I love the idea of bucket lists, I really do. Anytime I see one of those posts listing the “30 Things To Do Before Turning 30” or “10 Places to Visit Before You Die” I’m tempted to make my own. I am nothing if not goal oriented, and I’m confident that if I made a list I would strategically allocate vacation days and funds until I had carefully curated Instagram posts documenting each and every item. It would be fun. I would see lots of places I had always wanted to visit. But what about all those places I hadn’t yet dreamed of?
You see, the problem with bucket lists is that they don’t leave room for spontaneity or unexpected detours in our lives. They don’t factor in the many google image searches I’ve done that eventually led to flight purchases. They don’t take into account the fact that my dream of living and working in Europe, accidentally led me to Chile.
To me, the real magic of travel is discovery. It’s realizing, over and over again, just how narrow your view of the world is. It’s learning to define terms like beauty and adventure in a way that is fluid. As I have learned to approach travel with an open mind, I have experienced the power of travel to expand both my mind and my heart in ways I never anticipated.
Some of the most amazing experiences I have had weren’t even on my radar before they presented themselves to me. It would never have occurred to me to include Dubrovnik, Croatia or Banff, Canada on my list of must see places. When I signed up to spend a summer in Costa Rica, my daydreams were filled with sunbathing on tropical beaches and zip lining through the rainforest. I never thought to dream up a petite woman named Emilse, who would open her home to me and treat me like her own daughter. Before I moved to Chile, I didn’t even know places like San Pedro de Atacama or San Carlos de Bariloche existed.
Plans are important, of course. Daydreaming only gets you so far, and it’s crucial that we take action to turn our dreams into reality. But I urge you to always be led by inspiration and not obligation. Let your lists and your plans be works in progress. Keep your mind and your heart open. We don’t know what we don’t know, and more often than not what we’re actually looking for may not be clear to us until we stumble upon it.
So, in the name of inspiration, I’ll leave you with some photos of a few of my favorite unexpected trips and experiences.
Dubrovnik, Croatia was the starting point of a 2013 trip through Croatia, Slovenia & Italy…
After exploring the Croatian coast, we headed inland to Plitvice National Park…
And then crossed the border into Slovenia, where we took a day trip to Lake Bled…
2 Months before our wedding, a co-worker mentioned that she and her family had spent memorial day in Banff, Canada. I did a quick Google image search, showed the photos to Matt, and we booked our honeymoon a few days later…
During a road trip up the West Coast of the U.S., we needed a place to get our and stretch our legs. We stumbled into an incredible hike in Montaña de Oro State Park in California…
I had never heard of San Carlos de Bariloche before we moved to Chile, now it’s one of my favorite places in the world…
The same could be said for San Pedro de Atacama. Who knew there was an other worldly desert in Chile? Not me…
What experiences have you stumbled in to?