Travel Stories

Arrived in the hot surf town of El Paredon. I will be exploring Central American surf towns over the next month and want to create a standardized way to analyze each. THE FRAMEWORK The most important aspect is the climate. I was researching the science behind climates yesterday and learned some interesting things. There are five major climate groups according to the Köppen–Geiger system. In El Paredon it is quite dry and lacking lush vegetation and fruits which I do not like as much. It is classified as a tropical savanna. Whereas most parts of Costa Rica are more lush with huge leaves, animals teeming about, fruits as well. This would be a tropical monsoon climate, characterized by a distinct rainy season. In Florida I grew up in a humid subtropical climate which I quite like, but this climate does not exist in digital nomad places. Finally the best climate for human health is the Mediterranean climate, characterized by hot dry summers and mild wet winters. I am attracted to sunshine and humidity over dry weather with lots of nature. The next important thing for me is walkability. I will never own a car again as I stated. I want a place with a main area of town where you can stroll and meet other vibers. Walking and an active lifestyle is huge for health. Some towns are spread out and require a scooter. Some towns do not have a central hub. I am looking for a walkable town with a centralized hub. Places that come to mind are Tel Aviv, Pai, Koh Rong. Next is infrastructure. Of course you need good cafes, a diverse selection of food. All at a good price. Fast wifi is important for working. Hobbies. The place you live needs to support your interests. Right now I like surfing, yoga, sauna, weights, soccer, basketball, maybe pickleball. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EL PAREDON SCORECARD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CLIMATE 6.4/10 Hot but dry, tropical savanna lacking lush vegetation and fruits ▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░ WALKABILITY 6.8/10 Compact and walkable but lacks a distinct central gathering area ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░ INFRASTRUCTURE 4.9/10 Limited cafes, lacks diverse food options, basic amenities only ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░ HOBBIES 5.2/10 Good surfing, outdoor gyms available No sauna or organized sports ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ OVERALL SCORE 5.8/10 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE VERDICT It still is a really cool town to backpack and I recommend people check it out. However in my search for a home base it will not make the mark. I look forward to comparing it to El Tunco, El Salvador and Santa Teresa, Costa Rica in the coming months! UPCOMING COMPARISONS • El Tunco, El Salvador • Santa Teresa, Costa Rica • More to come...

It seems humans follow the same laws of atoms and molecules, like entanglement and superposition, posits Douglas Adams in *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*. Yesterday I felt that more than ever. Rachel and I went to an authentic mayan cooking class, without the class and ran into a character we have met before. First of all, I booked a trendy Mayan cooking class in San Juan a week in advance and came to the clay house on time at 1 PM. The lady running the kitchen welcomes us and we take a seat. She begins bringing us our appetizers, drinks and the dish. Rachel and I look at each other inquisitively, confused why we are eating before the cooking class. Typically you make the food then eat not the other way around. As time passed, we decided to ask what was going on. The lady told us we booked only lunch, no class and it was impossible to do the class today. Disappointed, we accepted our fate and ate the mediocre mayan chicken and fish and laughed. While we are eating another couple walks in and take a seat. We start joking that they are about to get screwed over like us, expecting a cooking class but just getting mediocre tasteless mayan food. As time passes we analyze them to see when they will notice. While this is going on the guy at the other table is staring hard at us, and Rachel staring back. Rachel claims she is very good at memorizing faces and says she recognizes the guy. He over hears her saying this and says yes I think we have met. I immediately connect the dots and realized we met this couple in Sapa Vietnam in a small bar in April! Now we are here in a small lake town in Guatemala! How improbable! To that point, it seems that humans do follow the laws of superposition and entanglement on a macro scale. People always say "small world", but I feel like there is something even more mysterious underneath this simple statement. The interesting thing about the universe is that a lot of the complexity gets abstracted away. From underlying simple rules, complex behavior can emerge which then can be distilled to simple rules again. It is fascinating. This experience resonates with the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which I am currently reading. The author Douglas Adams satirizes the entire existence, poking fun at how absurd life is. It really does seem that the world and our experiences trend towards the most absurd and improbable. This has become a part of my philosophy. So what do you do with this underlying principle? I think the only thing you can do is be adaptable, ride the wave, never be surprised, and seize the absurdity. If you learn to wield the improbable, instead of expecting simplicity, you can make some very life changing decisions, financially and socially.

I just finished a Temezcal ceremony in Lake Atitlan. Before I get into it I will share my feelings of this place. Lake Atitlan is a beautiful lake surrounded by volcanoes. There are 5-7 towns on the hillside of the volcanoes situated around the beautiful lake. Yesterday Rachel and I rented a jet ski for 30 minutes and it was so fun and beautiful. Today we woke up at 3:30 AM to hike the famous Indian Nose, a sacred Mayan land hike. The views on the top for sunrise were beautiful. The town we are staying at first is San Pedro, known for its backpacking community. There are nice cafes by the lakeside and shops. After the sunrise hike I found a vegan restaurant to have breakfast at. We walked outside of town to get there. It was so hard to find and locate. We had to go through bushes off the main path and around farmland to find the cafe. While we ordered food I noticed a shirtless dreadlock man with tattoos stoking a fire and building a dome. It reminded me of the sweat lodge I participated in with the Lakota tribe in Boulder Colorado in 2021. Rachel asked him what it was and he said it was a Temezcal ceremony, similar to the Native American sweat lodge, performed by Mayans. I was super excited and I said we had to do it. What a serendipitous moment. It had to be… coincidence? I get in the pitch black dome and my heart starts racing. The sweat lodge I did 4 .5 years ago made an imprint on my life and conscience and I was nervously excited for what this would entail. I reflected how I have grown so much in 4 years, from a whippersnapper 21 year old to a more grounded 25 year old, still doing the same ancient indigenous ritual, in a beautiful volcanic lake. There were four rounds, with some locals and some tourists. They put volcanic lava rocks in the middle and called them abuelitas, grandmothers. The rocks are millions of years old and can contain healing properties and knowledge. There were four rounds and each round they added 13 abuelitas. The leader sang songs on his drum and gave speeches in Spanish. I pretty much understood everything he said which I was super happy with. As I sat there in the temezcal I reflected on my journeys and how grateful I am and for Hashem. Recently I have been reflecting on my relationship with Hashem and trying to evolve it. More on that later. The temezcal got hotter and hotter. I loved it. I tried not to compare it to my first one with the Lakota but inevitably I did. There were less people and more tourists this time and it was a little less hot. But I still got all the amazing effects. Beautiful herbs rubbed on my body and in my nose. I rubbed aloe vera in my hair body, all over. I sang and shouted and yelled. It was a beautiful experience. After the ceremony we all ran to the beatiful volcanic lake and relaxed. As I realized on my big adventure, I love adventurous experiences that integrate you with local unique cultures, and this was exactly that. Guatemala has been amazing. Nice people, clean safe, unique indigenous culture, very pretty, and lots to do. As I sit hear overlooking one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen I can only reflect how far I have come and am very grateful for all the unique experiences that make me who I am today. I wish to share them with you and to help show the beauty of travel, of people, of cultures, of life. There are so many interesting people and views, and beliefs, and ways to connect. Many people lock themselves in their own prison with the key in their pocket. Yo just have to have the courage to reach in there and open the door. Once you do that, being curious, open minded, the whole existence can flow through you. Don't wait for life to give you what you desire, go and find it and take it.

Rachel and I arrived to Guatemala yesterday after celebrating Hanukkah with my family in Florida. Hanukkah dinner for the first night was memorable and one for the ages. It was really special. For the next three weeks Rachel and I will be backpacking around Guatemala. Of the data I collected from fellow backpackers, Guatemala seemed to be the best country in Central America to backpack. There is history, hiking, surfing, nice people, and it is cheap. Being in Antigua the past two days it is already off to a great start. The town is historical but modern. It is clean and the people are friendly. There are an abundance of cafes and walkable streets. As I backpack around Guatemala for the next three weeks this might be the last time for a while I will be in backpacker mode. I am ready to start a new section, not just a new chapter, a new section of life. To find a place to live, to grow, and to build. I will take all my learnings and apply them to the fullest of my ability. In the meantime I am really looking forward to the time with Rachel to be a backpacker a little bit longer. After my 10 month trip there is still a linger off wanting to travel and backpack. I quenched that going to Costa Rica and Panama last month and this will be the cherry on top. To seal that era and to begin a new. I am looking forward to getting a longer term lease in Costa Rica, El Salvador, or Mexico. I have pretty much narrowed down my options to surf towns in Central America that are walkable and cheap but with fairly modern infrastructure. I am feeling grateful, grounded, and focused. I am grateful for my strong body, intellectual mind, spiritual connection, friends, family, and life. Any of it can be taken at any second. Happy Hanukkah.

I have been sick the last two days. Being sick and weak really gives you perspective. I am grateful to say I rarely get sick so this really took me by surprise. It made me reflect how much I value my strong body and how I want to continue to improve it. Getting over a sickness also feels like a rebirth. I have been hyper aware of what I put in my body and how it will make me feel. I want to continue this. It is really difficult to do while at home and trying to line up meals with my parents but that is okay. I talked with my good friends Zach and Jared this evening and we explored important ideas. Zach shared this idea of a new section of life he/we are entering. The past 25 years have been about acquiring data, freedom, exploration. I quit my job to gain perspective about the world and the best way of life to live. As Zach put it, AI is trained on data, and really high quality data is super expensive. That is what I did with quitting my job and traveling the world. To acquire high quality data on how to maximize life and how to live it. While at home the past few weeks, similar to when I first got back, the external forces try and weigh influence over you. I have done a good job, and will continue to defend my perspectives and life choices. Business with Kyle has been great and I know we have so much to give there too. Zach mentioned this new section can be about relentless building. I have thought about this while building my business and new life. Being a builder and a creator is an important quality of my life and I want to continue that strong. There is no reason I could not be a billionaire if I tried. Rachel comes in to town tomorrow, the first time seeing her in six months and since the trip. I am excited for what will unfold. I will then head to Guatemala on a one way trip for a one month backpacking trip, very possibly my last extended travel. I am excited to find a place to make a home, to build a home, to grow into for the next section of life.