For those unfamiliar with Maltese geography, and we were very much among them, the nation isn’t just one island but a small constellation of seven landmasses, three of which are inhabited. Our destination was Gozo, the second largest, reached by a brisk ferry from Malta’s northern tip.
Nation one hundred arrived at Malta’s International Airport. It’s been a little over a decade since I set foot on Hawaii’s sun-drenched and rum-soaked shore, starting my voyage to all one hundred and ninety-six sovereign states.
After the infamous lead pipe affair on Beirut’s outskirts, my trip around Lebanon took a gentler turn with a drive north to the picturesque coastal town of Batroun. The weather was perfect: a sweltering Mediterranean morning under a sharp blue sky.
My journey from Damascus to Beirut began not with the predictable comfort of a scheduled bus or taxi, but in a dusty suburb, completely unsure as to where I was, waiting in hope for a shared car to appear.
Day two in Damascus began with a sober reminder that, despite recent signs of normality, the scars of conflict still run deep. Khaldoun, my ever-insightful guide, led me out early into streets bustling with morning routines—most notably, queues of patient locals lined up to collect daily rations of fresh bread, which remains a part of everyday life from long before the Assad regime ended.
Following the stability of Jordan, I found myself crossing into Syria—a place caught between the trauma of its recent past and the uncertainty of its future. Assad’s regime had finally collapsed in December, and with new visa requirements soon to include land borders (as they already did at Damascus airport), the window to visit Syria was quickly narrowing.
I arrived at Wadi Rum just as dusk was starting to soften the edges of my rocky surroundings. My guide, a lively Bedouin named Fahdi, promptly tossed me into the back of his pickup truck, revved the engine, and took off at a scarcely believable pace given the ‘road’ we were on.
Stepping off the plane at Queen Alia Airport in Jordan, it struck me immediately that I had significantly underestimated the heat. I'd read the forecasts, of course, but they'd seemed quite abstract until I was actually marinating beneath a sun intense enough to weld my T-shirt to my spine before I’d even reached passport control.
So, after sixteen days cruising the Caribbean, we found ourselves back on the sunlit shores of Barbados, the island where our colourful voyage had first begun. With our flight home not until the evening, it seemed entirely fitting—indeed almost compulsory—to dedicate our remaining hours to the pastime most famously synonymous with Barbados: the enthusiastic consumption of rum.
By the time we reached Dominica—our final new nation of the trip—levels of ‘cruise fatigue’ resulting from too much food, too little sleep, and an endless supply of Heineken were at an all-time high.
