August 31 2014

What If All This Crazy Travel Kills Me?

It’s my last full day at El Panchan, just outside of Palenque in the Mexican state of Chiapas. (Go ahead and google it, I’ll wait.) I’ve spent 5 days here, sweaty and content. The casitas right in the jungle at El Panchan, the isolation that brings on a feeling of time warp back as much as 40 years, the lack of English speakers, the waterfalls of Misol-ha and Agua Azul, the ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilan, and Bonampak, the river ride in an oversized canoe with a huge motor along the border with Guatemala; all these things I will take home with me, and the memory of them will bring me back again despite the difficulty of getting here. Continue reading

August 11 2014

Travel Jitters

I leave August 23rd on my next adventure.

Like the proverbial cold feet before a wedding, I seem to get travel jitters in the weeks just before I go somewhere. It’s not the nervous excitement felt while looking forward to a vacation, and it’s not like the necessary preparations for a business trip you have to go on. This is a trip that I chose to go on when an opportunity made my heart speed up, something that I used money out of our family’s budget for, an indulgence that I might be horribly unprepared for that sometimes inspires a feeling of OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DOING? Continue reading