“We left with no expectaions, we only wanted to experience life.”
September 20th marks 3 years since we left the town that we had been living in on the West Coast of Canada to set out on a one way ticket into the world.
We had a housesitting gig in Costa Rica starting on November 1st, 2017 that would last for 2 months. Beyond that , we had no idea what the world had in store for us.
Soon after we arrived at that job, we became good friends with one of the neighbours, who coincidentally also needed us to housesit, take care of his dogs, and manage his cabina rental (putting money in our pockets!) after we were finished with the first job, keeping us at that beach for another 2.5 months. This was but just the beginning of three years of coincidences, manifestations and a general feeling that the universe is taking good care of us.
After that we got a few housesitting jobs in various locations, which would set our course and send us on a vast and wonderful adventure.
We left Canada with only $9000 after selling our entire life, paying off all of our debts and closing down our businesses. We were also armed with a few different credit cards and a solid determination to just make it work.
3 years later, we are still at it. Our travels have taken us to Nicaragua, Guatemala, Islands in the Caribbean, back to Canada for a visit, and to where we are now, Morocco.
In between our housesitting gigs, we visited ancient mayan ruins, witnessed real live toucans flying in the trees, watched volcanoes smoke in the distance, sat with sea turtle babies as they pushed off into the ocean, experienced Day of the Dead in Mexico, rode camels in the Sahara Desert, experienced Ramadan, worked at a Botanical Garden, toured through abandoned Sultan Palaces, lived in 200+ year old Moroccan buildings, swam in pristine jungle rivers and so much more.
In this time we also became mural painters, pushing ourselves past our artistic boundaries, and painted murals in numerous locations now, in restaurants, hostels and hotels.
We have met some of the most amazing people and have made new life long friends. We have eaten some incredible food and have experienced numerous different cultures, traditions and ways of being, some of which we have adapted into our own everyday practices. Plus we have challenged ourselves, and each other, beyond comprehension.
This life that we have chosen, is certainly not easy, and it is NOT for the faint of heart. To make this sort of life work, you need to dig deep into yourself, pull out all of your strengths, and find a sort of determination that you never knew that you had before.
Though we have literally NO regrets about any of the choices that we have made, and we are more in love with our lives each and every day, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t difficult and isn’t wrought with inumerable challenges that we face.
But, the beauty of this life is that we have the time and the place to figure it all out. We aren’t crushed by societies rules and thoughts about how we SHOULD be doing things. We owe nothing to anybody, and we can do with our time exactly what we want.
Because of this, and this alone, we have been able to explore who it is that we really are. We have both found ourselves returning to passions and things that we loved to do when we were in our early 20’s, before society got it’s hands on us and somehow squashed our dreams.
In a sense, I feel like I have time warped forward into a life that I left at a young age. I left my young travelling life to seek out a life that I figured that I was supposed to be living, to live a life that was “normal” and fit within the bounds of societies rules. 20 years later, I find myself happy again, and I find myself fulfilled and with a sense of childlike wonder about the world that had been lost for many years.
Although we still find ourselves facing financial challenges, it doesn’t weigh us down like it did in Canada. There we were doing things to make ends meet. There we were just surviving on a day to day basis. There we did jobs and made money doing things that we enjoyed, but they weren’t our passions.
In this life that we have chosen, our passions take center stage, and our life is being formed around them. In this life we get to decide what we WANT to do, not what we HAVE to do.
This, in itself, is the biggest gift that we have given ourselves, and as we move forward, with one foot in front of the other, we continue to fine tune, tweak, learn new skills, leave old habits behind that don’t serve us anymore, and just sit in a quiet knowing that it will all work out.
In one sense it is so hard to beleive that three years has gone by already, yet in another we have experienced more in those three years than one could hope to accomplish in a lifetime. And the most amazing part of it all, is that we still feel like we are JUST getting started!
We truly do feel like the world is our oyster. We are ecstatic about our futures, and relish in the unkowing and the unfolding that is yet to come.
We state on our website that we ‘left with no expectations, we only wanted to experience life.’ I can say with full authority that we truly have!
Thanks so much for following us along on our journey. We hope our story inspires you too to live a rewarding and exhilerating life!
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We were interviewed on the Zero To Travel Podcast! Check it out by clicking below!
You two are very brave!!! I am enjoying reading about your travels and where you’ve been. Thanks for sharing.
Thank so much for following along on our journey Heather:). Stay well!