Nicaragua To Do List: In Progress

1. Chicken bus, ‘nough said!

Suggestions?

Filed under: Nicaragua, Planning

China To Do List: In Progress

1. Tai Chi with friends in Shanghai
2. Great Wall

Suggestions?

Filed under: China, Planning

Japan To Do List: In Progress

1. Zen meditation
2. Shinkansen, Japanese bullet train line

Suggestions?

Filed under: Japan, Planning

Butterflies

Updates have been a long time coming, I know. I’ve spent the last few weeks wrapping up undergrad classes, projects and portfolios, and celebrating the unusual amount of winter birthdays. Trip planning is on schedule: I leave for Managua, Nicaragua in three weeks. I haven’t spent as much time preparing for this trip as I feel like I should be. I do have wiggle room as the first 10 days will be in an organized group. As far as the last 5 days go when I will be on my own, I’m not so sure. I’m torn between sketching out details and just winging it…

Grenada is on the list and the Corn Islands are off. That much I can tell you.

I still need to acquire mosquito netting, a typhoid shot, health insurance and a bigger pack (I have one 30 liter, one 40 liter but I think I need to upgrade now for a 60-70 liter), suggestions?

I’m starting to get that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling. Before I discovered traveling I use to only get this feeling for cute boys with smiles. I love how traveling alone is as exhilarating as it is mildly terrifying.

Filed under: Nicaragua, Planning

Twenty-Three

This will be an epic year full of epic adventures. One month into twenty-three I will begin the first leg of my round the world journey starting in Managua, Nicaragua. If you think about it, I will spend just under half of my twenty-third year skipping across the world like a rock on a lake surface.

Bring on the adventure!!

Filed under: Random

Quote of the Week

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”

Cesare Pavese

Filed under: Quotes, Travel Quotes

Question

If you know what you want to do, why is it so hard to just do it?

If you have an answer, please share.

peace.

Filed under: Random

Help and Host

The new kid on the block in globe-trotting and backpacking on the cheap.

Help exchange system, a new way to find free accommodation in exchange for work for everyone, volunteers, backpackers, students, gap years and anyone looking for a different type of holiday. We’re here to do just one thing: help you to see the world for next to no cost, make new friends and discover new cultures. On our site you’ll find all kinds of working holidays listed: organic & non-organic farms that offer farmstays, ordinary people who offer homestays, hostels, ranches, lodges, B&Bs, boats and anywhere else whose owners are happy to host backpackers – and maybe even feed them too – in exchange for a little work. If you have a tight budget or are simply fed up with over commercialised holidays and just want to meet real people then you’re in the right place. Start you’re journey to seeing the world a different way.

If this site gets up and running, I very well could contribute!

Filed under: Planning, Travel

Hunger Scorecard Report

I subscribe to several list serves, one of which sent me the Scorecard Report for “Who’s Really Fighting Hunger?” today. While this seems more of a scare-tactic report to me given the upcoming World Food Summit in Rome, there is quite a bit of constructive information in it. The report surveys 50 governments (rich and poor; developed and developing) from across the globe and what they are doing to tackle their hungry populations. The report presents the information in an easy to read, colorful and straight forward way that will appeal to all audiences.

China, Spain, Japan, the UK, the USA and France (all countries I will be traveling to soon) are surveyed with fascinating results: while some of the poorest countries in the world have been able to reduce the number of hungry people, many of the richest countries lag shockingly behind.

I highly recommend checking it out.

Filed under: Development Topics, Food Security

we came, we saw and we soaked!

There is great beauty to be had in days off!

Like hiking in the rain into hot springs at 12am in the middle of no-where.

…and above all knowing that you only exist when the cold rain falls onto your face as you lay in a hot pool carved out of a tree trunk while candle light dances around you.

Life is beautiful.

Filed under: Random