Hey, fellow wanderer!

I owe you an explanation for disappearing for three weeks. 👋

I got sick, and for a while there, even opening my laptop felt like more effort than I could manage. It wasn’t anything dramatic, thankfully. But it was the kind of sick where you spend most of your time on the sofa and completely forget that you have emails waiting for you.

I’m feeling much better now, although I’m still trying to work my way through an inbox that has somehow become its own small administrative crisis.

But I don’t want to spend this whole email apologising for being gone. I’d much rather tell you what I’ve been thinking about since I came back.

I’m spending the entire winter in the Canary Islands.

I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while, and at some point I realised there was no reason to keep waiting for the “right” time. So I decided to just go.

I’ll start in Lanzarote, and then I’m planning to island-hop from there. Tenerife is already on the list for December, and after that, I’ll see where I end up.

I haven’t even booked a return flight yet.

I just couldn’t bring myself to spend another winter somewhere cold, so I decided that, for once, I’m going to do something about it. ✈️

That means I’ll be writing to you from wherever I happen to land, which I’m pretty excited about.

SHORE NOTES

While I was stuck at home recovering, I also finally fixed something that had been annoying me for a very long time: the Italy and Spain page on the blog.

It had become such a mess that I’m honestly not sure how anyone was supposed to find anything. There were old posts mixed in with newer ones, things weren’t organised particularly well, and it had become much harder to use than it needed to be. 😅

I’ve cleaned it all up now, and because pretty much everything I’ll be doing this winter falls under Spain (yes, the Canary Islands included), it’s actually a useful place to start if you’re planning your own trip. → Check out the Spain page​

THIS WEEK'S LETTER

There’s also something I’ve been thinking about quietly for the past few months, and I’d love to know what you think.

I’ve been considering creating a proper guide to the Spanish coast, as well as one specifically for the Canary Islands.

But I don’t really want to make another PDF or ebook that you download, save somewhere on your computer, and then completely forget about until you stumble across it six months later.

I’m imagining something much more practical: an interactive planning tool that you could actually use while you’re planning your trip.

You could open it when you’re trying to decide which part of the coast to visit, figure out where to stay, work out how to get between islands, and generally make sense of all the little decisions that go into planning a trip.

I think it could be really useful, but I also have to admit that I’ve spent a slightly ridiculous amount of time looking at ferry schedules lately, so there’s a chance I’m just excited about the idea because I’ve become strangely invested in getting from one island to another. 🚢

That’s why I want to ask you before I spend weeks building something that only I am excited about.

Would you actually use something like this?

If you think you would, just hit reply and tell me what you’d want it to help you with. I really do read every reply, and what you say might actually help me decide whether I build it.

NEXT WEEK

Next week, I’ll be landing in Lanzarote, so I’ll finally have something new to tell you about.

I’ll share what the island is actually like, what I’m doing there, and how this whole “I’m going to spend winter island-hopping with no return flight” plan is working out in real life. 🏝️

I’ll see you next Thursday. Apparently, Thursdays are our thing now.

Love, Maya

P.S. Packing for an unknown number of islands, completely unpredictable weather, and an open-ended amount of time has turned into a surprisingly complicated project. 🧳

I put together a list of what I’m actually taking with me, including the things I’ve owned and used for years rather than a bunch of random “travel essentials” I bought specifically for the trip. → Here’s what’s actually in my suitcase​