a panamerican sabbatical

November 21 — December 21: Central America (from Chiapas to Costa Rica; on December 21 la bestia departed from Puerto Caldera in a container bound for Guayaquil, Ecuador)

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October 4 — December 2: Mexico and Guatemala

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August 10 — October 12: 20,000 km (12,427 miles)

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July 2 — August 9: 10,000 km (6,214 miles)

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Prologue: It all started in 1995. I was reading an autobiography by a guy who had circumnavigated the globe on his sailboat. I had already passed the test for an Austrian license for lakes and rivers at age 12, so why not offshore sailing, sometime in my twenties? Fast-forward to 2000: living near Buenos Aires as an exchange student, I got invited to join a regatta from San Fernando de la Buena Vista to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. I joined — and ended up barfing so hard that I thought I’d die right there on the Rio de la Plata. No more dreams of a me on a yacht. And yet, my stay in Argentina was memorable not just because of my seasickness. For the first time in my life (and with steadfast encouragement by my porteño host family), I cautiously embraced uncertainty. It was both scary and liberating. I ended up dropping out of college and instead ventured into a professional field that I was truly passionate about: international development. I’ve run with it ever since. Before joining the faculty of American University‘s School of International Service in the fall of 2009, I rewarded myself with a long weekend at the Llao Llao hotel in Patagonia. The day I left, I promised myself that I would return. Then, shortly after moving to Washington, D.C., I watched an Alaska Geographic documentary on the Gates of the Arctic. A new idea was born: how about a panamerican road trip from D.C. to Patagonia via Alaska?