The beginning...

When I first started to tell people about my decision to take a RTW trip, I was expecting to hear that I was crazy.  Instead, the most common response was "I'm not surprised.  That sounds like something you'd do".  I'm not sure if this was due to my inability to stay in one place for longer than a couple of years, or just my persistently stubborn independence.

In the final faculty meeting of the school year, I announced to my colleagues that I would be travelling around the world.  My principal asked "Where exactly do you start with planning that".  My answer:  Google.  Honestly.  I googled RTW trip tickets.  Who knew it would be that easy?  I'd always wanted to travel the world..but thought that would require some communication with a fancy travel agent and the subsequent selling of a kidney on the black market.  Nope.  Google.  After months of comparing companies and websites and reading reviews, I settled on a company.  Here is MY take on how it worked -

THE PROCESS:
1.  Visit a website.
2.  Plug in the places you want to go.
3.  Push 'submit'.

Here is where it differs - some sites will automatically spit out an estimate.  Others will be difficult, saying that portions of your trip don't vibe with their silly rules (a little less dramatically than that).  Finally, some sites will submit your trip for review ultimately forcing you to speak with a representative <shudder>.

THE RULES:
1.  You can only travel in one direction (no crossing the same ocean twice)
2.  You have a minimum and maximum number of stops you can make
3.  You have a mileage limit
4.  You must return to the same country you left from
5.  You must complete the trip in a certain amount of time (i.e. 1 year)

THE RESULT:
I looked at so many different sites that I could hardly list them if I tried.  Ultimately I decided to go with airtreks.com for 3 reasons:
1.  You can break most of those pesky rules.
2.  They are SUPER helpful.  Not that others weren't - but their site is LOADED with info, and their travel consultants are incredibly patient and helpful (I'm indecisive so my process took a while)
3.  I had a coupon....thanks to my friends Steve and Jana who were taking their own trip!  Although, I wish I had checked Facebook first because they had some pretty awesome deals there, too!!

I talked to my airteks travel guy, Chris, for quite a while.  We ironed out details, hashed out dates, discussed how long I should stay in certain places...he was awesome.  I'm sure I'll be carrying on this little travel-mance throughout my trip.  The cost of my tickets also included my travel insurance (score!) AND my Australian visa - which they took care of for me.

Trip Departure - August 14th, 2013
Trip Destinations (not including overland trips) -
 >San Jose, Costa Rica
 >Lima, Peru
 >Santiago, Chile
 >California, USA
 >Auckland, New Zealand
 >Sydney, Australia
 >leaving from Perth, Australia
 >Bangkok, Thailand
 >Madrid, Spain