I’m standing around outside of Oleaje Sereno restaurant waiting for the river taxi to Rincon Beach, a remote area that backs up to Corcovado National Park on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific Osa Peninsula.
 
“Everybody knows it as Sierpe,” writes Samuel in WhatsApp, referring to the river taxi pick-up point. “It’s like two blocks long. (Laughing-smiling face.)” Samuel is the proprietor of the Jungalows at Playa Rincon and he’s sent me a photo of my river taxi captain, Gama, whom I now see walking towards the dock. A gaggle of backpackers and a handful of Ticos (native Costa Ricans) are lining up to get on board.

​My luggage is sitting at the café from when my morning taxi driver dropped me off. It is an embarrassingly huge blue suitcase I borrowed from my husband without asking. My backpacking days are long over and I didn’t even try to pack light for this trip.
 
I seem to be the only one milling around the café, uncertain as to whether I’m supposed to follow Gama or wait for someone to come get me. One of the waiters asks me if I’m getting on the boat so I gather up my stuff and pretend to start hauling the big blue maleta.

​Thankfully, he stops me and calls to one of the boat guys to come get my luggage. “Something-something el gigante,” is all I could pick up, followed by something to do with “she’s got her hands full with bean and cheese nachos.”
 
The boat guy comes and picks up my gigante maleta and “con mucho gusto” readily takes it down the ramp, never looks back, and there’s not even a suggestion of wanting to be tipped for being helpful.
 
Standing on the dock with the other passengers, I’m peering over shoulders and backpacks to see if this is going to be anything like the “chicken boat” going down the Mekong River from the border of Thailand to Laos, a two-day trip on hard wooden slats, all of us facing towards each other with our luggage piled in the middle.
 
Thankfully, I see that we each get an actual seat and there are two big-ass, rumbling Suzuki engines on the back that would have made my father-in-law proud. 
 
Gama instructs passengers to be seated in certain sections of the boat, according to where they’ll be getting dropped off, and in what order.
 
As the last few people pile on, the boat sinks a little with the weight but within minutes we are drifting away from the dock, the engines humming and the motors emitting a low rumble beneath the water.

The boat accelerates, and I am free.
 
Nobody knows where I am.
Nobody knows me.
Here I am “Carolina,” the Spanish name I was given by my sixth-grade Spanish teacher.
Here, I speak Spanish as much I do English. 
My brain works differently because of it.
There are no reminders of home.
I am the expression of myself that I like the most.

I am in a foreign land far from any cities, towns even.
My experience is my own.
Nobody to care and worry about me.
To be concerned about boat safety or where on earth we’re going or what will happen there.

On either side of the vast Rio Sierpe (meaning “serpent”), the spidery legs of mangroves tiptoe into the river. Their thick, visible roots alternate with clusters of palms and other native trees—nature, singing green everywhere. Untouched by humans. Possibly ever.
 
A reverence comes over me as the boat engines drown out all human noise.

Now I am having an adventure.

​Almost four weeks in Costa Rica and it’s been anything but relaxing, really, as I’m not on “vacation” per se, but rather looking into building a tiny house business with my husband and some pretty cool people we’ve been introduced to.
 
Aside from that, I’ve been working full-time, remotely, and taking a few days here and there. My vacation officially began yesterday but it didn’t feel vacation-like until Game hit the engines.
 
Almost an hour into the ride, the Sierpe River catapults us right out into the Pacific Ocean—well technically it’s Drake Bay but the mouth is so wide it may as well be the ocean—and suddenly we’re riding swells big enough that my butt comes off the seat and lands again with a thud as ocean spray splashes up on both sides of the boat.
 
There is nervous laughter (maybe it’s just mine) but soon everyone becomes livelier and more talkative as we exchange “oofs” and “whoas.” I was expecting some sloths dangling from trees along the way; nobody warned me to lay off the bean and cheese nachos in Sierpe. This ride rivals any amusement park sensation.

​Four middle-aged Hispanic men are swilling Imperial out of cans in coolers they’ve brought. One of them is celebrating a birthday.
 
“Como se llama esta playa?” I ask the birthday boy, when we drop off some young Tico dudes on a deserted beach with a jungle structure up the way.
 
“I have no idea,” he laughs. “This is all new to me.”
 
It’s the third stop and I am still on the boat with the hombres.
 
Now I inquire, “A donde van ustedes?”       
 
“I don’t even know,” he laughs again, and then questions the group’s leader. “Where we going anyway?”
 
“Who knows?!” and we all laugh again. “Wherever we stop.”
 
On my right, the waves are lapping us against the shore as a few people disembark. Soon there is a guy there next to me in the water, pushing against the boat to get the bow to point straight out. In boozy breaths, he tells me more than once that he’s lived there for more than 51 years, followed by something about “soy argencito.”
 
Or is it argencino? Or argentino? Argentinian?
 
I have no idea what he’s talking about but he grunts and laughs after everything he says, including something about an avion and Hawaii and I think I might have heard, “how about we take off together?”
 
A random wave splashes against the boat and like a bucket of water lands right on top of my head, soaking me and everything I’m holding on to. (These are the kinds of adventures I miss in all my domesticity.) I laugh out loud and el borracho, still there trying to steady the boat, laughs at me laughing.
 
It's all fucking perfect.  Pura vida perfect.

​That summer we arrived in Paris like we owned the place. At 15, that’s how you feel. Especially when you’ve left your own country for the first time and had a taste of freedom that can never be reversed. In London we ordered challises of beer and no one blinked. In Paris we bought cigarettes, asking and offering strangers for a light as though we were seasoned smokers. We learned to say “Je ne compras pas Francais” as though not knowing how to say we don’t speak the language was supposed to impress people. We joined all the tours—Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Bateaux Mouches (pronounced ba-tow moosh)—but then we had hours to do as we pleased, as long as we returned to the hotel by curfew. Which sometimes we didn’t and our Latin teacher who organized and chaperoned the whole thing would curse us. I remember one time we pissed him off so much he didn’t speak to us for the entire time we were in Italy. We still respected him though (in Latin class he’d tell us stories of escaping the Nazis during the Hungarian Revolution and how he’d been an Olympic diver in Hungary) and he never seemed to take it out on me when I took third year Latin the following year.

Now—like a strange cool dream I return to Paris with my husband. I’m turning 50 in the City of Lights and I want to spend just a day here en route to Barcelona, to finish something I never started: going up the Eiffel Tower. In 1984 I remember standing beneath it with my friends and groaning at the idea of waiting in lines to go up some stupid tower. We were such assholes in some ways. In other ways, I soaked up so much of what Europe had to offer, it forever changed me and broadened my perspective for years to come. It certainly made me more worldly, more articulate about places and people. And pretty savvy for a smalltown girl. Not to mention, the genie was out of the bottle, so to speak. I could never be reeled in again by my mother. (Sorry mom. I know it was hell.)

​After checking into Hotel Plaza Opera and appreciating the balcony view of the Eiffel Tower we rush to get a bus to the tower for 5:30 p.m. timed ticketing. The goal is to get to the top by sunset around seven. As you approach the entrance, the street hawkers flash arms hung with Eiffel Tower souvenirs of all sizes and colors: gold, beige, black, and a flashing lights version that seems just too cheesy until you experience being up the tower with the dancing lights and realize it’s actually a pretty accurate representation. We save our attention and our euros for later and make our way to the queue—still an hour-long wait to finally get to the front of the line and onto one of the elevators that takes you diagonally up the side of the tower to the first or second level. At the second level we get off, desperate for a coffee and a snack after nonstop travel, then proceed to the elevator that takes you to the summit.

From atop the Eiffel Tower Paris is aglow with perfection in urban engineering. Golden lights connect the dots of buildings and streets that form neat geometric angles. The Bateaux Mouches casts blue light as it glides effortlessly along the river Seine. Lighted bridges span the river like tiny golden rails meticulously placed to finish off a masterpiece. Two powerful spotlights shine from different angles at the very top of the tower, casting bright yellow light on key monuments below. Families gaggle and lovers kiss, as thousands before them have over the last 129 years since the Eiffel Tower was built for the World Exposition in 1889. Gustav Eiffel’s application won and he was commissioned to build the tower. It took more than two years and a hundred workers and was an instant hit at the expo and for the city of Paris. At the time, it was the largest building on earth--a grand testament to Industrial Revolution prowess.

​Miraculously the Eiffel Tower was spared during World War II although the German occupation of Paris meant a giant “V” banner (adopting the Allies’ use of “victory”) and German slogan underneath: “Germany is victorious on all fronts.” In an act of rebellion, the French cut the cables on the tower lifts so that Hitler would have to take the steps if he wanted to go up the tower. Apparently, he never did. And as the end of the war neared, and perhaps as desperate declaration, Paris and all its historical and religious monuments were to be demolished though it never happened thanks to the German general who saw it as an act in futility and knew well by then that Hitler was a looney tune.

After we descend we make our way to the street vendors, trying to decide which version of the Eiffel Tower we should take home to our kids—the black one, the beige one, or the gilded one. It occurs to me that the “iron lady” may in fact look like any one of these colors at a given time of day. I always had it that it was just black, but tonight I’ve seen it a flat tan color when we arrive by daylight, turn to a darker beige then to a brilliant gold flickering into the night. Who knew? As expected, Paris surprises and delights. 

​We make promises to our children. Sometimes big promises we have no idea how we’re going to keep. Yet we make them—because we believe so strongly in something or we know we would give anything to make those things happen.

The promise I made to my children is that we would travel. Far and wide. Domestic and abroad. We would witness the wonders and we would shake off the mediocrity of daily life with new sights and sounds and moments that remind us that the world is a much bigger place. And that while our own back yard is quite wonderful, there’s nothing like experiencing oneself on new and uncertain turf. To discover new paths and roads and pit stops. To summit the terrain and get a new view, a new perspective, another chance to look at life in wonderment.

Some years ago I told my oldest son, Cooper, who was then about eight years old, that I would take him “some day” to Utah, to visit my company’s headquarters in Provo and see those glorious Wasatch Mountains as you fly into Salt Lake City, dusted with snow in the winter months yet gleaming and golden like they’re on fire when the sun goes down. A visit in September meant taking him out of school for a few days with an emphasis on the “educational nature” of our trip. I wrote something to the effect of, “Visiting science lab of a multibillion dollar life sciences company and attending entrepreneurial business training with global business leaders.” Followed by, “A trip to the Utah desert to observe the arches and canyons worn away by the oceans 150 million years ago.” We also bought a guidebook for reference and I let him pick out his own travel journal—required for recording thoughts, feelings, experiences and observations in a new land.

During two days of business training, including personal stories of achievement and defeat, champion moments and leadership, I got my mojo back and my son—though plagued with “boredom”—heard so much about accountability and commitment, he was whispering in my ear about goal setting and being in the game. Later, when we were driving in the desert, I acknowledged him for sitting through nine hours of business training with no electronics, no books, nothing. He said sheepishly, “I looked around at all the babies that were there and I thought, if they can do it, I can do it.” Maybe that’s why he sat up a little straighter on the second day!

We rise before the sun and drive from our home base, a desert motel called Robbers Roost in the town of Green River, Utah, which happens to have the most divine little coffee spot (Green River Coffee Co.)—a rarity in caffeine-free Mormon country. Robbers Roost recollects the daring days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid who robbed and plundered, then hid out in these Utah desert caves and canyons. 
​
As we roll into Arches, the sun peeks over the canyon skyline, bursting orange over the entire scene: the towering red rocks, the desert sand and shrubs, the fins and arches and plateaus far off in the distance as far as the eye can see.

Delicate Arch is our first destination, ideal in the early-morning hours before the heat and throngs of people arrive. It will be our most demanding hike, a mere three miles round-trip but requires navigating sandy terrain and a lot of ups and downs, then a steady climb at a 45-degree incline up a massive smooth rock to an additional climb along a narrow ledge (not as daunting as it sounded in the guidebook but certainly something to pay attention to). We secure our footing and watch where we step, soon rounding a bend to the magnificent Delicate Arch. The golden sun casts rays perfectly against the red rock and every picture we take more beautiful than the one before it. 

​Stepping out from the airport terminal in Fort Lauderdale, an unexpected wave of heat hits my face and reminds me I’m no longer in the North where this morning it was cold as winter. Unexpected because I’m a child of five, maybe seven-years-old, and it’s unimaginable to me that the temperature in one place is so different from another. I can see the gleaming white car sitting curbside waiting for me. Grandfather ushers me to the door and I climb in the backseat, feeling the instant icy cool of air conditioning and a smell I never knew before: leather seats. It is clean and bold and wonderful and I feel like a princess arriving in a foreign land. And off we go in Grandfather’s Cadillac.
 
That trip, maybe another, it’s four in the morning. I’m at the wheel of the Caddy driving in my grandfather’s lap to some place where we will get on a boat with some friends and go fishing. Half-asleep, but I’m excited to be driving. What kid wouldn’t be? People did things like that in those days. I’m glad they did.

From Kathmandu my mother and I board a plane that holds about 15 people headed for the village of Lukla, the starting point for all treks in the Solokhumbu (Mount Everest) region of Nepal. We get good seats on the left side of the plane and perfect views of Everest as we fly seemingly into the side of a mountain, touching down on the tiny Lukla airstrip.
 
In Lukla our guide Moti Bhattarai, whom we’ve hired by word-of-mouth and Lonely Planet recommendations, hires a porter (commonly referred to as "sherpa") named Arki. He hoists a giant bundle containing our weighty duffel bag and other trekking supplies up with a rope and strap that he wears across his forehead, his head bearing much of the weight of our heavy bag hanging off his back. Within minutes he’s far ahead of us. Moti hangs back to make sure we’re doing okay on the first leg of this 10-day trek to Thyangboche where the view of Everest are exquisite and the 13,000-foot altitude is just enough for the uninitiated.
 
Today we’re headed to Phakding (pronounced pock-ding).

Everest viewed from the flight to Lukla By Steve Evans from Citizen of the World - Himalayas: Mt. Everest, CC BY 2.0

​We leave Lukla via rocky trails along the mountain's edge, while down below to the left we pass farms and spiraling, intersecting, criss-crossing fences made of stone. Towering above the mountains are even greater mountains, snow-capped Himalayan peaks. On the trail, we pass porters like our own, carrying monstrous baskets, filled with everything from fuel to food to camping supplies, for trekkers and shops and villagers. The higher up in elevation you get, the more expensive the luxury items: beer, sodas, candy bars. They’ve all been brought by foot over miles and days of trails. Many of the porters are young boys, teenagers and early-20s, barely straining it seems under the weight of their loads.

“Namaste," the standard greeting in Nepal, works for any time of day so we offer it up every time we pass others on the trail. Then we learn we shouldn't say it to the porters as they need to save their breath, but feel obligated to answer back if we greet them. Sounds effects on the trails include lots of hacking and hocking, from Kathmandu to here. Everyone eats a lot of dust and there are no qualms about rolling up big loud loogies and spitting them out right in front of you. The "poor man's hankie" is another common sight: holding the bridge of the nose and blowing it all out onto the street. 

Sherpa carrying load in Nepal  By Rüdiger Wenzel - Archiv Dr. Rüdiger Wenzel, Parchim, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, 

​Every once in awhile we hear the hollow clang of the yak bells, signaling that a herd of the long-haired cow cousins are approaching, either oncoming or from the rear. Soon enough they appear, laden down with supplies, rounding the bend, guided along by the switch of the herder. We hug the hillside to make way for them as we’ve heard they can be ornery. We learn later that what we’re seeing in the lower elevations are crossbreeds between yaks and cows; yaks can only survive and thrive at the higher elevations. There are different terms for all the different types of yaks and crossbreeds, and for your further trivial information, female yaks, which you don't see on the trails but are milked to make cheese and butter, are called “naks.”

Yak trains on the trails of Nepal By Krish Dulal - Own work, CC BY 3.0, 

Now and then we pass mani stones, sometimes massive rocks, sometimes just piles of carved stones with Sanskrit prayer inscriptions: Om mani padme hung, the well-known Buddhist mantra that translates as "a compassion-jewel in wisdom-lotus, amen." You're always supposed to pass the stones on the left (your right shoulder to the "Buddha"), so Moti leads us off on a little trail to the left that loops back up to the main trail. Lots of blue, red, yellow, white and green prayer flags waving on poles all along the hillsides and strung as banners over rooftops. We take lots of short breaks and a longer one for lunch. Amazingly, my mother’s ankles hold out, despite walking for hours on loose rocks, but around 2:30 p.m. she’s running low. Instead of pushing it to Phakding, Moti has us stop for the evening in Ghat, a village just before Phakding.

Mani stones you must pass on the left with your right shoulder to the stones  By DARIO SEVERI - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

​We're staying in a wooden lodge, called teahouses in Nepal, in the middle of a tiny village, surrounded by mountains. Sitting around the little black woodstove in the early evening, eating dinner of dahl bat—rice with vegetables and lentil soup you pour over the rice. Funnily enough, it looks just like the curry vegetable dish the Australians at the next table have ordered. They joke that the menus always say what the teahouses would like to serve you, but it's not usually what they have or can prepare. The porters eat “mash,” which looks like a large pile of yak turds piled on the plate. It’s some kind of dark millet bread they dip in vegetable soup.

It gets dark and cold early in the Himalaya as the sun goes down behind the towering peaks and there is no electricity in most villages. Before hunkering down into our sleeping bags for the night, we each make a trip to the charpi (outhouse), a squat toilet with porcelain basin that’s surprisingly good compared to the wooden ones where you can see evidence of all who came before you through the hole between your feet. In the middle of the night, the soft, tinkling sound of bells lends mystery to the quiet stillness. 

Teahouses in view on approaching the village of Ghat  By John Pavelka - Flickr: Village of Ghat, CC BY 2.0, 

​Down the West Coast of New Zealand along the Tasman Sea we arrive in the village of Franz Josef, the starting point for glacier walks on the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers.
 
The Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are also located at a spot greatly affected by the shifting of the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, so these glaciers generally shift anywhere from one to five meters per day. The way the Southern Alps and mountains are formed in this area, coupled with forceful winds coming off the nearby Tasman Sea, also contribute to the formation of the glaciers, which, oddly enough, are within walking distance of lush, rainforest vegetation.

Professional guides lead the glacier walks. At the Franz Josef Glacier Guides check-in, you get a little drawstring knapsack, a raincoat, a pair of thick, woolly socks, and a pair of glacier boots (with ice grips) in your size. A group of 35 or so gets split up into three smaller groups at the base of the glacier: slow, slower and slowest. We each pull up a rock and switch into our woolly socks and glacier boots. The rain starts again so we don our generic blue raincoats with the big FJGG letters on the back.

A bus takes us within a few kilometers of the base of the Franz Josef Glacier. From there we begin our hike over glacial debris (lots of rocks) to get to the base. A glacier is basically formed when heavy snowfall occurs and the snowfall exceeds the summer melting. The snow turns into ice, and as more snow falls and builds up again the ice shifts down (advancing glacier), and more and more layers build up, ultimately forming thick blue ice.

Now when they say glacier “walks” I have this picture in mind of just getting up there on that glacier and walking around. WRONG. When we finally do reach the base, I look up at this monstrous mass of ice and snow and realize we’re gonna be climbing. I opt into the “slow” group, feeling reasonably fit and thinking, how hard could it be? Our guide soon takes off, hacking away at the ice steps, which have to be maintained every day with an ice axe. Each step requires a steep haul, starting with your boot (always stepping on the ball, not on the heel of your foot) about the height of your knee, so every step involves pushing from your butt and quads all the way down to your toes.

From time to time, the guide stops to allow everyone to catch up, encouraging us to stick close together and not get too far behind. The reason being, if you miss seeing where the person ahead placed their feet, you don’t know where to step for sure footing.

Somewhere along the way we pass a wooden box of ice poles (walking sticks with metal spikes on the bottom). We each grab one and keep going up. We are fully on the glacier now, and it is BIG, I mean massive, and we’re still going up, hopping across deep crevasses that drop down into nowhere, taking timid steps on ice shelves which barely fit my boot, shuffling left to right in a passage formed by two big ice walls, up and up and up, and all I can think about is the fact I’m gonna have to go down again.

If you’ve ever been on a horse, tripping and stumbling downhill, you know that feeling of powerlessness when any sudden lurch makes you feel as though you’re going to go tumbling down over his head. Only on the glacier, there’s no horse, just you and your equilibrium and a stick. More than a few times I lost track of the person’s steps in front of me and found myself standing helplessly, staring down at a maze of icy bumps and impressions. One set slants downward toward a crevasse. On the other side of it across from where I stand, the muddy tracks of the other hikers seem to come up out of nowhere. The girl in front of me is standing at a higher elevation and points out where she has just stepped. The man behind suggests another good option from the side where we are standing.

And down I go, having to deal with all those nasty steep steps again. Most every time my foot sets down I take a leap of faith, as it never feels quite like I’ve got my footing and balance. In the middle of one steep descent, I have just taken two big steps and am about to take the third, most daunting one, but my pole keeps sinking through soft snow and into air. As I make the step, I slip and fall rear first right down to the bottom, providing a fine example of another, less desirable way of getting down.

After a few more tricky descents, all I can think of is getting off the damn glacier, the end of which looks tauntingly near. If we were walking on a flat surface it’d take less than five minutes. But we’ve still got to ditch the poles in the box and climb backwards down that ladder on the edge next to the ravine. 

Eventually, our drawstring knapsacks with our own shoes and dry socks are in sight at the bottom. Hopping down the last few steps, my feet hit solid ground again and I am thankful for the woodstove and hot shower waiting for me back at our chalet. At the finale of our glacier walk, we each receive a certificate of achievement. Though it’s just a piece of paper, it feels justly earned and well deserved--a reminder of a not-so-small victory.

I awake at 4 in the morning to the rhythmic chanting of the devoted being called to mosque for the first prayers of the day. It’s Christmas Day in this predominantly Muslim country of Indonesia and I’m preparing to leave Cibodas, a mountain village some distance from Jakarta. After a cold shower and breakfast, I get a ride down to the main road. There is no direct bus to Bandung because it’s Christmas Day (yet nobody I've met so far is actually celebrating it), so I get on a bus for Cianjur (pronounced Chianjur), where I hop another bus for Bandung. Finally I’m on my way to Pangandaran, a beach town situated on the South Java Sea.

​We wind for hours and miles through tropical mountain ranges and deep, green gorges followed by lush green valleys of banana and palm trees—vast expanses of totally unspoiled, undeveloped land, touched only by the people who farm it. We ride through a mid-afternoon downpour but the sun comes out again as we get closer and closer to the coast. When we finally ride into town, I haul my heavy pack off the bus and hire a becak (trishaw) to take me to my guesthouse. (Mind you, this is in the days before searching online and booking ahead. I’m going purely off my Lonely Planet Indonesia guidebook and the author’s recommendation of a place called Delta Gecko run by an “eco-groovy Aussie” named Kristina.)

Gateway to Pangandaran Wikipedia/Michiel1972 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

 The beach at Pangandaran ​By Kondephy - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

​I settle into a dorm-style hut with one bed up and two down, our own mandi (a toilet hole in the floor and a well of clean water in the corner to pour over yourself and down the hole). There’s no electricity but all the huts and gardens are lit by the soft glow of kerosene lamps in the evening. My roommate is Milly, a dynamic 29-year-old Australian girl. When I ask her how long she's been on the road she replies matter-of-factly, "Five years." She's done Africa and South America, and has just returned from five months in India. I inundate her with questions about traveling alone as a female and she says she wouldn't have had it any other way. People look out for you and always want to help you if you're traveling alone. I realize I've already experienced some of that on my way there.

Christmas dinner includes traditional Sundanese dancing and martial arts. Gathered around three large dining tables are about 30 people—foreign travelers and Indonesian friends and neighbors—being served a huge buffet of Indonesian food, under a bright full moon on Christmas Day. Kristina tells us the next full moon on Christmas wouldn't be for another 100 years. I allow the profundity of the moment, this time and place and my being in it, to sink in.

​She goes on to explain the first act of the evening, a traditional Sundanese dance. Pangandaran officially marks a divide between Sundanese and Javanese, two entirely separate ethnic groups with different languages and related, but distinctly unique cultures. With apologies to the Dutch in the audience she talks about the Dutch occupation of Java and how the Sundanese had been the main victims of oppression. During a period of several hundred years, the Sundanese were not allowed to practice their traditional martial arts so they disguised it as a dance (similar to slaves in Brazil who developed kapoera to disguise fighting techniques, so they could continue their martial art tradition). A young Indonesian girl performs a beautiful dance followed by demonstrations of the martial art itself, called pencak silat, fluid and rhythmical movements accompanied by beating drums and flute music.

Standing at La Plaza de Las Tres Culturas—an evolutionary intersection where Aztec ruins sit alongside a 17th-century church and 21st-century modernity—what you’ll first notice is that the church and the plaza are leaning. And that is because Mexico City is sinking. Yup, the entire city, in fact, is one big swamp, built in this location because here was spotted an eagle with a serpent in its talons, perched on a cactus—a prophetic sign for the Aztecs to build a city after wandering nomadically for several centuries.

For modern-day Mexico, that means that all over the city, there are leaning, sinking buildings as well as ruins that are retreating into the earth.

Aztec ruins in the foreground with La Basilica (the old one) leaning in background 
​By Deror_avi - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

La Basilica de Guadalupe, a modern structure (hideously out of architectural sync with the adjacent churches) that holds 10,000 parishioners, faces a plaza where you can also see the old Basilica (sinking), La Colegiata (sinking), and high on the hill behind, El Templo de Cerrito.

The story behind La Virgen de Guadalupe, which has produced a kind of cult following in Mexico, as well as becoming central to Catholicism in this part of the world, goes something like this:

In 1531 an Indian named Juan Diego was walking over the hill on his way home from church (the Indians walked for miles to attend services in the city) when the Virgin Mary appeared to him. Over a short period of time, she appeared to him several more times, each time telling him to send a message to the bishop to build a church on a nearby spot.

When the Indian approached the bishop, he wouldn't believe that the message actually came from the Virgin) and he asked for proof. When the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego again, he told her that no one believed him because he was an Indian, and they wanted proof. She gave him a bundle of red roses and told him to fold them in his jacket, take them back to the bishop, not showing anyone until he got there.

When he returned to the bishop he opened his jacket and the roses fell out. Imprinted on his frock was a perfect image of the Virgin. The bishop believed, and had the church built (the old Basilica).

The faithful make the pilgrimage to La Basilica de Guadalupe 
​By Karolja - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

​The entire square is considered a holy place, a mecca for millions of people who make the pilgrimage to visit the site. Even poor people come from the outer regions of Mexico and camp out in tents on the plaza for several days. On the periphery are hundreds of vendors selling rosaries and images of the Virgin. The most pious crawl on their knees across the plaza, approaching the Basilica in prayer position.

While church services are going on, visitors can enter a passage behind the church altar and shuffle by the huge 24K gold framed frock of the young Indian and you can clearly see the colorful image of the Virgin peacefully looking down. The guides joke that instead of being called "catolicos," Mexicans are often called "Guadalupanos"—for such fervor around La Virgen de Guadalupe.
 
Regardless of your religious leanings, it’s well worth seeing the churches and holy spots of Mexico City—before they sink into the earth.

​Our guide, Castor, is serious when he tells us, "No camera. No flashlight. No cigarette." It's 10 o'clock at night, and we've been stumbling along behind him and his wife, Maria, on the beach in complete darkness for half an hour, hoping that every shadowy form is a giant green sea turtle that has emerged from the Caribbean to lay her eggs on Tortuguero Beach.

My husband and I have traveled from the central highlands of Costa Rica - three buses, a taxi, and a five-hour boat ride - to the western Caribbean coast, just miles from Nicaragua, hoping to witness this event in late October at the end of the nesting season. Thunder rumbles behind us offshore. A crack of lightning crosses the moonless sky. Ominous raindrops threaten to end the whole expedition, and I wonder how the baby turtles ever find their way to the sparkle of the sea on a night such as this.
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We traipse behind Castor and Maria in dutiful silence, contemplating the impact we could have on a turtle's nesting decision. Although they can't hear well, green sea turtles have a powerful sense of smell. Strong odors and lights can disturb them, and if the female feels threatened, she'll likely return to the sea to abort all 100 to 120 of her eggs - a huge sacrifice for an endangered creature.

Earlier that day we had read up on threats to the turtles - toxic waste, plastic bags, and fishing hooks among other things - at the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (now the Sea Turtle Conservancy) information center in the village of Tortuguero. These threats apply, however, only if the baby turtles even make it to the sea in the first place.

Behind Tortuguero beach is a thick jungle and a national park that are inhabited by 57 species of amphibians, 111 species of reptiles, 60 species of mammals, and more than 300 species of birds. While the Caribbean Conservation Corporation has helped curb the human appetite for turtle meat and eggs - Tortuguero means "turtle catcher" in Spanish - natural predators remain hungry. Hundreds of broken eggs and shells litter the beach, commingling with debris such as dead coconuts, driftwood logs, even garbage.
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Yet this vast area also produces most of the green sea turtles of the Caribbean.

I had imagined groups of tourists prowling around the beach, all of us hovering in a huge, gawking circle over a nesting turtle, but, surprisingly, we're the only ones. Castor explains that some guides take people out at 8 p.m., but we're less likely to see anything at that hour.

We stumble farther, past the end of Tortuguero village. Night sounds kick in, mysterious calls of unknown birds and insects, followed by profound silence. Then Castor stops suddenly, our small group coming to a clumsy halt behind him. With his low-beam flashlight, he draws our eyes down to the sand, churned as though a miniature tractor had driven up onto the beach and headed straight inland.

Castor slips away, follows the trail, and returns. "She is there," he reports, "making her nest now. We'll wait for her to finish and then we will see her lay the eggs."

Castor lowers his voice, stoops over with his hands on his knees, and explains what the female turtle is doing: She's using her body like a giant power drill, turning herself around and around in a circle until the top of her shell is nearly even with the sand. Using her powerful, leathery flippers she scoops sand out around her, burrowing deeper. Employing her back flippers, she then reaches beneath herself to dig a neat, deep hole for the hundred or more eggs she'll lay this evening. In two weeks, she'll come back to this beach and lay some more.

In hushed tones we shower Castor with questions. How long do the eggs need to hatch? Sixty days. How long do green sea turtles live? A hundred years or more. How much do they weigh? They average 300 pounds. Why this beach? The conditions are just right, and the turtles nest on the same beach on which they were born.

From Tortuguero, the hatchlings may travel the Caribbean Sea for decades. Once the females mature at 20 to 30 years old, they'll return here to lay their eggs every few years.
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Then Castor is off again. We sit silently on a big piece of driftwood, waiting patiently like family members outside the birthing room. Some minutes later, we get the message we've been waiting for: "It's time, she is ready." In the dark we move up the beach, wondering where she is exactly, hesitantly stepping as though we might trip over her.

​"Come, come close, have a look," Castor says, and we gravitate toward the soft red glow of his flashlight. His right hand holds the massive turtle's left rear flipper aside so that the light shines directly into the hole, which is already filling with eggs. The turtle's droopy pointed tail heaves as a soft, slippery egg slides through and plops into the hole, followed by another and another, sometimes two and three in one push, followed by a watery substance.

Watching her tail so intently feels invasive and I wonder out loud if holding her flipper back is among the things guides shouldn't do, but do anyway for the tourists' sake.

"She's in a trance right now," Castor assures me. "She doesn't know we're here."

I gasp in awe as dozens of eggs drop into the earth, recalling that only a sturdy few will survive, and that only 1 to 3 percent of the females who hatch from these eggs will make it back to this beach to lay their own eggs.
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The turtle's tail swells one last time, then relaxes, producing nothing. Within minutes her tail flippers begin scraping sand from the walls around her, dragging it over the top of the eggs to build a mound underneath her. Gradually the eggs disappear from sight, and the scraping sound of her flippers subsides.

Castor has slipped away again. He signals us to another spot some distance away. Unbelievably, another nest is hatching at this very moment, dozens of baby turtles desperately flailing their way to the surface, trying to drag themselves up out of the hole and to the sea.
But there's a problem. A huge driftwood log lies embedded in the sand parallel to the sea, obstructing their passage down the beach. As the little turtles scatter from the nest, dazed and looking for the light of the sea, Castor shines his beam toward the water and Maria scoops the newborns up by the handful and places them on the other side of the log.

If we weren't here at this moment, most of them would have wandered aimlessly toward the jungle and death. Hordes of them scramble from the hole. It's a process that's gone on for 2 million years. I root for every tiny one of them.

A​fterward, as we stroll back to the village of Tortuguero, I recall my mixed feelings about the human impact on this environment. Now I'm going home joyous that my presence here helped an entire nest of baby turtles survive the first challenge of their lives.

If you had to come back from your little solo venture with a good story to tell, you’d start thinking like a writer and looking for the “angle” of the story. Whom can you meet to start a conversation with? What can you get yourself involved in—an event, an activity, a local scene—that would give you an inside track on what’s happening where you are? Where would you wander that’s not on the list of highlights provided by the hotel or tour company or guidebook? What questions could you ask of someone on the street or in a café about local lore, or a historical subject, or perhaps something a bit controversial? What questions and thoughts do you have in your head that you’re a little bit afraid to ask?
 
Not that every destination is going to be so seductive, but you get the idea. Write your own story. Create your own plot and develop your own characters. With you, starring in the middle, narrating the whole thing.

Here’s what I mean: You’ve been told you have to go to the Bayon (Angkor Wat) temples at sunrise. It’s the best time to go as the first rays of light are cast through the shadowy statues and monuments. The photography is amazing. The serenity and solitude is available to all—if you get there early. You could go with the driver and small tour leaving at 5 a.m. but instead you negotiate a ride on the back of a motorbike for $5 and leave at 4:30.
 
Sometimes you’ll have a good enough sense of a place to know that certain “adventures” are okay, that you’ll be reasonably safe and taken care of. I’m not saying to hop on some stranger’s motorbike and hope for the best (though frankly, those have been some of my best travel memories!), but I am saying, be willing to push beyond your own comfort level sometimes. Recognize those moments when you’re hesitating because it’s just not what you’re used to or what you’ve heard is the way things are supposed to be. Be bold. Get out there. It’s your own internal world where the risk usually takes place.

When you travel with others, there’s a natural tendency to share your thoughts, opinions, feelings, even off-handed remarks about things from “back home.” Sometimes it’s fun to share in the excitement of the new place, to learn from one another and laugh and grow together. But if you want to have experiences no one else is having (see number 1 and number 2), you also need to keep some of those experiences to yourself. As soon as you start talking about your travel moments with others, it is likely that others will chime in and add to (or take away from) your very personal travel experience. 

Not everything needs to be shared. In fact, keeping some of those travel treasures to yourself will sustain you for years to come. Maybe you’ll share them, maybe you won’t. They’re yours to keep for the rest of your life. You just have to get out there and have them. 

​Have some interesting examples or ideas of how to have travel experiences no one else is having? Would love to read your comments!