The initial reaction to reading this autobiographical travelogue is that this is just that, a travel journal, but as I read further into the chapter by chapter account from Joey and then Simon, I thought about Robert Frost’s, poem, “Two roads diverged in a wood, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Simon is from Bruges, Belgium, and Joey is from Denver, Colorado. Two worlds apart and yet historically and spiritually engendered, they set out on an exploratory expedition into their own spiritual path to Pachamama, or creating their own realities.

As you delve into this journey, you become intertwined in the story as both authors tell their version of their own daily experience through their meeting in South America. As the story unfolds, it becomes more than just a mere journal. The spiritual involvement into the lessons of the universe come to the forefront, and Simon explains the scientific and spiritual revelations of time and space known today through previous experimental and scientific researchers. It is extremely enlightening even if you have learned it before. He sheds a new and interesting perspective on this reflective information.

In the end, both travelers find a new enlightened way to embrace life and offer the reader a living Spiritual Constitution for welcoming all the gratitude and blessings life has to offer, even in the small nuances we take for granted everyday.

This was truly a journey for the senses that I thoroughly delighted in following. I am a believer now and find myself thinking, saying, and shouting “Pachamama” for the simple joy I find in it and the smile it brings to my face. It’s likened to the moment in time when two friends are talking in a group and say something that no one else gets, that private joke, but this time the joke’s on you if you don’t read the book. I recommend you take this journey, too, maybe not to South America, but at the very least, by reading Simon and Joey’s Paths to Pachamama.