Somewhere Between Fear and Adventure: What Barbados and Belize Taught Me

One Small Decision Can Change Everything

Vulnerability

I’d be lying if I said it is easy to continue writing and publishing these blogs with any regularity, especially after all that I shared in my last Memoir post.

I left myself open, raw and exposed, and opened old wounds—not only for myself, but for some people close to me. It was a powerful experience. Healing and freeing in many ways, but also full of uncertainty and unease.

What did people think?

How do I follow it?

But I realized this is the authentic place from which I want to live my life.

We all spiral through cycles of joy, grief, strength, vulnerability, fear, stress, productivity, exhaustion and excitement.

We are meant to feel it all.

So many people go through life on autopilot—numbing feelings they don’t want, staying busy to feel productive or worthy, making everything out of all the daily tasks. I catch myself doing this often.

We ignore the simple human experience our soul is here to take part in.

A life truly felt isn’t always meant to be protected, safe or predictable. It is meant to be experienced—fully present, fully felt and completely aware.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

What’s real needs to be felt.

And sometimes our stories need to be shared. Not only so you can release some of it, but because you never know who your story will touch. You never know who you can help—or who you will become yourself on the other side.

With every decision you make, you are creating a new version of yourself. One simple step leads you toward many more, which can lead you to a whole new reality.

This is how we created our travel lifestyle.

How We Became Travelers

Like I’ve mentioned before, I was never a traveler.

It wasn’t something my family did. I didn’t even take advantage of the study abroad program at my college, even though German was my minor. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere back then.

It just wasn’t who I was.

It wasn’t until my 30s that travel became a reality—and then, eventually, an identity.

Our first trips were all-inclusive. This made traveling easier because there was less to navigate and less to plan. Package deals and having everything we needed in one place took some of the fear out of being in a foreign country.

We started a travel fund, made payments and figured out the rest one step at a time.

And then we fell in love with Barbados.

What Barbados Taught Us About Traveling Beyond the Resort

For our third trip to the island, we decided to find a smaller hotel on the beach and try skipping the all-inclusive package.

Bougainvillea Barbados was a beautiful resort, with rock-lined pools and a perfect white-sand beach. It had the convenience of a restaurant, and because we saved money by not going all-inclusive, we could spend a few extra nights and get a room with a full kitchen.

We made sand sculptures with our little one, took excursions to explore more of the island and played in the warm tropical waves.

It was heavenly.

It’s also hilarious to look back on it now.

To think about how much we learned—and how drastically our feelings have changed.

I remember:

• Being scared to walk and venture too far from the hotel.

• Eating at the hotel restaurant a lot because it was familiar.

• Trying to cook meals that turned out awful. Don’t forget to buy salt, pepper, olive oil and seasonings! Cooking on vacation takes away too much free time anyway.

• Feeling like we needed permission to go somewhere.

• Taking a taxi to visit Oistins for the Fish Fry, but not staying long.

• Walking the beach and going just a little farther each day.

• And, finally, discovering on our last night that St. Lawrence Gap was nearby—but being too nervous with our young son to go farther and explore it.

So many missed opportunities.

If you read my recent blog about Barbados, you’ll remember that my husband and I stayed in the Gap, thoroughly enjoyed its variety of restaurants and nightlife, and even returned on foot to places we had stayed in the past, like Bougainville.

It’s comical how much we once let fear of the unknown hold us back.

We had a great trip.

But it could have been so much more.

And that became part of our travel evolution.

Now, the most meaningful experiences are often the ones where we get to meet local people, explore beyond the typical tourist path, and maybe have a few mishaps or unexpected adventures along the way.

We learned a lot about travel on that trip.

But we also learned a lot about ourselves.

Taking the Next Step: Our First Trip to Belize

The next step in our travel evolution was traveling to Ambergris Caye, Belize.

My husband has a friend who moved there. He was excited to see his friend, but it also gave us some reassurance to know someone on the island.

This trip had a lot of moving pieces.

We had to leave from Boston instead of our nearby small airport in Portland, Maine. That meant finding a Park and Fly and navigating a much bigger airport.

Don’t forget—we’re rural Maine farmers.

Those things are second nature to us now, but back then, it was a big deal.

Ambergris Caye is the largest island off the coast of Belize. Once you land in Belize City on the mainland, you can to take a ferry or small plane to get to the island. O save time we chose the plane.

I was terrified.

Even now that we travel a lot, takeoff and landing are not my favorite parts of flying. On some trips, the anxiety gets to me, and I need to take lots of deep breaths, close my eyes, listen to calming music and squeeze someone’s hand.

So, the idea of flying in a tiny 12-passenger Cessna?

I wasn’t sure I could do it.

But, as with everything we do, sometimes all it takes is one small decision.

The trip was booked.

I was in it for the ride.

One decision lead to a whole new path, a series of events, and suddenly I’m watching the crew board us by size to balance the tiny plane.

I stepped into the identity:

I am a person who does this.

And as it turned out, I enjoyed that little plane more than almost any other flight I had ever been on.

You fly low, and it gave us the most spectacular view of the sparkling water, islands and waves crashing over the reef—the second-largest barrier reef in the world.

The water there is a slightly different color than other places we’ve visited in the Caribbean. More of a brilliant, electric blue.

And seeing it from a plane is a whole different perspective.

Why Ambergris Caye, Belize, Is Still Calling Us Back

Belize is well worth it.

Although I have loved the luxury of all-inclusive resorts in other places, Belize is the perfect balance of elegance and down-to-earth living.

We stayed at Belizean Shores, which I’ve described in a previous blog. It offered elegant, condo-style accommodations, but still felt rustic, with sandy walkways and tropical gardens all around us. They also help you schedule the puddle-jumper plane, will pick up at the airport, and can book your golf cart rental for peace of mind when booking a trip that has lots of moving parts.

There wasn’t a restaurant on-site, but you could still order food at the gorgeous swim-up bar, and it would be delivered from the sister resort next door.

Everyone uses golf carts to get around the island.

The roads can be a bit bumpy, but for a couple of Mainers who love exploring dirt roads up north at home, it felt familiar in the best possible way.

Some of our favorite things to do on Ambergris Caye included:

• Exploring the island and local restaurants by golf cart.

• Watching hermit crab races in the town of San Pedro.

• Hanging out with locals and enjoying the company of some of the friendliest people we’ve ever met.

• Taking a snorkel tour of Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Shark Ray Alley. Snorkeling with sharks, stingrays and turtles will always be one of the most present, joyful and fulfilling experiences of my life.

• If you’re a scuba diver, explore the world’s second-largest barrier reef.

• Taking a fishing tour. We asked our guide if our son could try spear fishing. He wasn’t prepared for that request that day, so he took us by boat to his home to grab his personal gear.

• Booking an excursion to the mainland to visit the Mayan ruins. Yes, I got on the little plane again! There was an option to take the ferry, but we loved the small plane so much that it simply became part of the adventure. We visited Lamanai and took the guided river boat ride. The knowledge and cultural pride of our guide was incredibly moving.

• Visiting Secret Beach and enjoying lunch with tables in the water under a thatched palapa.

One Travel Lesson We Learned in Belize

One thing to keep in mind when planning a trip to Ambergris Caye is sargassum.

Try to book your visit when heavy sargassum isn’t expected. It can’t be predicted perfectly, but there are seasons when it is more common.

And before you say, “What’s the big deal about some seaweed?”

Sargassum is another whole category.

It can come in on massive floating sheets, consume the coastline, smell awful and turn the water completely brown and unswimmable.

We’ve been there during high sargassum, and it didn’t ruin our trip, but we needed to be flexible.

There is no sargassum on the Secret Beach side of the island, so we planned more trips over there.

That’s another lesson we’ve learned through traveling:

You can’t control everything. You can control how willing you are to adjust.

And I’m looking at booking our third trip to Belize soon.

Some places simply call you back.

One Small Step Changes More Than You Think

Every beautiful moment we’ve experienced has come from one decision to be brave.

There will always be fear when you are trying something new.

What many people don’t realize, though, is that you don’t need to suddenly take a huge leap of courage.

You’ve heard the cliché before: To make a big dream come true, you just need to take the first small step.

But there is more to it than simply starting the journey.

The most important thing that happens with that first small step is how it starts to change your identity.

You get your passport.

You take the class.

You go on the date.

You join the gym.

You make the phone call.

Whatever that first step is, suddenly there is a shift.

You are on a new path.

And you start becoming the person who can hold the dreams you want to make come true.

Do it messy. Do it anyway. Just start down the path.

You will figure it out.

This is how I became a Pilates instructor.

It’s how this flatlander from New York became an alpaca farmer.

It’s how the girl who never traveled became the person people ask, “Where are you going next?”

It’s how one trip that we saved and budgeted for over a year became taking multiple trips every year.

And it’s how this quiet introvert started sharing her story with the world through photos, reels and words written on a website.

Our Next Dream: Sailing the Caribbean

My husband recently got his captain’s license.

He can now captain a 100-ton boat if he chooses, and he is one step closer to his dream of doing catamaran charters in the Caribbean.

Not because he saw the whole path ahead.

He asked the right questions of his mentor. He started taking classes. He started logging his hours on a boat.

And he simply started down the path.

In April, we plan on chartering our own catamaran in the British Virgin Islands.

We’ll book the boat, buy the provisions, plan the itinerary, schedule the ferry from St. Thomas and find the crew.

There will be a lot to figure out.

But for now?

We just booked the flight.

✈️ Free Travel Planner

If you have more than one trip on the horizon and need help keeping it all organized—or planning your first trip and don’t want to miss a vital step—download my free travel planner and keep the important details together in one place.

There are two versions included: a PDF to print if you prefer a paper version to write on, and a Word document if you’d rather keep your plans digital.

✍️ FORWARD: My Digital Reflection Journal

And if this post resonated with the part of you that knows you don’t want to keep waiting for someday, you might also want to take a look at FORWARD, my editable digital reflection journal.