Patagonia

I might go there in December and January. And that would be epic.

It's a volunteer program--you get down there, help take down fencing in the National park (it's in Chile), and get some days off and you can explore some of the most epically beautiful land in the entire world.

I'm having some issues regarding how I want to handle My Future.

I want to move to California in the spring, specifically the LA area, but I want to have some money saved up first. I also want to travel. Which costs a lot of money.

I don't want to put off finding an industry career type job so long that I become irrelevant, but I don't want to feel like I've wasted years doing some job just to wake up at 50 to realize I'm dissatisfied.

Tough decisions. But a few weeks in another country just sounds right to me. I'd like to WOOF it, but the places I want to go tend to restrict genders or how long you can be there, or have other weird hoops to hop through.

I've thought about heading to Japan and just teaching English as a tutor, which can be a great way to make money, but I am not that enthused about spending a lot of time in heavily populated areas--which was part of why, when thinking about visiting East Asia, Laos sounded so cool, especially if I was going to backpack around.

So Chile? Only recently came into my radar as a place to go, to help, to explore. It's always been Asia, all parts of Asia, which capture my interest. But the thought of going to Chile, surprisingly, does not seem like settling to me. It sounds like a great adventure in a dynamic country that could use some volunteers to take down some fences. I wouldn't be donating money to a gov't or organization, and I wouldn't be taking anything but pictures. I'd be trying to give something to the Chilean people that they deserve, access to a spacious, gorgeous national park which would preserve a piece of their geologic and social history. And it's not me giving that to them, either--not really. I'd just be doing some grunt work.

Onward to Patagonia? The land of huge mountain peaks, breathtaking coastlines, epic valleys? A land with a history so rich even the dinosaurs were something special?

I'm in.