And every single day was an adventure.”Īlthough Hamby and Hazelip have finished their worldly quest and returned home to Texas, the two are already planning for their next trip, they told CNN.Īnd they shared a crucial piece of advice for any travelers worried about the language barrier on their own adventures. “We always say when we started this, we did not plan a vacation,” she added. We just have friends now all over the world that we love dearly.” “We met some of the most wonderful, kindest, friendliest people in the world. “We love all the sights that we saw, but the things that we remember the most are the people that we met,” she said. “We just understand each other and we know this is a good thing we’re doing and we kind of respect each other’s feelings.”įor Hamby, the highlight of the trip was the people they met along the way. But we seem to allow each other to give space,” said Hamby. Over the past three months, the pair have ridden camels in Egypt, met elephants in Bali, danced in Nepal, and observed the Northern Lights in Finland.Īnd despite the challenges international travel presents, the best friends say they finished their trip without any arguments. So we went this year, and our theme was, ‘At 81 and still on the run.'” “And COVID shut those plans down,” Hazelip went on. Originally, the two planned to disembark in 2022 when they were 80 years old. “We miss you and wish you were joining our adventure,” they write. On their website, Hamby and Hazelip say they dedicated the trip to their late husbands, Kelly and Don. “And so about four years before we were going to turn 80, I mentioned to her one day, ‘Ellie, wouldn’t it be fun to go around the world in 80 days at age 80?'” “I just got the idea because we had traveled previously together internationally,” she said. Hazelip says the idea for their trip originated a few years before they were each set to turn 80. Both became closer as widows after Hamby’s husband died in 2005. GET MORE FEEL-GOOD NEWS: Captive orca Lolita set for release into ‘home waters’ after 50 years at Miami Seaquarium Credit: two bonded over their shared interest in travel and commitment to prioritizing unique experiences over comfort and amenities while abroad. This led her to the Zambia Medical Mission, a project run by Hamby and her husband in southern Africa. Before his death, he “planted the seed in my heart that we should start taking our grandsons on mission trips in the summer,” she said. Hazelip told CNN that she met Hamby after her husband died in 1999. They’ve also accrued a loving social media following who track the “traveling grannies” on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Since that first venture, the pair have visited 18 countries across all seven continents, often while clad in matching T-shirts. “The beauty of the Antarctic is just unbelievable to see the penguins and the icebergs and the glaciers - just, this was amazing.” “But when we stepped foot on the ground on the Antarctic, you forgot all of that,” she recalled. “For almost two days, we were a rocking and rolling and a slipping and sliding through the Drake Passage and we were holding on for dear life,” Hamby said in an interview with CNN. Getting to the southernmost continent first required crossing the Drake Passage, the notoriously rough waters between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands.
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