On this trip I am relearning and continually practicing living life more in the present. So much about the travel lifestyle is transient. When those beautiful moments happen where the perfect mix of awesome people come together it really does only last a moment. No guarantee whatsoever tomorrow night will be the same. In fact, it never is. Carpe noche…

So when those moment happen, you can’t assume they will return. I’ve made that mistake and regretted it every time. Losing that extra hour or two of sleep? Worth it for going out with friends on their last night. (And who I am I kidding, I can take a nap whenever the hell I feel like it tomorrow!) Your actually may never see them or have this opportunity again, so now is truly the time. Back at home in the states, I used to put things off way too much. All the typical excuses: “I’m tired”, “I have work tomorrow”, “I’ll do it next time”, blah blah. I’m living a different mentality here and hope to keep it up when/if I come back. Letting myself love people openly as much as I actually do, putting myself out there as part of many communities, reaching out to make new friends, and doing more things that will make me happy.

After drafting this post, I preached these thoughts to my friends, then later in the day attempted to demurely pass on a sunset boat cruise that was a birthday party for one of our hostel mates (later, I discovered the sweetheart birthday boy was a rescue diver and ended up buddied with him on my first real dive!) because it was going to cost a whole $25USD. They called me on my hypocrisy and I am glad the peer pressure worked. We rode out into the sunset on the same trusty Ragamuffin sailboat Maggie and I went snorkeling on, but this time with a mission to simply take in the view, drink rum punch, and dance on top of the cabin under the stars. The first mate strikingly resembled T-Pain and knew how to pump the tunes. It was so much fun.

On our return, we were chilling back at the hostel, talking about dancing, and when the topic of two-step came up one Brad Pohler said he was able to flip girls and would I like to try. For a split second I hesitated, then remembered all this and thought hell yes I want to try! We did twice–a complete flip, essentially an assisted hands-free cartwheel. Whoosh! By the time we finished dancing, I was laughing so hard I thought my sides would split. Happy again I said yes.