Introduction
At the start of 2022, I had planned to spend most of the year exploring from Central America down through the Isthmus of Panama onto South America and ending near the Punta Arenas area of Argentina. I needed to work on my Spanish language skills and what better way to do that than effectively live in the Spanish world for 6+ months?
But plans are made to be broken, especially when you live a nomadic life. As I wrote about here on this blog, my father passed away after a tough illness at the end of December 2020, and while the house had been full during COVID times with me and my two sisters, my stepmom decided the time and market was right to downsize homes.
So I pressed pause on my South America excursion and flew home at the beginning of the month to help with the move.
Family Ties
I returned a few days after moving crews had come to collect all the largest furniture items, but I still had to pack up and downsize as many of my things as possible, while also helping the family set aside items for an estate sale. After giving up or selling most of my possessions before leaving the US back in 2015, I only had maybe 2 or 3 boxes in my parents’ garage. But my semi-nomadism came to a halt after deciding to return home to Florida at the end of 2019 to help with my father’s care and be closer to home. As COVID dragged on, my collection of things grew beyond my normal one suitcase limit!
And so this month I was suddenly faced with a lot more stuff than I recall having picked up over the past 7 years. I also ended up going through mementos of my father and his father before him to decide what to store in the new family home. The emotional weight of revisiting the memories of my father meant this took almost the entirety of my time at home, but I think I made good progress. When/if I end up with a more permanent home base in the future, I’ll catalog things further. (And I’m sure my stepmom would appreciate the garage space back!)
Scuba Diving
An old friend from Thailand messaged me to say she would be in Florida in the Fort Lauderdale area and asked if we could meet up. She is a marine biologist so I knew I had to take her to my absolute favorite dive site in the state. The Blue Heron Bridge is a city park and snorkel/dive site located in the town of Riviera Beach about an hour north of Fort Lauderdale.
The site is considered to be one of the best macro diving sites in North America. In scuba diving, “macro” refers to small critters that are easy to overlook. The particular location, contours, and water movement of the immediate area around the bridge, make for the ideal breeding ground for shrimps, crabs, nudibranch, seahorses, octopus, frogfish, and many more unusual species. Most divers only ever dive around coral reef or shipwrecks and never get to experience hunting for sights in “the muck.”
When diving the bridge, it is only advisable to visit during one of the two periods of high tide a day, when the in and out flow of the ocean currents are at a minimum. And when my friend was visiting, the tides only allowed for one dive on the day she was in town. But we still had an excellent dive! We found at least 5 individual seahorses, I spotted my first ever frogfish in the States, a pipefish, and lots of other wonderful creatures.
Kennedy Space Center complex
After drying off from diving, we jumped in my car and headed the couple hours north to Orlando to be closer to one of my favorite tourist destinations in my home state of Florida, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
The space center complex, located on Cape Canaveral, an easy hour drive east of Orlando, is the home to the United States largest rocket launch facility. It is the historic launchpad for the country’s most storied programs, Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. And it continues to be a functioning space port for launches by private companies Boeing, ULA, SpaceX, as well as NASA and the US Military.
While much of the facility is off limits given its active status, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is a space nerd’s dream vacation.
Highlights for any visitor include catching one of the high quality shows being played at the IMAX theater, seeing the full sized rockets in the rocket garden, and my favorite, the real-life Atlantis shuttle in its very own showroom. Another experience not-to-be-missed is the bus tour through the operational part of the space complex en route to the Saturn V/Apollo museum. Allow at least 5hrs for your visit, but know you’ll have to be selective in what you see. The collection is just massive. If you are extra lucky, maybe you’ll even get to see a rocket launch live!
Where I’ve Been
COUNTRIES VISITED: 2
Colombia, United States
CITIES VISITED: 8
Bogotá, Orlando, Riviera Beach
Where I’m Going
At the beginning of June, I am heading out on my next big excursion. The plan as it stands currently is to head to Central Europe and visit friends, see new countries, and attend a digital nomad conference called Bansko Nomad Fest in Bansko, Bulgaria at the end of the month. Between the beginning of June and the festival, I will likely be in Austria, Croatia, and Serbia. There is also a chance I’ll visit Spain to see a friend, but that will depend on their schedule. It always pays to be flexible! I’m excited to get back to the Balkans after my initial taste last September in Albania!
