Hello family and friends, welcome to my travel blog! I cannot express enough how excited I am for this journey ahead and I am beyond grateful to get the opportunity to do this. We’ll see how frequently I end up posting because I am going to be disconnected from the online world but I am going to use this blog as a medium to share photos, tell stories (although some of the crazy tales will best be told in person over a nice glass of scotch. I will also be keeping a personal journal so maybe that will one day hit the shelves), and hopefully provide some travel recommendations for anybody reading. Who knows…maybe one day I will start some sort of travel consulting business? I’ve always loved doing travel research and coming up with potential itineraries.

How it all began

Two words: Costa Freaka. In April 2021 I was fortunate enough to get invited by Jason and Hayley to stay for a week at an Inspirato mansion (featured photo up above) in the hills of Coco in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica. Quick shameless plug for Inspirato – it’s a luxury vacation rental travel membership with beautiful homes all over the globe – so needless to say staying in that house was a much more balling accommodation than I am used to. Long story short because this blog isn’t about that trip, and it is a long story, going on this trip reminded me why I love traveling internationally so much. There is nothing better than immersing yourself in another country – interacting with locals and soaking in the culture; trying new food and drinks; exploring cities, national parks, and beaches; learning the history and other interesting facts; even getting screwed over and being out of your comfort zone. When I got home from that trip, I had caught the travel bug.

The Feeling That Wouldn’t Go Away

As the summer went on, I went on two hiking road trips in Yen’s van that increased my yearn for exploration and adventure (which I am so grateful to have gotten to use Ghost – hard to go back to regular camping after living the van life). On the first trip just us two absolutely crushed southern Utah hiking 25 miles in 3 days squeezing through slot canyons, crossing rivers and getting lost countless times to get to the Golden Cathedral, waterfall swimming, and catching endless views from the ridgeline.

For the second trip me, Yen, Vicky, Destiny, and Amelia (yes you read that right…me and four beautiful ladies) took the van to Glacier national park for the 10-day adventure of a life time. If you haven’t been to this park, I highly, highly recommend; it is my favorite to date. Going-to-the-Sun Road is the most jaw dropping stretch of land I’ve ever driven across. You don’t even need to hike to soak in Glacier’s beauty. But of course, we wanted to hit the trails hard and truly explore the backcountry of Glacier. And hike hard we did, accumulating over 40 miles throughout the trip. We kept calling it the Disney Land of National Parks – the hikes were like something out of a fairy tale. The lakes were surreal blue colors and the trees and meadows a vibrant green you’d see in a National Geographic magazine. My three favorite trails we did in case anyone is looking for recs were Grinnell Glacier, Cracker Lake, and Hidden Lake Lookout (unfortunately Highline Trail one of the most popular ones was closed because it was too early in the season). Another amazing trip that was chalk full of great stories and hilarious inside jokes.    

Combine my Costa Rica trip with these two hiking trips and my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about going on a world travel adventure centered around hiking and cultural exploration. My 20s were spent going to hundreds of shows and chasing bands across the country and it was the best time. Music will me always be so near and dear to my heart and has been how I have made pretty much every post-college friend. But in my 30s I’m hoping to focus more on becoming even more of an outdoor adventurer and doing lots of incredible hiking trips.

I knew the trip was real when I didn’t only think of the good but nerves and reality kicked in too. One side of the brain kept thinking about the uncertainty of the unknown and traveling solo, leaving all I’ve built up in Denver the past five years with great friends, an awesome lifestyle, and thriving at my job. What am I crazy?! And the other side of the brain saying yes of course you are but this trip will be so worth it. This will be the experience of a lifetime that will help define the next path in my life and now is the perfect opportunity to follow it. I was at a point in my life where I can do this and who knows if that will ever happen again: my lease was ending the following May, I wasn’t currently in a relationship, and I was coming up on 5 years at my job and starting to think about what was next. In my head I figured I would take off for my adventure in May and just take the rest of 2022 off. Who knows? Could get tired/home sick and come back earlier or could love it so much and stay even longer. It just seemed easy to say I’ll do it until the end of the year.

Taking the Next Steps

As another amazing summer in Denver filled with good times with friends, music, hiking, and camping came to a close; I knew that I was ready to take this leap of faith and it was time to turn this idea into a plan. Step one was to figure out where I wanted to go. I never went on my free Birthright trip to Israel and they had recently extended the age limit to 32 so it seemed like the perfect way to start the trip. Then I started doing some research on Eastern Europe since it would be pretty close to fly to from Israel, its cheap, and I hadn’t been to any of the countries. For some reason I started with Montenegro and just immediately fell in love with it. It had the perfect blend of hiking, beautiful coastlines, and ancient cities. I started digging deeper into some of the other Balkan countries and was blown away by how beautiful they were. Okay this is it; the plan is coming together. I spent the next few months researching the different Balkan countries and mapping out my potential route. I am going into the trip extremely flexible – certain things I researched were a must do – but in general I was going to go with the flow and just see what happens. Maybe I’ll get stuck in a certain city that I didn’t even plan to go to or maybe I end up finding an Albanian wife. Really open to anything. I like doing my own research to know what’s out there but also a big part of the fun is just stumbling upon something great or getting word of mouth recommendations.

I had mentioned to my parents and brothers that I wanted to do this trip but it was more off handed in conversation versus being a set plan. So, when I went home for Thanksgiving, I told my family that this trip is for real and that I plan to go to the Balkans. And I am very grateful that I come from a well-traveled family that goes out of the country frequently. Of course, they still had some questions about the trip especially given Covid concerns but they immediately showed their support which is such a great feeling.

Oh Russia

Fast forward a few months and it was almost time to tell work and really make the next big step for this experience to happen. Up to this point I had known about the trip for awhile but in this Covid world you can’t be sure of anything so I didn’t want to tell work until I absolutely knew. It was looking a little dicey during the winter with Omicron spreading like wildfire but things started calming down a bit in February so I was feeling confident about my trip. Also, I would be starting in the summer when things have seemingly been better on the Covid front. And then fucking Russia has to go and invade Ukraine. Right when that happened, I started getting an uncertain feeling about the Balkans since a lot of the countries are former Yugoslavia and have a history tied to Russia. Most of the area would probably be fine but hell, I was thinking about going to Romania which borders Ukraine. It just felt weird to be flying so close to a conflict zone. And who knows what else Russia might do if they decided to keep working their way across Europe. Or even if I just got into some tense situation while over there, just didn’t seem worth taking the risk. I was feeling bummed because I had spent so much time doing my research and had even booked my first hotel in Montenegro. But luckily the world is my oyster and I started looking a into South America. Didn’t take long for me to fall in love with South America and switch my plans. I mean the Andes just look absolutely insane. Talk about some crazy hiking. I’ve done a few 14ers in the Rockies but the Andes have 17ers, 18ers, even 20ers. So many amazing multiple day treks too. South America is also a very popular backpacking spot so it was very easy to read about other people’s trips and quickly come up with a plan. Within a few days I was already equally, if not more excited, to do South America over the Balkans. Plus, I could use this as an opportunity to pick up some Spanish. I took French growing up so I’m going in very green, but at least I understand the general concepts of verb conjugation and masculine/feminine for nouns and adjectives. I have started doing Babbel to get the basics down and plan to continue to improve throughout the trip. Who knows…I might even take a week or two off from bouncing around and take some Spanish classes? It would be really amazing to come away from this experience being conversational in Spanish.

Trips Before the Trip

And of course, I couldn’t just go into my 6-month South America adventure without a few trips beforehand. Rachel’s wedding in Palo Duro State Park in Texas was the first stop. So much fun kicking off my journey celebrating her and Jacob and getting to see all my Houston and Austin friends. Also glad that I got to do a few hikes while I was there too. The timing worked out perfectly to where her wedding was only 2 weeks before my lease ended so I decided to use this date as the jump off point for when I would be leaving Denver. I drove my car to the wedding and now am slowly making my way back to Florida with whatever I could fit in the car. After the wedding I drove my car to Houston to drop my car off at Paul and Nichole’s and am now headed to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for 5 days for another incredible Inspirato trip (all coming full circle since that was the root of what gave me the travel bug). And that’s where I’m at currently on the trip.

Then I drive back to Sarasota for about 10 days which will be nice chill time with the parents relaxing before the trip and eating well. The calm before the storm. My next stop is New York for 5 days since my Birthright flight leaves from the City. I will get the chance to see a bunch of Tulane and other friends and just do random things around New York. Then I fly to Israel for the 10-day Birthright trip followed by a night in Tel Aviv with Adam. Then I am flying to Porto in Portugal for a week to meet up with my family – parents, brothers, wives, and children – so the whole shebang. FINALLY, after that I fly from Portugal to Santa Marta, Colombia and start my trip. I have my first week in Colombia booked but the rest will be winged. My plan is to go counter clockwise across the continent so Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil if time permitted to do all that. Or maybe I fall in love with country and never leave, who knows? So yeah just a casual 6 trips before I even start South America getting to see friends from all stages of my life and spending time with my family.

Phew that was a long post, others will probably be shorter but maybe not. Depends how chatty I feel and how much I want to type. Anyways that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Hope you all enjoy the blog as it comes along.