By Greg Fry

Kamloops couple completes six-year, 84-country odyssey

Sep 20, 2018 | 2:32 PM

KAMLOOPS — Daniel and Sara Pedersen of Kamloops completed the journey of a lifetime this week and returned home with a suitcase full of memories.

The pair was gone for six years and visited 84 countries, 260,000 kilometres in all, including all seven continents.

Daniel, a financial planner, and Sara, a physician, were inspired to make the trip by a promise they made to themselves when they got married more than 20 years ago.

“This harkens back to when Sara and I were first married,” he told CFJC Today. “We made some decisions, like we weren’t going to have children and we discussed in earnest what we wanted to do with our lives and one of the big things is we wanted to see the world.”

He says they decided to make motorcycles their main mode of transportation after talking to another couple who had made a similar trip.

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“And what intrigued us about their journey was the vulnerability aspect and how it really opened you up into experiencing the world, instead of being encapsulated inside a vehicle and being sheltered.”

Daniel says it started when they left their property in Pritchard on June 22, 2012 and a plan to see the Americas.

“And we headed north to Alaska and committed to the southern tip of Argentina,” he says, noting later on things sort of “unfolded as we moved along.”

He says it included visiting every continent, including one of the highlights of their trip, a journey to Antarctica via a Russian ice-breaker.

“To be really honest with you, it really was. You know before going there I was kind of neither here nor there, though Sara was really excited about it,” Daniel says. “But once arriving there and seeing both the ice and the light play, you almost have this living sculpture with infinite types of blues and pinks and then of course you have the wildlife aspect which was out of this world.”

For him, he says South America was the highlight of the trip.

“Because with the motorcycle you need some dovetailing of many different aspects — you need the culture, you need affordability and value for your money. You need interesting roads to ride, and we’re off-road riders, so we like to explore dirt trails. So, I would say South America was the highlight as far as the combining of all those aspects.”

As for Sara, she too enjoyed South America most but says a two-week trip to Iceland was also quite memorable.

“It was just spectacular. The scenery was unbelievable. We didn’t spend enough time there.”

As for the place they felt the most uncomfortable, she says Houston, Texas tops the list.

“Just because of the gun culture and it’s sort of obvious there. A lot of people have handguns and, for us Canadians, it made us feel very uncomfortable.”

Sara said she’d take the trip again if she had the chance, but notes she’d probably manage transportation a little differently.

“Instead of bringing our own motorcycles all around the world, to alleviate the cost and the stress of the shipping, I would say that buying a motorcycle, driving it and selling it and then going to another continent and doing the same thing would probably be a lot easier.”