The reality of life on the road.

We've now hit the six week mark since leaving Kamloops, BC, Canada on January 20, 2016. While six weeks isn't a substantial amount of time by any stretch of the imagination, it does feel like an incredible amount of time when you're living life on the road out of a backpack, living in (mostly) hostel dorms, and trying to stretch a $30/day budget (USD) as far as you can!

For those of you reading, this is my very first blog post - ever. Thank you for taking a peek! It's taken me a while to get my blog going, but now that it's finally up my hope is to post weekly. Jonas and I will be sharing stories of this new life of ours on the road in the most honest, unfiltered, educational, and entertaining words and photos that we can.  

Some of you know the background as to how we got to this point, but for those that don't, Jonas and I decided to leave the "everyday" and embark on six months of backpacking in Central and South America. We're attempting to cover a heck of a lot of ground during this time but we're still positive we can make it happen! Our general route, which has already shifted and changed based on impromptu chats with other backpackers, is the following: 

Costa Rica - Nicaragua - Costa Rica - Panama (where we currently are!) - Colombia - Ecuador - Peru - Bolivia - Chile - Argentina - Uruguay - Brazil.

Are we crazy? Haha, perhaps!

Bidding farewell to family and friends in Kamloops and then again to everyone who was in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica at Natasha and Jeremy's wedding, was nothing short of surreal. From packing up our home in WAY too many boxes to leaving my beloved colleagues in Sun Peaks, every step towards making this happen was dream-like.

Was I excited? Sure... kind of. Was I questioning our decision? Of course! At the age of 32 I had my doubts about leaving it all (a well established career and home life that I love) and venturing into the unknown. As I quickly discovered, I'm typically at the higher end of the age scale among fellow backpackers in hostels, haha. And of course friends back home are purchasing family homes and planning for first, if not second, children. I most definitely want to settle in and have a family at some point, but the idea of picking up and exploring life on a long term trip like this has always been with me. It's been a constant murmur in the background, resurfacing time and time again and always more insistent than before.

I mean really, what could be better than immersing myself in the minimalist lifestyle of living out of a backpack with the freedom to become as entrenched (or not) in local culture and plan each day as it comes?! This is what I've been dreaming about for 10 years since my first ever experience travelling internationally to Istanbul, Turkey, in my early 20's. It's taken me a while to take this big step (10 years!), but better now that never to have taken this leap of faith. 

I've coined this state of mind and our journey: Wave of Wonder. Not to be overly cheesy here, but it really is wanderlust that brings people into this lifestyle. Being curious about the world unknown and unfamiliar to us, and pushing personal boundaries to explore and learn are characteristics of everyone we've met on the road, young and old. Plus, picking a name for a blog besides “Christina & Jonas’s Travel Tales” was making my brain swell! 

The excitement of having our freedom to do and explore what we please with each day is truly amazing. At the same time it's thrown us into a tiring "go, go, go" mentality as we try to pack in as much as possible. It's a never ending cycle of planning the next move, searching for acceptable and affordable spots to lay our heads down at night, and trying to orient ourselves with the next town to ensure we don’t miss any of the must-see sights. 

This lack of permanence is still romantic for me after six weeks, yet exhausting. In the past 40 some-odd days we've stayed in 18 different hostels and hotels. There have been fabulous ones, and definitely NOT so fabulous ones. Peaceful environments to all hours ridiculous partying, run down, nasty conditions to gems that we by chance stumble upon, and everything in between. And to top it off we've dealt with reoccurring colds, upset stomachs (leading to other things, as you can imagine...), AND I threw out my back (an ongoing issue for me) which meant Jonas was my savior for a week, carrying my 40 pound backpack on his front-side while ALSO carrying his 40 pound backpack. 

The reality is, of course, that we can only just begin to scratch the surface of what a country has to offer in a few weeks' time. Try telling this to two fresh backpackers eager and ready to conquer it all! We're now trying to re-focus our energy on settling in for at least three to four days at a time, appreciating that this is a better approach in the long run for our physical and mental health. We hope to experience on a deeper level more of what these diverse, beautiful, and soulful cities and towns are truly about.  

It hit us around the four week mark that we were now fully immersed in the transient lifestyle; it no longer just felt like an extended vacation. The longest I've ever travelled is for two weeks, so this is a brand new world for me, and Jonas! Much of our time is spent crossing fingers, hoping that our next temporary "home" is truly reflective of the dozens of photos and travel reviews that I've obsessively spent too much time combing over. We're also in awe every time we arrive somewhere new (I don't think this will ever get old!), taking in the different sights, smells, sounds and cultural nuances. You might not think so, but there are immediate and visible changes throughout Central America between Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama... which I will get to in another blog post!

This is it for post #1! Just a quick look into how things are going. My next posts will roll out soon where I'll get into more detailed story telling! 

We hope you enjoy following our lives on the road.

Christina (& Jonas)