By Matt Skoufalos
After you’ve visited 82 different countries in the world – and you’re counting down the next 100 you have yet to tour – it might be easy to feel like you’ve seen nearly everything there is to see. But for globetrotter Bryan Henderson, travel represents a lifelong pursuit upon which the sun has yet to set, no matter where on the planet he’s viewing it.
Growing up in a household with two working parents, Henderson and his siblings spent a lot of time with their retired grandparents. Henderson described his grandparents as “travelholics,” noting that his grandfather, Charles Ziel, had filled four passports with customs stamps, and was on his fifth at the time of his passing.
“He’d been to 100 countries, and my goal is to surpass that,” Henderson said.
Henderson had a good head start simply due to growing up in South Florida during the 1980s and 1990s. Cruises routinely departed from ports in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Cape Canaveral, and the Ziels taught him the trick of calling a week before the ship left to jump aboard at a reduced rate. This method would send them on three or four cruises a year, anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Henderson was hooked.
“We loved it,” he said. “We had the best of times. You’ve got almost 30 different countries right in the Caribbean; by the time I got a driver license, I had been to all of them.”
Today, Henderson can say that he’s been to every country in Europe, all of South America except Guyana, and he’s heading back out to Asia next. He’s already seen Australia, China, Hong Kong, Bali, and Japan, where the 6-feet-4-inches tall medical imaging director needed to kneel in the shower to wash his hair. Henderson had the opposite experience in the Czech Republic, where one of the things he appreciated was that “everyone was my height.”
In the Middle East, Henderson has been to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Israel and Saudi Arabia. He’s been to Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia in Africa and is planning to take his nephew on an African safari next year, after the teen graduates high school.
Crossing his seventh and final continent, Antarctica, off the list last year required complex preparations. The only two ways to visit the continent are with a research permit or on a cruise ship from South America. Sailing out of Chile through Glacier Alley in Patagonia was “absolutely beautiful,” Henderson said, as the vessel traveled on through Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina, and then south, crossing the turbulent Drake Passage.
The four stops in Antarctica didn’t make land – “There’s nothing really to see on land” he said – but they did offer a spectacular view of 30-feet tall ice cliffs, and an opportunity to navigate the intra-glacial channels on smaller boats.
“I’ve completed more than 400 scuba dives as a certified rescue diver and I had no idea that freezing water attracted so much wildlife,” Henderson said. “Orcas, whales, seals and five species of penguins; I’ve never seen so much wildlife in the ocean.”
A tour of Europe revealed the breadth of its history to Henderson. He was particularly fascinated by the old architecture and sites of antiquity in and around the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas.
“I thought that most of the Roman empire was solely in the country of Italy, and I hadn’t realized how much the remnants of their legacy were all over Europe,” he said. “We once chartered a yacht in the Adriatic Sea, and there was a massive Roman coliseum right on the coast of Pula, Croatia.”
On one cruise from Rome to Dubai, a 22-day jaunt through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, Henderson traveled through routes going into the Arabian Sea that the captain noted were frequented by Somali pirates. As he passed through the “high-risk area,” the cruise ship turned off all its lights so that it would appear to be a freighter, and passengers were told to lock their balcony doors. The cruise ship was escorted by an armed all-black companion boat, and moved through the passage without incident.
Henderson’s constant companion on these journeys is Anica, his wife of 20 years. Early in their courtship, each had disclosed that they weren’t really looking to become parents. When he asked, “What is your passion?” and she replied, “Traveling,” Henderson said, “This is going to work out great.”
“We had a list of the places that we had both already been to, which then left the entire rest of the world as something that we could explore together,” he said. “The most fun we have is sitting down and planning our next adventure.”
The couple will spend Valentine’s Day 2025 in an over-water bungalow in the Maldives, and then some time in Dubai and Singapore as well. Henderson speaks English, Spanish, and German; and Anica, whose family is from France and Spain, speaks about seven languages. That’s useful for communicating across the globe, but new conversational mobile applications make it a lot easier for those who are less fluent in their non-native tongues.
“It’s just going to make the entire world seem smaller,” he said. “It allows people to come together and communicate. I don’t think a language barrier should be a reason not to travel.”
Henderson’s top travel tip is to seek out local pubs or restaurants in which to spend time speaking with local people to learn about things that aren’t on tourist websites. Henderson always travels with a detailed itinerary, but is prepared to do anything off-the-cuff as opportunities present themselves.
“People are way friendlier than you’ll read about in the news,” he said. “They’re going to tell you things that aren’t known to tourists, and they are usually more than happy to inform you about the many wonders of their country.”
“As an American, we think we’re the freest country in the world, but we’re not,” Henderson said. “I’ve been on the Autobahn where there’s no speed limit, I’ve been to jungles where there are no police, and I’ve been to beaches where there’s no clothing.”
“In Japan, we stayed in a house that didn’t even have a lock in the front door because they don’t have crime in that area of Yokohama,” he said. “It boggles my mind how Americans think.”
With about 100 countries left to see on the planet, Henderson’s top remaining destinations include the Northern Lights in Iceland and scuba diving in the South Pacific. Along the way, he enjoys expanding his palate with new dishes and cultural flavors from different global cuisines.
“The two things you need to travel are money and time, and we never know how much we’re going to have at any given moment,” he said. “Your money will return, but your time won’t. Surprisingly enough, there’s a lot of beauty in other countries, and most of it is absolutely free.”
