Confessions of a Travel Junkie

Lago Atitlan, Guatemala, Feb 2013 during our trip to HN

Hi, my name is Michael Wolfe and I am a travelholic. I made my first trip to Guatemala in 1964 when I was 6 months old in the back of a VW bus. As a child I traveled often with my family around the US, Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala. In order to support my addiction I became a truck driver, roaming the United States for months at a time. Even after getting married I continued to travel, taking my family with me in the truck. Now I live in Honduras having driven here from Maine, but after being here for 8 months and although I still love it here, I am feeling the old addiction to travel starting to work in me. I think that this "illness" is inherited from my father who is also a travelholic, so I'm not sure I am fully responsible for my actions.

Costa Esmeralda, Mexico, Jan 2013

I am glad that I began blogging, if for no other reason than that I go back from time to time and relive some of the high points of our travels to Honduras. But living on past accomplishments is a scary place to be. It may be a comfortable, complacent place to be, but who wants that.

Recently a  friend of ours, fellow traveler and adventurer Rachel Demming and her family, who we stopped and visited in Panajachel, Guatemala, shared in her blog, Discover, Share, Inspire, these same feelings. They started from Alaska, traveling as a family, with a final destination of the southern tip of South America. Somehow they got delayed in Panajachel....a place whose beauty would easily beguile any traveler in to staying for a day or two or a year or two. Anyway, reading her post made me realize that I too am beginning to feel the need to travel again.

It's not that I haven't been traveling. I have put almost 10,000 kilometers on the little pick up we bought in June, but after many trips to Naco, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa it no longer counts as travel, just work. It's still good to be out and moving and of course driving here is always an adventure, but it lacks the aliveness I always feel when I am traveling in places I have never been.

So I can definitely feel a trip coming on. We do have a trip to visit the Mayan ruins in Copan planned soon and that may tide me over for a while, but......  Where would I go if I have the chance? Well, I may be traveling to China soon on business and that would be really cool, but I'm a "driver". I like travel most when I'm behind the wheel. Returning to Guatemala is a real possibility as I would like my family to experience more of this beautiful country. But, having been there already, I think that our way leads us south. Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

Just a short trip, a fix for the travel junkie, a week or two. There's only two reasons we aren't in "la fiesta bus" today. Commitments to "normal" life and pets. It's hard enough to find someone to keep Tiger for us, but who's going to keep a donkey?

You may find this hard to believe, but even life in a foreign country can become mundane and normal...very quickly. Do you want to keep your edge? My advice is to stay moving, always stretching, never satisfied with "good enough".