27-Year-Old Woman To Become First Female Ever To Visit Every Country On Earth. Amazing

It’s everyone’s dream to travel the world and get paid to do it. Sounds like a fun experience—until you run out of savings midway through.After a year and a half of planning, Cassie De Pecol, a 27-year-old from Connecticut, embarked on a journey to become the fastest person to visit every single country in the world. The trip, which cost $111,000 total, took her 18 months to complete. She was almost derailed when she ran out of funding halfway through the trip, but in the end she saw all 196 sovereign countries and broke two Guinness World Records.Her two records didn’t come cheap and De Pecol had to get creative to pay for the trip. She told MONEY in a Facebook Live interview that she saved $10,000 from two babysitting jobs and—using athletes like Michael Phelps as her model—networked to find sponsors and investors to fund the rest of her trip.

If someone traveled to 50 countries, we’d be impressed. If they traveled to 100 we’d be super impressed. But if they traveled to every single country in the world, and became the first documented female, youngest American, AND fastest traveler to visit all 196 countries on the planet….well, that would leave us pretty amazed indeed.But that’s exactly what Cassandra De Pecol is doing. The 27-year-old from Connecticut has already visited 181 countries since July 2015, and with only 15 countries remaining and 40 days to go, she’s well on course to break the Guinness World Record for the fastest person to travel to all Sovereign States (plus an additional 11 countries). Her amazing journey is called Expedition196 and she’s traveling as an Ambassador for Peace on behalf of the International Institute for Peace Through Tourism. We might not be able to follow in her footsteps, but we can at least follow her inspirational journey via Instagram. Go Cassandra!