McDaniel Misadventures in South America

Amber McDaniel Start Date: Jul 15, 2016 - End Date: Nov 11, 2016
  • Cultural Exchange
  • Educational/Research Trip
  • Vacation/Personal Trip
  • Guatemala
  • Honduras
  • Costa Rica
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Peru
  • Bolivia
  • Colombia
  • Venezuela
  • Argentina
  • Brazil
  • Chile

My Travel Story

by: Amber McDaniel Start Date: Jul 15, 2016 - End Date: Nov 11, 2016
  • Cultural Exchange
  • Educational/Research Trip
  • Vacation/Personal Trip
Hello everyone!  My name is Amber McDaniel: part-time adult, full-time adventurer, and hopeful travel writer.  In the summer of 2015, I backpacked through Europe for four months entirely on my own, blogging about my experience in extreme detail. During that time, I fell in love with the world, and more so, the parts of it I had yet to see.  Now, after graduating college with two degrees, one in English and one in psychology, I am finally going to pursue that passion.

In a few short months, I'm setting off with my boyfriend on a yearlong backpacking trip through South America.  No plans, no itineraries, just a one-way flight to Guatemala and a healthy dose of spontaneity.  My preference for travel has always been away from the beaten path, climbing the mountains that few dare and visiting the small villages that most overlook.  These are the types of adventures I plan on having in South American, and that I will be documenting through writings, photography, and video blogs.

Through my writing, I seek to bring about an understanding of different places and cultures.  Rather than give a list of sites to see and places to eat, I attempt to create an intensely experiential and immersive travel narrative, raw and uncensored.  The truth of travel is that it isn't always glamorous or glorious, and I think the most valuable travel writing shows it for both its best and worst.  That is what it means to live a truly human experience, after all.

This fundraiser would sponsor not only the travel itself, but the upkeep costs of my website so that I am in fact able to share my stories with those who perhaps cannot experience such things themselves at the time, and ultimately it is my hope to inspire, to educate, and to dare people to step out onto the open road.  My life, and this journey, is guided by the immortal words of Chris McCandless: “The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
  • Guatemala
  • Honduras
  • Costa Rica
  • Nicaragua
  • Panama
  • Peru
  • Bolivia
  • Colombia
  • Venezuela
  • Argentina
  • Brazil
  • Chile

More Travel Information

Adventure Registry

  • GoPro Camera

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