Well Hello Everyone!

[westcoastfunky]

I just wanted to check in and say hello as I have not been around for a while.

I've been letting time pass as I knew it was not quite time to plan my trip yet but now I can feel that the time is coming.

I have a relatively loose outline of my travels. Essentially I know the first 5 stops (3 months) and then after that I know the approximate order of the continents I will visit.

For those that have not seen any of my few posts over the last year, here is a small recap:

I am planning to leave Canada to travel the world. I do not want to do an RTW, rather, I want to see the planet. I want to see as much of the planet as is possible. I will not go into war zones, etc just for the sake of a story or to say I was there, but I will do my best to see every country I am capable of seeing.

I want to have a second language before I travel and have been studying spanish loosely for many years so I have decided to do a short stint in south america first and then later come back to it to fully explore as I do not have the money to spend a year there travelling. I am lucky to have a business which I can run from anywhere in the world so I will go back later when I have more savings.

My plan thus far:

-Toronto & Montreal and hopefully also Newfoundland but it is very expensive to travel in Canada so I'm not sure about any of these
- See the Californian Redwoods on my way south
- Spanish language & surf school in Ecuador
- Pyramids in Peru
- Glaciers in Chile
- off to Oz for a year holiday visa while I explore surrounding areas (NZ, Tasmania, etc)
- Asia
- 2 year working holiday visa in the UK

After this I'm not entirely sure of the order of things. I will do exploring while I have that working holiday visa but only time will tell where I will explore. Obviously left is Africa, Western and Eastern Europe, Greenland and Iceland and then a proper exploration of South America.

I want to see the world because it is changing. For good or bad it is changing and one day in the future I want to be able to say I saw it then and I know it now. I want to say yes I saw that forest before it was gone, yes I saw those glaciers before they melted, yes I saw that desert before it became lush, yes I saw that culture before it was diluted and even yes I saw that place before it was rebuilt, I saw the sadness before life was returned. Life is all about change, everything in my life is constantly evolving and changing and so are the cultures we exist in and the planet we survive on. I'm 28 years old, a lot has changed in my life and a lot more will change, I want to remember things with my own memories for the good and the bad.

I'm leaving in about 6 months...at the latest April of '09, at the earliest January '09. I'm not sure yet how, or if I will document my journey much more than just keeping in touch with friends. The idea of being on the move for so long does make me sad. As it is, almost all of my close friends have left and are now only on this computer and it is hard but I know it will actually be harder when I am gone.

I will learn to rely on myself only and I worry that I will loose my ability to connect with people over long periods, loose those social skills to understand what compromises need to be made when you have someone (friend/relationship) in your daily life for several months. I also worry that relationships will have no depth and this type of long term isolation will negatively affect my ability to let people in...it is very unlikely I will meet a man whom wants to travel with me and whom **I** want to travel with me and make those compromises over destination, and this is a long time to not have a deep, true connection with someone. Sure you can connect deeply but the type of connection you build while sharing your life for 2 years is much different than the honeymoon infatuated must-learn-about-each-other stage of the first 3-6 months.

I have met several long-term travellers and they are very friendly, open minded, etc but they do not put themselves out for people and they do not care if you put yourself out for them...that really does sound ideal, and is as far as mates to do stuff with but it's a byproduct of the "friend for a day" condition and not something that lends itself to love-relationships.

Anyway, that is one concern of mine though if I am happy then it is okay and if I am not happy then I will stop travelling, it is as simple as that And in the meantime I will sample the sensuous talents of the cultures of the world and have a lot of sex.

I'm about to become a (possibly lifelong) gypsy. I feel sad, excited, trepidatious, blissful, and a bit torn. I feel making a journey like this that I should do something grandeur that will help humanity but there are already travel blogs, people already report for magazines, there are already guide books and besides, do I really want that commitment to have some project I have to complete?

In the end I am doing this for me and that seems a bit selfish...but who knows, maybe one day my knowledge of the world will be useful for something