Hola from Playa Grande Costa Rica!

Here is a quick update from me since my last email at Christmas. I’ve been traveling and working remotely now for the past thirteen months as a part of a group called Remote Year. My travels so far have spanned 53 cities, 17 countries and 4 continents and during this time I’ve been lucky to be able to realize a 70% increase in my sales volume for Pagely vs. the year prior to traveling. I did a lengthy write-up here summarizing the entire year in review. All in all it’s been an incredible experience. I had opportunity to speak at the PressNomics conference in April on how we’ve made this work and gave this talk which was well-received:
https://youtu.be/Tr33Oeeh-bI

^ that’s a solid 30min overview of what’s been involved in making this travel/working arrangement effective over this past year. 

In each city I’ve been diligent about doing a blog post, photo album, narrated walking video and music playlist to capture the local flavor. Here is the recap of all the places I’ve been since Christmas:

Bogota in January: we flew from Mexico City on New Year’s eve and celebrated that night in Bogota, Colombia. I then did two weeks of travel all around the coast and jungle of Colombia with a friend (great pics at that link above). The latter half of the month I spent heads-down on work stuff. Elevation of Bogota is 8,500′ – was great for high-altitude training on the runs there. 

Medellin in February: was one of my favorite cities. We stayed in an area called
“Poblado” with a bunch of great little parks and restaurants. Contrary to the long-running Pablo Escobar stigma from the various films portraying Medellin as an unsafe drug capital, it was extremely safe and welcoming. Medellin is a place I could comfortably live at this point.

Lima in March: Lima had amazing seafood and our workspace there was probably the best of anywhere we’ve been. Unfortunately they had terrible floods while we were there that displaced some 20,000 people in the outlying areas. The highlight of the month for sure was hiking the Inca Trail and getting to walk around Machu
Picchu and Huayna Picchu. I left Lima early to come back for a handful of things that were happening in AZ. 

Cordoba in April: I did a 48hr travel “day” to Cordoba Argentina the 2nd week of April. Cordoba was a nice “rest stop” before Buenos Aires and after Lima in the same way that Valencia, Spain had served that same role between Rabat and CDMX.  The highlight in Cordoba was the work we did via the Charity Makeover effort I started to help a local monkey sanctuary. I remain actively involved in that effort today helping transition the project amongst Remote Year groups that are still flowing
through that city each month. 

Buenos Aires in May: up there with Lisbon, CDMX and Medellin as one of my favorite cities Buenos Aires was our final month in the program. The last month was a whirlwind with a side trip to Iguazu Falls (incredible) and all the goodbyes and farewell parties. Argentina just yesterday announced a promising plan to put it on par with Chile in terms of making it friendlier for Entrepreneurs to start businesses. I have my eye on BA as a potential place to return if/when I start the next thing following the successful exit of Pagely.   

After Buenos Aires I did a trip with a friend to the wine country of Mendoza, Argentina en route to Santiago, Chile where I spent the last three weeks. I arrived in Costa Rica three days ago and enrolled in a week-long surf camp here. Unfortunately yesterday I broke my toe which will likely put a damper on my surfing lessons. Fortunately I was able to get up on the board twice before the toe incident. I’m intending to move north to Nicaragua in a week and then meet one of my oldest friends in Dominican Republic for kite surfing all of July. Our old drummer for Cold Turkey is getting married in Seattle in early August so I’ll be back
briefly in the States for that then (provided I’m not exhausted) bounce to Europe for summer and ultimately plant in Mexico City around October. 

If you want to read the massive recap I did this is the single best summary of everything. I always enjoy hearing from people especially when on the road and isolated from friends. Drop me a line when you have time and let me know what’s new with you. I’ll part with this photo I took last night on the beach of Playa Grande at sunset. It’s beautiful here
right now. I hope you are keeping cool this summer and look forward to hearing from you. 

-Sean

PS. if you’re on Instagram and want to keep up with my travels on a more frequent basis I post about a photo per day of something interesting and unique from my travels here.