From December 2011 to December 2013 I lived the life of a digital nomad, I traveled around the world while working remote :). It was challenging, immensely fun, and I learned a shit ton :).

So, where did I go?

Panama for a few weeks.
Cusco, Peru for a month.
Buenos Aires, Argentina for a few months (1, 2, 3, 4)
Chile for a month (1, 2)
Easter Island
Melbourne, Australia for 1 year (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Bali for a week.
Singapore for a week.
Tasmania for a week.
New Zealand for a month.
Hong Kong (1, 2)
Split, Croatia (1, 2)
Freiburg, Germany for a month.
Romania for a month.
Amsterdamn for a week or two (work).
Spain For The Via de la Plata (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Scotland for the last month (1, 2, 3)

And then back home to settle down in Fayetteville, Arkansas :)

What did I learn?

#1 – You learn a whole lot about yourself when traveling for 6 month stretches alone. Lots of time to think, read, and just be with yourself. It was super helpful for me and I cleared a whole lot of bullshit from my mind, and I have a much better idea of who I am and what I want to do. Which is an good feeling :).

#2 – Living with your brother is really fun, especially when it is in Australia for a year. Especially when he refers to himself as your life coach :).

#3 – Time zones are hard, but also nice because they force you to prioritize what meetings need to happen. I just switched to a format to try to force this at home with meetings only on MTW from 9am to noon. We will see if that helps.

And I was reminded just how kind and awesome 99% of the people in the world are :). And how they just want clean air, good health care, opportunities to better themselves, opportunities for their kids, and for politicians to go fuck themselves (especially the corrupt ones, which usually means all of them in lots of these countries). Maybe one day a global political party can really get some traction.

Favorite places or experiences?

I loved them all but I especially loved Croatia! I can’t wait to go back as the weather and beach and people are amazing. Followed closely by Scotland, it felt like home :).

Highlights of the trip?
– Christmas and New Years in Panama with friends and family :).
– Taking Ayahuasca in Peru and seeing old ruiens + reading about them.
– Touring the Mendoza wine region one weekend with Rose and Steve.
– Running at this great park in Buenos Aires while I was there + getting a lot of big picture working while I was there at local cafes.
– Finding the weirdest wines I’ve ever had with Joel and Laura one night in BA.
– Hiking Patagonia for a week near El Chalten. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.
– Getting to see Easter Island and do a lot of biking, running, and walking after the polluted capital of Chile.
– Living with my brother Nick for a year in Melbourne Australia :)!
– Riding a train from south to north australia for 3 days, I had a blast and it was an awesome trip!
– A week vacation in Bali where I read the entire Wheel of Time series over + the final one. And had some amazing food and total relaxation.
– Doing a short week camping adventure across Tasmania with Joel! And seeing a platypus in nature up in the mountains around old growth forests plus so many other beautiful areas. Tasmania is amazing!
– Heading back to Singapore for a week for delicious food and great company :)!
– RVing across all of New Zealand with my brother the navigator :). And seeing Hobbit town!
– Going on a boat with some work friends in Croatia that happened to fall on my birthday, exploring old military bases and a sub base was a life long dream :)! Not to mention how amazing that entire country is!
– Amazing hospitality in Serbia, and fantastic food and history!
– Running and mountain biking in Freiburg Germany, so many amazing trails everywhere!
– All the little trips I did across Romania, an amazing country and I’m hoping to go back when it is warmer :).
– Walking for 7 days across the Via de la Plata in Spain. It wasn’t what I expected, and I wish I had done it 8 years ago when I first found it. But it was still an amazing and challenging experience. Lots and lots of alone time when you are working all day.
– Scotland with family and friends! It was so great to have so many visitors for the last month.

Nick and I did a big end of Australia year trip to New Zealand and it was a blast! We rented an RV and started in Auckland and went all the way to the southern most point. We covered 1850+ miles, and apart from some arguments over navigation styles we survived.

Here is our rough route :)

And some pictures!

I loved this classified ad, for a “single Shepard”.

Joel flew in for two weeks and we did a couple fun trips while he was here. The first thing we did was rent a car and drive down the Great Ocean Road. Nick was able to get off work and finally see some of Australia outside of Melbourne.

We managed to see a Koala in the wild + about 20 more at some point!

And here are some other pictures as we went along the coast and into the Grampian Moutains. We did a lot of hiking and managed to see Koolas, Kookaburras, two kinds of kangaroos, a few massive 6 foot kangaroo bulls, emus, and more! We even managed to see a little roo jump in his mom’s pouch in the wild before she hopped off.

And after that Joel and I headed to Tasmania! Beautiful place and we managed to see a platypus in the wild + a ton of hiking and camping. We flew into Hobart, picked up a 4wd with poptop for camping. Then headed north along the eastern coast. We eventually made it all the way to the top of the north west, and then over across the middle to the middle of the huge eastern national park. And then back to Hobart with a stop at the Mona there which was amazing (and that is high praise considering I hate 99% of modern “art”).

As you can see from the shots Tasmania is one of the most beautiful places in the world and hugely varied in geography IMO.

Over Christmas and January my friend Tina visited and we took a big trip around Australia! We started in Melbourne (Kangaroo Christmas), then rented a car and drove around the coast on the Great Ocean Road, eventually ended up in Adelaide, took The Ghan train all the way from Adelaide to Darwin, and then flew to Noosa for a week on the beach. It was an amazing trip and here are a few of the pictures from it! The only bad part was I got a pretty bad cold during Christmas that lasted a week, but managed to loose it somewhere on the great Ocean road.

Great Ocean Road
The most beautiful spot in Australia IMO. I’m heading back with Joel and Nick soon. We did this amazing tree top walk you will see a pictures from too.. And yes dinosaurs are still alive in Australia and we stopped at a big zoo area.

The Gahn & What Australia Looks Like From Adelaide to Darwin…
The Ghan was the highlight of the trip. It was 1,846 mile 3 day train trip with our own cabin and a great way to spend new years. Below are a bunch of pictures of what Australia looks like as we traveled over that 1800+ miles and some of the driving we did on the way to Adelaide from Melbourne. Plus we stopped at Alice Springs & Katherine for day trips. The pictures are in random order unfortunately but you will get the general idea.
*Even a pic so you can see how being stuck in traffic in Melbourne looks…

Darwin & Croc Territory
We ended up in Darwin and stayed there a few days, the town gives off a weird vibe. Kinda like Mad Max combined with alcoholics (lots of drinkers at 10am). Anyway, we went to a great zoo and fed giant crocs, plus got to hold a whole a lizard, and the cutest smallest little turtle I’ve ever seen.

Noosa & The Beach
Beautiful beautiful area, although quite a few jelly fish :). Some pictures of some amazing Bulgarian food that Tina made, a ginger hiding in his tent, something you don’t want to step on, beach I ran on almost every day, and our beach house + view where we spent a lot of time!

Finally cooked some Kangaroo, it is delicious! A bit more flavor than beef, a touch of delicious gamey taste maybe? Love it and bought a bunch more. Nick also likes it. Next time I need to do higher heat and cut down on cook time too.

Nick and I went to Sydney last week, mix of business and fun, unfortunately I got really sick the day after we landed. So I laid in bed for a day while Nick went hiking but managed to rally the next couple days for bondi beach and the zoo between sleeping. Better now, just a super bad cold or something.

Some pictures of Melbourne, and a few I hadn’t posted from a few days in Sydney. 2nd month here and loving it!

I’ll post some more soon but for now just a quick note on how amazing the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne is! Nick and I went today and wandered for a long time.

They have a ton of local wine vendors out and tasted a lot of different kinds. I ended up buying some honey mead, local dry red, two week old olive oil, and some local port. All delicious plus we just take the bottles back and can refill them for even less. Nick got a 750ml bottle for 10 bucks and 7 bucks to refill it with delicious wine. Pretty sweet deal.

Fresh rustic ciabatta bread and fruit/nut loaf. Both delicious. Goat cheese / olive oil mixture and nick got three quarter bricks of cheese for $10 bucks. Hmm what else? Two bags of awesome mushrooms, other veggies, etc! Awesome place and only a few blocks from our apartment, going to switch to buying veggies etc there as better quality and cheaper than the grocery store.

So, in short here are my plans for the next 18 months:

Jan – Month in Cusco, Peru (at 11,000+ feet)
Feb, March, April – Buenos Aires, Argentina.
May – Santiago, Chile.

I scored apartments with internet in each place and hopefully going to visit Brazil from Argentina quite a few times. I’ve got plenty of space at most places so hopefully some friends will come visit!

Still working down ideas of what I’ll do while I’m in each place, but the general idea is Mayan ruins, old churches, museums, food, steak, wine, vineyards, lots of fun work (webpub/wwwh), wine, beach, patagonia, etc. May 30th I fly off to Australia, still waiting to figure out that stuff, but I’ll be there for a year! And hopefully quite a few trips to Asia and surrounding regions.

It doesn’t feel so bad, I’m probably in better shape then any other point of my life, even with death sitting on my shoulder ;). Plus just imagine how awesome my mid life crisis is going to be considering I buy night vision goggles and python skinned cowboy boots in my teens and twenties. Certainty something to look forward too.

I also made some plans for the next couple years. I’ve been wanting to travel some more and spend another year abroad. So in late December or January I’m going to head down to Nicaragua for a while to visit Joel and Laura. And then travel around Central and South America until late May. I will spend at least a month in both Argentina and Brazil, and I’m still working on other locations (probably Uruguay/Chile, and hopefully Panama to visit a friend). Then in May/June I’m heading to Australia for a year as I got my visa to go there! I haven’t done any reading yet but I believe they have nothing poisonous or deadly on the entire continent, just cuddly little koala bears.

I applied for a 1 year work holiday visa to Australia and got it about 7 days ago… My plan was to play Ultimate Frisbee in Melbourne while traveling throughout Asia while working on a new web project with Joel. But plans change…. About 3 days ago a business opportunity popped up that I’ve been wanting to do for the last years. So and we have decided to pursue that for it. So for now I’ll be staying in the USA and trying to decide on a location to move too, more details to come as everything gets locked down and the contract finished.