“Safe travels! You’ve got my Facebook details so we can keep in touch – you have a couch if you ever make it to Florida!”

And just like that a new friend has come and gone. At the parting, my new friend scurries off with her backpack strapped to her back, ready for the next hostel, the next hike, sightseeing tour, the next group of backpackers waiting at the next hostel.
I’ll probably never lay eyes on her again and within a couple of months we probably won’t even talk …

Now that I’ve been back in the States for a couple of months I find that some of my well-honed travel habits went AWOL on me and just disappeared without asking me if I was ready to part ways.  You see, I never lose anything on the road (truly haven’t left anything behind) yet in the past two months I’ve misplaced sunglasses, wallets, keys, and power cords for sometimes days while I’m living out cozy bedrooms at the hospitality of my friends.
In fact, my friends consistently joke that I …

Nestled into the cozy, cushioned table beds in Café D’Noz on Lago de Atitlán I was taken off guard when my server climbed up onto the cushions to whisper in my ear. At first all I heard was a bit of hushed syllables inaudible over the blaring movie showing in the café. With a questioning look from me she repeated the sentence in a hurried voice and rapidly stilting English.
“If you have drugs – flush in toilet now, police do drug raid next door. Do now.”
San Pedro on Lake …

One of the stories that is most often “wow-ed” at from my round the world trip is my time volunteering teaching English at a monastery in Nepal. It’s really quite fortunate that people are so interested in stories of my young monks, because I love talking about them!
Volunteering in both Cambodia and Nepal are two of the most memorable and rewarding parts of my past travels and I was really eager to find similar volunteer opportunities in Guatemala.
So with the percolating and warm memories of all of the kids …

I have a secret confession to make right now. I really like Antigua, Guatemala.
And I feel like I shouldn’t because the town seems so tourist-purposed and overrun by westerners; Antigua is such a marked contrast to the “dangerous” and grittier reality in nearby Guatemala City. When I mention to other travelers I spent a month total (split across three visits) in Antigua I often get those judgmentally inquisitive lifts eyebrow of an eyebrow.
Antigua’s cobblestone, almost idyllically pretty streets are clean. The low-slung buildings are a rainbow of neatly painted …

These past four months in Central America have been four of the hardest “travel” months of my life. I’ve been on the road for just under 18 months at this point and Central America has thoroughly exhausted me and essentially kicked my traveling ass.
I didn’t make a secret of that fact two weeks ago when I was frustrated beyond belief, sad, overwhelmed and just bone-tired of it all. It seemed like the Universe was conspiring against me, the gods of travel were just telling me to go home.
And …

So there I am, 16 years old, hiding in the hotel bathroom while sobbing on the phone and spilling my teenage woes to my dad.
And that’s when he hit me with my favorite advice from him:
The Advice
“Shannon, it’s just money. It’s not worth you being in a miserable situation, I’ll buy you a ticket and you can come home tonight.”
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The Back-Story
My dad isn’t one of those pageant parents, so when I told him I wanted to travel out of the state for an Irish dance competition (the Southern Regionals …

This week wraps up our three part series on how to travel around the world completely via land and sea travel. Michael is a full year into his RTW trip (he thinks it will last about 16 months total) and has shared valuable tips and information over the past three weeks about ways other travelers can plan a flightless trip around the world…from giving yourself a lot of time to travel overland (1), to coping with the extra cost of flightless travel (2).
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Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: Skip …