This is a summary of our family gap year. Here we give an outline of our itinerary, our philosophy of travel, and what might lay beyond this special time.

In nearly every post I write, I make mention of our family gap year. After all, this blog’s main purpose is to record our experiences and thoughts while our family of five travels long term. At every mention of our gap year, I reach back for a link that sums it all up, but every time I come up empty handed. That’s because we’ve dedicated all of our writing to what we’re learning and experiencing in the moment — as it should be. But it would be nice, at least once, to zoom out and focus on the bigger picture.

So here is an attempt to fill that informational void. This article will summarize all the questions of where, why, and what about our grand adventure. My hope is to give context to all the other content on this site.

What is a Family Gap Year?

A gap year is what happens when a high school graduate realizes they don’t legally have to go to class next fall. They take a year of freedom, because, why not? When a professor takes a long break, it’s called a sabbatical. When a family with kids takes a year off work and school, it’s called a family gap year.

It often involves international travel but doesn’t have to. It could be joining a community and doing a cool or meaningful project, or living in one place with a host family for a year. There might be a goal — writing a book, learning a new skill, experiencing things you would never do back home — but then again, there doesn’t have to be any set purpose. You might find the purpose as you go.

When it comes to traveling with three little boys, it gets complicated. What do you do with the kids’ schooling? The house? How to afford five plane tickets every time you fly? But once you figure out the logistics, it’s essentially the same idea. Take a break from “normal” life, and live it up, learn new things, try new things, and recover that lost sense of wonder.

What Made Us Decide to Do This?

Wanderlust is in my blood. I’ve always dreamed of leaving it all and traveling the world. It was always just a matter of when and how.

The final nudge from fantasy to reality came from the suggestion of a family friend who was gearing up to take their own gap year. Our biggest problem was the house. We couldn’t just leave it there — pipes could burst, branches could fall on it, a gang of squirrels could move in — but we couldn’t bring ourselves to sell it either. We had just spent seven years rehabbing it with much sweat and love.

Our friends had already solved that problem. They were putting their house online as a vacation rental and paying someone to manage it. Brilliant! Home care with the benefit of extra income!

We decided we were going to do it. That was 2019. That same year we were surprised with a third child. We were still determined to do it, but not while lugging a sack of diapers. It became our three-year plan. The delay didn’t matter anyway because we all know what happened in 2020. In fact, it gave us something to work towards and look forward to during the darkest days of the pandemic.

What Do We Hope to Get Out Of It?

That’s a big topic. I’ve devoted several blog posts to various aspects of this topic.

If I were to boil it down to four main points they would be: rest, growth, purpose, and family. It’s a chance to get out in the world and be challenged. It’s a time to lower the stress and catch up on a decade of crappy sleep. It’s a period to reflect on our life’s purpose and where we want to dedicate our time in the long term. And, importantly, it’s a time to spend our fleeting moments as a young-ish family — learning, growing, and experiencing amazing things together — before the kids grow up.

The kids are getting educated on the ways of the world. They are seeing that places can’t be boiled down to simple binaries like dangerous or safe, ugly or pretty, friendly or aloof. They are learning the subtle art of cross-cultural communication and becoming aware of their own privilege as Americans. They are also getting to see another side of their parents — the side that’s fun-loving and adventurous as opposed to anxious and zoned out.

Itinerary

We didn’t plan the whole year in advance. And, in fact, we had to revise even our most high level plans due to continued COVID-related closures in Asia.

What we did decide, more or less, was our general approach to travel. We settled on our travel philosophy. In a word, we wanted to travel slow. We made a preference for seeing more of a few places than trying to see it all. That’s why we will most likely only circle one continent, South America, for the entire year. We will spend a month (or more) at a time in several places. That also means we’ll choose to pass over other interesting and famous destinations.

We had to prioritize our motives. We decided to scratch one potential motive off the list: trying to impress people. We weren’t going to travel to every major city and tourist trap. We weren’t going to circumnavigate the world. In fact, we’d probably spend most of our time in places nobody’s ever heard of, because those are the kinds of places we love best.

The slow approach meets a lot of our highest priorities. It gives us some stability and makes our time more flexible. That’s useful with three boys occasionally getting sick or needing days of rest. It gives the kids a chance to form friendships with the local children. It’s also more affordable and better for the environment to fly less and spend more time in a place. Many of our long-haul journeys can even be done over land since we have the time. The result is a less hectic, more pleasurable travel experience, with still enough changes of scenery to keep the adventure alive!

So now that you know more about our general approach, here is a more specific outline of our past and future travel:

Phase I – The Big Chill

Timeframe: Mid-July through Mid-September, 2022 (2 months)

Places: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Teresópolis, Brazil; Paraty, Brazil;

We promised, pinky swore, and signed our names in blood that we would not plan anything for the first month. No meetings. No work. No getting involved or trying to make the world a better place. Just sleep, sightseeing, and pure leisure.

In fact, the idea sounded so nice, we decided to extend this phase for second month.

The point of this period was to disconnect from our harried former lives and let go of the need to fill our schedules. Two months was a healthy amount of time to disconnect. By the time it was over, we were more than ready for the next phase, volunteering at a sustainable farm.

Phase II – Eco Caminhos Farm Experience

Timeframe: Mid-September to November, 2022 (2 months)

Place: Eco Caminhos Farm – Nova Friburgo, Brazil

After a period of doing nothing, we swung the pendulum the other way. We woke up at the crack of dawn and did hard manual labor. We did construction and farm work. When we weren’t doing that we were sightseeing and attending workshops to learn about agroforestry and bioconstruction.

Having responsibilities and a community to plug into was a welcome change after two months of relaxation.

(Link to Eco Caminhos webiste)

After two months of a structured schedule, and four months in Rio de Janeiro State in Brazil, we were ready to move on to the next phase of our journey, a mixed bag of destinations in Northern Argentina and Uruguay.

Phase III – Northern Argentina and Uruguay

Timeframe: November to the End of 2022

Places: Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, Puerto Iguazu, Argentina; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Quinta Esencia Nature School, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; La Paloma, Uruguay

This period of time is being driven by two factors: a three-week visit by Liuan’s mom and the holidays. We are also sneaking in another 2-week “experience” at Quinta Esencia in Argentina.

As I write this we are in the middle of this phase. I have to admit, I liked our previous slower pace better. This phase is fast-paced. Booking and arranging this much travel is a lot of work and it seems like every few days we are having to pack up for six people (including my mother-in-law) and hit the road. It’s quite exciting though! After four months in Brazil, it’s like starting our travels all over again.

After Quinta Esencia, we will spend Christmas with some friends of friends of work friends living in Uruguay. We will also try to hit pause on the sightseeing and catch up on some homeschooling, blogging, and relaxation before the next action-packed phase.

Phase IV – The “Long Way Up” Patagonia Trek

Timeframe: January through February, 2023

Places: Ushuaia, Argentina; Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, and Puerto Montt, Chile; …still working on the rest of the itinerary

As much as we love just picking a beautiful, quiet place and staying a month, we couldn’t resist “going all in” and working our way up from the southern tip of Patagonia. When else are we going to find $70 plane tickets to the world’s southern-most city? We were also more than a little inspired by the Long Way Up TV series. We use “Long Way Up” as our family’s shorthand term for this phase of our travel.

Sadly, we won’t be able to be improvise and slowly wend our way north (ideally with a Volkswagen Vanagon), which was my initial fantasy. Being summer in the Southern hemisphere, it is high season for tourists. Everything is sold out, crowded or really expensive. (Welcome to Earth at is really is.) So, to make sure we don’t lose out on any decent-value lodging and make sure we have a seat on the bus, we will book everything in advance. We will also plan to spend only a few days in each place along the way.

By the time we are done with our “Long Way Up”, we will be ready once more to revert to a slower pace of travel.

Phase V – Peru / Ecuador / Colombia

Timeframe: March through July, 2023 (or somewhere thereabouts)

Places: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and maybe even Bolivia

We haven’t planned that far in advance yet. Here we will once more stay in places for longer.

We are looking forward to eating ceviche in Peru. In Ecuador, we have friends of friends that started a coffee farm and we hope to arrange a visit. We’ve traveled to Colombia twice and look forward to returning to our favorite places (especially el Eje Cafetera) as well as discovering new locales.

Like we’ve already done, we’ll probably seek out a mix of volunteering opportunities and periods of unstructured time.

After the Year is Done…What Next?

The truth is, we don’t know what’s next. Half of the fun is not knowing. The other half is dreaming about what it will be.

That’s not to say we don’t have ideas. One possibility is that we follow the example of the founder of Eco Caminhos (and other entrepreneurs we’ve met along the way) and embark on our own life project. I’ve long dreamed of designing and running a bed and breakfast in Latin America, possibly with a working coffee farm on the side.

Or we could continue traveling. Asia, anyone?

Then there is the possibility of going back home and picking up where we left off. It’s the option I least wanted to consider at the beginning of our gap year but I’ve slightly warmed up to lately. If we did go that route, we’d likely make some tweaks to our careers, our habits, and maybe even our address to implement a better version of the good life we had before we left.

We are very fortunate to be at a time in our lives where we can ask ourselves the question, how do we want to live? and be able to do something about it. But it’s not a simple choice. Liuan and I have already spent hours discussing this and our conclusions constantly evolve. There are going to be tradeoffs no matter what we do. Just as our philosophy of travel required prioritization, our lives going forward will require a clarification of values. Are we optimizing for meaning? Positive impact? Freedom? A healthy lifestyle? Time together as a family? Adventure? Rooting ourselves in a community? Making life easier? Making life more pleasurable?

Ultimately, Liuan and I (and the kids!) might favor slightly different values, but I’m confident we’ll work our way to an acceptable compromise.

How Can You Follow Us?

If you’ve made it this far, you must be really interested in keeping up with our travels! Here are some ways you can continue to stay connected. You can check back on our blog from time to time. We average about one post a week, but we’re not consistent. Sometimes we’ll publish three in a week, sometimes we’ll go three weeks without posting anything. It all depends on how many things we’re juggling at once and how good the internet connection is wherever we are.

The easiest way to follow us is by subscribing to our newsletter where you will get a monthly email with exclusive content, plus links to all the blog posts we published since last time.

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