“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 …

If you’re a faithful reader here at A Little Adrift then you very well could think that I am still hunkered down in Guatemala practicing my Spanish…that’s not precisely true! I left Central America about a month ago to take place in a wedding and a travel blogging conference (not at the same time) but both in the US.
I still have stories from Central America to share, but now I’ll pile in some tales from the Indian wedding ceremony I attended in Northern California’s wine country and a two …

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 …

A big Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers out there who happen to find this message, and my own as well!
A happy Sunday to the rest!
News from the Site
I am currently diving in Honduras and head back stateside for a wedding at the end of the month. Apologies this past week, the site had a pretty bad virus on it for several days and although the structure is not totally back to normal, it’s completely safe to surf once again!
Also, a big huge thanks to the kind …

Have you ever had those trips where you just feel like perhaps the planets weren’t aligned for you to be traveling right now? Everything is going minorly wrong, and it’s all adding up to be a bit exhausting?
I really hope that I am not alone, because this trip to Central America has been hard, like really hard. And it’s not any one thing that I can put a finger on because I still am really enjoying the countries I’m visiting and many of the unique experiences. I’ve even slowed …

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 …

I feel like a cheater in the RTW traveler club. You see, members of the RTW traveler club share some key qualities: most save up over the course of several years, they quit their jobs, and they (mostly, aside from travel blogging) single-mindedly backpack the world.
I didn’t do that. Not any of it actually.
I worked steadily from the road my entire RTW trip.
My Travel-Enabling Job
So here’s my confession to you: I perform freelance SEO (search engine optimization) work and I worked from the road every single week of my …