Covid is still managing to close borders, create chaos and undo any plans made, but we’re doing our best to keep up with the ever-changing rules and regulations to how Covid continues to affect travel.

Marty wrote a detailed post and checklist for travelling during Covid in 2022.

It includes all the information you need to navigate what you need to do before you go, which travel insurance covers you for Covid and even unexpected quarantine.

It includes what forms, apps and info you need to feel confident about travelling in 2022.

Also, are we any closer to completing our goal of visiting every country?

Summer spent in Victoria – working hard for the money

We spent the first three months of 2021 in a beach town in Victoria, Australia. It’s the best time of year to be in this part of Oz. It’s summer, the days are long, the weather is warm, the beaches are inviting, and it was a chance to spend time with my family.

We even picked up some work in a restaurant that had just opened.

It often surprises many people that we don’t have an endless flow of cash to travel. We sometimes work random jobs here and there to put more money in the bank to continue travelling the world.

If you’re wondering what kind of jobs we do, we talk about them in our post 20 jobs that pay you to travel the world. 

When not at our ‘summer job’, our free time was spent working hard on our travel blog, fishing and enjoying the beach.

Of course, we had Frida our campervan with us, so we took some day trips away too.

It’s worth pointing out that at the beginning of 2021, international borders were still closed due to Covid. They had been since March 2020. Also, the Australian government forbid all Australians from leaving the country (unless you got an exemption from the government to leave).

So, we couldn’t leave Australia even if we wanted to. There was no set date to when Australia would open back up, so we made a plan to do what we do best…to travel!

Go West! 

We left Victoria in early April to head West. You see, Australia is a HUGE country, and when winter comes from July – September in Victoria, it’s the ideal time to be in the northern region of Western Australia.

The weather is perfect up there! 

Our trusty campervan Frida didn’t miss a beat as we first explored South Australia before we drove across the Nullabor (bottom part of Oz) and entered the state of Western Australia.

Luck was definitely on our side as not long after we entered WA, the eastern states entered a hard lockdown (due to rising covid infections).

It lasted many months, and our friends and family back home in Melbourne spent the winter months enduring some of the toughest restrictions in the world.

At the same time, the state of WA closed its borders to pretty much all other states of Australia in the hope of keeping out the virus. There were no cases in this huge state yet, and they wanted to keep it that way.

Exploring Western Australia in our campervan was awesome! 

From May through to early October, we discovered many amazing places in Western Australia.

This beautiful state is full of incredible landscapes, stunning beaches, chilled surf towns, excellent fishing opportunities and magnificent national parks.

We especially loved camping in Karijini National Park. 

We spent a little longer than planned in Broome, a popular place in northern WA.

It’s easy to ‘get stuck’ here as there are many great things to do in Broome to keep you entertained.

It was early October at this point of our journey, and it was getting hot and humid up north. Sleeping in Frida was becoming a little too hot for us.

In addition to that, the wet season was coming next month, and we didn’t want to spend it in Western Australia.

We had plans to begin our big drive towards the east coast again. And, for anyone who doesn’t have a 4×4 equipped for wet, rugged roads and river crossings, it’s best to time it right so you don’t get caught out.

Our 9 tips for doing the Big Lap of Australia include some helpful information that is especially important for travelling this part of Oz. Many parts of WA are quite remote, and being prepared for anything is key to having an amazing time.

It’s best to take the time to plan this trip according to the seasons in Australia.

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So, where do we go now?

There aren’t too many options for what direction to go from there. We decided to drive back towards Northern Territory, and then see what happens.

After several long days of driving, listening to podcasts, fuel stops and coffee breaks at some random roadhouses along the way, we reached the town of Katherine in NT. 

We felt a sense of ‘Deja Vu. Flashes of 2020 came to mind….but it was 2021! The reason it all felt so familiar is that we were here at this very same time last year. It also meant that we had officially completed the Big Lap of Oz. 

We’d done the entire journey around Oz, and then some! Probably close to 35,000km we had driven around our beautiful country, and I have to mention it again – Frida was amazing!

It will be a difficult day when we have to sell her.

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So really, where do we go from here?

We had two options. Should we drive east, across Australia to reach the coast of Queensland? Or should we drive south towards Victoria, towards home?

We drove east, towards the Queensland coast, because the weather is warmer there. Days later, we made it to Townsville, turned north and arrived in Cairns. 

We love this part of the country, and we had a few weeks to enjoy it before the wet season sets in and it gets stifling hot here too.

We visited good friends, ate great food (don’t miss our post on the best cheap eats in Cairns if you’re heading there), discovered Fitzroy island and revisited all of our favourite beaches in Cairns. 

We also enjoyed one of our favourite house-sits ever in Trinity Beach, Cairns. We got to take care of a beautiful home and two labradoodle dogs, they were gorgeous.

We love the Aussie Housesitters website to take housesitting gigs around the country. Check it out if it interests you, and use our referral code VMYBJ5 to join up with Aussie House Sitters and receive a $10 discount off your membership!

And, when we get the chance to travel internationally again, we’ll be using our Trusted Housesitters membership. There are some amazing housesits out there to do, and we can’t wait.

Get 25% off your membership if you sign up using our referral link.

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International borders are open!

Early November arrived and we were still in Cairns. It was here that we received news that international borders are opening back up near the end of November!

We had our eye on one country to go and visit while we could, Libya.

We quickly enquired about arranging a trip there and looked at international flights online.

Wow, we found a flight on Skyscanner (all the best flight deals are found here) from Melbourne to Berlin for an incredibly low price.

It was with a low-cost, long-haul airline called FlyScoot. How was that price even possible? We booked it there and then in the hope that we could make other arrangements for a trip to Libya all come together.

Read our honest review on whether we’d FlyScoot again.

Let’s drive home

Ok, international borders are open, it’s early November and we’ve just booked a flight to Europe for the end of the month. We had to start driving home, we had a good 3000 km or so to cover to reach home. 

We took a detour to the Libyan embassy in Canberra on the way and lodged our visa, left our passports with them and continued driving home to Victoria.

It’s always a nice feeling to arrive home and see family. We unpacked Frida, gave her a spring clean and parked her in the backyard of my parent’s home. Now, we just had to wait for our Libyan visas to be approved and our passports quickly returned by mail.

After an anxious few days, they arrived! We had our visa, yes! 

Let’s leave Australia!

Tunisia & Libya

We felt amazing after our super cheap flight from Melbourne to Berlin via Singapore! We got so much sleep on both flights. Nobody else was on board, so we got to stretch out and rest. 

We flew directly to Tunisia and spent a few days in Tunis’s capital city. This is a great city, and we loved exploring the Medina in Tunis and trying as much Tunisian food as possible.

These 8 popular street foods of Tunisia were delicious.

Check out our 10 Best Tips for Independent Travellers in Tunisia. 

We also wrote the Perfect 14 Days Itinerary for Tunisia, which is based on our experiences and includes lots of helpful and detailed information that is difficult to find online.

We then flew to Tripoli in Libya and spent almost a week discovering this fascinating country. It was great to reach our country number 187, leaving only 8 countries left on our adventure to visit them all.

We had such a good time here, and the ancient Roman cities blew us away. Both Leptis Magna and the city of Sabratha were incredible places to visit.

So far, the best Roman ruins we’ve ever seen. 

We received many questions about what it’s really like to visit Libya, as it is one of the least visited countries in the world. Also, there isn’t too much information to be found out there about it.

It’s not an easy task (or a cheap one) at all to arrange a trip here, however, we tried to answer all of these questions and more in our post – How to visit Libya – what you need to know. 

After Libya, we returned to Tunisia, explored the country for another two weeks, and had a fantastic time! You can head to our Tunisia destination page on our website to learn more about our thoughts on this country.

We had planned to enter Israel in early December (this country is still on our unvisited list), but Covid strikes again!

We booked our flights to Tel Aviv, Israel from Tunisia, and literally the following day we woke to the news that it had just closed its borders to tourists and couldn’t give a date for re-opening. *sigh*

Plan B or C

We extended our time and explored a little more of Tunisia before booking flights to return to Europe for Christmas with Marty’s family. We flew into Prague, the Czech Republic first to stay with Marty’s sister and it was a good excuse to spend time in one of our favourite cities in the world. 

We spent our time eating the best Czech food in Prague, our favourite 6 places to eat are always consistent and delicious. Then, as it neared Christmas time, we took the train to Slovakia and spent a wonderful Christmas with Marty’s family. 

As we write this, it’s lightly snowing outside as we sip on traditional Slovak herbal liqueur while watching Christmas movies on the couch. It’s nice, really nice.

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RELATED POST – The 2 Best Travel Insurance Companies

Our plan for the future

If we counted the number of times we’ve been asked “What’s your plans” over the past few years, we’d be very rich!

The honest answer is, who knows? Ideally, we’d love to be able to travel to the remaining 8 countries left on our list, but in reality, that still unfortunately may take some time.

The nations in the South Pacific that we have left to visit are closed and they don’t look like opening back up anytime soon. So, it’s anyone’s guess where we’ll go. 

For now, we’re just happy that we have our health, time to spend with family and the freedom again to travel internationally if we wish.

You may see us pop up in Southeast Asia or perhaps South America; it’s undecided – and that’s OK with us.

More Travel Tips

We have so many tips to help you travel more!

These 21 cheapest countries to visit will help you stretch your hard-earned dollars further.

Read our top 6 travel hacks to save money and the 20 best travel apps to make travel easier! 

For food lovers, don’t miss our top 10 best countries for foodies. And, if history is your thing, these 30 amazing historical places worldwide will fascinate you!

We have many tips to save money for travel and consider these 20 jobs that PAY YOU to travel the world to help you travel longer.

If you become a trusted housesitter, you can also get FREE accommodation worldwide. Read more about how this works.

Check out our ultimate packing list for travellers, and remember to pack travel insurance! We recommend these two travel insurance companies for excellent coverage.

Our 12 essential tips for safe travel in any country are worth a read. 

You’ll need to stay connected while travelling the world. We recommend eSIM. It’s easy, reliable and affordable. View eSIMs for individual countries, or consider a Global eSIM if you travel to multiple countries or regions. This eSIM connects you in 124 countries, offering data-only eSIM and data/call/text eSIM.

The Global eSIM has been a game-changer; we couldn’t imagine travelling without it now.

If you want to travel with like-minded travellers, consider joining a group tour.

Check our Group Tours first for any upcoming trips you may be interested to join, or view these deals on worldwide group tours with Tourradar.

Check out our best-ever travel tips compiled from more than twenty years of experience.