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| Plymouth Magazine, November 2005 |
A Global Roam
Plymouth residents hit the world—running
By Kelly Westhoff
[Editor's note: Kelly Westhoff and Quang Nystrom, two Plymouth residents, are taking a seven-month trip around the world that began in October. Westhoff wrote about their journey last month, just before the couple began this worldwide adventure.]
I am quitting my job. So is my husband. Neither of us has another job lined up, but we're not worried. In fact, we're excited. Quitting our jobs is just one small part of a much larger plan—a plan to travel around the world. It is a plan that includes stops in at least 10 countries on three continents. It is a plan that spans seven months and requires that we pack no mare than what we can carry on our backs. We will leave Plymouth far behind when we start our journey in October 2005. Our first stop? Mexico City.
My husband, Quang Nystrom, and I will stay in Mexico City for just a few days before taking local buses in to the countryside. We plan to steer away from Mexico's beaches. Instead, we will visit central Mexico and its colonial cities: Taxco, Morelia, San Miguel de Allende and Guadalajara. While in Mexico, we hope to witness a Day of the Dead celebration and visit the forest where migrating monarch butterflies gather to pass the winter. We will spend a month in Mexico before flying to Argentina.
After Mexico, our plans are sketchy. Truthfully, even our plans for Mexico are sketchy. We don't have a written daily itinerary. We don't have hotel reservations and we don't have an exact route. We have plane tickets into one country and out of another. In between, however, it is up to us to figure out what to do, where to go and how to get from one place to the next.
This method of travel is called “budget” by many. And it is. But we've planned it that way. Both of us have traveled abroad before and both of us know that expensive high rises on the beach won't put us in touch with the heart of a country. We are not embarking on this trip around the world to stay in glamorous hotels. We are going on this journey to meet, firsthand, the cultures, foods, languages and people of this world, and along the way, discover a thing or two about ourselves.
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The remainder of this article can be found in the November 2005 issue of Plymouth Magazine.
Learn more about Kelly & Quang's Global Roam.