Inspired by a late-night, travel-themed TikTok session, I set a goal for myself to hit 50 countries by the time I turn 50. I was 41 at the time (late 2023) and I had considered myself decently traveled, so it seemed an entirely attainable and even fun goal. But then I started to crunch the numbers. I’d only been to 17 countries, meaning I have eight years to visit 33 countries (an average of four new countries per year). Suddenly, those repeat trips to France (5x!), Mexico (2x), Italy (2x), Spain (4x), Ireland (3x), England (3x) and Iceland (2x) seemed moronic. All those places in the Caribbean that feel like countries (Guadeloupe, Martinique) aren’t countries at all. Maybe I should have set the goal at all 50 states by the time of 50. After crunching those numbers (36), that seems closer to reality. And what counts as a visit to a new country? Surely, you have to leave the airport… but do you have to spend the night?
Eventually, I settled on some ground rules:
- You don’t have to spend the night
- You do have to leave the airport or get off the train
- Traveling on a train through a country does not count. You must get off the train.
- You have to have at least one meal (outside the airport)
- For example, heading into Frankfurt for schnitzel during a 6-hour layover coming home from (Country #16) Tunisia = (Country #17) Germany✅
- A country has to be generally recognized as a country by a majority of my close family members
- The reason this is vague is because ‘recognized by the UN’ or ‘has a team play in the Olympics’ or ‘has an emoji flag’ were eventually dismissed as possible qualifications. The only country that’s debatably not a country on my current list below is Northern Ireland, but since most of my immediately family has been there, and believes it’s its own country, it counts as a country. Also, I make the rules.
Now that the rules had been established, I had to get to work on how to average four new countries a year, while a) staying employed and b) balancing outside forces like my family who loves Mexico and friends who like to travel, but aren’t hell-bent on hitting my list of places. With two vacations already in the books for 2024 (Mexico in February and Iceland in April), we’re almost halfway through the year and I haven’t gone to a single new country. Luckily, we have a friend’s birthday trip to St. John in the Virgin Islands planned for the end of the year and this is where some strategy and creative thinking comes into play.
My strategy at this point is to visit places where you can easily get to neighboring countries. For example, if we leave early before rendezvousing in St. John, we can fly to Panama, and then onto a town in southern Colombia that borders Peru and Brazil. Is it going to feel more like the Amazing Race than a vacation? I guess we’ll see. But on the upside, that’s four new countries for 2024.
Stats, as of April 2024
Countries:
- United States (yes, it counts)
- Canada
- Ireland
- England
- Jordan
- Dominican Republic
- Italy
- France
- Spain
- Portugal
- Monaco
- Iceland
- Netherlands
- Northern Ireland
- Mexico
- Tunisia
- Germany
Continents:
- North America
- Europe
- Africa
- Asia
So many places to go, so little time…