My husband and I are planning to take 6-9 months off work to go travel around the world beginning in Feb/March. He is AA Platinum and I'm currently AA Gold (although I'll lose that at the end of this year). Given all the choices we have, I'm looking for some guidance on what the best option will be for our tickets - ie, pay for them or use miles and which route to take. Here is our wish list -
* we can assume we can start from pretty much anywhere in the world
* we've lived in europe for a few years, so we don't want to spend much time there
* key destinations are - south africa, south america and australia/new zealand
* we'd like to go places that are either very expensive or tough to get to given we are 1) using the RTW ticket and 2) we'll have more time than we usually do
* we're going to be backpacking, so going business or first class on the flights if we use miles may be a luxurious break

what is better to do - use miles to buy a RTW ticket or buy one and collect all the miles on the route? any good suggestions on itineraries? the possibilities are seemingly endless, so any thoughts are most welcome! thanks