Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet founder, on his year of travelling in the era of COVID-19

When Lufthansa cancelled (admittedly not their fault), it was Heathrow's "cut the passenger numbers" mandate, the taxi was actually waiting outside to take my wife to the airport.

It was a quick reminder of how well internet travel bookings work. Before she'd arrived at Terminal 2 I'd managed to find her a seat with SAS, admittedly to Berlin rather than Leipzig, but the autobahn still works. When Lufthansa cancelled again for her return to London it was British Airways that stepped up.

In 2021, while the pandemic was still in full swing, we had the COVID-testing merry go round to contend with. Which test did you need to have done 72 hours before departure, or 48 hours before arrival, or X hours before your transit stop? And which apps did you need to show to which airline or which arrivals official?

Of course, the Australian entry form was a long way from the most user-friendly. In 2022 negative COVID-19 tests never seemed to come up and we didn't even have to prove our vaccination status too often, except remarkably a couple of times in theatre queues in London's West End.

But you'd be an idiot not to get vaccinated wouldn't you? When the UK National Health Service was offering free vaccinations in late September I rushed straight round to the Notting Hill Vaccination Hub and got my fifth and contemplated having my vax history tattooed down my arm – AstraZenacX2, PfizerX2 and now ModernaX1.

Africa, however, was a different testing story. The African airline tale was a breeze, no cancellations, no delays, no lost baggage and I even managed to fly on Air Djibouti, the "Airline of the Red Sea" which just happens to be owned by Bruce Dickson, the Iron Maiden heavy metal band front man and 747 captain on the side.

COVID-19 testing wasn't so straightforward. I needed a test within 24 hours before departing Uganda for Somaliland, and then another test after I arrived in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. When I turned up at the testing centre at 7.30am there was already a long queue.

"Don't worry,"' my ultra-competent local guide consoled,"I booked you in at 4am when I dropped in after morning prayers. Although you're still number three in the queue." I tested negative but what if I'd failed, I worried? Fourteen days in quarantine in a Hargeisa hotel?

A few days later in Djibouti there was a RAT on arrival at the airport, before you even got to immigration, which was no problem. But then there was another test 72 hours before my departure and since I was ricocheting around the country for 72-plus hours before that departure another ultra-competent local guide fast-talked the testers into doing my test and then sort of pushing the sample to one side for 12 hours before they sent it off.

Please don't tell anyone. Hopefully all this testing madness is tumbling towards a long overdue conclusion, although in August I contrived to cross the US-Canada (or Canada-US) border four times and at the time Canada's ArriveCAN app still applied.

I'd loaded my Australian vaccination history on to the app and at each Canadian arrival flashed my phone at the officials and sailed in.

At the time, however, Canada had a distinctly un-visitor-friendly regulation that recent foreign arrivals could at any time be pulled over, COVID-tested and, if they failed, be popped straight into quarantine. I don't think anyone ever was tested, but the possibility would keep you on your toes.

Shuttling across the US-Canada border may have been no problem but my initial arrival in the US in Chicago certainly was. Let's face it, US immigration can be a miserable experience at the best of times, but at the worst of times, as Saturday, August 13 certainly was, it's positively third world. Except slower.

The problem was simple, hi-tech has barely touched the US immigration methodology and without our efficient passport scanners Chicago's O'Hare did not have anywhere near enough officials to cope with the arrivals.

The fact that my flight had arrived 20 minutes early added insult to injury when I had to stand in line for three hours. Forget the "Welcome to the United States" signs, I just wanted to hand over immigration technology to Australia.

Arriving back at Tullamarine on November 4 from engines stopped to the luggage carousel took 12 minutes but then a further 40 minutes for my bag to arrive. But you can't have everything.

Back in Chicago I emerged from the terminal just in time to miss the penultimate bus to Milwaukee where I was meeting an English friend for a North American road trip. A two-hour wait for the last bus of the day didn't appeal and the taxi dispatcher suggested $300 to the hometown of Happy Days and Harley Davidsons.

"Meter plus 50 per cent," the first driver in the line proposes but I have no idea what the meter might read. The next driver immediately comes up with $200, and then "tell you what, I'll make it $199."

It's 130 kilometres Chicago-Milwaukee and on a bad day I've spent $100 getting from Tullamarine into Melbourne. I jump in the back for a 90-minute explanation of why Donald was his man.

The next day my Brit co-driver and I hop in our Chevrolet Malibu and set off north on a trip that takes us as far north as Winnipeg and all those border crossings. Last November he'd waited until midnight for the Canada-US border to open at Niagara Falls so he could be the first British visitor to cross the border in 20 months.

From Winnipeg we turn south and travel all the way to Fargo, North Dakota, where the very wood chipper from the eponymous movie waits in the Fargo Visitors Centre complete with a handy boot for selfie posers to feed into the machine.

En route we drive through Hibbing, Minnesota, where Bob Dylan grew up and enjoyed one of those travel experiences strictly reserved for people actually going somewhere, virtual travellers can simply go away.

Outside the Hibbing High School there's a new Nobel Prize for Literature monument and two blocks south is Bob's childhood home where an elderly gentleman was out front mowing the lawn.

We apologised for gawking but he seems unconcerned about passing Dylan-tragics. Two minutes later we are invited inside to have a look around: "Now this was Bob's bedroom".

Remarkably when everyone could get back to the departure lounge we all seemed to. Well most of us, I'm still somewhat surprised at who has got straight back on board and who hasn't. There seemed to be a wide spectrum from "if I go outside I'll die" to "stuff it, I'm going to pretend life is going on" all the way through the pandemic and that hasn't changed post-pandemic. There are just more of us who have decided that life is going to go on and no way are we going to hide indoors.

I'm writing this from a beachside cafe in Nuka Hiva in the Marquesa Islands of French Polynesia, so that's definitely still travelling. The first couple of excursions for 2023 are already lined up as well. Stop travelling? No way.

Tony Wheeler and his with wife, Maureen, co-founded Lonely Planet 50 years ago next year after the couple travelled overland from the UK to Australia. Since then 150 million books under the Lonely Planet brand have been published.