Week 26: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Places, Why I’m Glad I Didn’t Wait Until Retirement to Travel the World
Happy Monday and it’s week two in the Galápagos Islands… random thought just now, as I start writing these posts each week every Monday, I realise that I have zero idea what is going to transpire this week, but it will be something cool and unique and it makes writing each weekly entry so exciting. Sometimes stuff goes wrong but it’s never life-ending, there’s a new surprise waiting each week!
I started my day off today with a Spanish lesson and then a walk around the town before stopping off for a coffee.
I headed back to my apartment to get my head down, I’m getting to the final stages of rebranding my marketing consultancy… it’s looking shweeeeeeeet. Most of the content is done, I just need these two projects to go live, so that my portfolio doesn’t look like a barren wasteland (like it does right now, awks), couple of weeks at the most, I hope.
I had a moment of guilt where I thought… f*ck, am I wasting my time here… like I’m in the coolest place in the world and I’m indoors working on my laptop. I’m sure most of you would agree with the former, but I think that’s kinda the point of all of this, is to live an ordinary life in extraordinary places. I can go and sit next to a sea lion on my lunch break and then come back and work for clients in the afternoon. That’s when I realised I was doing the right thing, I have to balance the temptation of constantly exploring with doing the right amount of work to keep the lights on.
At the end of the day I headed out on a long run and today my Garmin suggested 55 minutes… finally… I’m getting back to long distance. Got it done with minimal fuss, slow but I got it done – almost there.
Tuesday and it’s a beautiful day, because after three long weeks of waiting I have received confirmation I have been approved for the Estonian e-Residency program. To explain it simply: life without a physical address is super difficult; can’t bank, can’t go to the doctors, can’t sign contracts, can’t apply for visas – nuffin’. So, about ten years ago, some clever folks at the Estonian government realised that there were a growing number of “location independent professionals” or “digital nomads” in the world. Whilst most of us keep a permanent address somewhere, or update our addresses to our mum’s house, some of us just don’t have an address at all. So, now that I am in the program I can now work with a number of service providers that have been vetted by the Estonian government (lawyers, banks, accountants etc). My first step is registering a proper limited company for my marketing business, which will have a registered presence in Estonia and once all that is done (around June), I can then apply for a temporary residence visa somewhere (more on that, soon).
Other than that, standard affair: work, Spanish lesson, grab a coffee from a nice café and head out for a run. And fiiiiiinally ladies and gentlemen, we cracked 10Km! It’s mad really… just over a year ago, I could, on any given Sunday, go out and run north of 30Km in one go with no fuss and now I have to hype myself up to crack 5Km. Intensely frustrating but we inch a bit further forward with every passing week.
Wednesday, my final full day in the Galapagos, up early as checkout is 9:30am (criminal). Headed to a coffee shop to work for a bit before heading to my boat at 3pm and f*ck me, the heavens opened. The 2-hour boat crossing was utterly horrendous.
Arrived back in Santa Cruz, the first island I was at, headed to my favourite restaurant for dinner, did a bit of reading and then headed back to grab my luggage out of storage and to my apartment to pack my bags properly, travelling from 7am until midnight tomorrow… FML.
A final thought about the Galapagos for Thursday and, whilst there are people my age and younger here, the overwhelming majority are sixty or seventy plus and you know what? So many of them are struggling, and these are the ones that I see that make it ashore, I can’t imagine the amount that never leave the cruise ships. So many people will say “it’s fine I can see the world when I’m retired, I’ll have all the time in the world”. Please, if you’re reading this, don’t wait until you’re retired. Take a sabbatical, take an extended break between your next job. Whatever it takes. Because, if you even make it to that age, you’re body is gonna be pooped and you’ll wish you would’ve done it sooner.
Which do you think is going to be more likely:
- Me hitting sixty and thinking… sh*t, wish I’d worked more and waited to travel
- You hitting sixty and thinking… sh*t, wish I’d just taken a month break between jobs
Anyway… today? Three flights in about 12 hours… will my suitcase make it from Galapagos>Quito>Bogota>Mexico City without going missing? Will it f*ck. Let the games begin!
Fast forward to Friday morning (00:05) and I’ve landed safely in CDMX and so has my bag! MEX airport is such an easy experience, straight through their e-gates and six months visa-free on arrival, no questions asked. I was through customs in minutes. Shortly after I was in my new apartment and I hit the hay.
Spent most of the day resting and unpacking my bags on Saturday as I’m up early tomorrow morning and I am deeeeeead today, nothing to report, sorry!
Final day of the week and I’m up early because every Sunday morning in México City they close over 50kms of avenues to runners and cyclists. I headed out for a run to the end of the avenue to clock up 7K and hit 30K for the week, my longest in a year!
In the evening I started working on my Galápagos vlog, which, at the time of writing I have now finished and you can see here.
See you next week 👋
