Epilogue

At this point, I wish I had thought of some nickname for my readers other than, well, "readers". Because then I could have started this, my capping entry for this one-year excursion, with something like, "Hey there, Loonies, it's been a fun ride, hasn't it?" But I can't, so let's move on from here. This is my blog's epilogue (epiblog?), and I can guarantee you right now, it is not going to follow any logical narrative path. It is somewhat stream-of-consciousness, and will just jump from topic-to-topic of what I want to note. It'll be fun. And it'll put a bit of a capper on the whole trip, I hope. So let's dive in!

Entry #076: Saturday, April 19, 2014 (Torrance, CA)

Alright, here we are: the final normal narrative entry! Don't worry; I'm not going to stop here! Truth be told, I'd hate to close this out on such a dull note. I might be posting another entry about my re-acclimating to life in the US (if that turns out to be a thing), and I'll definitely be posting a retrospective entry, giving my overall impressions of the trip, plus some interesting factoids (seriously, try to guess the total word count of this blog). But let's not focus on the future, let's focus on the past! What happened in the last few days of my trip? Uhhh....not much. But let's check out what that "not much" entails!

Entry #075: Monday, April 14, 2014 (Guayaquil, Ecuador)

Back in Guayaquil, well past my one-year anniversary, a few days from returning back to the United States, and lemme tell ya, folks, it's been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me, inasmuch as I can feel emotion. I'll explain more within the entry, but needless to say, there's been a veritable hodgepodge of feels. So let's look into what brought about said feels in the last few days, as this may be my last entry before my days will be filled with photo uploading and other computer-planning thingamajigs, which make for terribly dull narratives. So let's hop to it!

Entry #074: Wednesday, April 9, 2014 (San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands)

So, I'm guessing that this is going to be my last entry from within the Galapagos Islands. The next time you hear from this blog, I'll be back in Guayaquil, in what will either be my second-to-last or possibly last entry before being home. What a concept, eh? Truth be told, I'm genuinely not sure if I want there to be 75 entries or 76. 75 is a mathematically pleasant number in many respects, but 76 has the added bonus of also being the number of photo albums I have from the trip. A coincidence, to be sure, but a fun one. Stay tuned to find out, I guess? But first, let's look at what just happened in the past few days. There are wasps, guaranteed!

Entry #073: Sunday, April 6, 2014 (San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands)

I would love to say this entry is my one-year anniversary entry from the beginning of the trip. I really would, and I guess I could, but it would be a lie. The actual anniversary is on the 8th. However, I can't guarantee I'll have Internet access to post on that day, and I don't want to be late, so I guess we're celebrating preemptively? Yay? In any case, with one year rolling around, we're getting ever much closer to the end of the trip, but before we look at that, we continue our work in the Galapagos sun. (And trust me, there's plenty of sun.)

Entry #070: Friday, March 28, 2014 (Guayaquil, Ecuador)

And here I am in Ecuador. My 22nd country, if you count every country where I gave my passport to a migrations officer. And my last country. It's a little bittersweet being here, but I really am starting to hear the siren song of home in my ears. So I'm just going to keep on keeping on. But before I talk about this hot and humid country, we need to finish up my time in Peru. And also talk about my bus ride between the two countries. It was a 28-hour bus ride. That's a long bus ride. Anyhoo, let's get on it.

Entry #069: Sunday, March 23, 2014 (Lima, Peru)

Hola from Lima, my last stop in Peru. It's been...well, fairly uneventful the last few days. That's partially because I was just in transit, and partially because I haven't had much motivation these part few days. This lack of motivation might be due either to a kind of travel version of senioritis, or it can be due to the fact that I've come down with a cold (thanks to the fact that my tent-mate on the Inca trail had a cold), and I don't have Emergen-C to fight it. I've also been sleeping a lot more and have had a general sense of lethargy, so I'll just chalk it up to the latter possibility. And truth be told, all the coughing I've been doing hasn't contributed to my writing spirit, so let's get to this.

Entry #068: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 (Cusco, Peru)

Hey now, I'm back from four days without Internet, and what's the first thing I do when I get it back? I write a blog entry for you, of course! Can't you see how much I love you all? "But Andrew," you may be asking, "Why didn't you have Internet for four days?" Well, you may remember that I mentioned I was going to be going on the Inca Trail. I, um...yeah. That's pretty much it. I was on the Inca Trail, hence no Internet. But hey, let's read about it right now!

Entry #065: Thursday, March 6, 2014 (La Paz, Bolivia)

As of me writing this ("this" being the intro, which I ironically write after everything else in the entry), I have only about seven hours before I hop on a bus and make a nine-ish hour trip to Puno, Peru. While it's definitely only been a week in Bolivia - a short time compared to many of the places I've been - it definitely feels like much more than a week, because man, stuff happened, and I went places and did things. What exactly were these things? Well, let's take a look.

Entry #063: Thursday, February 27, 2014 (Santiago, Chile)

Before I begin, I gotta level with ya, folks. I'm again in one of those moods where I get no pleasure in the prospect of writing, where it's just another burden that I have to deal with. It's been a while since the last one of those, no? But, of course, this blog is for my own personal record benefit, as well as for the benefit of the Chinese phishing websites that Google Analytics says makes up two-thirds of my audience. So still I write. I'm not going to say "I'm gonna go qucikly through everything", because every time I do that, it's a 10,000-word entry, but still, I apologize if the quality here isn't up to whatever usual standards I might have. Anyhoo, moving along.

Entry #059: Monday, February 10, 2014 (Auckland, New Zealand)

Well, another chapter closing off in the book of my travels (and I almost mean that literally, because if you printed out all these blog entries into a book, it would come out to at least 250,000 words, and most likely much more; I'll check before it's all done). Heading out from New Zealand, where I spent a little under two months, to South America, where I'll spend a little more than two months. Reflections on that later. But let's talk about the last couple days in New Zealand before I get on my 41-hour flight. Whoop whoop!

Entry #057: Friday, January 31, 2014 (Tauranga, New Zealand)

With this being the end of January, and the fact that I only have three more bus trips scheduled, it is really starting to sink in that my time in New Zealand is coming to a close. That's the weird thing about staying in one country longer, I guess. Some may say it was too long - others may say it was too short - but after giving it some real thought, I've decided that like everything else, it's exactly what it needed to be. On a less philosophical note, I did some cool stuff the past few days! Let's have a look at them!

Entry #054: Monday, January 20, 2014 (Hastings, New Zealand)

Well, if you're reading this, that means I survived my time in that overcrowded hostel. Well, I survived even if you're not reading it. So that's good, although it wasn't guaranteed, especially with how weak the walls were to prevailing winds (more on that later). But now I can't dwell in that past, because I'm now in a new hostel, in a new town. I've been in both for less than two hours, so I don't have too much to say about them, but there are some interesting aspects so far. So let's get started!

Entry #052: Saturday, January 11, 2014 (Fox Glacier Village, New Zealand)

So, I'm just a little under halfway through my time in New Zealand, and what do I have to show for it? Well, a lot of panorama photos, for one thing. It's really good for that. But also a lot of internal musings about the nature of adventure and how it applies to my own journeys. But we'll get into that later, because first we gotta talk about my traveling into Glacier Country, and before that, my inability to eat  burger. What a scoop!

Entry #051: Tuesday, January 7, 2014 (Te Anau, New Zealand)

Hey there, how's your new year been? I hope 2014 has been everything you've been hoping for! Me? I've had no particular hopes or dreams for 2014; I'm just taking it as it comes. And so far it's been pretty good, I can't deny. I've had some good opportunities to meet and hang out with some people I legit enjoyed spending time with, and have been able to go to some of the more dramatic natural areas of New Zealand. Plus, I was given pounds of free meat! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's go back and see how this first week of 2014 has gone.

Entry #048: Sunday, December 22, 2013 (Christchurch, New Zealand)

Coming to the end of Week One in New Zealand, and I still haven't caught any hobbits. They're tricky little buggers, I tell ya. But I have seen plenty of sheep, prompting me to maybe think that they're hobbits in disguise. In any case, I actually didn't think I'd be in Christchurch as of the posting time of this entry; I thought I'd be at my next locale, Lake Tekapo. But wait to you hear the wacky reason why (actually, it's just that I didn't pay attention to my own bookings). But what really happened in the past few days is I saw a lot of pretty views, walked a good 45 miles or so, had a hostel-induced crisis of faith, and had a really bad allergy flare-up. Hot dog! Let's go in for a closer look!

Entry #042: Thursday, November 21, 2013 (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Today marks a big page turn in my trip. Well, "today" meaning "the last couple days and the next couple days in addition to today." There's the turn in that I'm now done with the three-week cycling tour, the turn that my mom is making her way back to the States, and the turn that I will soon be leaving Asia for a new continent. So, lots of stuff! In fact, it makes me somewhat glad that, economic center of the country aside, Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon is actually a fairly boring place, with few attractions, as it allows me plenty of decompression time. So let's use that time and take a look at what's been happenin'.

Entry #039: Thursday, October 24, 2013 (Bangkok, Thailand)

Hey there! It's been a while. Not that I've been lazy! At least, no more than usual. No, it's because I was in the Himalayas without a PC. Yeah, I know I said I'd put up a "gone fishin'" interlude post but...that never happened. (*Cough.*) If you're wondering about my Everest Base Camp blog/podcast "spectacular" (and I don't use those quotation marks lightly), that'll be up shortly; the audio (all 7+[!] hours of it) is all uploaded online; I just need to get the post organized. And once it's up, this entire paragraph will be rendered obsolete!

Speaking about obsolescence, how about me? Hey, remember that I was in Singapore? Of course not, because that just happened. I was planning on writing from Singapore (being, like Hong Kong, one of those places that just needs a single name, no "City, Country" format required), but as I'll explain in a bit more detail later, I have three options of things to do on this trip - planning to do things, doing things, and reviewing things I've done (either by writing or sorting through photos). My time in Singapore was mainly spent on the first two. But why take my word for it? Let's get into the haps for what happened since I left Kathmandu!

Entry #031: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 (Johannesburg, South Africa)

I wish I had a scarf I could throw over my shoulder, because if there was ever an appropriate time to say "And that's the end of that chapter," this is it. Yes, after eight legitimately amazing weeks, I am no longer doing the Askari Wilderness Conservation Program. Final thoughts in the entry proper, but right now I'm back with Lynn, my Johannesburg CounchSurfing host, and tomorrow I'll be hopping on a train to go to Cape Town. Lemme tell ya, it never ends. Well, not until April.

Entry #026: Sunday, July 28, 2013 (Pidwa Wilderness Reserve, South Africa)

Well, the sleepout I mentioned before has come and gone, and I'm still here to write about it, so it's fairly safe, I'd say, to assume that it went off at least partially successfully (in the sense that we weren't eaten in our sleep). While that was the main crux of activity the last couple days, there has actually been quite a bit of interesting things going on, the kind of stuff you can only get at a place like this.