While I Can by Jo Dibblee is an inspirational travel memoir that documents the author and her husband’s decision to throw caution to the wind and leave their home in Canada to embark upon an adventure of a lifetime to Baja, Mexico.  

What starts out as a plan to spend a winter there turns into something so much more as they fall in love with Baja, the community, and the people. While Michael pursues his dream to master kitesurfing in one of the best places on earth for the sport, Jo gets involved in fostering dogs and eventually helping set up Team Baja Humanity, a grassroots project that aims to uplift communities in need in Baja.  

Their travels end up being a life-affirming journey of discovery that changes them and their lives in ways they never imagined when setting out on this epic adventure.    

I absolutely loved this book. It’s gloriously optimistic and brimming with raw emotion. As Jo Dibblee takes the reader along for the ride, her writing vividly conjures up the experience of embracing the unknown and opening yourself up to life’s possibilities. The writing is top-notch, and I really enjoyed feeling part of the author’s emotional journey.  

A key theme of the book is grasping life by the horns “while you can.” It is this moto that propels Jo and her husband onto their path of Baja after recent health scares put their own mortality into sharp focus. Overall, Jo’s book is full of hard-won life wisdom and is a pleasure to read.  

“Most things in life must be experienced and learned; there’s no shortcut or free pass. It is from these moments we know and do better, or, at the very least, become wiser. It wasn’t as though we hadn’t done our research and talked to others, but there were plenty of things we did not, or could not, know.” (p 43)

Through her words, Jo portrays the transformational effect of travel and weaves a story that is full of love not only for travel but for people, relationships, communities, and the wider world. She effectively brings her experience to life with well-written, vivid descriptions and extraordinary emotional intelligence. Her words are sure to inspire a healthy dose of wanderlust in her readers! Her commitment to other people and being of service to those in need is both touching and inspirational. 

Pages: 196 | ASIN : B0CC3P6S36