Okay, so this is mega delayed and let me start off by saying, you have my deepest apologies! I got back from a big trip in late November, jumped straight back into work, then it was a hectic lead up to Christmas and now, well, lol, I am currently home with bloody covid.
2024 was probably my biggest year in travel since the pre covid era. I went on a 7 week honeymoon with my gorgeous wife, went on short trips to Indonesia and Tonga and then went on another massive trip with my Dad towards the years end.
Before we get started on my year in pictures, lets quickly run through some statistics and superlatives.
Number of flights flown: 44
Number of airlines flown: 21
Number of countries visited: 17
Most surreal moment of 2024: Coming face to face with orcas
Best travel day of 2024: Finding a secret glacier in Iceland
Number of travel mishaps: 9
Most stressful travel day: Travelling from Tunisia to Oslo was a multi problem day
Best hotel I stayed in: It’s gotta be a tie between Cempedak Private Island and the Saxon Hotel
Okay, now lets get onto the pictures!
In an effort to use points to fly in the pointy end of the plane on the way to Europe, we ended up taking a two day layover in Tokyo to enable us to fly Japan Airlines business class. We had an absolutely brilliant few days eating, shopping, playing with capybaras and just generally having a phenomenal time.
We spent two glorious weeks driving around Iceland, hiking and exploring during the few daylight hours and cosying up during the long nights. Highlights included our secret glacier spot, a super jeep tour to rarely visited waterfalls in the northern highlands and the bagels at Deig bakery in Reykjavik.
In order to fly cheaply to Greenland we flew via Kangerlussuaq on the good value ‘fly and sleep’ tickets offered by Air Greenland. We had a short layover only but were still able to see some gorgeous reindeer and visit ‘the secret place’ – a spot of Russell Glacier that forms huge towering ice walls that you can walk right up to – spectacular!
Ah, Ilulissat – how I love thee.
My third visit to Ilulissat was wintery perfection. We travelled outside of the main tourist season and thus it meant that booking some activities was tricky but absolutely doable and we saw very few tourists. We did an arctic sauna, slept in an actual igloo and went dog sledding with a champion musher.
After freezing our butts off for the better part of a month, a city break was a nice change of pace. We spent two days in Amsterdam, getting absolutely sloshed and going on multiple random side quests while intoxicated af – ’twas delightful.
We departed from Paris purely because it was how I could snag us business class flights with points as we started to head back towards home. We spent a few days in Paris, visited some museums, ate a lot of pastries and celebrated the 34th birthday of my beautiful wife. As an added bonus, I got the message that one of my besties gave birth to her beautiful baby – also on Ella’s birthday – we happy danced in the queue outside our lunch spot when we got the text.
We broke up the long journey back to Australia with a few nights at one of my favourite places to stay in the world – Cempedak Private Island. Drinking coconuts in our private pool and exploring the many creatures that call Cempedak Island home was the perfect (almost) end to our honeymoon.
Koh Tao on the other hand – meh. We visited to give Ella the chance to do her open water diving course and I must admit, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. People had told me the diving here was great but I thought it was incredibly sub par. However in hindsight, I have done some beyond incredible diving in my time – I may just have been a little bit spoilt in that department and that may be skewing my scales a bit.
Our final stop of the honeymoon was Melbourne for the Eras tour! Our tickets cost about the yearly GDP of some small countries and getting them was a battle but we got there and bloody hell, it was worth every cent and stressful moment.
A few months later I had the opportunity to meet up with some of my best gal pals from Darwin. As Laura now lives in Perth, Chels was (at the time of writing at least) in Darwin and I am down in Adelaide, Bali seemed like the right spot to converge. Chels and I did a freediving course in Amed (a rare non touristy part of Bali) and when Laura arrived it was non stop eating, drinking, spa days, shopping and a bit of hippy shit… sound healing anyone?
Most of the winter months were spent in my Adelaide home. Nights out with friends, concerts with my dad and my precious dog/son’s 2nd birthday were some of the highlights. Married life is absolutely lovely and as much as I love my travels, I also truly love being home with my beautiful family.
The yearly pilgrimage to Tonga was another undeniable success. The whalies were once again uber delightful and I look forward to seeing them again later this year. I keep waiting to get sick of my visits Tonga and well, it definitely hasn’t happened yet!
Dad and I visited Nosy Be with the goal of swimming with whale sharks, an endeavor of which we were ultimately successful, although this actually ended up being far from the highlight. We also saw lemurs, swam with a pod of dolphins and also with a huge fever (and yes, that is the correct collective noun) of mobula rays. Our little hotel was also super lovely and provided a fantastic and affordable place to stay despite the many challenges that come with operating in a country with as poor infrastructure as Madagascar is infamous for.
We drove from Nosy Be to Diego Suarez in the north and this whole experience was plagued with issues. Hotel in Diego was a nightmare, tour organiser was useless (although our actual local guide was a sweetie) and we very narrowly avoided some major issues that would plague domestic flights just a few days after our departure. I ended up moving our domestic connection forward a bit because I had a Bad Feeling™ that ended up being spot on. Gotta trust your gut!
I surprised my Dad with an incredible stay at The Saxon Hotel in Jozi on our layover from Madagascar to Tunisia. This is easily the best hotel in Joburg and more importantly, was the home of Nelson Mandela as he edited Long Walk to Freedom. My grandfather was raised in KwaZulu-Natal and actually attended the same school as Mandela when he was a young boy (albeit a couple of years separated them) and thus I knew that Dad would find a stay at The Saxon truly memorable.
From Jozi we ventured to Tunisia with the sole goal of being the biggest Star Wars nerds possible. Much of my personal favourite Star Wars film (episode one) was filmed in Tunisia and thus we wanted to visit as many of the filming locations as we could in one short week. Our guide was fantastic, Tunisia was safe and gorgeous and we had such a fun and Star Warsy week.
The culmination of our epic trip was a week in northern Norway. Basically, I had plans to do this trip in 2020 and finally I was able to make it happen in November of 2024. We flew all the way to Alta with one goal – to swim with orcas – and boy was it incredible.
I have never been colder in my life, swimming in drysuits is super frustrating and we had very limited daylight, and all of those issues aside, this will go down as a highlight of my entire life.
We broke up the trip home with a layover in Singapore. We did all the touristy things, visited the Gardens by the Bay, ate chilli crab, drank singapore slings at Raffles and visited the Art Science museum. Singapore is a touristy spot but I still absolutely love it.
So what is in store for 2025?
Travel plans for 2025 are well and truly underway! I will be heading back to the Maldives for a non-luxe trip in early March, I want to do some more diving in the middle of the year and August will see me return to Tonga for the whalies. I am off to Japan for a short and sweet bucket list trip in September before heading to Europe to celebrate my father-in-laws 70th birthday and ending the year in South America for some epic wildlife and some amazing trekking.
I can’t wait to share posts from Madagascar, Norway and Tunisia and to bring you along on all of my 2025 adventures. Would love to know what adventures you have in store for 2025 so feel free to let me know in the comments!
