I am writing this post from Cartagena, Colombia, where I am now nearing the end of my second full day, third day overall, of my voyage of rediscovery. This is the first stop on a trip that will take me to 10 countries, passing through another seven along the way. Phileas Fogg, in the Jules Verne novel, went around the world in 80 days. I anticipate doing it in 76, though I don’t have any big wager waiting for me at the end, as old Phileas did.

There are a number of things that inspired me to take this trip. The stated purpose is to find a country or countries to which I might relocate. But really the purposes — and there are several — extend much beyond that. One of the primary ones is my need (call it a desire, but really it’s a need) to uproot my life every so many years. I see this as essential to keep from becoming staid, stuck in my ways, and boringboringboring. I look around and see people living such narrow repetitive lives, and I am determined not to be one of them. I never have been like that and I don’t anticipate falling into that pattern now. I’ve been in the same place for going on seven years now — ever since moving off the boat, where I lived for almost five years — and it’s well past time for a change.

Another purpose is to remind myself that not everyone in the world lives as we do in the United States. It took no more than the first step, literally the first step, off the airplane after we landed in Cartagena, to receive that reminder, and I have received it virtually every minute I have been here. And this is just the second day of my Odyssey.

Yet another purpose is to see if I can still deal with the shifting vagaries and challenges that come with travel into unknown and markedly different places. It’s always been one of my talents, and so far the results have been reasonably assuring. I have never been one to expect, or even want, things to be as they are back home. I may or may not drink the water, depending on where I am, but I’m not one to complain about the toilet paper (though I do miss my bidets, once you’ve used one of those TP just doesn’t satisfy) or the way people drive or the chatter in the street.

I have some more personal objectives, too, but ones for now I’ll keep to myself. They may or may not (more likely not) be met, but if the big ones that I have divulged are largely met, the trip will have been a success.

Bumps in the road

I’ve already had some bumps in the road, and getting over or through them is all part of the experience. The first came at Orlando International, before I’d even left the U.S., when my first flight, to Miami, was delayed. Also at Orlando, the American Airlines ground person decided there wouldn’t be room in the overhead bins for those of in Boarding Group 9, so my plans to do the entire trip with just a carry-on and a flight back got derailed before the first flight when she insisted I check my carry-on. Which I did, after removing my laptop from it. Fortunately, the bag did make it to Cartagena, which I admit to having doubts about.

I’d count making my way through the endless concourses of the new Miami International as another bump in the road. I have added MIA to my list of the world’s worst airports, and whoever designed it needs to be dragged outside and shot so they cannot inflict the same design flaws elsewhere.

Arriving in Cartagena relatively late at night and descending a stairway — something we used to do a lot back when air travel was still fun, which it decidedly no longer is — instead of traversing a jetway, and then walking in the balmy tropical night air along a fairly lengthy exterior passageway on the tarmac, marked off to keep people from wandering into the path of taxiing aircraft and baggage tractors, all I could think of was how we weren’t in Kansas anymore. But that was okay. The world does not need the spiffiness or sterility of most American airports, and it was during that initial walk into the fairly basic terminal and awaiting Colombian immigration that I concluded, without a single doubt, that I had made the right decision to go on this trip.

I had selected an AirBnB — my first AirBnB experience — to stay in that is just a six-minute walk from the airport. It took a little doing, but I finally did find the place, managed to extricate the keys from a lockbox, climb the steel staircase to the second floor, open this locked door and that, and then, upen entering what would be my quarters for the next four nights, discovered that the bed had been slept in and used towels greeted me in the bathroom and a pile of dirty pots and pans awaited in the kitchen. Now this was a pretty big bump in the road, but when I reported it to the owner via AirBnB messaging, he could not have been more apologetic or willing to make things right. Apparently the person who is in charge of maintaining the unit was sick the day of my arrival and failed to notify the owner, and now I was walking into the aftermath of that.

Anyway, one can have worse things happen then having to sleep in a pre-used bed or use one’s own towel, which I had the foresight to bring with me. And the next day, along with a refund for the night, came a lovely older senora to make the place spic-and-span by the time I got back from my explorations. All good.

Realizations while lying on the beach

There is a special pleasure that comes of being in a place where one can go out at 2 in the morning, in just an ordinary neighborhood, not some tourist zone, and be able to find places within a few minutes walk to score nourishment and drink, things I had foregone most of that initial day and night of travel. I don’t know anywhere in the U.S. where that is possible. Certainly nowhere I have lived, no matter how big or small the place. Score another big plus for not being in the U.S.

Anyway, on Monday, full Day One of my expedition, I managed to navigate the intricacies of money exchange, finding and using taxis (never my preferred thing, but easier than trying to figure out the local bus network), exploring el Centro, the old part of Cartagena which is the part most tourists know, while wearing myself out triangulating the various directions I was given to find a certain real estate office, only to discover that it no longer exists. This isn’t intended to be a travelogue, so I’m not going to go into detail about the sights to be seen in the places along the way. Cartagena certainly has more than its share of those. Go visit them yourself if that’s your objective. Mine is just to get a feel of being in a place, to absorb its essence, not to be a tourist.

By the end of a very long day I scored a taxi with what felt like a square tire to take me back to my now spiffified place, where I engaged in the time-honored practice of taking a well deserved nap. And then to put on my swimsuit under my clothes, grab one of the clean towels, and head for the beach, which is just a couple of blocks walk in the other direction from the airport.

I’ve been what passes for swimming — the beach is one of those long flat beaches that are perfect for forming rip tides but not conducive to actual swimming — twice now, in the Caribbean. And that first time, Monday afternoon, lying on the AirBnB towel and looking up a cloudless blue Caribbean sky — and discovering I had eye floaters that appeared like some sort of alien life forms — some revelations came to me.

The first being how just living takes courage. The courage to face the unknown — none of us ever knows what might befall us or when death, the ultimate curtain call, might come to us. This thing about courage is something I’ve thought a lot about in recent months. Just driving down a two-lane road, oncoming traffic coming at us at speed, separated from us by just a painted line or lines on the road. And yet we don’t give it two thoughts. Or the other night flying through the night sky, the courage of putting oneself in an aluminum tube tens of thousands of feet above the earth’s surface, hurtling through the dark at hundreds of miles per hour. Even just lying on a beach, exposed to the universe, takes courage.

And now, being out at some point on the earth’s surface, some mix of latitude and longitude, I am happy to have found the courage to push myself out of my comfort zone, out from the place and the life that has become all too familiar, and to venture into the relative unknown.

I’ll keep reporting on my voyage of rediscovery as I go along. Not every day, for sure, but as opportunities and thoughts arise. So watch this space for updates.

Featured image, sunset on the beach at Cartagena, photo by the author.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Comment, share, and subscribe, here, and there.