Posted on January 05 2020
The world of travel is something that I was exposed to as a byproduct of my first love: dance. At the age of eleven, I was selected to be a part of a dance conference called DaCi (Dance and the Child International), which was being hosted in Helsinki, Finland for that year. Attending this conference as a member of the Jamaica School of Dance, Junior Department, meant that for the first in my coherent, memory recalling years I was traveling, and let me add, doing so without my parents!
The first and last time I traveled prior to this, I was a three-year-old button nosed ball of energy ( yellow was my favorite colour and everything about my personality matched yellow ), who went to New York, Canada and New Jersey with my older brother and my parents in the summer of 1989. I recall some of the trip, but to be honest as to how much of it I remember from my actual memories versus how much of the trip I have put together from seeing photos, I’m not quite sure, but hey…. I know I had a blast!
However, it was now eight years later and big things were about to happen. I was about to take a flight to Europe! Almost 9000 kilometers away! We stayed in England for a couple of nights en route to Finland, which is when I realized that winter was a major thing. Not for the faint of heart or as “cool” as it looked in my encyclopedia (Yes! Hello fellow millennials: for “generation Z” I am from the pre-Google generation). In fact, it was the coldest my island living, beach bumming always smelling like “Hawaiian Tropic” self had ever felt! And I liked it! And same goes for Finland. The food was different and yummy! The architecture was unlike anything Jamaica had, very Victorian and grand in England and modern, clean lines and tall (very very tall) in Finland. This travel thing was going to be a thing in my life… I could feel it in my bones, on top of the 10-degree chill.
Dance also allowed me to travel to Buffalo, New York in November of 1997 where I first saw snow!! Where I made my first snow angel, lost my shoe in 2 feet of snow, which dumped on us, overnight. Epic! Wyoming, Suriname and Belize followed after, again thanks to dance but this time I was attending the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. I still, however, hadn’t done any personal travel. Here began a mission: I wanted to see every country in the world; to set foot everywhere! The travel bug had bitten me and sent a new contagion coursing through my veins! One that to this day hasn’t been cured and to be quite frank, I’m uninterested in curing 😃
Up to this moment, I have visited 41 countries, 5 continents, seen 4 of the New Seven Wonders of The World and 3 of the Wonders of Nature.
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In this space I will share my travel experiences, recommendations, travel do’s and don’ts, the places, food and things that stuck out for me, the lasting impressions made and so much more; and just why travel is my guilty pleasure that I absolutely feel no guilt about!
But first things first, thank you for coming to the space, sharing in my travel journeys and more importantly interacting with a piece of my life’s odyssey.
I’m super excited to share this small yet large part of what makes me feel absolutely alive!
Cheers all those who wander… and are far from lost!