You can help “define” indie travel by voting statements you agree/disagree with up or down. Please sign/share if it resonates with you.

My favs:

• See yourself in the context of a rich and complex world.
• Define your values and explore your beliefs; craft your own meaning for life.
• Pack light and keep things simple.
• Seek pleasure in simple moments and details.

I’m also a little obsessed with this color palette right now. My next project will might not incorporate Tangerine Tango — (Pantone color of the year). :)

So four days into 2012, I clicked the fateful “buy” button on a ticket to Hawaii for March! It feels good to be crossing a travel goal off my 2012 Goals list already, and I’m excited to be making my goal of working remotely for 1-3 months actually happen. What else is on my travel list this year?

2012 Travel Goals:

1. Work remotely (not in Portland) for 1-3 months
2. Sublet/Airbnb my condo for 1-2 months (see above goal)
3. Try kiteboarding in Hawaii
4. Apply to at least one new credit card for airline miles
5. Travel to South America (Chile please!) or Portugal for 2+ weeks
6. Visit a new island in the Caribbean
7. Try couchsurfing
8. Visit NYC, San Francisco, Boston or Savannah (essentially: another US city that I haven’t been to)
9. Be a traveler at home: attend 12 new Portland things
10. Go on a quarterly getaway trip with boyfriend (overnight or weekend trip in Oregon/Northwest etc)
11. Take a “spontaneous” same-day trip (using HotelTonight etc)
12. Take a digital sabbatical (no social media/email) while on a trip

What’s on your 2012 travel list?
Join BootsnAll’s 2012 Indie Travel Challenge and share your list. Need some ideas? Check out 18 Travel Resolutions to Keep This Year.

Next up on my list, I need to sublet my condo in Portland for the month. So if you know of anyone who wants to see what it’s like to be a Portlander for a month (albeit not our best month weather-wise, but I still love my city!) in a cute little condo overlooking the river and on the Streetcar line, send them my way please!

Meanwhile, I’ll be hiking the Stairway to Heaven on Oahu. :)

Prompt #30: Where are you going in 2012? Why is that place great for indie travelers?

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” –Saint Augustine

I’ve become a little obsessed with Torres del Paine national park in Chile the last few years. It’s breathtakingly beautiful like New Zealand and I have yet to visit the South American continent, so South America is on my target list for the coming year.

2012: Chile & Torres del Paine National Park

Where are you going?

Today is the final day of the 30 Days of Indie Travel project. I had so much fun keeping up with the project (yes! I blogged every day in November!) and reading other bloggers awesome stories and experiences. Until next time…

Prompt #29: What does travel mean to you in one word?

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” –Helen Keller

adventure, freedom, learning, curiosity, fun, change, experience, happiness…

Adventure. The one word that best wraps up everything I love about travel is probably adventure… When you’re traveling everything is new… it’s an adventure. You have no idea what you might experience or discover in the next week, day, minute… it’s an adventure. Things are different and a change from regular routine… it’s an adventure. You have the freedom to do and be whatever you want… it’s an adventure. You learn new things rapidly and see that there are many different ways to do things and they’re not better/worse just different [squat toilets come to mind]… it’s an adventure. When you’re traveling you’re living in the moment, you feel super alive… it’s an adventure.

Life in general is an adventure.

What does travel mean to you?

Photo: super cute poster print by happydeliveries on Etsy.
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Prompt #28:The right gear can make or break your trip. What is your favorite/must-have gear item?

“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” –Coco Chanel

Oh how I love packing, and packing lists, and clever gadgets. I’m over on the BootsnAll blog again today with my Must-have Travel Gear Item: Flight 001 Wet Suit bag.

I originally found this bag after returning from Panama with a bag even the customs agents didn’t want to open. Mildew happens.

What is your favorite gear item?

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Prompt #26: Post a photo of your favorite place and tell us what you love about it.

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” –Miriam Beard

I don’t have ONE favorite place. That’s just silly. I’m back on the BootsnAll blog again today, sharing about one of my favorite hikes, my glorious rainy Hike to Huka Falls in New Zealand.

New Zealand, in general, is one of my favorite places in the world. I did a lot of hiking in New Zealand and can’t wait to go back and see more of the North Island.

Where is one of your favorite places?

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Prompt #22: Where would today’s travelers be without smartphones, GPS, iPods, iPads, or even the internet? Share one item of tech you can’t live without or tell us how has technology changed the way you travel.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” –Steve Jobs

No surprises here, my must-have piece of technology is my iPhone. When I did my career break, I was sans-phone. It’s a completely different travel world now…

The upside? I get to use my map for directions, taking awesome pics, having location tags on my pics, checking in on Foursquare so I remember where I went, fiddling with Instagram, staying crazy pants organized with apps like TripIt, and checkin to flights all from my lovely little iPhone.

The downside? I’m tweeting, taking pictures, letting my curiosity get the best of me and checking work email, looking things up on my phone instead of asking a local a question, or generally staring at my obnoxious little iPhone.

What’s your must-have gadget?

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Prompt #18: Every traveler has a budget; for some it just might be higher of lower than for others What’s your style? What do you spend very little on and what are you always willing to pay more for?

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” –George W. Bush

I can be a notorious cheapskate while traveling, but I also like to splurge on stuff I probably wouldn’t buy at home (sky diving, I’m looking at you). It’s my turn again over on our work blog, for the 30 Days of Indie Travel project. So go check out my Where does my travel money go? post — including my cheapskate confessions of making my own fresh-squeezed orange juice while on my transatlantic cruise back to the States (all you have is time on a Transatlantic cruise, like 14 days of time. Worth it.)

Where does your money go on a trip?

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Prompt #12: Travelers meet dozens, if not hundreds, of new people on every trip. They may become friends, enemies, lovers, and resources; they may stay in your life forever or be forgotten the next day. Tell about a time you felt a powerful connection – for however long – to another person while traveling.

“The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them.” –Amelia E. Barr

Solo travel makes you much more apt to meet strangers. It’s one of the fun things about travel, as the saying goes you might be traveling solo, but you’re never alone. I met so many interesting people on my RTW trip — from the people you spend an afternoon with and never see again, to the backpackers you just keep running into throughout a country, to people who you identify as “your people”.

One memorable friendship that I made on the road water, was with a couple from Toronto, Dave and Andrea. I had decided to take a small group sailing adventure from Mykonos to Santorini. After not finding any cheap lodging on Mykonos (I’d been paying $30/night at a pension in Naxos), I decided to just arrive straight to the designated meeting point. I arrived to the taverna about two hours early since my ferry was also early and started chatting with a Canadian couple who were also waiting to meet their sailing group. I was immediately excited that I’d be spending the next week with people who seemed just my style. Over the next two hours more late 20s to 30-somethings (couples and solo travelers) arrived and we all got to chatting. Then the two captains arrived. One of the captains said “Who’s sailing from here to Athens?” and all the people I’d just met raised their hands. The second captain said “and who’s heading for Santorini?” and myself and some random couples scattered around the taverna raised their hands. My heart sank, as I’d been traveling really solo for three weeks (spending my time reading, pedaling around the islands, tavernas, pubs, chatting with locals, afternoons at the cafes, windsurfing lessons… it’d been great, but I hadn’t met a lot of other travelers or spent much time with English speakers especially since it was getting to be end of season in the Cyclades.)

Needless to say, I was really looking forward to hanging out with people who seemed like “my people”; and the older couple, young standoffish couple in the corner, and random group of three, did NOT seem like my people.

I bid farewell to my new friends of an hour as we arrived at the marina. After putting our packs onboard and meeting everyone, we headed into town for dinner, and I was mentally preparing myself for a very long week.

Fast forward 4 days and I learned that the retired couple had a great sense of humor, the standoff-ish couple from Toronto were just in the corner because Andrea had thrown up almost the entire way on the ferry from Crete to Mykonos that afternoon, and the other group of three ended up being kind of odd ducks (a ‘club’ I’m well familiar with), and the German captain was kind of a nut who wandered about in his skivvies, but we had become a little family during our one week sailing adventure. Turns out I had a lot in common with Dave and Andrea, so they became my default people to hang out with from exploring a new island to listening to tunes on the top deck, to jumping off the boat enroute to Ios for a swim, and renting a car together to drive around Santorini after the sailing trip was over.

As we sat as a group on our 2nd to last night on the sailboat in the port of Ios, drinking champagne to toast a birthday, waiving to the Russian mega-yacht to our left and chatting to a group of sailing friends to our right, I was reminded how you don’t always get to pick your companions, and even if you could, you’d probably select ‘wrong’ half the time. I unexpectedly found ‘my people’ in a group I’d quickly stereotyped, and had a memorable trip, which just added more to all the reasons I love Greece!

Have you made any surprise friendships on the road?

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Prompt #11: For some of us, food isn’t just a part of our travels, it’s the reason why we travel. Whether you travel the globe to try new foods and use food to form a deeper connection with the culture or just eat to live, food plays a big part in the travel experience. Share a food-related story from your travels or describe your best meal.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” –James A. Michener

Eating is one of my favorite things about travel. I love to discover new foods, and usually wish that there were more meals in a day so I could have it all. So for today’s 30 Days of Indie Travel post, I’m over on my work blog, with 67 Memorable Meals from 23 Countries — chattering about all the interesting stuff I’ve tried so far on my travels from the questionable, deep-fried tarantula in Cambodia to those addictive potato wedges in New Zealand…

What’s one of your favorite meals while traveling?

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