New Direction

So, this blog will be taking a different tangent in the next few months as I won´t be working in an ambulance in the near future. And I´ll explain this with a little back-story. From about when I was about 16 and onwards, the ultimate destination for me was, and still is, the South Pacific. There is a distant, edge-of-the-earth lure that for some unexplicable reason has drawn my interest for about eight years, and this has turned out to be the year that I´ve decided to go there. I admit that I´ve kept my travel plans on the down-low, not mentioning it on this blog and only telling a few friends about this plan. But since I´ve decided to keep a blog about this trip, which will ultimately supply sufficient defining features about myself that will compromise my interweb anonymity, I really have no choice but to include the history of my previous (and precursor) trip to this one.

On April 3rd, 2008, I left Calgary, Alberta on a 1979 Honda CB750 motorcycle and rode solo to Panama City, Panama through the course of two months, crossing every country in between except Belize. I´ll go into the details of that trip some other time, but that was the precursor for me being in Panama right now. On April 26th, last week, I flew from Seattle, WA to Panama City, Panama. Here is the plan: to join on as unpaid crew on a private sailing yacht who is looking for an extra deckhand, and sail as far as possible towards Australia via the South Pacific islands before I have to fly back to Canada for the next University year. The logical continuation of Canada to Panama by land is Panama to Australia by sea, which is the second leg of my intended round-the-world trip broken up over the past and coming years.

Panama also is home to one of the world´s busiest cruiser and trade routes: the Panama Canal, where I hope to find a southwestward bound yacht with room for extra, unpaid, crew. It´s called hitch-hiking the oceans (google that), and it´s how I plan to see French Polynesia, etc. Since it´s only my third day in Panama, prospects are few and far between but I´m making some contacts that may translate into a position on a boat. It´s my intention to keep this blog updated, but circumstances may dictate otherwise. Eventually, however, I hope to have all of my travel writing posted here.