It’s a Thursday afternoon. We are in the middle of a lagoon that connects to the Caribbean Sea, a few 100 metres away. A squadron of pelicans (that’s right, that’s what a group of pelicans is called :)) are sizing me up from their mangroves.

Picture this. Take a globe, rotate it to point to South America. Stare at the Caribbean ocean. Pick the smallest point. Make it smaller by a hundred times. That’s us -) Three people on a boat.

The whirring of the motor has stopped. The boat’s bobbing up and down. All we can hear are the waves. We are here, a small speck in a large ocean, hoping to see some manatees.

I haven’t seen this animal before. They look a bit like dugongs, and are called sea cows. Remarkably, the closest land animal to them is the elephant.

Manatees live under water, they feed on sea grass and algae. They come up every 5 minutes, for a second, to breathe, when they are active. When they are asleep, they come up once every 2-30 minutes or so.

The sun is beating down strongly. I have been travelling for 51 days straight now and I am burnt and tanned red. As much as Henry, our Mexican boatman. We keep staring at the water, with anticipation.

And that’s what travel can do to your soul. A day earlier, you are reading about activities in a place excitedly. Laughing, making plans. The next day you wake up, optimistic and happy knowing you are going to do something fun. In the moment, you sit with hopeful eyes.

Daily routine dulls our senses, our souls. It makes things mechanical. Travel does the opposite.

Ten years back I was sitting on a similar boat in Hoi An, Vietnam, the sun blazing down on my back. I had left my corporate job a few months earlier. Then I didn’t have any money, no savings, barely enough to travel for 3-4 weeks. Today, I am a few kilos heavier, the bank account is slightly better and even more tanned with all the travelling.

The heart is hopefully the same. I’m feeling a lot of gratitude.

A minute later, we see a nose peeking out of the water. My first Manatee.