65. Go Anyway: Sabbaticals, Chronic Disease and Family of 6 Travel with Dr. Sarah Gebauer

🌍 Dr. Sarah Gebauer, author of the Go Anyway book, shares how her family of six explored 54 countries in four years, created a custom sabbatical policy as a practicing physician, and traveled with a child with a chronic disease!

👍 We cover the realities of balancing a demanding medical career with family sabbaticals, language learning on the road and practical frameworks for making extended travel possible!

LISTEN NOW TO:

• Learn why professionals have more leverage than they think to take sabbaticals
• Discover language tips like local school enrollment in Spain and French family tutors in France
• Unpack the logistics of traveling internationally with Type 1 Diabetes
• Master the financial and lifestyle levers of long-term travel and keeping a homebase
• Explore how to navigate kids that don't want to travel at first!

RESOURCES:

• Go Anyway: The Practical Guide to Long-Term Travel With Kids on Amazon
• Book website

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Transcript

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Suzy

Think long-term family travel is impossible with a demanding career? Think again. Today I'm joined by Dr. Sarah Gebauer, an anesthesiologist, mom of four, and the author of the book Go Anyway: The Practical Guide to Long Term Travel with Kids. We dive into how her family explored 54 countries in four years using mini sabbaticals, how she convinced her medical practice to approve long-term leave, and the benefit of keeping a home base, and how they navigate education and languages on the go with four kids. We also talk about navigating travel with a child with type 1 diabetes. Stick around until the end where Sarah drops her top family friendly destination picks that just might surprise you.

Welcome to the Wander World School Podcast. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today we get to know Sarah Gebauer. Please tell me a little bit more about you and your family and where you're calling in from today.

Sarah

Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be on the podcast and really excited to help your listeners also learn more about what we did and how possible it is to take some of these shorter sabbaticals and make them happen. I'm Sarah Gebauer, I'm a physician. My husband and I have four kids. We're based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which is a small ski town in Northwest Colorado. We've spent much of the last several years outside of the country. We've gone to over 50 countries together in the last four years, mostly doing between one and six months, but mostly about three to five months at a time. And I just published a book about it called Go Anyway: The Practical Guide to Long-Term Travel with Kids.

Suzy

I'm so excited to learn more about your book and the resources that it can provide for traveling families that are considering launching into short or long term travels or exactly like what you've done, being able to get away for a couple of months at a time is a great way to get started. But before we talk about your family travels, as well as the book, I'd love to hear more about where your love for travel started.

Sarah

I grew up in Texas and didn't even leave the country until I was 20. I literally did not have a passport. My parents still don't have passports. I took a college class and went to Cuba and that was the first time I'd been anywhere that felt, of course, so foreign. I mean, that's such a different place to go for your first country to leave the country. I studied abroad in Spain after that, then continued traveling quite a bit on my own actually in my 20s and then met my husband walking up to Everest Base Camp when I was on my 27th birthday. And that was a good indication that we were both the kind of people that would travel in the future as a family. Once we had four kids in five years, we all assumed that we'd stop and we did for a while. The kids were really small and exhausting. And then

really COVID hit and we realized we might not ever be able to do what we were planning to do. And that really galvanized us for when the world opened back up, we kind of left immediately after that.

Suzy

And when did you fit medical school in there?

Sarah

The last year of medical school, the last month I had off and I said, well, I'm never going to have fun again in my whole life. Like, well, Everest Base Camp sounds like an exciting place. And I didn't have anyone who wanted to go with me, so I went by myself and met my husband there. So it was my residency and fellowship after that.

Suzy

That's perfect that you put it in and paid off in many different ways. I did the Everest Base Camp when I was 29, quit my job for a while, and it was very challenging and very memorable. And it's something that I thought, should I do that again with my kids? Have you been back to Nepal with your kids?

Sarah

No, we're actually thinking about doing it right now, though. It's almost our 20 year anniversary of when we met there, so we've had this thought that we might go during that time.

I agree it's very challenging. But my favorite part was just you meet, you know, obviously, I met a very special person. But because everyone at least then was staying in the same kinds of tea houses, there you got to meet people from all different walks of life all over the world. There were backpackers who were 18 with no money, and then there were people who had paid $100,000 to go on that expedition. And sitting around a yak dung fire at night and talking and learning about each other's stories, I thought was the most fun part of the trip.

Suzy

Oh, absolutely.

I'd love to hear more about choosing a career like being a physician and then also the desire for travel that you have and how to fit that in with a demanding career as well.

Sarah

It's a great question, and I think it is something that makes physicians and a lot of people, like you said, with demanding careers think that this is just off the table. They are kind of done before they even begin thinking about it because "I couldn't leave my job." I actually think that professionals have the most bargaining power in their work, much more so than a lot of people, and their jobs are in high demand. Their skills are things people really want, and they can arrange things more easily if they ask for them. I work in a small group. I have seven partners who are wonderful—other anesthesiologists that I work with—and we're all equal. It's a democratically run group. I actually created a sabbatical policy for our group specifically for me to be able to go on this trip. And that was really about:

How can I arrange this so I get to do what I want to do, but also no one feels like, you know, that made them lose money or that made them have to work more or they get resentful? So how can we do this in a really fair way? To my great delight, I've actually had several partners do the same thing. They hadn't really thought about doing it necessarily or taking more than a couple of weeks off. Like, that's the usual American thing, right? Two weeks is the maximum you could imagine. And once I put this sabbatical policy in place, I had one partner bike the Continental Divide Trail, another partner went to Ireland to her ancestral home,

and it's a great retention tool. You know, people will stay around to be able to have that flexibility in their lives, especially professionals, because they usually have probably enough money or they can kind of piece together enough money, but the time and the ability to do that is really important.

Suzy

That's great to hear. I also imagine that it is allowing someone to have a demanding career and make it more sustainable, because it's not work, work, work, and then retire and then finally enjoy life—I get to do that along the way. And that also ties in with making travel sustainable. Maybe we're not going to quit everything and hit the road; we're going to fit it in with real life as well, which means that we can do more over maybe a longer period of time, which is what it sounds like your family travels have looked like. So tell me a little more about the 54 countries you've been to in the last four years. What has that looked like for your family?

Sarah

Yeah, the first trip we didn't know if we were going to take subsequent trips. So we were kind of like, well, let's do all the things we want to do. Our youngest was six and we decided to travel for five months.

So we first went to Colombia where we met our language tutor that we had worked with for a long time online. It was lovely. And then we went to the Galapagos for three weeks, which was a really incredible experience. And then to Egypt, Morocco, and then settled in a small town in Spain, and then went to Israel, Jordan, Dubai, Indonesia, Australia, Tahiti.

After that we did a Southeast Asia tour. The one after that was Balkans in Eastern Europe, so we ended up on that trip going to all kinds of places that most people have never been to, like Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, and North Macedonia were all really incredible. And most recently we did a month in Greece followed by two months in the French Alps learning French with a language tutor. So for the three months we were in Spain, our kids were in a local Spanish school, so we focused on language learning. And then when we were in France, of course, we focused on learning language as a family as well. It turned out it was great because kids love to correct their parents and they learn language more quickly than adults. So highly recommend, because it's a great motivator for your kids to be able to correct you with your pronunciation and the words you use.

Suzy

Yeah, they love to see that their parents don't know everything.

Sarah

That's right.

Suzy

That's a great way to humble ourselves. And I love that idea of learning together as a family. So languages have been important with your journey. Have you been able to keep them up in some way doing the online language tutoring? Has that motivated your children to want to continue with languages?

Sarah

So our kids have been doing online language lessons with the same tutor in Colombia, who's wonderful. And actually our middle school has been really great in accommodating, and the high school, in allowing them to do online language lessons instead of the regularly scheduled Spanish class, which they would be far ahead of their peers in.

And it has motivated them. My oldest son actually just got a scholarship to study Arabic. So we're going to go to Morocco and study Arabic and French there. But he really wanted to be able to speak Arabic and to be able to understand what people were saying in one of his favorite places. It's interesting to see what really grabs them and how they want to interact with language. But we have definitely focused on wanting to be able to let them have the ability to travel to places with at least some kind of language ability.

Suzy

Yeah, very true. And you never know what doors will open up with language and what your kids will be interested in. Just curious, navigating kids' opinions on travel, especially with four kids, how does that look like?

Sarah

Yeah, they did not want to go. So this is another thing that I hear from parents all the time. Like, "Well, I'd really want to do that, but, you know, my kid doesn't want to go."

I mean, they have nothing to compare that to. For them, all it is is a loss—a loss of routine, all these things they think of, "I'm going to lose all these things." They just haven't had the life experience to say, "But look what I'll—everything I'll gain." You know, not just the things that parents think about, like language and the ability to navigate a subway and all those good life skills, but also just the perspective and the self-confidence to be able to know you can land somewhere and you'll be fine. When we presented the idea, my oldest son was kind of like, "Can't we just go for two weeks? Like, that seems good enough to me." My daughter was very concerned she would forget how to speak English because we were going to a Spanish-speaking place, and I was like, "Well, that would be really best case scenario, to be honest."

They were not excited. They kind of grudgingly went along with it. And then when we were on our way back from Tahiti, they were like, "We don't want to come back. Can you just quit your job? Let's just keep traveling. This is so fun." And they've been very enthusiastic about the subsequent trips.

It's actually easier once you go to more places for them to make connections and for it to be more meaningful and more enjoyable. So, for example, when we're in Rome and we see the Vatican and see the Pope, and then you go to Egypt and you see where the Crusaders crossed off, crossed out all the faces of the Egyptian gods on the walls, it makes a lot more sense to them when they have some kind of context for it, as it does for all of us. And it's also just become part of their identity. I mean, we put them in a school in Spain, they spoke no Spanish, and we said, "Good luck." And then when we came back, they were starting new schools.

I was like, "Are you nervous? How do you feel about starting this new school?" And they were like, "Well, we just went to school where we couldn't even speak the language. Like, this really isn't that big a deal in the scheme of things." So I think it gives them some perspective, too, and self-confidence that they can handle things and that they can navigate new situations.

Suzy

You bring up a great point that especially with travel, we know that there's a lot to be gained, and that once you try it out, you as a family will decide, "Let's keep going," or "Let's adapt," or "Maybe that was enough." But you really don't know until you get out there how kids are actually going to respond to travel. It's probably going to work out just great and that they are going to love these opportunities. They just don't know yet what they don't know.

Sarah

Exactly. And we always try to frame it as: it's either going to be a good time or a good story.

You know, when you're puking off the boat going between Galapagos Islands—great family memory. Everyone laughs every time. So there's a lot of opportunity for understanding that a good experience doesn't necessarily mean that it's fun all the time, too.

Suzy

Very true. And so you've been juggling school in Steamboat Springs and then school along the way. Tell me a bit more about what education has looked like while traveling for you and your family.

Sarah

I think we've tried every possible way to do homeschooling over the years. It's very age dependent, depending on your kid. So when they're younger, certainly in elementary school, it's just a lot easier. Whereas once they get to high school, they actually need credit and they have to take exams. It makes it definitely more challenging.

So we think about kind of this go-go travel versus settled travel. So the go-go travel is, you know, usually for us when you're traveling between every one to five nights. We try to stay at least three nights in each place that we go just because it's pretty exhausting otherwise. We have them do schoolwork on buses, on trains, on airplanes, things like that. But we did all online schooling during that period. There are so many good resources now online, obviously Khan Academy, Duolingo...

And then when we were in France, we did a lot of workbooks because we found that just not having the kids on screens all day was nice. And the older kids, we enrolled in a school that our high school has an affiliation with, which has been great. And a lot of high schools now in the U.S. have some kind of online school affiliation.

So it's the same as if he were there taking the classes, which has been great. Obviously the level of instruction is much lower—no real human to ask any questions. So my husband and I and the different AI chat tools have been very helpful, and especially reminding us how to do some of our math homework from many years ago. And then the younger kids, the schools have just said, "It sounds like a great experience. Let us know when you're back." We do have to unenroll them and then re-enroll them every time, but that hasn't been an issue so far. And the school has been just really supportive. Usually the kids have done a presentation about their travel to their class or to their grade every time they've come back. We also make them write essays when we're gone connecting those—because my husband and I love history—connecting different parts of history. So,

we have just kind of fitted it in where it made the most sense for us. And when we're settled, it's a lot easier to do schoolwork. And if you're working—which I have been also, I work remotely when we're gone for the most part as well—routine is definitely easier the more settled you are.

Suzy

I think it's great to moderate the tempo for whatever your family needs or desires, but just knowing that go-go travel is not sustainable forever. It depends on the family.

Sarah

Yeah. You know, for us, we really found that five weeks was our limit. So after five weeks—I don't know what's magic about that, but it seems very consistent for us—so five weeks and then we need at least two weeks in the same place. Two weeks that we don't feel the need to every day be spending 8 to 10 hours doing cool stuff that we might never get to do again. So we'll either go to a place that we've already been or go to a place that we know is going to be a little slower paced. So once we went to Rome for a couple weeks because we had been there before and loved it and there was lots to do, but we also knew that we didn't have to do something every single day if we were just feeling like taking it a little easier and that we could just eat pizza and then we'd feel very happy.

We've definitely found that you have to plan those breaks in or else everybody gets really worn down after a while.

Suzy

And you mentioned a little bit that you are working remotely as a consultant when you travel. You also were the lead architect of making sabbaticals part of your practice, which I think is genius.

Tell me a little bit more about how you've been financially and logistically able to plan all this while maintaining work and all the other things that you have to do as a family.

Sarah

That's a huge question that I get. You know, my husband has been staying home since our oldest was born, so I am the primary breadwinner. You know, so it is very possible. I think people get really locked into "I need to make a certain amount per year" without realizing that their expenses may be very different if they're in a different country. So there are several levers that I talked about in the book in terms of things you can change to decrease the cost of the trip or to increase your income. You can work more before you leave, whether that's picking up a second gig or working more hours at your primary job, which was easy as a doctor to do. So that's mostly what I did. And then worked a little more when I came back as well. And then you can work while you're there. So that may be getting a different job than the one you have right now that you can do remotely.

And then there's also, you know, you probably have assets like a house or other things that you can rent out and that can also provide income. So these days you can rent your car, you can rent your house, you can rent your driveway. And then the biggest piece is that you can go somewhere very cheap and stay there, and that will guarantee you that it will cost less than your current life in the U.S. So if the amount you need to make now is X, that may be half or a third of what you actually need to live on.

Suzy

Very true. If you're home and you're maybe spending there and you work extra, you save up because you know that this trip is coming up—it gives you that extra motivation.

What's a financial snapshot that you've experienced on your trip?

Sarah

So when we're settled, we try to stay somewhere that's relatively inexpensive. So when we were in Spain, our monthly rent for a 1,200-square-foot apartment that included a cleaner twice a week was $1,200 a month. And that was in a great area right across from the plaza. Kids went outside and played every day with local kids, played soccer.

We eat at a lot of grocery stores when we travel—you know, in Asia, more convenience stores or malls, but it's very affordable for the most part. And you can make a pretty good meal almost anywhere you are by shopping at a grocery store instead of sitting down at a restaurant, especially with six people.

When we travel, I generally spend the same amount on lodging no matter where we are. If we're going somewhere expensive, we've definitely stayed in many hostels. If we're going to a place where it's not as expensive, then you get to stay at a nicer hotel.

A, it helps with planning, because this is how much I'm willing to spend per night pretty much any place, and so that narrows down the options and you have an idea of how much you're going to spend. But also it is nice to have every once in a while a nicer, fancier hotel. I mean, my kids, the first time we traveled all around the Galapagos and the Middle East, and then we got to Bali and they said, "Wow, this is a really nice hotel. There's hot water!" And you're like, "Yes, keeping the expectations steady, I think, is important."

And then in terms of transportation, of course, flying and moving people around is always our biggest expense.

We have been very saddened to see that it is more expensive to use trains in most places than to fly. We would much rather use trains, both for the environmental impact and then also because my son has type 1 diabetes, we have to go through a very long security process every time we get on a plane. It would be much more pleasant to just get onto a train and not have to go through all of that. We are often flexible in where we go, and just kind of like, where can we get to cheaply with a non-stop flight or an easy train ride or a bus, and we just go to that place. Almost everywhere is pretty cool once you get there if you have an open mind about things.

Suzy

That's a great mindset to have—just be open to adventure.

You put all of your expertise into the Go Anyway book. What led you to write the book and who do you think would most benefit from reading it?

Sarah

The biggest inspiration was a doctor that I worked with who's in his 60s now. And he said, "Gosh, you know, I always wanted to do that. We always wanted to do that as a family. And then it just never seemed like quite the right time. You know, the kids were too young, and then once they were not too young, they were in too many activities and they didn't want to leave or we didn't want them to leave. And then they were in high school and we just didn't want to mess up their academic progress. And now they're adults and they have jobs, and that opportunity is gone." And he said, "That's one of my biggest regrets about parenting, is not taking that adventure when we could have." And so I really wrote the book to help people realize that there really are always going to be reasons not to do this.

And I just wanted to make it more accessible in a very concrete way to people who might say, "I would love to do this, but..." and really kind of provide some answers and frameworks and advice about what worked for us to people who might be in that situation.

Suzy

I do appreciate when someone shares that perspective with me. I've heard it before too: "I wish we had done that when they were younger." And I'm just so thankful that we are opting for that now. And there might be other things that we wish when we're older, but at least I'll know that we had this desire and we took action on it. And it's helpful to have resources like your book to help you get out the door. You mentioned your son has type 1 diabetes.

How old is he now? When was he diagnosed? And then what has that looked like with traveling?

Sarah

He was five, almost six when he was diagnosed, and he's now nine, almost 10. And it was only six weeks before we were supposed to leave for our first big trip. It was completely out of the blue. No one in our family has diabetes. I mean, I'm a doctor, but that was honestly not that helpful because it's a lot of technology, a lot of gear, a lot of stuff that I just didn't deal with intimately as a physician, and learning it all as a parent was a lot to deal with. We thought the doctors would say, "No, don't go on this crazy trip to very remote places." They said, "No, you'll be fine. Just do the normal things that you would normally do if they were sick. Kids get sick in the U.S., they get sick abroad, you know." And we're so glad they did because that gave us the confidence to go ahead and go anyway.

Almost every culture has some kind of low-carb option. Actually, Europe is the hardest because they have a lot of pastries and pasta and bread as their primary meals. Whereas places like Latin America where it's a lot of meats, beans, avocado, eggs, which are all very good low-carb foods. And then the Middle East: a lot of kebabs, tomato-cucumber salad, hummus—all very good low-carb foods.

And then we figured out the gear pieces, which involve cooling insulin in special coolers that will keep insulin cool for 48 hours at a time. We then transfer it to a refrigerator while we're traveling, and we bring all of his medical devices with us—enough for several months at a time, and usually an extra few months just in case. The hardest part, honestly, is going through airport security.

They have to be hand-checked, which inevitably involves the chief of security coming down and talking to us and checking my son and checking the devices and looking at them, especially in countries where they don't have these devices yet; they're very new. Once in Azerbaijan, they woke up the airport doctor in the middle of the night to have him come and say, "Yes, this actually does exist."

And, you know, people have been very kind for the most part, but it does mean we have to schedule an extra hour every single time. But if that's the biggest inconvenience that we have... Otherwise, my son has been very healthy. He's never been hospitalized. His glucose levels have been really remarkable.

It's totally possible, even with a chronic illness, to manage a lot of this. It takes some extra planning and some extra negotiating with insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers, but totally doable.

Suzy

Absolutely. With just a little extra planning, it is all figure-outable. But I do agree that the technology has gotten so impressive with type 1 diabetes management.

Are there any other challenges that you've experienced as a family? I mean, you've been able to overcome, like you said, chronic illness, but are there any other challenges that you've overcome as a family?

Sarah

We've really been very lucky. Our kids have been very adaptable and really fantastic. I think for the kids, the biggest thing that they feel like is a challenge is leaving their pets. They really miss their pets.

I would never think, "I wonder what our cat is doing right now," but they really think about that quite a bit. One of our sons was diagnosed with a shellfish allergy very randomly. He had been eating shrimp his whole life, and then suddenly it made his throat swell up. Of course, in Southeast Asia and a lot of places, in the fish sauce and a lot of dishes, there is shrimp. And we were able, by doing some exposure therapy, to decrease his amount of shrimp allergy, so that was reassuring.

Suzy

Yeah. What have been some of those positive parts about traveling as a family, and then especially since you're traveling while still having that home base? I'm curious how that's played a role, too.

Sarah

As you mentioned, having the home base has been really helpful for us. A lot of people think, "We have to either totally move and leave our life behind, or we can only go for two weeks." I think having something in between that has been great for us because we get to more deeply explore. We get to spend more time as a family. Really, the biggest benefit for us has just been that time together as a family. You know, when we're here at home, they have birthday parties and work and activities, and people are kind of off in different directions doing things. I think a lot of modern families can relate to that. When we're traveling, we are spending breakfast, lunch, and dinner—we are eating every meal together. We are spending all the time in between every meal together going to museums or sites or whatever we're doing that day. So just the cumulative amount of time where we're actually together as a family, talking to each other and having new adventures, is so much higher when we travel than it is in our regular life. And it's really just allowed us, my husband and me, to get to know our kids better and to understand them better and to have more shared points of reference as a family and just more special moments that we can reference.

And then also just seeing the kids become more confident in themselves and their abilities as we travel. They think of themselves as travelers. So, for example, they are much more likely to speak up in geography and history class because they have been to a lot of these places. My son reads The Economist every day, and, you know, he is aware of where these places are that they're talking about and who the leaders are.

But I will say that having the home base has been really helpful for us. It has allowed us just kind of the financial stability in terms of having a job to come back to, which is always nice and reassuring. But then also just having them have the same friends. We're in our small town, they go back to the same school, it's the same people. You know, honestly, usually not that much has happened. You know, a lot of times we go for three months, from like the beginning of August through the end of October or something, and, you know, kids haven't done that much—like maybe they had a soccer season. But that's been great also because it just gives them that stability and friendships, and they know they're going to see their friends again and when they're going to see them, and being able to keep in touch has been a really nice way to balance the desire for something new and adventure with the desire to have some kind of stability as well.

Suzy

And I wonder if that affects socialization in the sense that when families travel for an extended period of time, they might really need or want—or maybe need—for the kids to seek out socialization. Certainly your four are close in age, which might be helpful or might not sometimes. But also, if you're traveling for, you said, three months at a time, let's enjoy this time as a family together and see what we see. And I'm sure their socialization when they're in school in Spain or at the playground... kids will be kids, but there's maybe less of this need for seeking out these opportunities because we know that we have this to come back to. And I think that can be really reassuring for families that have a strong home base that they like, or that really want to maintain friendships there—that it is possible while still incorporating travel. Because like you said, I notice that too. I'm like, not much has happened while we've been gone for five months. It feels like you could just jump right back in sometimes, especially kids; they're just so adaptable. So I'm curious what your thoughts are about the socialization piece, especially with teens and tweens when you're traveling, and how that has interplayed with your desire to keep your home base strong as well.

Sarah

Yeah, well, the first time, you know, I was so worried when we put them in school in Spain because I didn't want it to be a terrible experience and I didn't want them to be miserable. And so they came back from the first day of school, and I was like, "You know, did you play with anybody? Did you make any friends?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, we have friends." I go, "Great! You made friends, that's wonderful! What are their names?" "Oh, I don't know. We just played soccer." You know, you kind of forget that's all you need. It doesn't have to be a whole big thing; it could just be like, "We're friends, we played, that's great, that's all it needs to be." It doesn't have to be as heavy as some adults sometimes try to make it or think it should be. And then for teens and tweens it is harder, for sure. Technology helps; kids call their friends every weekend because the time change is hard to do, and they text with them quite a bit as well. They have no social media accounts at all, but they are allowed to text with their friends.

Suzy

That's awesome. Let's wrap up with the lightning round. Let's start with: you can only ever visit or live in three countries. What are they?

Sarah

French Polynesia, Morocco, and Singapore.

Suzy

And what is one item that you cannot travel without?

Sarah

A pill case—a small pill case that I can put all of our pills into a very small container.

Suzy

What is the first thing you always do when you arrive somewhere new?

Sarah

We usually go on a free walking tour to just get a sense of the layout of the city, meet someone local, and ask them for recommendations.

Suzy

Very smart. If you could teleport to one place right now, where would it be?

Sarah

Right now it is cold and raining in Steamboat, so I think I'm going to have to pick Mo'orea in French Polynesia, which is a beautiful beach with amazing stingrays and blacktip reef sharks that just swim around you in shallow water.

Suzy

And do you recommend French Polynesia for families? Because whenever I hear about it, I think of honeymoons, couple retreats, so I'm curious how welcoming to families it would be.

Sarah

Well, there are several islands, so it depends on the island. We went to Mo'orea, which is 30 minutes from Tahiti on a ferry, and it's an atoll, so it's very shallow for about 100 feet out—so no waves and great for small kids. And then also the kids can just put goggles on instead of a snorkel and just squat down and see all the fish instead of having to swim and snorkel at the same time, which is amazing and much preferred for children, especially under 10 or so. It really is island dependent. We stayed at a hostel when we went, and it was great and friendly. They had a shared bike that you could use and a shared kitchen, and it was easy.

Suzy

That sounds wonderful. I know that there is endless advice I'm sure in your book that people should go check out, but what is one piece of advice for a family just starting out that you would start with?

Sarah

The main piece of advice is to think about all the ways it could work, and not all the ways that it might not work. Really just try to think of the obstacles as something you can figure out rather than fixed things that will never move. Because if you want them to, they really will over time.

Suzy

Very well said. And where can people learn more about you and more about the Go Anyway book?

Sarah

Well, my website, goanywaybook.com, has a link to the book, and then it's available on Amazon as well in Kindle and paperback form. So I would love to have your readers read and reach out, and I love to talk to people about this. This is a passion of mine, and I would love it if even one person decided to go ahead and go on a trip that they were hoping to go on because of this book. I'm thrilled to be here with you and talk more about traveling that I know is so important to both of us, so I really appreciate your time.

Suzy

Yes, thank you so much. I'll make sure to link all that so people can check it out. Thank you.