Theworldwalk

I know she's highly adaptable, but I'm still worried about the adjustment. We're walking six to eight hours a day now and she still has energy when we set camp. I'll be going on some long walks when I'm done just for her sake.

But also, she's seven now and I think it's probably good that we're going to slow down. Seven is a good time for a dog to retire to a life of leisure.

Yeah haha

So I was only in Honduras for five days. Every night but the last I slept in a hotel room. The last night there was nothing around, but I found this two story watchtower-type structure and decided that would be a good place to hide.

I hid my cart then climbed to the second story. All was well and the view of the valley below was incredible. As I started dozing off lights of a truck turned onto the watchtower. Then there were voices and someone coming up the ladder.

I stood. A second later there was a silhouette across from me of a man with a machete. A moment of quiet felt like a very long time, then the silhouette laughed and yelled down to his friend, "It's just a gringo!"

He stepped forward and I saw it was an older man. After rattling off the fastest Spanish I've ever spoken, he said I was fine, but that someone had stolen some cows the night before so he was on high alert. He unfurled this hidden bed and said he was going to stay the night.

I offered him oreos and went to bed figuring have a guy with a machete on my side meant I was safe for the night.

Algeria was the most challenging not because of the terrain or the weather, but because I had a police escort with me 24/7. At first, it was nice to feel protected and have local guides whenever I hit a town, but after about two weeks it started driving me mad. I was used to lots of solitude, and now I was being fretted over every time I paused to make sure I was okay. All the officers were immensely friendly, but simply having eyes on me all the time wore on me. And towards the end of Algeria, because the police wouldn't let me camp, there were about five straight days I had to walk from sunup to sundown in order to reach a hotel.

Temperature-wise, Costa Rica was the most challenging country. It was so hot and humid that in order to get any sort of mileage in I began waking at 4am, then stopping at 10am because it was too hot to walk after that. At one point, the soles of cheap sneakers I bought there literally melted off. Not fun. I was sweating day and night.

And yeah, I'd say I'm pretty deft at managing bureaucracy...at least when it comes to wrangling visas and sorting out Savannah's paperwork.

I did! Right at the end. Met a girl in Washington state, we've been dating since.

In the wrong shoes...so much.

Savannah did well in the desert. In north Peru it actually wasn't too hot, then in Lima I had her hair trimmed so she wasn't holding in too much heat.

The greatest difficulty of the desert was probably the solitude. There were times where I felt like I was going insane. My mind was as blank as the landscape. It seemed I thought every thought.

But at other times the solitude was magical. Like throwing my tarp under the stars at night and everything being perfectly quiet. Those were nice nights.