A few more quiet and relaxing days at home & a lot of Christmas markets visits before the adventure starts. I will be traveling through Central- & South America for 5 months, starting with Costa Rica on 01-Jan-2019. Current status: excitement, nervousness & sadness about things left behind. Relaxation is hard. Thinking all the time about what to take with me, making decisions & than decide for something else a few minutes later. Trying to learn some Spanish & getting extremely nervous by thinking about how to get around without decent language skills... But mostly I am thankful. Thankful for the chance that I can take 6 months of from work, thankful for the support from family, friends & colleagues... Just thankful for the chance to just try it out.
It feels like that almost all my life I wanted to travel, see different places, explore different cultures, try different things. I tried to travel as much as possible. But although I got the chance at my working place to take a few more days off than just the standard holiday days everyone has, it was always too short, never enough time to see and explore properly. Four weeks was the most I was able to travel in one go. It felt I lived only from one holiday to the other & was still never satisfied, still had restless feet’s, always wanted to see more & more & go to other places or even go back to where I was already, as I felt I never got it properly, never explored everything. Which is something which is impossible anyways, as even after having lived in Ireland for over 5 years, there are still places (probably even in front of my doorstep) I still don’t know. It feels like it’s getting out of hand, I always live in the past or in the future, never in the present moment.
Over 2 years ago I decided I needed a change in my life, I am not happy & I have to chase my (travel) dreams. The world is big & beautiful. There are so much more places to see, people to meet, things to do, I at least want to see & do a bit more for a bit longer than just the ordinary 2 weeks of summer holidays.
—> It’s the things we don’t do we (will) regret, not the things we have done.
Saving up as much money as possible was the first step into the right direction.
Thankfully there is a possibility work wise to take a career break (unpaid time off). I applied for the max time (180 days) & got it approved - Yeah!! Five months of this will be pure traveling. Two weeks before & after I am spending time at home (Germany).
The very very difficult decision where to go got much easier, as I will travel the first 3 weeks with a friend to Costa Rica. It than made sense to stay at this part of the world 🌎. I did my research which countries are safe and relatively affordable & ended up with the following plan:
Costa Rica
Panama
Ecuador (February)
Peru (March)
Chile (April)
Mexico & Cuba (May)
Fingers crossed all will work out properly. I am positive. All flights (ie. Panama to Ecuador & Chile to Mexico) are prebooked already, also the flights back to Germany (30/31-May) & than back to Ireland (12-June) are sorted. Costa Rica & Panama has also being prebooked in terms of accommodations, transportations... as far as it was possible online. The rest is open & I will do it more spontaneously on the go. I want that freedom & flexibility.
This blog will be a travel diary & a ‘I am fine’ catch up. I will try to post regularly & in both languages, but please bare with me, if I can’t manage it. Also please excuse spelling or grammar mistakes, it happens especially as I write without a proper keyboard on a device that gets very confused as I write in multiple languages & sometimes the automatic correction is not helpful 🙄.
Happy reading anyways.
Regards, Anja
* My Mom & myself at the Christmas market castle Koenigstein, Germany Dec 2018*
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