We’re 82 year old best friends who traveled around the world in 80 days – that’s how it was

In Travel + Leisure’s Traveling Like column, we’re talking to travelers about what it’s like to explore the world through their unique perspectives. We spoke to Sandy Hazelip and Ellie Hamby, two 82-year-old single great-grandmothers, who travel the world together with an infectious, positive spirit. Their adventures will be documented in a Penguin Random House book called “Happy Place,” which will be released next year.

Sandy Hazelip: I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, in a very modest family and got married in my late 20s to a wonderful person. Our son developed diabetes when he was a baby, so I became interested in learning about medicine. When I was 34, I told my husband I wanted to go to college to be a doctor. From day one, he was my cheerleader. I started medical school at age 39 and opened my practice in 1985.

Then my husband died in 1999. But before he got sick, he mentioned that we should take our grandchildren on mission trips. Six months after his death, a young doctor told me he would be attending a medical missions workshop the following weekend in Dallas. I went to meet Ellie Hamby and her husband, who were the directors of the Zambia Medical Mission. I began serving a mission, and Ellie and I became good friends.

Ellie Hamby: I grew up as a farm girl in Oklahoma and lived in a very small town until I graduated high school. I got married and then went to college. My husband was a professor at Abilene Christian University. We ended up going to Zambia and lived there for six years in the 1980s. When we returned to university, we were approached to run a medical mission.

None of us were doctors [professionals], but I’ve been known to organize everything my entire life. We started organizing a medical mission to Zambia in the 1990s. It’s one of the biggest medical missions in the world and I’m still running it. We see 2,000 to 3,000 patients a day, six days a week, at the clinic. Sandy is one of the doctors, going every two years for the past 20-odd years.

About five years after Sandy’s husband passed away, my husband passed away in a tennis accident. Sandy called me about a month later. I was still adjusting to her sudden death. She said, ‘I’m moving my doctor’s office to Abilene and I don’t want to leave my house in Eastland, so I need a bed a few nights a week. If you give me a bed, I’ll take you to eat.

That was 19 years ago. Except when we’re traveling, she’s usually at my house one or two nights a week. We stay up late, drink coffee, and start to realize that we like doing things the same. Our friendship developed from two terrible tragedies, but it was a beautiful thing because tragedy touches us all. This doesn’t mean your life is over. We both had phenomenal husbands. We loved them very much. But we developed this great friendship.

Our outlook on life is similar: we are very happy people, we believe in the goodness of humanity and we are not afraid to try new things.

I had already traveled a lot, having been to around 115 countries.

About three years after Sandy started staying at my house, we took our first trip together in 2008. We went on the Trans-Siberian Railway – not the tourist train. We made the entire journey on the popular second class train.

Hazelip: Our third trip together was in 2011 – we were in Syria when the war broke out.

Hamby: We were sleeping in a Bedouin tent in Palmyra, in the Syrian desert. We had already traveled all over Syria on public buses – two 72-year-old women with backpacks.

The problem was that there were no tourists in Palmyra and we were going to Jordan, but we hadn’t paid for the hotel and there were no ATMs in the city, nor did they accept credit cards. Mohammad from the hotel organized everything for us – his mother prepared a wonderful meal for us that evening and he arranged for us to go with a driver to Damascus, about five hours away.

We got there and the entire square was full of soldiers holding AK-47s. Our driver came to them and must have said that these two elderly women needed to withdraw money from an ATM. They dropped their weapons. We prayed that there would be money – and there was. Then Mohammad told us to get into an unmarked white car on the side of the road to take us to Jordan – and that’s what happened. So we’ve already had some wild experiences.

Hazelip: We’re old enough to remember the movie and the book “Around the World in 80 Days,” so two or three years before I turned 80, I said to Ellie, ‘Why don’t we go around the world in 80 days? , when we are 80 years old?

Hamby: My first reaction was, ‘What?!’ About 30 seconds later, ‘Why not?’ We told our family and friends. I think most of them felt like it would never happen. It’s a pretty scary thing, and we didn’t realize how scary it was until we completed it and got all this recognition.

We use the Oneworld Alliance Round the World fare, which is great. You have to go to six continents and that gives you 16 flight segments. You circumnavigate the world in one direction. This made it useful and saved us money.

Hazelip: You can make your own itinerary – just follow the rules. When we arrived in a country and wanted to see more things, we used our air miles and flew to these other places. Occasionally we had to buy a ticket. Our average hotel room over the 80 days was $29 per person, per night – and that usually included breakfast.

Hamby: Our best deal was $13.50 at the Royal Pyramids Inn in Cairo. We had to enter through an alley, but when we reached the roof, there were the pyramids. And then the lights come on at night – we watch for free.

Hazelip: When other women say they would love to travel with us, the first thing I do is look at their hands. If they have well-groomed nails, they probably won’t want to travel with us.

Hamby: We do not have a travel agent. We book all the hotels ourselves; we book our flights and when we have a problem we have to solve it because there is no one we can call. And we don’t have any men carrying our luggage.

Hazelip: We had originally planned to do our around the world trip when we were 80, but COVID shut it down, so we went when we were 81, and our theme was…

Hazelip and Hamby: Around the world in 80 days at 81 and still on the run.

Hamby: We start in Antarctica. It is one of the most inspiring places to set foot in the world. Standing there and taking a 360º turn around – what you see is unbelievable. The immensity of Antarctica, the icy mountains, the icebergs, the water, the penguins everywhere — it’s unbelievable.

Hazelip: So we were in the Arctic Circle. We had a driver in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland. One day he said, ‘Would you like to go dog sledding today?’ I thought it would be a tiny ride, like at the Texas fair, so we said yes.

Hamby: He had a whole pack of huskies. We walked four miles through the forest, making sharp turns and holding on for dear life. And it was minus four degrees.

Hazelip: We came back and said, ‘Wow, that was fun!’ The other day he asked if we wanted to see the reindeer farm. Turns out it was on his family’s farm that he grew up and we were able to feed the reindeer.

Hamby: Sandy and I don’t plan often. Things just happen. We really trust the locals to organize things for us. In Bali, for example, we got a driver for $50 for eight hours. When we saw something we wanted to do, we could do it. We saw a sign that said ‘Happy Swing’ so he headed back. They were the most fun swings over the rice fields.

Hazelip: In the end, we said we don’t go on vacation – people get tired when they go on vacation. We set out on an adventure and each adventure prepared us for the next.

Ellie found a saying that I love: ‘The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page.’

One of the wonders of the world we had planned to see on the trip was Machu Picchu, but political unrest prevented it. Ellie and I are eternal optimists. We were sure that when we got there, everything would be over. Three days before our flight to Peru, we had to make the decision to cancel it.

So this year, we are now in South America, with Machu Picchu being the last place we stopped. We’re having so much fun and our new theme is…

Hazelip and Hamby: We are 82 years old and we are not done yet.

Hamby: We are in La Paz, Bolivia, more than 3,600 meters above sea level. We went up to the Valley of the Moon the other day and a whole group of Bolivians applauded when we reached the top.

On this trip we fished for piranhas in the Amazon. I caught three, but Sandy caught the biggest one. We ate that night with piranha stew, which was very good. We also went alligator hunting – and caught two. I went swimming with pink dolphins in the Amazon. We are not afraid to venture out.

Hazelip: We are not afraid to have fun.

Hamby: Also, FYI, between Sandy and I, we have four artificial knees. These things happen to all of us as we age, and you need to work hard, get physical therapy and stay positive.

Hazelip: Ellie’s family is used to her wild travels. My family is trying to get used to this. I promise I will text them every day. I let them know we are safe.

Hamby: In our planning, there are some things our children don’t need to know. They didn’t need to know that we were going to fish for piranhas, for example. Why would we tell them and let them freak out? They will be able to find out later when they see photos of the piranha we captured.

We’ll keep traveling as long as we can – and we can make up sayings. We don’t have it for 83 and 84, but for 85 it will be “We’re 85 and we’re still alive.”

We hope to be able to travel as long as our health lasts. So far we’re doing well, but we know we’re getting older and there will come a time when we won’t make it. We don’t let age determine what we want to do. We are fearless travelers, we don’t like nightlife and we don’t look for men. We’re just two single women on an adventure.

Hazelip: We have one wonderful adventure after another every day.

Hamby: The language of South America has been a little more complicated than most, but Sandy and I say there is a universal language, and that is a smile. We use this over and over again.