This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
It seems like about time to explain just why I suddenly changed all my plans and flew home on Thursday/Friday, scrapping my entire journey without so much as a word of advance warning. I've given a bunch of people (very brief) explanations in email, but I want to cover all the reasons, of which there are a few, all interrelated. And for those who are wondering, I decided to come back on Monday night, while I was failing to sleep in the cab of Carlos(the mechanic)'s truck.
Reason 1: Safety. I've been living on a shoestring for a long time, relying on hitchhiking, sleeping rough, and the kindness of strangers to keep my budget very low. I've always said that I balance security and experience on every decision I make, and as most of you are aware I usually choose experience! But in this case, the risks are just too great. If I try hitching and sleeping rough in Central and South America, particularly in the more turbulent and crime-ridden areas, I'm very likely to die, or at least lose things I really need.
Reason 2: Money. I'm broke at this point. My plan was to carry on to the Yucatan region, which includes Cancun and other popular holiday destinations (and theoretically more English speakers), and get some work to save up, the way I did in San Francisco. But the kind of wages I'll be making anywhere in Mexico, particularly working off the books, are going to be so low I could be working for another year just to build a shoestring budget for travel onwards - I'd barely make it to Peru, let alone on to New Zealand as per the original plan.
Reason 3: I hadn't seen my girlfriend or my family for a year and a quarter. On the current schedule, I was looking at another year, maybe a year and a half before I made it home. It's just too damn long.
Reason 4: As many of you have gathered from previous posts, I already feel like I've found the thing I was looking for, or at least a large part of it. And what I've found is that once home, safe and secure and surrounded by my family, new aspects of that discovery - of contentment, or gratitude, or peace, or whatever - keep unfolding, and I'm constantly understanding it better. Makes me feel certain this was the right thing.
Reason 5: It just felt like the right thing! And I've learned to trust that instinct because it always seems to lead me away from bad experiences and into good ones. Further proof of that: I had to borrow the money for my plane ticket from my parents, but as soon as I got back they told me that my wonderful Auntie Rosemary in Belfast was sending me some money leftover from the estate of my Great-Aunt Mary, which has enabled me to pay them back half of it right away and have enough money to cover my expenses until I'm working again. That's a little hint that I'm still in the right path.
Reason 6: Just a couple of months ago, I would have been mortified to be giving up and coming home after all the big claims and promises I'd made to everyone - I'd have felt like I failed. Now, I could care less what anyone thinks about my decision. Funnily enough, that might be the most important reason to make this choice.
I'm going to keep posting on here, at least for a while - I'm not sure I could stop writing, even if I wanted to. Next I'll go over, for anyone who's interested, where I go from here. Then I'm probably going to write a few posts about stuff I learned from travelling this way, which might be of some use to anyone who's considering a similar journey (first: My final kit list, after 15 months of testing and refinement). And I'm going to have plenty of interesting things to do in the next couple of months which should be worth a few posts - my diary's already filling up!
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