Our year of travelling with Dora is coming to an end.  This does not mean that we do not travel any more, but rather that this one years project of extensive and globe-covering travels is now over.

We could not have had a better ending than we did, by being united with extended family in Washington D.C.  To celebrate the 70th birthday of Gudrun´s father, we spent a week in a large family home between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

S-Africa was one of the “big rocks” when we started planning our 1 year long journey.  Gudrun and Benedikt had been to Cape Town before and this time we wanted to explore more and show Dora this beautiful country.

Diversity and the enormous gap between “those that have and those that don´t” is the first thing that stands out when just driving from the airport past several kilometers of what they call Townships.  The other main thing is simply the beautiful landscape.

In Dubai, they have all the highest, longest, biggest and best of everything. It is amazing to see this city that only a decade ago was only a fraction of what it is today. The speed of building and the ambition put into being “the best” is mind-boggling. It was an exceptionally clean and friendly city to visit and even it is probably the most modern city in the world, the atmosphere is very “chilled”. 

After Pirate´s Cove we spend some time in L.A., Barrington and Iceland before taking off again for our Christmas vacation to Holland.

This time it would be the four of us as Atli, Dora´s 21 year old brother joined us.  We felt sorry to leave their oldest brother Björn at home, but he was enjoying the holiday with his girlfriend Eva and their nice “little” husky dog, Máni.

The atmosphere in Holland was very festive.  Families doing their holiday shopping at Christmas markets and town centrals but also enjoying all the special treats like the very Dutch olijenbollen and poffertjes.

The whole team had been looking forward to our long weekend at Pirate´s Cove.  When we stayed with Sandie Tillotson in her Hawaii residence in May, we had all been invited to join her and her friends this weekend in November.

Originally Benedikt had signed up for the NY marathon this weekend, but he did not want to miss out on this weekend for anything.  The marathon will have to be another time.

Las Vegas! A playground for grown ups.  Coming to Las Vegas was just like we had anticipated.  This city has been featured in numerous Hollywood movies so all the glamour and extreme was to be expected.  Still, everything is so unreal that an entire city can run on entertaining people.

After a pretty tight schedule during Convention time, we had been looking very much forward to the coming week.

We had made plans with our very good friends from business to take a week off and do a trip together that we called “our Blue Diamond trip”.  As we have all been in the business for 14-16 years we all reached the level of Blue Diamonds before Nu Skin started to take the BD to Las Vegas and Pirates Cove.  Our next three blogs will be devoted to this trip.

It was a long drive through the “nothingness” of Nevada to get from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. 

But coming to Salt Lake was very friendly as we (Gudrun and Benedikt) have been there numerous times since 1997 or since the beginning of our Nu Skin journey.  Dora had good memories of a Convention in Salt Lake she attended with her brothers and us a few years back. 

We checked into the Hilton hotel to stay for 10 nights and just realized that this was the longest we had stayed in one place for several weeks.

Driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco will take just over 5 hours if you drive straight on the highway.  We decided that we wanted to explore a little and drove a bit longer but instead saw the coastline and small towns on the way.

We took off early morning, after breakfast in L.A. and headed direction Santa Barbara to begin with.

We were a little unsure about our journey to Puno and Lake Titicaca, after the marvelous trip to Machu Picchu.  Perhaps it had to do with the high altitudes or that we heard people surprised about us staying this long time in Puno.  But we would find out that this southern area of Peru also had its specialty and was well worth the travels.

Machu Picchu was surely one of the main reasons we initially decided to travel to Peru.  We all more and less had some personal interest for this historic place.  Now we were almost there and the excitement was clear and we wondered how this would actually turn out.  Well the short version is simple – it was magical and beyond our expectations.  This is a destination that we do encourage everyone to visit, at least once in his or her lifetime.

We had heard a lot of good things about Cusco before coming, like the center area was full of ruins and historical monuments.  One thing we did not realize was that Cusco (pronounced Cosco in Inca language) means Navel or Center of the Universe in the Inca culture.

This was the center place in the Inca Empire with Inca trails in all directions and several hundred of Sacred places or temples in direct lines from Cusco.  The usual walk in one day was exactly 12 km.  And therefore there are resting places with water and supplies every 12 km, when going by foot from Cusco.

This part of our travel schedule was already very special for the fact that we went to Peru with Gudrun´s father, Kristjan, and his spouse Ditta.  We had been planning for this trip since early this year and all had high expectations.  We met up in Florida and went together to Lima ready for some whole new experiences.

It has been a long term plan to visit Florida.  With both friends and family living in Fort Lauderdale and Miami we had many reasons to add the area to our travel plans.  It turned out that September is not the best time of year to travel to this renowned vacation place.  We still enjoyed getting to know the area.

This was one of those ideas.  We just said "how about taking a tour and see the Niagara Falls".  A few days later we where on our way.  It was a long weekend in the schools, so we were joined by the whole family of Gudrun´s sister.  It was a pretty long drive, but both Toronto and the Falls impressed us.

We took the flight to Boston, enjoying the full comfort of our favourite Icelandair airline.  Arriving there late afternoon and after the typical passport checks etc, we came out and felt the heatwave.  It had been a hot summer in USA.  We jumped on the bus and headed towards Providence.

We went back to Iceland to spend the summer after our Hawaii and Japan trip.  Late July we welcomed about 40 Nu Skin leaders, Diamonds, Blue Diamonds and Team Elites, from all over Europe to our home country.  It was an adventurous week of activities and leadership program.  We just love these kind of events.

What a country! Not only is the country spectacular, but the people are absolutely special. We were treated like royalties from the moment we came. Fantastic food and a lot of brand new experiences with the best of friends.

What a fantastic family time!  All seven of us ( us with our three children and the girlfriends) spending unforgettable time together.  We could not have chosen a better or more beautiful location to have such a journey.  This will be a memory for a lifetime for us all.

Every year Nu Skin brings all the Team Elite Executives to an exclusive location as a reward for a job well done.  This year we went to the beautiful island of Kauai on Hawaii.  What an experience, with great people and incredibly beautiful surroundings.