How I Became the Youngest to Travel to Every Country at 21 - Guinness World Record

okay my babies right here today we're at the [Music] and Lexi Alford is here with us Lexi hi hi thank you so much for having me what are you doing with your life now that you've already checked off 195 countries well today I'm actually launching my YouTube channel I've been stockpiling all of my footage from every country in the world and I'm finally ready to sit down and edit it and share it with everyone so how did a 21 year old girl break the world record for being the youngest person to travel to every single country on the planet well it all started before I was even born instead of going to college my mom started a travel agency when she was only 19 years old and as a result of this throughout my life I've been able to tag along with my parents as they traveled around the world for work when I was 12 years old and crammed into the backseat of a rental car driving down the great ocean road in Australia something significant happened I was noticing all of these young people living in VW vans with surfboards on top bumming around all the beaches and truly living life in the moment and at 12 years old this is the first time I remember daydreaming about what it would be like to travel for a whole year without having to work with the idea of taking a whole year off of work in school to travel the world I became motivated like crazy to start working and saving to make this dream a reality naturally when you're 12 years old it's hard to find people that want to hire a 12 year old that's why I started cleaning and painting on my dad's construction sites after school then I worked for his friends sites and their friends by the time I turned 15 I started training at my mom's travel agency to become a certified travel agent living rent-free at home created the perfect environment to save money my family even gave me a car when I got my driver's license and I started my first business as an airport chauffeur I graduated early and got a degree from community college so I'm also lucky not to have any student debt beyond saving the most aspect of this period in my life was that I learned everything about the travel industry like how to find cheap flights and utilize points and miles as well as gaining access to discounted rates that are only available to travel agents two months into my gap year I was crashing on my friend's couch wondering how I could make my desire to travel the world have more purpose the dream I had at 12 years old didn't feel meaningful enough that night was the first time I counted up how many countries I had been to in my whole life it was around 70 that was the moment that it dawned on me I remember grabbing my phone and googling what age is the youngest person to travel to every country the first thing that popped up was the Guinness world record for the youngest person to travel to every country and the record was held by a guy that was over 24 years old so there I was an 18 year old with six years of savings in my pocket I had already traveled to 70 countries thanks to my travel junkie family and I'm a travel agent that already had experience creating complex itineraries I knew that very same night that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't at least try to break this world record in retrospect I had no idea what I was getting myself [Music] so I made it to Yemen walking around the old city in Tripoli who's next up Afghanistan I'm out on this random island in Guinea as you can see there is so much I'm excited to talk about from how I budget travel to planning to how to do it safely and of course the coolest places to go to to have an authentic experience I'm the youngest person to travel to every country but I'm the first to say that I've only just begun to scratch the surface of how much there is out there to explore this world is so vast in all my favourite places ended up being where I at least expected them and the most genuinely kind people that I met lived in the countries that we're told to fear the most I have so many stories to tell and now it's my mission to share everything that I've learned with you guys in order to help empower you to get out and see some of these places for yourself if you're curious what that means and what's next for me I'm going to be pouring all of my energy into creating videos for you guys so please subscribe to this channel and I will catch you in next week [Music] you

Channel: Lexie Limitless

Views: 1,170,687

Rating: 4.9446387 out of 5

Keywords: travel, how to travel, guinness world records, Lexie Limitless, Lexie Alford, Every Country, Youngest Person to Travel to Every Country

Id: N7cKlYTHRzk

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019