Completion: March, 1997
Now that I have officially landed back in Canada, I have been thinking - WHY did I do this. I know my travel logs describe an amazing journey filled with incredible scenery and wonderful people along the way. The trip represents the completion of a dream of mine. It has been a shared experience with my family and friends.
The easy way would have been not to have started at all - and kept it a dream. I was much more emotional at the start than the finish. I knew once I began it would be completed. I think the reason WHY was to prove to myself that you can be in charge of your own destiny - it just takes determination and believing in yourself.
It is hard to describe the feelings I get when I look at a world map and remember the road from top to bottom. I look at the length of the journey and I feel a connection with the places I've been - a mosaic of landscapes, cultures & people. It is an amazing sensation, and the reason WHY I'll do something similar again.
Two important thoughts come to my mind as I try to give this trip some life perspective. One thought is for myself and the personal accomplishment it has meant to me - and others who shared in this adventure. The second thought is for others who may wish to enrich their lives through travel. What sparked my inner spirit was a book I read by Tim Cahill (Road Fever). What may spark your inner spirit will be different. It may be a book, a quote or perhaps finding this travel blog.
Jim Molnar - Seattle Times
"Traveling has never felt like recreation. It's not that I don't feel refreshed and energized from a trip. To the contrary, the more eventful, even difficult the trip has been, the more my spirits are raised when I finally return home. We go on vacations with a sense of what we deserve and what we are due. Traveling takes us into the world with a less self centered perspective: concentrating on our relationship with -our link- with others we meet along the way. Traveling can teach us to appreciate home rather than celebrate escape from it"
Posts from this trip.
I want to say this is the road from hell but I know we have many more miles to go. This winding, hairpin filled road traverses the top of the Sierra de Juarez Mountain. Several times we drove in and out of the clouds. In one spot we came upon a serious truck accident that had traffic backed up. There were mangos and papayas all over the place. I'm not sure the driver made it.
What lied ahead of me was 1,100 kms of grueling and hot driving. The road ahead was through the Atacama Desert - one of the driest place on the earth. The landscape looked baked and tortured from the heat. Inside the van it was 105 degrees F (40 degrees C). I didn't dare turn the air conditioner on for fear of taxing the engine any more than it already was.
