We have completed our official second year of full-time travel or, as we have become accustomed to saying, our second year living as nomads. It looked very different from our first year. To start, our entire first year was spent in Canada. The land border between Canada and the USA had remained closed so our itinerary was adjusted. Our second year was spent in 9 countries! In our first year, we lived predominately in our travel trailer and a few rental houses. In our second year, we ditched the trailer and lived out of our SUV (aka Chuck), tent camping in the US and augmenting with short-term house rentals and hotel stays. Our first year was in English-speaking Canada while our second year was almost exclusively spent in Spanish-speaking countries. We had to equip ourselves for a large range of temperatures during our year in Canada, but our second year was spent entirely in a 15-35 degree Celcius range and we rarely wore long sleeves. Our second year was really our first time living in and seeing parts of the world that actually look, feel, and operate differently from our hometown. For all these reasons and more, we certainly learned new things about ourselves and about how we see the world. I will aim to shed some light on a few of those lessons along with our observations and a few of our favourite stories.
Similarly to our first year, we noticed that life felt simpler with fewer possessions. We had reduced ourselves to a single bin of personal items each, two bins of family games, school items, and gadgetry, plus a bin of kitchen items. The rest of the truck’s space was filled with a tent, a shelter, sleeping mats and bags, one suitcase of clothes each, a bin for food, and a cooler as our fridge. Everything had a storage spot and we’d shuffle the bins around based on whether we were camping or staying at a hotel or house. Once we arrived in Mexico, the big camping items were sold and we spread ourselves out a bit more comfortably but didn’t increase our stuff (too much) to fill the space. The kids had autonomy over their bins and suitcases so they had to make decisions about what would fill those spaces. Molly had the most challenging time with this concept as she wanted to bring and keep everything she loves and yet she got through each and every pack cycle and said goodbye to some of her things when needed. When it was time to fly back to Canada from Costa Rica, all of us had to really dig deep to decide what would fly back and what would be donated. Even the adults found this exercise challenging but we did it together and are stronger for it.
We all learned that things are scary until they aren’t. We all took a pause before approaching a stranger to request help or directions or ask for an item, especially in a foreign language. Each time we did, however, it got a bit easier. Claire has a knack for languages and was the quickest to learn Spanish, but needed someone beside her to find the courage to speak. Erik did most of the logistics at each border crossing and got the most confident in his oral Spanish, but he couldn’t explain why he had to use a certain form of a verb in each sentence. By the end of our trip, all five of us were able to summon the guts to approach someone and speak in Spanish. Surprisingly, initiating conversations in Spanish remained our biggest fear – not hiking canyon walls or tubing through rapids or standing on active volcanoes…nope; speaking in Spanish. This year’s travelling helped us to realize that we can work through things that make us scared, little by little until it no longer has the same effect.
I believe the best takeaway from our year was learning and witnessing how humans are so very similar to each other even when they appear so different. We are very fortunate to have met many great people who invited us into their lives. Take Marlon, for example, who acted as our guide through parts of Nicaragua. He’s in his fifties, single, and was about to become a grandpa for the first time. His face would light up whenever he talked about the upcoming milestone. His love of family was contagious because it existed despite some of the extremely challenging impediments to a safe and prosperous life in his country. Or the lovely ladies we met in Guatemala who taught us their art of backstrap weaving. They dressed in their traditional woven skirts and shirts, lived in homes with earthen floors, and stitched pockets into their skirts to hold their smartphones. They beamed at their kids, showed off their lovely work, and talked about meeting friends in town for coffee later.
I also believe that we found a more rooted sense of identity as a family this past year. Our first year felt like we were these outcasts crazy enough to try travelling during a pandemic. No one was racing over to introduce themselves at the park. Most of our human interactions were initiated behind face masks. This second year, however, we started to identify as a nomadic family and met other nomadic families and even made plans to meet up with these families in a number of places. We became a part of a small social group who were also interested in seeing the world and experiencing a lifestyle of their own design.
Now much of this content is really my own opinion and I realize that I am but one of five people who experienced our second year. I wanted to hear from the kids to see if they had any lessons-learned or overall impressions. If you also have children, you will probably relate when I say they just shrug and say, “I dunno” when I asked them if they have anything to contribute to the blog. So I asked them some specific questions, and here are their answers.
“What story do you find that you tell the most often?”
Claire was the quickest to answer this question. She recalls the time when we were having a granola bar under a tree in Mexico after having swam in our first cenote. We were heading to the second swimming hole and decided to have a snack and some water first. Suddenly, we heard a rustle in the tree followed by a loud thump. A large iguana was suddenly on the ground only a few feet away from Claire and staring at us as if to say, “uh, hey, nothing to see here” and then it quickly turned and ran into the brush. We were a bit stunned and then we all broke into laughter. To this day, we don’t know if the iguana was trying to get Claire’s food or if it just fell out of the tree and then ran away embarrassed. We also happened to be listening to a Spy School book as a family during that month and so this iguana quickly became a new spy-in-training who clearly needed to work on his skills.
Erik reminded us of our long and harrowing car ride on the barely-made mountain road in Guatemala. Simon remembers roasting marshmallows on a volcano and loves talking about how cool that was.
“What was the biggest ‘wow’ of our year?”
Molly really felt a sense of excitement and awe when seeing animals. She remembers seeing the first sloth in Costa Rica and the colourful poison frogs. Her favourite animal encounter was watching the small turtles head towards the open ocean in Todos Santos, Mexico and getting to pet a real penguin in Veracruz. Simon’s wow memory was ziplining both in El Salvador and with friends in Costa Rica. Erik remembers feeling amazed when the Fuego volcano erupted and the vibrations were felt in his chest while he watched. Claire can’t stop thinking about the beauty of Semuc Champey in Guatemala and how gorgeously clear the green waters were to swim in. For me, the cenotes in Mexico took my breath away. But these examples are just a few of the many wonderful sights we got to see and experiences we were fortunate enough to have. All of the National Parks in the US were also spectacular. Yellowstone’s unique geothermal features were almost alien. Utah’s sandstone canyons exposed some of Earth’s oldest layers like a cut on Earth’s skin. And the rugged beauty of California’s coast will be forever etched into our minds.
“What do you miss about travelling and camping in our truck?”
At the time of writing this, we have been living with family or in London for almost 6 months. Our truck is long gone to a new family and our camping gear has been donated. Simon was the first the say that he missed seeing new scenery and waking up to fresh air when we camped. Erik felt nostalgic for the audiobooks we would listen to together while driving from place to place. Claire felt that life was a bit simpler as we had less things to manage and only so many possible options for how to spend our time. Erik and I were a bit reflective of the time spent planning and coordinating and organizing our lives, but only a bit nostalgic – it was a lot of work!
Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all flowers and sunshine. We had our many ups and downs along the way. I still struggled with feelings of isolation and loneliness, missing my sports teams and lacking a sense of community. Simon longed for some young and energetic friends with whom he could play ninjas, trying desperately to get his sisters to participate and often resorting to pestering as a means of getting their attention. Erik and I would get lost in the logistics of life and forget to spend time fostering our emotional connection, sometimes feeling more like roommates than spouses. And with five family members each with their own preferences, it was very hard to find common ground when making plans on where to go and what to see. If there is a silver lining to the struggles of life on the road, it would be that we are able to practice our problem-solving, resilience, and adaptability skills; we definitely needed them! Doing so together, learning from each other, and persevering through all of the ups and downs, have definitely made us stronger.
As with our first year on the road, we have no regrets for the time spent exploring, learning, seeking, enjoying, adjusting, and being together on this EDVENTURE!