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Dear Family and Friends,

It’s been a week of hopscotching across Morocco. I’ve wandered the alleys of Essaouira, slept in a scuzzy Casablanca hotel, dealt with the stomach flu in Rabat and got hustled in Fez. But, fear not, it has not all been a classic case of Daniel dragging himself through the mud. There have been lovely moments, such as shared tajines (Moroccan stews) with other weary travelers and wistful moments spent on buses and trains through the countryside.

And speaking of loveliness, today, after a bumpy bus ride through valleys of fig orchards and careening around mountain slopes, I’ve arrived to Chefchaouen, an artsy white-washed mountain village. I feel like it will be a nice place to spend my final days in Morocco – relaxing, writing postcards, hiking the hills and getting a closing hammam treatment. It will be a nice way to wrap up a frenetic month in this oftentimes-chaotic nation.

Indeed, I’ll be relaxing and taking stock of the past six months. Believe it or not, July is quickly approaching, and this will signal that the year is half over. And subsequently, this will also indicate the midway point of my travels.

* insert Bon Jovi singing “Oh, we’re halfway there, Oh-oh… living on prayer!” *

On Thursday evening, while tucked into aforementioned scuzzy hotel room in Casablanca, I chatted about my travels with the Canadian CBC Radio programme “All in a Weekend.” During the interview, I was posed a variety of questions that are typical to those inquiring about my project. Why are you traveling? How are you paying for this trip? What’s been your most interesting experience? But perhaps the question that caught me a bit off guard was an investigation into expectations – “Is it what you’d hoped for?”

My response was a hesitant “yes… and beyond what I’d hoped for.” In many ways the trip is unfolding as planned, but there have certainly been some curve balls, such as bed bugs in Buenos Aires and getting mugged in Cape Town. I also stated how there is a gap between imagining what it might be like to stand atop Table Mountain, and actually standing atop Table Mountain. I wasn’t able to conceptualize these things before leaving.

Over the past couple of days, and not un-coincidentally as I approach the official midway my project, I’ve found myself returning to this question of trip expectations. There have been some sacrifices to tackle a yearlong-around-the-world project: I’ve abandoned my family and friends, given up a rent-controlled apartment in Montreal’s hippest neighborhood, left an amazing job and will subsequently be going into many thousands of dollars of debt. So it’s all been worth it, right?

Is this trip everything I hoped it would be?

I tried to enter into this trip by stripping myself of expectations. But it’s impossible to take one step in this world without expectations. When I’m back home in Canada, every day I wake up with expectations. I expect the bus to arrive. I expect that the coffee shop will be open. I expect that when I open the tap in my bathroom, that water will come forth. Our daily lives are constructed on a heap of expectations and assumptions and, yes, hopes. And this trip was not an exception from expectation.

I didn’t blindly walk out of Canada with an open itinerary; I did not throw a feather to the wind and follow wherever it might happen to blow. I created a framework for my travels, and in doing so I believe I automatically created a set of assumptions and hopes about what this year would look like.

One of these guiding principles of my project was the exchange of work for food and accommodation. And six months into my journey, I’ve yet to be in a situation where this is fully actualized. Everywhere that I’ve gone, I’ve paid money to be there. My host organizations in New Orleans and Costa Rica were the closest, requiring only a $10/day fee to cover basic food costs. Others required that I cover accommodation, and one, here in Morocco, completely dissolved, leaving me scrambling to figure out what the hell to do with myself. And then, I figured it out.

But am I disappointed that I’m not actually accomplishing this initial objective of ‘no money’ exchanges?

No. Part of this is my doing. For instance, when I was in Argentina, I could have sought out a farm in the countryside where I could have done a traditional no-money-involved-work-exchange, where food and accommodation would be covered. But I wanted to be in the city of Buenos Aires. That was the dream. I paid a bit of money to live that dream, and I had a great month. I’m owning it.

I guess I’m learning to have hopes, but to have weak grasps on them. Low budget travel is a full time job. It’s taxing. But what it does well is burn away expectations. Sure the hostel has ‘hot showers’ advertised on its website, but will it actually have hot showers? It’s essentially the art of lowering one’s expectations.

Before I left Canada, I wrote a blog post about my expectations. I had hoped to learn more about the world, to meet some very fascinating people, to acquire new skills and to return as myself, but more of myself. I knew shit would happen to me. And it has. But I haven’t even been to a hospital yet, so things are looking promising.

So, yes, the verdict is clear to me. Is this trip everything I hoped it would be? Yes. I am essentially doing what I set out to do. And as I reach the halfway point of this adventure, that feels pretty darn fantastic.

The famous Roman sculptor Michelangelo said that his works of art were always within the marble, but his job was simply to reveal them. I’ll beg you to forgive my arrogance in paralleling myself with such greatness, but I look at my travels in a similar light. I’ve been heading out into the world to reveal the narrative that was simply supposed to exist.

With no regrets from Chefchaouen,

xoxo

Daniel

PS: The photo is from one of my favorite moments in Peru.

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