Where’s Walda? That’s what my moms friends call me whenever they play Mahjong. I honestly think I should buy her a map so she can map out my path as I’m going… I know for a fact I’ve gone to a few places that no one (including her) knew where they were. The nickname started back in 2016 when I bought my first one way ticket going anywhere and it just stuck. I’m currently on my third one way ticket (my first post covid) and it’s been nothing short of incredible. 

2022 was nothing I expected it to be and yet everything I needed it to be. I thought the pandemic was going to continue to rock our world for at least another year, January me had no idea she’d be quitting her job. She didn’t know she’d venture to 14 countries (some more than once) and 2 territories. She didn’t know she’d finally spend months on end in the water and weeks on end in the mountains. 2022 has been an extremely big year and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take a minute to enjoy the highlights of my year above and below the water.

Below water highlights:

  • Baby’s first bullies and lemon sharks
  • Snorkeling with manatees (pure freaking magic, put this on your to do list ASAP)
  • Seeing my very first Great Hammerheads (honestly probably my favorite shark)
  • Seeing my first tiger sharks and a pregnant one no less!
  • 3:30am whale shark swims in paradise
  • Becoming an advanced mermaid (laugh all you want but that shit’s hard)
  • Diving (and matching) with my favorite dive buddy (you know who you are)
  • Learning how to use a DPV with said buddy
  • Safety stop Sailfish… I will never stop screaming about this
  • 400 Dives reached while in the Maldives
  • Dancing with my first bottlenose dolphins… I think I’ve cetacean obsessed now 
  • Safety stop Pilot Whale… another one I’ll never stop screaming about
  • Learning how to free dive and seeing the schools of munk mobulas
  • Diving with my first (and very curious) blue sharks in the Azores
  • Diving in the blue depths of Princess Alice on the search for sickle fin mobulas
  • Swimming with humpies in French Polynesia
  • Feeling my whole body vibrate from a male humpback singer, something I’ll never forget
  • Swimming with the megafauna of WA (hello whale sharks and manta rays)
  • Rec passing my GUE Fundies class and finally getting to dive in Sydney again
  • Seeing seahorses (and spotting them myself) for the first time in a couple of years
  • Being the octopus whisperer on a good day of diving in Sydney
  • Getting to experience the wilds of Coco’s Island
  • Seeing a frogfish for the first time in years
  • Being able to find the seahorse of Cabo
  • Hitting 500 dives and completing my divemaster (FINALLY) in Cabo San Lucas

Above water highlights:

  • Finally going to Harry Potter World in Orlando
  • Trying sweet bread pizza in Bimini 
  • Flying in my first seaplane over paradise
  • Reuniting with my best friend in the Maldives… hello above water villa oh how I’ve missed you
  • Having coffee above the clouds in the Burj Khalifa
  • Cafe hopping in Dubai
  • Finding Smartfood popcorn in Dubai (ifykyk)
  • Seeing the Tree of Life in Bahrain (see dad, it made the list so it was worth going too)
  • Cruising through the fjords of the Musandam, Oman
  • Flying high above the valleys of Cappadocia in my very first hot air balloon ride
  • Seeing Soren and Anya finally tie the knot in the beautiful Kew Gardens 
  • Finally going to the HP Studio Tour in London (Ok, I went twice, I know) and HP The Cursed Child play
  • Not one, but two play dates with one of my favorite people… Hi Laura, I miss you
  • Seeing the beauty of the Faroe Islands
  • PUFFINS
  • Experiencing the sheer epicness of Iceland once again
  • Crossing into the Arctic Circle on Grimsey Island
  • Being convinced to do the hike to Glymur which involves crossing a Glacier stream calf deep
  • Staying in a glass lodge outside of Hella and the midnight sun
  • Getting to share the beauty of Bruarfoss with people I love
  • Reuniting with life long friends in the Pacific Northwest and revisiting UDub for the first time since I graduated
  • FINALLY setting foot in Sydney again… and never wanting to leave (again)
  • Getting to see just a little more of Western Australia, boy did I miss the red dirt (I’ll be back)
  • Making some new Aussie friends and eating my way through all of my favorite Sydney joints
  • Being home just in time to go leaf peeping with the first snow of the season
  • Setting foot in my first new country of the year, Costa Rica
  • Seeing a Toucan and celebrating my birthday with an awesome friend in Monteverde
  • Living in Mexico for three weeks 
  • Girls trip and my first northern lights
  • Setting foot on my 6th continent, finally made it to South America!
  • Seeing an active Volcano in Pucon
  • Driving to the end of the Carretera Austral
  • Seeing SO many Glaciers
  • Crossing the border to Argentina and falling in love with El Chalten
  • Hikes in Patagonia… Laguna Torre, Fitz Roy
  • Starting the O trek and finishing it in 2023

But my life isn’t just a highlight reel, there’s plenty of mistakes and blunders that happen along the way

  • Getting washed out of one dive at Blue Heron Bridge because sometimes the weather hates me
  • Slightly starving in Bimini because I didn’t account for the fact that the island might not have veg food
  • Spending way too long in the Abu Dhabi airport when we could have been in a hotel because of a miscommunication
  • I can’t begin to tell you the difficulty that is driving and navigating in Dubai if you don’t know the city well.
  • Not realizing that a cafe I wanted to go to in Dubai was actually a chain and I went to the wrong location the first time and then had to drag my parents half across the city so we could go to the other one too… let’s just say my dad didn’t love all of the pink cafes
  • Questioning my sanity when I bashed my head on a scuba tank in Oman (waves suck sometimes)
  • Falling off a skiff onto the dive deck in Socorro 
  • Taking a few wrong turns in the Faroe Islands (okay, I know the roads aren’t that complicated but it happened)
  • Getting the king of ear infections in the Azores and then having to see three doctors and take 8 flights while suffering from it (don’t make my mistake friends… DO NOT fly with an ear infection)
  • Not being able to hike in the PNW because of the king of ear infections
  • Flying home with 6 checked bags, holy hell I still don’t know how I managed that one. Shout out to the epic bellhops of the Shangri La in Sydney, y’all are the real MVPs
  • Surfacing too soon every dive in Coco’s and missing out on the whale shark and schools of hammers
  • Getting bashed on a boat ladder in Coco’s (again waves hate me)
  • Having the boat in Coco’s come back a day early and scrambling to make new birthday plans
  • Falling up a paved street in Cabo, I still have the scars from that one and yes I was 100% sober
  • Getting Mel’s feet completed soaked trying to see a hidden waterfall in Iceland (completely worth it but would have been a massive issue had her shoes not dried)
  • Bed bugs, need I say more?
  • Buying bus tickets that were only slightly refundable in Chile and then realizing we couldn’t use them
  • Falling not once but twice on the O trek

60 flights later and too many trains/buses/rental cars to count it’s time to ring in 2023. I know this post is a few days late, but I was out of signal for a bit. I rang in my New Year far off the beaten track on the O circuit in Chilean Patagonia. 8 days of hiking and disconnecting was such a perfect way to bring in this big New Year. 2023 is going to be my biggest year yet, I can just feel it in my bones. More blog posts, more adventures, more memories, more water, more countries, just more of everything. I want to make this last year of my 20’s my biggest one yet and I hope y’all enjoy the ride. 

What do y’all halve planned for 2023? Tell me in the comments below!