Be­fore be­com­ing a cer­ti­fied glo­be­trot­ter, Dil­lon De­Coteau had as­pi­ra­tions of work­ing with aero­planes, al­though he didn’t know he would end up be­ing known for board­ing them rather than guid­ing them.

“I want­ed to be an Air Traf­fic Con­troller, so I sort of saw my­self do­ing some­thing in the trav­el in­dus­try but not ac­tu­al­ly do­ing the trav­el­ling my­self,” De­Coteau stat­ed.

He said that, as a child grow­ing up in the Bor­ough of Ari­ma, the on­ly coun­try he vis­it­ed was the neigh­bour­ing South Amer­i­can na­tion of Venezuela.

But on 8 April, De­Coteau, who now re­sides in Cana­da, was ver­i­fied by No­mad­Ma­nia—an NGO that con­firms peo­ple’s trav­el claims—as some­one who has trav­elled to all 193 Unit­ed Na­tions mem­ber coun­tries.

“I end­ed do­ing this for me, I just want­ed to set a goal for my­self and see that I can ac­tu­al­ly see it through, I feel good that I ac­tu­al­ly ac­com­plished it, that I ac­tu­al­ly saw it through to the end,” he ex­pressed.

In a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, De­Coteau said his jour­ney be­gan 15 years ago when he had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over one mil­lion Air Cana­da miles.

He said he booked a ten-coun­try trip that kept him away for ap­prox­i­mate­ly six weeks. Dur­ing that time, he vis­it­ed Chi­na, Japan, and even Aus­tralia.

“It was fan­tas­tic, the ex­cite­ment of go­ing from one coun­try to the next, some peo­ple get tired af­ter a while when they trav­el­ling, oh they miss­ing their home, but for me the ex­cit­ing of see­ing new places, meet­ing new peo­ple it kept me go­ing,” he said.

For De­Coteau, the rest was his­to­ry as he soon booked sev­er­al mul­ti-coun­try trips un­til he com­plet­ed the en­tire UN map.

The glo­be­trot­ter doc­u­ment­ed the coun­tries he vis­it­ed and the peo­ple he met along the way on his so­cial me­dia, shar­ing pic­tures of him­self in Oman, Iran, Chad, Por­tu­gal, and many oth­ers.

But while the achieve­ment is a dream come true, he ad­mit­ted his trav­els had some tur­bu­lence—es­pe­cial­ly across the African con­ti­nent.

“It was alL about shake-downs, hav­ing to pay bribes, I’ve had my pass­port and phone held hostage, threat­ened to be thrown in­to jail by army guys be­cause I was tak­ing pho­tos they say I’m tak­ing it il­le­gal­ly, I had to of­fer them mon­ey,” he said.

He said those ex­pe­ri­ences damp­ened his trav­els, but he quick­ly moved on to the next des­ti­na­tion.

“I meet the nicest peo­ple for ex­am­ple in Afghanistan, every­one was like lin­ing up, they want­ed to take pho­tos, to take me to lunch… It’s the nicest peo­ple like in Iraq, re­al­ly nice peo­ple,” he shared.

And while An­dor­ra may be one of the most scenic coun­tries Ari­ma-born De­Coteau has vis­it­ed, there is one thing he and oth­er trav­ellers agree on: this coun­try’s cui­sine ranks high­est.

“On a few of my trips I’ve met peo­ple like me… I met one girl in Syr­ia and she was like I missed those dou­bles. I think the food in Trinidad has every­body beat, every­body is talk­ing about the Tri­ni food the Roti, the dou­bles,” he said.

He thanked all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans for shar­ing his sto­ry and sup­port­ing him as he con­tin­ues his jour­ney.