Montanita, Ecuador - Travel is a powerful drug. It can make you love places you never knew, miss people you never knew existed, and do things you never thought you'd do. It will change you forever. It's a one way street to new and varied experience that is not without it's emotional strain, and diversity. For many travel is a way to open the mind, to raise the blindfold on the vista of life. We do this, we travellers, to better understand experience and interaction. We do it to better understand the world and the human form. It is an act that bridges ignorance and amplifies consciousness. By doing this one reaches a higher plane.

Does travel bring you closer to god? To travel is to be lost, to be immersed in the unknown - to know god is to know the unknown. I have seen god in the eyes of a street kid in Villa 31 near Retiro, Buenos Aires, Argentina; covered in dirt, eyes blazing white, moving like an animal. I have seen god in the storms of tremendous power that brutalize the Andes every ski season here. I have felt god in the blinding heat of Guaylaquil, Ecuador.

" It is all a dream to me now. If we're lost, we are lost together" sang Blue Rodeo and they were right we travellers are lost, but we are "lost together" both with the new experiences we have and the old ones we bring from home, amongst these we are hopelessly dislocated. Travelling may be an attractive pursuit but one must be prepared to be irreconcilably estranged from their past. They must be ready to feel what we call "lost".

montanita: the beach