Looking Back on 2019: A Year Of Highs and Lows

and just like that, 2019 is a wrap. It seems like each time I sit down to write these reflections posts, I can’t believe just how fast the year went. As I’m writing this article, I have my furry friend (Spare Dog) at my feet, my furry Nick next to me (he needs to shave!), and I’m looking out to the sea and mountains beyond. 

This past year was filled with adventurous travel to new and repeat countries, highs and lows on the company and personal front, love and laughter on the relationship side and lots of fun here in Grenada. So much has happened, that I had to speak with my iphone photostream to remember all of the incredible things we got up to!

Images of mountains, colonial towns, ancient sites, and tropical islands dominate the feed. It’s been a pretty great year. Every 12 months has a feeling, a vibe, or some sort of big event that stands out. For 2019, I’m dubbing it “A Year of Highs and Lows”. and you’ll see why after reading — the year was amazing, and then seemed to plummet at the end. 

Here’s a recap of the year, and what we have planned moving forward into 2020.

Travelling around the Galapagos was a highlight of our year!

I’ve been doing these roundup messages for quite a few years! here are the ones from previous years if you’re interested:

2012: A very memorable Year

2013: A Year of Firsts

2014: started and ended With Mexico

2015: A Year of Spontaneity

2016: A Year of big Decisions

2017: A Roller coaster Year

2018: A Year of Achievements

Celebrating our 12 year anniversary!
Achieving goals set For 2019

At the end of each yearly roundup article, we set some goals that we want to achieve in the coming new year. This is what we wanted to achieve in 2019:

Being much more active (going hiking much more and joining yoga again).

Exploring much more of Grenada

Continue to create and offer helpful information on our website

Help out (volunteer work, donations, environmental causes)

I’m pleased to report that we accomplished those goals!

Being much more Active

This year, we got back into “hashing” here in Grenada, and while we didn’t join the hikes every weekend, we did do quite a few. I’ve also joined yoga and attend classes two times a week, many weeks. And, we now do much much more walking then we used to, plus some at-home workouts as well.

Nick and I both did a couple of detoxes this year, one with natural pills, and one simply with smoothies and fasting. We actually just finished up a two-week booze detox and smoothie diet which is what we previously did when we were feeling a little heavy.

We thought it was a good idea to slim down and dry out before the holiday season! Nick lost 10 pounds, and I lost 8. In case you missed last year’s post: “We got Fat – handling blogger Bod“.

When we’re living somewhere, we find it hard to be active. When we’re travelling, it’s much simpler as we’re always out walking around new cities, hiking to new sites, or just wandering aimlessly. because we’re not getting any younger, we’re putting health and wellness at the forefront of our goals.

Hiking is our preferred way to stay active
Exploring much more of Grenada

Even though we’ve spent 5 years in Grenada (on and off), it always amazes me that there are still new places to discover. This year we explored a couple of new hikes and walking trails, offtrack beaches and some great new restaurants that have popped up.  

On top of just finding new places to walk and eat, we found ourselves attending various events — red wine festival, Carnival, music festival, and chocolate festival. Plus, we explored the sea by sailboat on various occasions, did some deep-sea fishing, and Nick had a look at the underwater world on scuba. 

We also celebrated 3 birthdays with staycations here on the island. One on a cacao farm, in a treehouse cabin, surrounded by nature. Our four-legged friend also joined in on that bday weekend! My 35th birthday was celebrated with live music, beach bar drinks, and lazy pool days at one of the hotels here, plus a private sunset sail. Nick’s 35th was recently spent enjoying a dinner party, followed by a night at a boutique seafront hotel in a cute bungalow. 

Finally, family members concerned visit. even though it was just for a few hours while they were off the cruise ship, it was good to show Nick’s grandparents around our home (and get in some hugs!).

We had so numerous great times in Grenada throughout the year — I’d say we did the little island justice!

Sailing into 35!

Continuing to offer helpful content on Our Website

As with every year, we are alwayscreating new articles, videos and messages on our social media channels to hopefully inspire and assist others when it concerns making money on the road, and travelling the world.

In 2019, we published 157 articles on Goats On The Road, filmed and edited 20 YouTube videos and posted on social media 237 times!

This year, we also kicked it up a notch and created a digital course to help bloggers progress from hobby bloggers to a lucrative business. and by we, I imply Nick. 

Nick planned, filmed, and created the SEO Made easy online course — spending hours to guarantee it was detailed, professional and many importantly, actionable. Each of the 300 students who have purchased the course are also in Nick’s VIP Facebook group where he shares his wisdom and advanced methods for SEO. It’s been very gratifying for both of us to see the students’ progression!

Because Nick created that course, we were invited to be a part of the Paradise pack in 2019. For the past 3 years, we have promoted the pack (because it’s filled with awesome products), but this year we were invited to have our course in the bundle of online resources.

We were ecstatic!

Chatting with Travis and Jason from the Paradise pack was a lot of fun

We did an hour-long live chat online with the creators of the pack (Travis and Jason), with over 3,000 people viewing at a time! We then did an hour+ podcast with Jason, where we spoke about our lives as digital nomads and travellers. chatting with online colleagues is always a lot of fun, and we love this style of interview.

Special!

If you’re interested in learning some of our SEO secrets, but aren’t sure if you want to purchase the SEO Made easy course, we’re providing a totally free 1-hour session, here.

Helping Out

Finally, our last goal for 2019 was to help out more. In 2018, we were able to do quite a few things in Grenada, but this year we wanted to do more, both at home and away — there’s always much more that can be done.

As with last year, we sponsored an eight-year-old girl from the orphanage so that she could attend a four-week summer camp here on the island. Her weeks were filled with arts and crafts, history and culture, sports and activities, plus a couple of outings to the beach to learn about marine life and the environment. I hope that this summer camp continues for these children as it’s a great initiative.

We also assisted an artist in his “Beautify Grenada” project where he sources out blank walls around the island and looks to brighten up the community by painting distinct images on them. “Our” wall that was painted is one that we drive by every day. It’s is in front of a preschool and is now home to colourful turtles, balloons, trees, children, and of course, goats! I hope this talented artist continues his pursuit of beautifying the island. 

Plastic is a problem worldwide. Our eco-blogging, travelling friends from The Dharma trails put together a “Green Up Grenada” project to bring awareness to the plastic issues and to clean up the beaches (and underwater).

Nick heading out on a dive to cleanup the underwater world

We participated in the clean up of La Sagesse beach (323 pounds of garbage was collected), and the scuba diving clean up at Grand Anse beach where 150 pounds of garbage was pulled from the sea. This was a great campaign and hopefully it raised much more awareness about the unnecessary use of plastic here on the island.  

Utilizing Our home as a “Base”

A month after ringing in the new Year in Grenada, it was time for us to pack away the household items we had accumulated over the past year, load up our backpacks and hit the road. Every February, the owners of the house we rent return to spend 5 or so weeks here. This implies we have to vacate — which is ok as we go travelling again!

We had been pretty much stagnant for many of 2018, and not really utilizing our home as a base, which was the whole point of settling here — we planned to stay, and then travel, and repeat. Instead, we felt a pull (is it actually called a “pull” if we don’t go anywhere?!) to stay put.

This year, we were ready to correctly make use of our base. Live, travel, repeat. It was time to get back out into the world. And, we actually ended up doing quite a bit of travelling this year — 5 months to be exact. 

Eating bbq chicken in the sea with spare Dog, after hiking – a great day!

Travelling for practically half of the year and staying still for the rest seems to be the ideal balance for us. It allows us to have exciting adventures, sample new foods, and learn about new cultures, but also gives us enough downtime to rest, work and catch up with friends. 

I don’t want to jinx it, but after travelling for 10 years, and blogging for 7 of those years, could it be possible that we’ve finally found a work-life balance that suits our lifestyle?! 

Having explored Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia in 2017, we knew we loved the continent of South America. So, when considering where to go in February, we took a look at the map and chose on Ecuador and Peru for our next adventure…and what an adventure it was! In fact, Ecuador has shot up to the top of our list of preferred destinations. 

We were offline for this entire trip and had an amazing time backpacking around these two countries, it felt great to be on the road again! You can read about our thoughts and highlights of this trip in our roundup short article here.

The hiking around Otavalo was amazing!

Read Our Ecuador Articles Here:

12 things To do in Quito, Ecuador

Mindo: the complete travel Guide

Otavalo: The supreme guide for Travellers

Hiking the Quilotoa Loop: A How-to Guide

Galapagos Islands Travel: A guide To travelling Independently

Press trip Partnerships

Going on press trips/FAM trips isn’t our main blogging income model, but when we’re invited somewhere that resonates with our travel style and interests, we happily accept the offer.

This year, we were invited on 6 press trips and had a great time exploring new destinations — all of which were an outstanding fit. Sure, we had been to these countries in the past, but the provinces, cities, and islands that we went to were new to us.

Nova Scotia

Even though we’re Canadian, we’ve seen very little of our home country. So when the Nova Scotia tourism board invited us to experience what the little province has to offer, we jumped at the opportunity to see the east!

Jagged coastline, hiking routes, fishing villages, fresh seafood and welcoming locals — this is Nova Scotia. We picked up our rental car and had an amazing time road tripping around the province for 3 weeks, while experiencing all the fun things to do in Halifax, and beyond.

As an added bonus, we were able to spend a few days going to with family here as well! My father and his wife were travelling around Canada and stopped in Halifax at the same time we were there. It was great to catch up and get in some much more hugs.

With so numerous places to visit and adventures to have, we would certainly return and explore much more of the culture, cuisine and nature in this province. 

Read much more about our experience in Nova Scotia on the blog, here.

Beautiful nature in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island

Indonesia

This island nation is one of the countries we went to on our first backpacking trip in 2009. We then returned to live in Canggu, Bali for a couple of months, and Nick went on a scuba diving trip with the Indonesia tourism Board.

This time around, we were invited by Lotus Hotels, to experience their dive resorts and share our findings with you. 

We travelled to 4 different destinations over the course of 15 days — Gangga Island in North Sulawesi, Birie Island in Raja Ampat, Candidasa on Bali Island and the island of Gili Trawangan. even though we were on a trip that was planned for us, going to these destinations (some of which are quite offtrack) was an amazing experience. 

Sunsets on Gangga Island were amazing

The majority of the trip was centred arou