Central America Obsession

For those who don't know I leave for my next journey in 20 days. I am headed to Central America to quiet my obsession, with the beaches, rain-forests and monkeys that call it home.

My desire to trek from Cancun to Panama began in 2007, I was in Venice, Italy with my mother and I saw her struggling in silence to climb bridge upon bridge, stair after stair, with arthritis and an artificial hip. She wanted to see and do everything and since Venice was not handicap accessible she suffered through 5 days of pain to experience the things she wanted to see and do. On my 23rd birthday we were sitting on the Grand Canal and she confided in me how much pain she was experiencing. It made me think of the year prior when she (against doctor recommendations) hiked across a Hawaiian lava field to watch the sunset as active lava flowed into the ocean. Again she was in sever pain, and again she was not willing to sit aside and miss a life experience. For this, I admire my mother more than I can tell you. Nonetheless, I found myself considering the advantages of seeing the world as an able-bodied individual and reordered my travel priorities.

The re-prioritizing of my travel plans moved Central America and the hiking, SCUBA diving, caving, tubing, kayaking, horseback riding and zip-lining adventures it holds to the top of my travel list. For almost 3 years I have been attempting to make a trip to the region and for one reason or another consistently found my plans unable to be executed. Something (work, money, time, health) always impede my plans.

Then in November I found myself obsessing once again over Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua. I had some but not enough money to make the kind of trip i wanted to take. I put my travel dreams out of my head and three days later, things changed. My mother and aunt gave me a wonderful gift! They gave me a portion of the money left after my Grandmothers death to travel, buy a car or whatever else i wanted to do with it. It took me only one cry of joy and declaration of gratitude to decide what i would do with the money. "Central America here I come!!!"

The past 3 months have been filled with reading, planning and preparing for my 3 month trip to Central America. I am so excited for this adventure and so excited to share it in this blog.