Privind înapoi în 2019: un an de maxime și valori minime

și exact așa, 2019 este un înveliș. Se pare că de fiecare dată când mă așez să scriu aceste postări de reflecții, nu pot să cred cât de repede a decurs anul. În timp ce scriu acest articol, îl am pe prietenul meu blând (câine de rezervă) la picioarele mele, Nick -ul meu de lângă mine (trebuie să se bărbierească!) Și mă uit spre mare și munți de dincolo.

Anul trecut a fost plin de călătorii aventuroase în țări noi și repetate, maxime și valori minime pe companie și front personal, dragoste și râs din partea relației și multă distracție aici, în Grenada. S -au întâmplat atât de multe, încât a trebuit să vorbesc cu fotostream -ul pentru iPhone pentru a -mi aminti toate lucrurile incredibile la care am ajuns!

Imagini cu munți, orașe coloniale, situri antice și insule tropicale domină furajul. A fost un an destul de grozav. La fiecare 12 luni are un sentiment, o atmosferă sau un fel de mare eveniment care iese în evidență. Pentru 2019, îl dublez „un an de valori maxime și minime”. Și veți vedea de ce după citire – anul a fost uimitor și apoi părea să se prăbușească la sfârșit.

Iată o recapitulare a anului și ceea ce am planificat să mergem mai departe în 2020.

Călătoria în jurul Galapagos a fost un punct culminant al anului nostru!

Fac aceste mesaje rotunjite de câțiva ani! Iată cele din anii precedenți dacă sunteți interesat:

2012: Un an foarte memorabil

2013: un an de prime

2014: A început și s -a încheiat cu Mexic

2015: un an de spontaneitate

2016: Un an de mari decizii

2017: un an de coaster cu role

2018: un an de realizări

Sărbătorind aniversarea noastră de 12 ani!
Atingerea obiectivelor stabilite pentru 2019

La sfârșitul fiecărui articol anual, am stabilit câteva obiective pe care dorim să le atingem în noul an. Aceasta este ceea ce am vrut să realizăm în 2019:

Fiind mult mai activ (mergând la drumeție mult mai mult și alăturați -vă din nou yoga).

Explorând mult mai mult din Grenada

Continuați să creați și să oferiți informații utile pe site -ul nostru web

Ajutor (muncă voluntară, donații, cauze de mediu)

Sunt încântat să raportez că am îndeplinit aceste obiective!

Fiind mult mai activ

Anul acesta, ne -am întors în „hashing” aici, în Grenada și, în timp ce nu ne -am alăturat drumețurilor în fiecare weekend, am făcut destul de multe. De asemenea, m -am alăturat yoga și am participat la cursuri de două ori pe săptămână, multe săptămâni. Și acum facem mult mai mult pe jos, atunci obișnuiam, plus și câteva antrenamente la domiciliu.

Nick și cu mine am făcut amândoi câteva detoxuri în acest an, una cu pastile naturale și una pur și simplu cu smoothie -uri și post. De fapt, tocmai am terminat o dietă de detoxifiere și smoothie de două săptămâni, ceea ce am făcut anterior când ne simțeam puțin greoi.

Ne -am gândit că este o idee bună să se strecoare și să se usuce înainte de sezonul de sărbători! Nick a pierdut 10 kilograme și am pierdut 8. În cazul în care ați ratat postarea de anul trecut: „Ne -am îngrașat – manevrarea Blogger Bod”.

Când trăim undeva, ne este greu să fim activi. Când călătorim, este mult mai simplu, deoarece ne plimbăm mereu prin noi orașe, mergem pe site -uri noi sau pur și simplu rătăciți fără rost. Deoarece nu devenim mai tineri, punem sănătatea și sănătatea în fruntea obiectivelor noastre.

Drumeția este modalitatea noastră preferată de a rămâne activ
Explorând mult mai mult din Grenada

Chiar dacă am petrecut 5 ani în Grenada (pornit și oprit), întotdeauna mă uimește că există încă locuri noi de descoperit. Anul acesta am explorat câteva noi drumeții și trasee de mers pe jos, plaje offtrack și câteva restaurante noi noi care au apărut.

Pe lângă faptul că am găsit doar noi locuri pentru a merge și mânca, ne -am găsit participând la diverse evenimente – Festivalul de vinuri roșii, carnaval, festival de muzică și festival de ciocolată. În plus, am explorat marea cu barca cu pânze în diverse ocazii, am făcut niște pescuit cu mare adâncime, iar Nick a aruncat o privire asupra lumii subacvatice din scufundări.

De asemenea, am sărbătorit 3 zile de naștere cu șederi aici pe insulă. One on a cacao farm, in a treehouse cabin, surrounded by nature. Our four-legged friend also joined in on that bday weekend! My 35th birthday was celebrated with live music, beach bar drinks, and lazy pool days at one of the hotels here, plus a private sunset sail. Nick’s 35th was recently spent enjoying a dinner party, followed by a night at a boutique seafront hotel in a cute bungalow.

Finally, family members concerned visit. even though it was just for a few hours while they were off the cruise ship, it was good to show Nick’s grandparents around our home (and get in some hugs!).

We had so numerous great times in Grenada throughout the year — I’d say we did the little island justice!

Sailing into 35!

Continuing to offer helpful content on Our Website

As with every year, we are alwayscreating new articles, videos and messages on our social media channels to hopefully inspire and assist others when it concerns making money on the road, and travelling the world.

In 2019, we published 157 articles on Goats On The Road, filmed and edited 20 YouTube videos and posted on social media 237 times!

This year, we also kicked it up a notch and created a digital course to help bloggers progress from hobby bloggers to a lucrative business. and by we, I imply Nick. 

Nick planned, filmed, and created the SEO Made easy online course — spending hours to guarantee it was detailed, professional and many importantly, actionable. Each of the 300 students who have purchased the course are also in Nick’s VIP Facebook group where he shares his wisdom and advanced methods for SEO. It’s been very gratifying for both of us to see the students’ progression!

Because Nick created that course, we were invited to be a part of the Paradise pack in 2019. For the past 3 years, we have promoted the pack (because it’s filled with awesome products), but this year we were invited to have our course in the bundle of online resources.

We were ecstatic!

Chatting with Travis and Jason from the Paradise pack was a lot of fun

We did an hour-long live chat online with the creators of the pack (Travis and Jason), with over 3,000 people viewing at a time! We then did an hour+ podcast with Jason, where we spoke about our lives as digital nomads and travellers. chatting with online colleagues is always a lot of fun, and we love this style of interview.

Special!

If you’re interested in learning some of our SEO secrets, but aren’t sure if you want to purchase the SEO Made easy course, we’re providing a totally free 1-hour session, here.

Ajutând

Finally, our last goal for 2019 was to help out more. In 2018, we were able to do quite a few things in Grenada, but this year we wanted to do more, both at home and away — there’s always much more that can be done.

As with last year, we sponsored an eight-year-old girl from the orphanage so that she could attend a four-week summer camp here on the island. Her weeks were filled with arts and crafts, history and culture, sports and activities, plus a couple of outings to the beach to learn about marine life and the environment. I hope that this summer camp continues for these children as it’s a great initiative.

We also assisted an artist in his “Beautify Grenada” project where he sources out blank walls around the island and looks to brighten up the community by painting distinct images on them. “Our” wall that was painted is one that we drive by every day. It’s is in front of a preschool and is now home to colourful turtles, balloons, trees, children, and of course, goats! I hope this talented artist continues his pursuit of beautifying the island. 

Plastic is a problem worldwide. Our eco-blogging, travelling friends from The Dharma trails put together a “Green Up Grenada” project to bring awareness to the plastic issues and to clean up the beaches (and underwater).

Nick heading out on a dive to cleanup the underwater world

We participated in the clean up of La Sagesse beach (323 pounds of garbage was collected), and the scuba diving clean up at Grand Anse beach where 150 pounds of garbage was pulled from the sea. This was a great campaign and hopefully it raised much more awareness about the unnecessary use of plastic here on the island.  

Utilizing Our home as a “Base”

A month after ringing in the new Year in Grenada, it was time for us to pack away the household items we had accumulated over the past year, load up our backpacks and hit the road. Every February, the owners of the house we rent return to spend 5 or so weeks here. This implies we have to vacate — which is ok as we go travelling again!

We had been pretty much stagnant for many of 2018, and not really utilizing our home as a base, which was the whole point of settling here — we planned to stay, and then travel, and repeat. Instead, we felt a pull (is it actually called a “pull” if we don’t go anywhere?!) to stay put.

This year, we were ready to correctly make use of our base. Live, travel, repeat. It was time to get back out into the world. And, we actually ended up doing quite a bit of travelling this year — 5 months to be exact. 

Eating bbq chicken in the sea with spare Dog, after hiking – a great day!

Travelling for practically half of the year and staying still for the rest seems to be the ideal balance for us. It allows us to have exciting adventures, sample new foods, and learn about new cultures, but also gives us enough downtime to rest, work and catch up with friends. 

I don’t want to jinx it, but after travelling for 10 years, and blogging for 7 of those years, could it be possible that we’ve finally found a work-life balance that suits our lifestyle?! 

Having explored Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia in 2017, we knew we loved the continent of South America. So, when considering where to go in February, we took a look at the map and chose on Ecuador and Peru for our next adventure…and what an adventure it was! In fact, Ecuador has shot up to the top of our list of preferred destinations. 

We were offline for this entire trip and had an amazing time backpacking around these two countries, it felt great to be on the road again! You can read about our thoughts and highlights of this trip in our roundup short article here.

The hiking around Otavalo was amazing!

Read Our Ecuador Articles Here:

12 things To do in Quito, Ecuador

Mindo: the complete travel Guide

Otavalo: The supreme guide for Travellers

Hiking the Quilotoa Loop: A How-to Guide

Galapagos Islands Travel: A guide To travelling Independently

Press trip Partnerships

Going on press trips/FAM trips isn’t our main blogging income model, but when we’re invited somewhere that resonates with our travel style and interests, we happily accept the offer.

This year, we were invited on 6 press trips and had a great time exploring new destinations — all of which were an outstanding fit. Sure, we had been to these countries in the past, but the provinces, cities, and islands that we went to were new to us.

Nova Scotia

Even though we’re Canadian, we’ve seen very little of our home country. So when the Nova Scotia tourism board invited us to experience what the little province has to offer, we jumped at the opportunity to see the east!

Jagged coastline, hiking routes, fishing villages, fresh seafood and welcoming locals — this is Nova Scotia. We picked up our rental car and had an amazing time road tripping around the province for 3 weeks, while experiencing all the fun things to do in Halifax, and beyond.

As an added bonus, we were able to spend a few days going to with family here as well! My father and his wife were travelling around Canada and stopped in Halifax at the same time we were there. It was great to catch up and get in some much more hugs.

With so numerous places to visit and adventures to have, we would certainly return and explore much more of the culture, cuisine and nature in this province. 

Read much more about our experience in Nova Scotia on the blog, here.

Beautiful nature in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island

Indonezia

This island nation is one of the countries we went to on our first backpacking trip in 2009. We then returned to live in Canggu, Bali for a couple of months, and Nick went on a scuba diving trip with the Indonesia tourism Board.

This time around, we were invited by Lotus Hotels, to experience their dive resorts and share our findings with you. 

We travelled to 4 different destinations over the course of 15 days — Gangga Island in North Sulawesi, Birie Island in Raja Ampat, Candidasa on Bali Island and the island of Gili Trawangan. even though we were on a trip that was planned for us, going to these destinations (some of which are quite offtrack) was an amazing experience. 

Sunsets on Gangga Island were amazing

The majority of the trip was centred arou