My Comfort Zone

On By Expedition Fresh Start2 Comments

The only thing that is stopping you from where you are to where you want to go is your comfort zone

Dhaval Gaudier

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in Mexico for almost a whole week now. I still feel like I’ll be returning to work next week with some interesting stories to tell about my vacation. It hasn’t sunk in completely that I’m unemployed, and that I won’t be returning to Tennessee anytime soon. I wonder when the ‘vacation’ feeling will go away.

I know many of our family and friends have been worried about us, but in all honesty, we have been doing very well here. We landed in Cozumel on August 10th, and we stayed in the ‘downtown’ area about a mile away from the airport. After being cooped up in a plane and the airport all day, we decided to walk to our hostel rather than take a taxi. After a 20 minute walk in what felt like 100-degree weather, we easily found it. Our hostel was small and intimate, and our host Jorge was exceptionally welcoming. It wasn’t fancy, but we had a room with two double beds, a private bathroom, and the most glorious air conditioning ever (or maybe we were just really, really hot).

I don’t know what I’d expected, but Cozumel was a very laid back little island. COVID restrictions had halted the cruise lines, so there weren’t nearly as many tourists as I’m sure they are used to. Most of the homes in the area were small and run down. The businesses weren’t much more than street fronts with roll up doors, and the restaurants were open air with only a handful of tables. You could smell the foods and see the chefs preparing them as you walked down the street. Most motorists transited town on mopeds, scooters, or bicycles, and many people just walked. There are bars on every window and gates outside every home, but I never felt unsafe here.

On our second day, we decided to head to the beach. On the way to the marina, the atmosphere of the town changed as the businesses in the high-traffic areas targeted the tourists coming on/off of the island. We’d gotten used to the laid back feel of the downtown area, but this marina area was much different with rhythmic music blaring, large crowds moving through the town, and souvenir shops at every turn. We also began to notice big shifts in prices. Three tacos in the downtown area would cost you about $3; in the marina area, the same plate of tacos was about $12. Near the beach, we met Alex, a local tour guide, who spent about half of an hour talking to us about Playa Casitas, the Mayan Indians, and the history of the island. Afterwards, we swam in the shallow water by the shore where Henry was grateful he had brought along his goggles so he could watch the thousands of little fish swimming among the rocks.

We left Cozumel by ferry on day 3 and landed in Playa del Carmen. We only had time to walk around the touristy area for a bit before we boarded our bus to Cancun. Again, we stayed in the downtown area and we walked the 15 minutes from the bus station to our hotel. We’d found a great deal on a nice hotel, so we splurged for a little bit of luxury for the two nights we’d be there. The hotel was fancy and beautiful, and it had a stunning pool. But being there made me miss our little Cozumel hostel. I loved the big thick towels, but I missed the warm welcome and the family feel.

Cancun was very different from Cozumel. It was a bustling area, and even the downtown area where we were staying had the toursisty feel. When we’d walk out of the hotel, we were bombarded with local businesspeople asking us to look at their menus, go on excursions with them, buy their wares, etc. It was uncomfortable, and I didn’t like it. Once you got through them, the rest of town was really nice. We rode the city bus to the beach in Cancun for an afternoon, and it was peaceful and absolutely stunning there. The beach had the beautiful, white sands I love, and the turquoise water was refreshing We played for several hours in the waves, and after getting a little too much sun, we headed back home. We ate in a food court in a park for several meals, and watching the kids play and the people interact with one another made the city feel a little more intimate and pleasant.

On day 5, we rode the bus to Chiquila, and wow what a change that was! The town had only one paved road. The bus hit tree limbs as it navigated the narrow street, and the bus station was only as large as the space the bus needed to turn around in. People here rode bicycles or dirt bikes with buggies affixed to the front of them. The taxis were three wheeled vehicles with one three-person seat in them. With the help of a local resident we were able to find our hotel on one of the gravel side roads. It was very cute, but we were the only guests at the 10-room facility. We had to hunt down the maid to get checked in. She called the owner and we waited about 10 minutes for him to come by and check us in. Our host was very nice, but he promptly let us know that there was a problem with the room we had booked. He said the previous occupant had accidentally taken the key with him, and it would be a few days before they could get it back. We were welcome to stay in the room we booked without a key if we liked or he could move us to another. We chose the other. The hotel also had a restaurant, but unfortunately, the chef cut himself and had to be taken to a hospital, so instead of enjoying dinner there, we ventured into town and found a delicious meal at a stand on the side of the road. Breakfast was included with our room, so on Sunday morning, we enjoyed a hot breakfast cooked just for us by the hotel staff. They really worked hard to treat us well, and we loved their hospitality as well as that of the town.

Yesterday, we rode another ferry to Isla Holbox and easily found our hotel. Again, we were told that there was a problem with our room, but they were able to put us in a different room which worked out better for us instead. This hotel is also very nice. Our room has a kitchen, and because of the prices of food here on the island, we’re cooking several of our meals here instead of going out. We have already explored the beach here twice, and we will be going back there again later today. Henry has also been eyeing a little park we found on the way to the beach yesterday, so we may stop by there again as well. It’s a cute island, and there isn’t much to do except lay back and relax, which is just what we need right now.

We’ve had lots of questions from home, so I’ll try to answer the most common ones for you.

I must say that the food here has been better than I expected. Unlike Brian and Henry, I’m not much of a fan of Mexican food, so I was concerned about my ability to find sustenance while we were here. So far, that’s been a non issue. We have been very pleased with our meals so far. We aren’t big breakfast eaters, so we’ve gotten food from the markets for breakfast most days and that has also helped to save us money. Brian says he’s proud of me for ordering my meals without really knowing what is coming on them (the menus here are generally not descriptive at all). I’m not very adventurous with food, so this is a stretch for me. I’ve had to pick a few things off, but nothing that was too bad. Henry has liked his food as well, but he’s decided to start letting Brian order for him as nearly every meal, he ends up liking Brian’s food more than whatever he ordered.

One thing I’ve found interesting is how much more seriously Mexico is taking the COVID precautions than we took them at home. You cannot enter a store or restaurant here without walking over a shoe cleaning mat, getting your hands (and sometimes your belongings) sanitized, and wearing a mask. Its obvious that they are working hard to keep people safe here. They need the tourists, and if the travel industry gets shut down again, they will suffer even more.

We haven’t felt unsafe anywhere we’ve been. People have been very friendly to us, and most have been eager to help us. We haven’t had any issues with not speaking Spanish, although it has been comical communicating with folks occasionally. We’ve ridden in a taxi, 2 ferries, 2 city buses, and 2 long-distance buses with no issues. We’ve also ordered multiple meals, bought ice cream, purchased deli meats from a grocery store, and stopped for directions several times. I have been surprised by how few English speaking natives we’ve seen/met on the trip so far; I think it will be nice to have a good old fashioned conversation soon.

We have stuck to our budget pretty well so far, and I hope to post something on that in a few days. We did have one instance where we felt like we got taken advantage of, and that was in a pharmacy when we were buying sunscreen. We were in Cancun, and we were tired and in a rush. We walked into a pharmacy to buy sunscreen, and it was stored behind the counter. We ended up paying $17 for a small tube of sunscreen. If we’d been more careful, we would have recognized the high price and found a better deal elsewhere, but we’ll treat it as a lesson learned. We’re still getting used to converting pesos to dollars, but we will definitely be more careful now.

This week I’ve experienced lots of firsts. Not all of them were great, but nonetheless, I’m glad I had them. It’s scary to be in a different country surrounded by people who don’t speak your language and to rely on their help and your instincts to get by. Of course we knew that’s what we’d run into before we left. Compared to my expectations, this hasn’t been so bad, really. We originally had planned to start our trip in Europe where life would be a little more familiar to us, but with COVID, that just wasn’t feasible. This is much more out of my comfort zone, but I’m so grateful we had the chance to start out here.

Enjoy the ride

On By Expedition Fresh Start9 Comments

Life is like a roller coaster. Sometimes you close your eyes and hold on in shear terror, and other times, you just have to raise your hands up in the air and enjoy the ride.

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The past week has been a complete whirlwind, an emotional rollercoaster like I’ve never experienced before. All week, I have been flitting around as fast as I could trying to get everything that we needed done before our departure. At times, I’d think through how amazing this trip will be and how lucky we are to get to do it. More often than not, though, I could barely breathe because the anxiety would creep in and my joy and excitement would be overpowered by fear – fear of the unknown, of missing my family, of not getting all my ducks in the row in time, of the million and one things that could go wrong. I would remind myself constantly that this opportunity is worth the short term struggles, and that when we actually get going on the trip, everything will be much more calm. Sometimes it worked to calm me down, but not usually.

I know Brian and Henry have been going through this as well. When Henry gets nervous, he talks more than usual (and that’s saying something). When Brian is anxious, he gets cranky. I become like a drill sergeant barking orders with no sense of humor. Through all of it, thankfully, we’ve clung to each other and we’ve pulled closer as a family instead of letting the stress pull us apart. And as I think about it, that’s part of the reason we are going on this trip anyway – to pull together. So maybe it has been a little good for us.

Our last day in Nashville was chaotic, at best. We had the last of our stuff to take to storage, family to see, two cars to sell, and we had to get packed for a 6:00 am flight the next morning. We went hard all day long, each of us trying to divide and conquer the chore list. If it weren’t for the help of our family, we wouldn’t have made it. Heck, even with their help, we ended up flying out this morning on 2.5 hours of sleep. There were tears and nervous laughter last night as we packed our bags, anxiety as we worried that the zippers on our bags might not be able to hold against the stress and wondering what else we might have missed, sadness as we hugged our family for the last time for a long while, and excitement about what our next days would hold.

We woke up at 3 am this morning, quickly dressed and repacked our bags, threw out everything that we had left in the apartment, took out the garbage, and left two boxes of stuff for my sister-in-law to pick up later just as our Lyft driver pulled up. The airport was buzzing even at 4 am, and my anxiety along with the big crowd and the general chaos of checking in were enough to raise my blood pressure and make me nauseous. We felt unprepared as we went through check in trying to answer all of the questions and supply all the documents they needed. Apparently Southwest had sent us an email on Monday with a link to a form we would also need, but since we were running crazy all day, we’d missed it. The agent was fantastic, and she helped us through it, but we could feel the glares from everyone in line behind us as we held them up. We finally made it through security and to the gate with plenty of time to grab some breakfast to try to settle ourselves and catch our breath, but the hurricane of emotions continued to batter my heart. On the way down the corridor to the plane, I began crying like a baby at the thought of not seeing home again for a year. The time will fly by, but I’ve never been very good with goodbyes, and this one was hard. As I sat on the plane, Henry and Brian did their best to calm me, and they helped me remember that my home is wherever they are. Since the moment we took off with both of them holding my hand, I’ve had a peace again about this adventure. This is what we are supposed to do, after all.

As I type this, Brian is asleep in a hammock in our room, and Henry is passed out on the bed. We’re all beat, but now that we are here, we can rest a little easier. We’ll find some dinner soon, and tomorrow, we’ll figure out where we go from here. We don’t know what’s in store for us now, but we’re going to do our best to raise our hands up in the air and enjoy the ride.

Our travel plan

On By Expedition Fresh Start5 Comments

Over the next 12 months, our goal is to step onto every continent and swim in every ocean. We’re starting out by flying from Nashville, Tennessee to Cozumel, Mexico where we have 2 nights hostel reservations on the island. From there, we have 4 months to get to Ushuaia, Argentina so that we can begin the next leg of our journey to Antarctica. From there, we’re not quite sure where we’ll head, but we expect to spend about 2 months in Africa, 3 months in Asia, and 3 months in Europe. We’re hoping that we can work in Australia before we come home as well, but with all of the current travel restrictions, we aren’t sure how we can do that yet. Our plan is to return home to Tennessee in August 2022.

The link below shows many of the sites we’ve identified that we want to go and visit. Hopefully we can go to most of them, although we are certain we won’t hit them all. If you have somewhere in mind that we absolutely must go, please drop us a line and let us know!

pintraveler.net/map.html

If not now… when?

On By Expedition Fresh Start13 Comments

Every morning you have two choices: Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them.

Unknown

Hi! My name is Diana, and in 14 days, my family and I will embark on the adventure we have been dreaming of for several years. We’re leaving everything we know to wander somewhat aimlessly around the world in search of, well, nothing really. We’re going to spend the next 12 months traveling with a goal of visiting every continent and swimming in every ocean. We want to meet new people, eat lots of different foods, experience other cultures, and find our own place in this world. It feels surreal to realize that we are actually doing this. I mean, who really does this kind of thing? We have sold our house, quit our jobs, and booked our one way flights out of the country. This is crazy!

Perhaps you think we’re brave, this trip we’re taking sounds amazing and while you may not ever do it yourself, you are really excited for us. Or perhaps you may be one of the ones who say ‘Wow. That’s neat’ and then wonder if we’ve lost our minds. It’s okay. Really. We love you no matter how you feel about it. We know that this sounds impulsive and irrational, and we don’t really expect anyone to understand (but we’d love it if you did).

Our dream began in early 2019. Brian and I were hiking a fire watch trail near Asheville, North Carolina while we were enjoying a romantic getaway. We were talking about how we wanted to be able to travel to so many places, but with our jobs and commitments, we would never have enough time to see them all. We had a beautiful home on 6.5 rolling acres, two very good but demanding jobs, and more responsibility than we cared to carry. Travel sounded great, but between our work, bills, and the expense of travelling, it just wasn’t practical. Before this conversation, both of us had been struggling with these thoughts, but we each just assumed that the other was content. Come to find out, we were both tired of the rat race, and neither one of us could see the point in continuing it. We talked about leaving it all behind, buying a conversion van to fix up, and then we’d take Henry with us and travel the country, seeing all of those things we had only dreamed of.

Over the next few weeks, the conversation grew more and more serious to the point of actually watching videos on converting vehicles for this kind of travel. We learned that there were a lot of people who did do this – people just like us who weren’t sitting on a giant nest egg, people with little bitty kids, and people who weren’t weird smelling hitchhikers were making this work for them. Many of them had digital/remote jobs, and because neither of our jobs would ever support remote work, we began researching our options with that too.

A few months into it, we talked to Henry about the idea. He handled it in the easy-going way he handles most things. He was game for the idea, but he wasn’t exactly thrilled. I don’t think he thought we were serious. We asked him to keep the idea quiet outside of the three of us, but at home, we all began picking out places we wanted to see. I don’t really remember when or how the trip morphed from a conversion van in the US to backpacking the world, but we decided that we could see more and do more if we were willing to let go of a few more conveniences and travel further away. By Christmas of 2019, we bought the largest world map we could find and began pinning our wish-list destinations!

Over the next year, we began preparing by researching and paring down our belongings. We needed to replace Brian’s truck, but we decided to hold onto it a bit longer so we wouldn’t have to spend the extra money. We began to really question new purchases and tried hard to hold ourselves to a tighter budget than we’d had. We began following different blogs and watching videos to learn as much as we could. We started changing our credit card strategy to better take advantage of bonus points and rewards so we could have them available to help fund our trip. And we set a tentative date of June 1st, 2021 for our departure.

In 2020 when COVID hit, we expected to have to push off our trip for a few months to a year. We were really disappointed, but we knew eventually that it would pass and we’d be able to go out. We questioned what travel would even look like when all was said and done, but we still had plans to go. Brian and I were both working in ‘essential’ businesses and in positions that could not work remotely, so the pandemic only meant more hours and more work for both of us. Friends would post about their abundant newly found family time, but we barely saw one other or our son for months. Because of that, 2020 took a harder toll on our family than we’d expected and by the spring of 2021, we weren’t even sure we could/would go. Brian and I were struggling, and we didn’t know how to get our marriage back on track. It looked like the dream was dead.

After much debate, we decided that this trip could be our one shot to start over, to put our family first again, and to try to heal and refresh our relationship. We decided that there would never be a convenient time, and if we wanted this, we would just have to make it happen. We needed a fresh start, a second chance at the life we had dreamed of. So we put our house on the market, and when we had a contract on it, we set a tentative departure date of mid August.

Several weeks later, we’re living in a one bedroom apartment that our friend was willing to rent to us for the short term, and as of Friday, we will officially be unemployed. We have a pile of supplies in our tiny living room that we need to organize into our three brand new backpacks, a freezer full of food we are still working to eat down so it doesn’t go to waste, and a storage unit packed to the brim with everything else we own. Life has changed significantly over the past 2 years since the inception of the dream. Its terrifying but oh so exciting. It’s uncomfortable, but refreshing at the same time. Of course, isn’t that what chasing a dream is supposed to feel like? There will always be a good reason to put it off for another time, but tomorrow isn’t promised, and we can’t keep putting off life waiting for everything to be perfect. It’s time for us to chase our dream. It may be a wonderful adventure or it might be a terrible mistake, but either way, we’re going to experience it together.

What about your dreams? Are you ready to chase them? If not now… when?