in Italy itself. A favorite hike was the Cinque Terra, and we had nice visits to Sorrento and Positano. We took a cruise from Civitavecciaia to the Aegean Islands, Santorrini, Rhodes, and Ephesus in Turkey. From Spain we traveled to Segovia, Madrid, Grenada, Malaga, Tenerife (while there was a volcano scare in Iceland that stopped flights to norther Europe), Portugal Algave, the Picos de Europa, where we visited the mock up of Altamira Cave art, to Bilbao, into France at Biarritz, where we rented a car and drove the the Dordogne Region to see the mock up of Lascaux Cave’s art. Then on to Disney Paris with the grandkids up from Italy. We also took a cruise from Venice to Croatia and Montenegro before returning to California for retirement.
We did three sailing trips to the Virgin Islands and added St. Vincent twice to the trip, as well as a stop on Dominica. Another sailing trip with Spinnaker Sailing Club was to the Renaissance Islands from St. Martin, and a trip to the Windward Islands of Tahiti. Great snorkeling on all these trips.
We joined our son in Sicily for a summer at the beach. My last overseas trip was recently to London for the International Hawaiian Outrigger Races at Eton’s rowing lake, Dorney. Our over seventy-five crew took a third place medal.