My 2012 Travel Resolutions

Every year, we make resolutions for the New Year. It is the typical procrastinators excuse … “I’ll wait till the New Year to start the gym/diet/travelling etc”

For me, after I’ve made out my mental New Year’s resolution check list to lose weight, be nicer to people, organize my life, get married; I always go back to the top of that New Year’s check list and add ‘travel more!’. Travel keeps my sanity in check during a busy year of work schedules, project plans, and all the hectic personal and social events that life presents us with on a hourly and daily basis … that being said I’ve really stopped making resolutions and I just make plans!

Here are my 5 travel resolutions in no particular order …

1. Antarctica:
• This is on many people’s bucket list, but I’ve resolved that I will step foot on the last continent for Christmas 2012. Antarctica’s tour season covers about five months, mostly over the Southern Hemisphere summer (November to March). All other times of the year are extremely cold, dark, and the pack ice freezes out a long way.
• I don’t care what the hole in my budget is … this is the ONE travel destination where budget travel is not much of an option unless I’m going to work hard on some boat – This will not happen!! I’m expecting at least US$5,000 and this is using airline points and hotel points  and this will only cover the bare necessities –  but who cares how you got there … as long you get there!!
2. Get my country count to 80+
• I’ve hit my goal of 70 countries before 35, so the upcoming year I’m aiming to get to 10 new countries. Antarctica doesn’t count as a new country, so I will have to figure out how to spread the love. The tentative country plan will be the following
• Dominica in February … Hopefully, I’ll recreate the blog post listed.
• Ecuador and Galapagos Islands in March
• Peru and Machu Picchu in April
• El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in June
• Turkey, Greece, Hungary and Poland in
• St. Lucia and Martinique in May
• Antarctica in December
3. Get to Carnival 2012 in the best shape possible
• This won’t happen. But I’m going to try my best … 3 months of working out and I’ve only dropped 20lbs, but at least I won’t embarass myself in my costume.
4. Revisit an old favorite
• There are spots that are meaningful to us all, whether it be somewhere in your own town, a honeymoon spot, or somewhere you went as a child. I think that I would like do somewhere old that’s new for someone else 😛
• I’m thinking Paris again. It’s been 7 years since I was in France … why not??
5. Challenge yourself
• I would like to do something that would be outside of the typical travel routine, I’ve developed. Maybe hiking Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail.

Here are my 5 travel behaviour resolutions in no particular order …

1. I will make every effort in the year ahead to be courteous and respectful to airport and airline personnel and members of the TSA; they work under unusually stressful conditions, fielding enormous pressures, and they deserve our smiles and understanding.
2. I will constantly remind myself of the moral obligation to leave a generous tip to the chambermaids who have made up my hotel room — theirs’ is an underpaid profession and I should supplement the measly wages of the hotel chains.
3. I will avoid traveling on airlines that delight in public-be-damned attitudes, the companies that exult in an openly-expressed disdain for the traveler, making a virtual point of their arrogant references to the passenger. Screw you Spirit Airlines … forever!
4. I will give some thought (I’m not sure I have the courage to do so) to changing into pajamas on an overnight flight across the Atlantic. First class passengers are currently encouraged to do so (and sometimes supplied with pajamas and robe by the airline); why shouldn’t economy passengers wear the same?
5. I will continue to regard travel not as a mere recreation, but as a serious learning activity, a way of understanding the world, an essential element of a civilized life.