¡Buenas! We are Nikk & Shannon. After living in Costa Rica for a year, we are ready for our next adventure. We’ve spent the last three years building out Tortuga – our 2022 Jeep Gladiator – and now we are ready to hit the road.
Join us as we travel the entire PanAmerican Highway (and then some). Along the way, we’ll find the best beers and the best beaches… and then repeat!
Where it all began
It all started back in 2002. We had just started dating and were getting to know each other. When the conversation on our second date turned to future hopes and dreams, the idea of moving to a beach came up. It was probably Nikk who brought it up, he’s the dreamer, but the idea was perfect for both of us, and so it became our plan.
At first, the idea was to move to the Caribbean. We’d talk about it off and on throughout the years. When House Hunters started doing International episodes, we’d watch the beachy island locations and talk about how one day that’d be us. Life continued – we moved to new houses, to Iowa, and back to Colorado; we started careers and worked in new places; we spent time with family and friends and made new friends; most importantly we raised an amazing human from a little boy into a smart, kind, handsome, witty young man. All the while, the dream was always in the background… one day… one day we’d move to the beach.
In 2019, we decided to make our dreams happen. We sold our house and nearly all of our belongings, and headed south in our Jeep. Well, about 4,862 other things happened between “decision” and “driving” but you get the gist. You can read more about the decision to leave in our first post.
We started this blog to chronicle our drive from Denver to Costa Rica, but we had so much fun sharing, we decided to keep it going. We settled in Surfside (a wonderful beach town in the Guanacaste region), made friends, learned A LOT about living abroad, imported Chivo – our Jeep – and began to build a life for ourselves.
The World Turned Upside Down
And then… (cue the dramatic music)… the Covid 19 pandemic changed everything. Like so much of the world in early 2020, the pandemic shifted life in ways that we never imagined. Nikk’s job went away (luckily only briefly), Shannon’s yoga teaching went away, and we were quarantined in a foreign country. So much was unknown, so much was scary, and we didn’t quite know what was next.
Long story short (although you can read the long version here), we moved back to Denver, Colorado. It wasn’t necessarily what we wanted at the time, but we trusted the Universe and made the best decision we could.
The Next Adventure Begins!
If only I were a better website creator! This is where I’d put in a montage of pictures and videos from three years living in Denver. Instead, you’ll have to settle for reading all about it in this blog post. What you’ll learn is that we’re now on our next adventure: driving the PanAmerican Highway from Alaska to South America. We’ve got a new Jeep named Tortuga and we’ve started what we think will be a two-year trip. We’ll be chronicling some of the journey here on this blog, but we’ve stepped up our game to add a YouTube Channel so you can come along with us.
Feel free to drop us a comment here, contact us through the website, or send us an email. We’d love to hear from you! What’s your favorite craft beer? Do you want to travel the PanAmerican and you’re looking for resources? Where do you think we should go next?
Most of all, though, we just want to send our deep GRATITUDE to YOU! Thanks for stopping by our blog and we hope you’ll follow along. Until next time… CHEERS!
What do you think?? Drop us a line!