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Our Last Minute Global Work'ation

July 1st, 2022

Bocas Del Toro, Panama

A month and a half ago I was sitting on top of Pete’s Hill in Bozeman, MT with my dad, contemplating what the fu** I was doing with my life.

I was about to go into my senior year of college, working a full-time remote job, tired of living in the same town I had spent my life growing up in, and hadn’t crossed much off my bucket list in the last 2 years. I wanted to explore and see the world, push myself out of my comfort zone, and of course seeing everybody living out my dreams on Tik Tok wasn’t helping with that fantasy.

I simply mentioned to him that after college I was going to move to an island for a year. His response? “Why don’t we do that now?” I was taken aback as a surge of excitement and surprise shot through me. “Seriously?” I responded. “Why the hell not? We both work from home, we’ve got 2 months of summer, let’s do it.” And thus began our adventure. We slowly started playing around with the idea. Where should we go? Europe, the Caribbean, Maldives… jk way out of our price range.

And after a few hours searching online and looking at Airbnb’s we found it. The best hidden gem of an island: Bocas del Toro. Within a day and a half, we had 2 separate Airbnb’s booked, flights booked, gear in the Amazon cart, and were cancelling our summer plans in town. It was confirmed, we were picking up and moving to Panama in less than a month. Now to many of you, this might not seem like a crazy idea, but since Covid both my dad and I began getting too comfortable with our life in Bozeman, and although we didn’t know it yet, this was the start of something big for us. 

Fast forward a month, and here we were. 36 hours of travel and sleep deprivation later and we were warmly welcomed into Bocas with live music from the local airport agent as we waited for our bags. Although it was a struggle to keep our eyes open, we gladly sang along with him as the tunes of “Every little thing, is gonna be all right” drifted through the tiny terminal.

Immediately we felt as if we were at home. Every local we passed by greeted us with large smiles… and some wandering eyes, and although we attempted to engage in communication, we quickly realized we were slightly screwed as not many spoke English and we were about as far away from competent Spanish speakers as you could get.

As soon as we arrived in Bocas, this deep sense of belonging filled through me, and it has only grown in the 2 months we’ve been here. Every day I truly feel as if this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and I can’t even begin to describe the sense of home and belonging this place offers. 


About a week into our vacation, we once again came up with a crazy idea. As we sat on our over the water balcony, watching the bustle of morning water taxi’s speed by, I mentioned to my dad that I wanted to keep traveling. I was addicted, I needed to see more.

We casually began researching what’s called an Around the World Ticket to see where we would want to go and if it was even feasible. Within a matter of 2 hours, we had the next 5 months planned out. Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Botswana, Jordan, sailing in Mallorca, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali and then home (if we ever left).

We sat on the idea for about a week, researching adventures in each of these places, and figuring out how to budget for it and if this was something we really wanted to do. As we could have guessed, neither of us changed our minds at the end of the week, and before we knew it, we had a 5-month plan for 16 countries, my sisters’ flights booked to bring us our backpacking gear, and I was un-enrolling from my last semester of college. 
 
I’ve always written in my journal when I travel and my newly found friend here in Bocas, mentioned I should start a blog as we head out on this crazy adventure. So here we are, follow along for travel trips, adventures, crazy stories and more as the Hathaway’s are away.