I’ve recently been reflecting on how dramatically my living circumstances have changed over the last three years. It’s been quite a wild ride indeed!

A little over three years ago I left the comfortable surroundings of the city I was born in and where I spent the first 31 years of my life. I moved to Devon in the south west of England, a very charming and picturesque place that many say is one of the most beautiful parts of England (and I would probably agree). Moving to Devon wasn’t something I’d been planning and I seemed to remember it all happened very quickly.

I spent about 10 very enjoyable months in Devon. I loved the tranquillity and calmness of Devon and the relaxed pace at which most people there seemed to flow through life. It was also the first time in my life I lived next to the ocean, and I still miss that ocean a lot. I never had any plans to leave Devon, but events happened, opportunities presented themselves, and bang, within a matter of weeks I suddenly found myself living in London, again something wholly unplanned.

I spent about 15 months in London and I loved just about every minute there. I loved the vastness of the place, the incredible amount of things to see and do and I was blessed to become friends with some of the most interesting, intelligent and fun, not to mention highly conscious, people you could ever hope to meet. I still miss London a lot to be honest, but I knew it wasn’t part of my path to stay there. I also lived in 3 very different parts of London during those 15 months. A couple of months in the East End, about 11 months in North London and then I spent my final two months living in a very swanky flat close to Richmond in West London.

Then, almost a year ago I moved again, and this time I moved abroad for the first time to Canada where I had some great friends I wanted to spend more time with. Canada was slightly more planned than the other moves, or at least I knew three months in advance of my move that I wanted to go there. However, I literally didn’t know until about week before I flew whether I was definitely going or not.

In Canada I was living in a small town in Nova Scotia called Wolfville, a very charming and friendly little town where very little happens. It could not have been more different from London, but I enjoy being there and I enjoyed slowing down once again after the mad pace of life in London. It was also fucking freezing!!

I’ve never experienced a freezing cold winter before. We literally didn’t see the ground for almost 4 months due to the snow. And my god was there a lot of snow. I don’t think that’s an experience I ever want to repeat but I’m mightily glad I endured it. It feels like a war scar of some kind and it’s certainly given me a whole new perspective on weather and temperature!

I also had no plans to leave Canada (are you seeing a recurring pattern here!?), and I was really looking forward to experiencing a Canadian summer after the long harsh winter. In fact I had literally just applied to renew my visa for another 6 months (and paid an administration fee) when a few days later I had a mad flash of intuition that I should move to Peru. 3 Weeks later I was jumping on a plane to South America, my most exotic and perhaps bizarre destination yet.

Each of those 4 moves (to Devon, then London, then Wolfville, then Cusco) was essentially a leap into the unknown. None of those moves were planned in advance and to be honest I never really had a clue what I would be doing when I got there. In all those cases I was essentially following my intuition and completely trusting that I was doing the right thing and that everything would work out for me.

Now I’m starting to feel like I might be about to take another leap into the unknown. In just over a weeks time I’m going to start travelling to Iquitos, a city in the middle of the Amazon jungle in northern Peru. At this moment I don’t have any plans to stay there for more than a few weeks; however, I’m starting to get a strong intuition that I will stay there a lot longer than a few weeks. I get this weird feeling that universal cogs are turning and that my life is about to take a whole new direction.

Also, as I finish this post I’m a few hours away from catching a bus to Bolivia. My visa expires in a few weeks and I want to renew it before I head to Iquitos. Tomorrow morning at 9am I should be arriving in a place called Copacabana on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca where I intend to hang out for a few days before I get a bus back to Cusco on Sunday.

Hasta luego mis amigos!