2025 Year in Review

Today, Adventures from Elle turns NINE years old! It’s been nine years of intentionally exploring and documenting Jamaica on the Internet for the world to see, and now I have written about travels in eight countries and counting too. Adventures from Elle has been with me through many milestones, triumphs and sorrows. I’ve had pauses in writing for weeks at a time, but I’ve never given up on my passion. My current writing streak is 26 consecutive Fridays, so let’s see if I’ll eventually beat my longest writing streak of 81 weeks. In today’s bonus post, let’s talk about the year that was and my 2026 goals.

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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2025 Adventures

The first half of 2025 was slow where travel is concerned, but things picked up in the second half. In terms of international adventures, I visited two new countries, namely Mexico and Guatemala, bringing my country count to nine countries. I also visited Houston, Texas to present my research project about quality of life in Jamaican dialysis patients at the American Society of Nephrology’s 2025 Conference. Attending an international medical conference has been a dream of mine, so who would’ve thought that I’d actually be invited to present at one? Adding this to my CV! Anyway, Guatemala sneaked up on me. I expected Guatemala to be awesome, but I never imagined it would become my favourite country ever visited. I enjoyed the views, food, culture and people very much. Lake Atitlan was breathtaking, and my Acatenango climb takes both records for most difficult and most beautiful hikes I’ve ever done. I also had a blast at Chichén Itza in Mexico, my second New World Wonder.

I feel privileged to call Jamaica home, and even after nine years of intentionally exploring Jamaica, there are still so many places left on my local bucket list. But, it’s getting increasingly harder to visit the remaining places on my list as most are located in remote areas, and best tackled on a multi-day trip. I usually don’t have enough free time to make multi-day trips possible. Nonetheless, these are the new places I visited at home this year, spread across 7 parishes. My favourite local adventure for 2025 goes to Nanny Falls, but every spot I visited was unique and shared with great company. Surprisingly though, I had no local hotel stays for 2025.

• Beaches: Gibraltar Beach for a baby sea turtle release.
• Rivers: Heineken River.
• Waterfalls: Nanny Falls, Crescent Falls, C-Pond Waterfall, Rafjam Waterfall.
• Hiking: Gourie Forest Reserve, Catherine’s Peak, Cockpit Country (Troy to Windsor).
• Historical Spots: Stony Gut, Stokes Hall, Old Pera Windmill.
• New Restaurants: Epican Tapas Lounge (they have the best tacos I’ve tasted locally!), Strawberry Hill Resort’s Restaurant.
• Other: Logos Hope Book Ship, Jamaican Dragon Boat Festival, Pure Chocolate Workshop.

Blog Stats & Milestones

• On May 14, Adventures from Elle surpassed one million cumulative reads since the blog’s 2016 inception.
• I’ve now published 385 articles on here across nine years. That’s about 1 new article every nine days but of course, my posting frequency isn’t this perfect. 🙂 Life happens.
• I published 37 articles in 2025, definitely one of my slower years. My record number of articles in a single year is 66 in 2023.
• This year, my readers mostly hailed from Jamaica, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and China. Jamaicans accounted for only 40% of my blog traffic which means majority of my readers are reading from abroad.
• My top 5 referrers were Google, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and WordPress. These were my top 5 referrers last year also, but the order has switched up a little. Honorary mention to ChatGPT which sent a few hundred readers my way.
• My blog traffic remains at a plateau for 3 years in a row, likely due to algorithm and AI search engine changes. It’s annoying because I got 40% more page impressions but 20% fewer clicks, as there’s no need to click on my website anymore when you can read its content in AI/Google snippets without clicking. I hope to see improvement where this is concerned in 2026, and while we’re at it, I hope Google and WordPress figure out how to block bot views.
• I welcomed a few brand partnerships, one media feature and wrote two guest posts for other websites.

Best of the Blog in 2025

Out of my 37 blog posts published this year, these 3 were your favourites in terms of readership & engagement:

• Logos Hope Returns to Jamaica (2,703 reads)
• Mad River, St. Mary: A Surprise Find (1,378 reads)
• Couples Tower Isle, Elle’s Review (1,141 reads)

However, my favourite articles are the stories which took a bit of time and research to prepare. These were:

• 8 Reasons to Visit Antigua, Guatemala as I haven’t seen a colonial city this well preserved since Cusco, Peru.
• Is Tulum, Worth Visiting? as I quite enjoyed this city despite the negative media surrounding it of late.
• Cockpit Country: Historic Hike from Troy to Windsor as very few Jamaicans have hiked this forgotten British trail.

Personal Life

2025 has been a bittersweet year. My father lost his battle with cancer, and I spent six months studying and preparing for DM2 internal medicine, the hardest exams I’ve ever done. In Jamaica, one has to pass exit exams to complete residency unlike in the USA where you can finish residency and work as an attending for a few years before taking board exams. And, given that residency is tied to employment, not passing on the first try can have serious implications like joblessness. Thankfully, though, I passed on the first try and closed that chapter of my life. I had a career break to facilitate new job interviews, as well as my wedding and honeymoon which were everything I dreamt of; God is good. I also presented my research project at the American Society of Nephrology in Houston, Texas last month which was a super cool experience. Thus, where career and personal life are concerned, I’m rounding out 2025 in a better place. Unfortunately though, thousands of Jamaicans are still recovering from the catastrophic hurricane which struck a few weeks ago.

2025 Reads

Reading was my favourite hobby as a child and teenager, but since 2014, I’ve neglected this passion because my career comes with reading dozens of academic journals and books. There’s just never enough hours in the week to get my academic reading done, let alone find time for recreational reading. My 10 weeks of unemployment post residency this year finally allowed me enough free time to rekindle that flame and it truly felt cathartic. I wish I’d spent more time reading though, instead of worrying about finding a next job. Anyway, my focus was on reading books written by Black authors so here’s what I got up to:

• How to Say Babylon, a memoir by Jamaican-American author Safiya Sinclair. She chronicles her life in Montego Bay, Jamaica born to a Rastafarian family and explores challenges she faced such as religious discrimination, misogyny, exploitation and poverty. There are some historical inaccuracies in the book, but otherwise a 10/10 read.
• Queenie by British-Jamaican author Candice Carty-Williams. Queenie, the main character, makes very questionable life choices due to her low self esteem. It’s easy to be angry at Queenie, but I still had some pity towards her. A good read, and I hear the author is working on a part two! 9/10.
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by African-American author Zora Neale Hurston. Published in 1937, this book portrays racial struggles in the American South. A good read but some parts weren’t that captivating in my opinion, 8/10.
• The Book of Night Women by award-winning Jamaican-American author Marlon James. Set in colonial era Jamaica, this book details life from the perspective of a slave and all the grisly horrors of plantation life. This was a very raw and painful read, but this is the grim reality my ancestors faced for 300 years in Jamaica. I couldn’t put this book down either, so 10/10. Marlon is truly an exceptional writer– once you overlook the expletives.

I hope to double my list of books read in 2026; taking suggestions! Thanks, Rebecca Goes Rendezvous, for inspiring me to add this segment to my year-in-review post. 🙂

2026 Hopes

I’d love to finish some home renovations we’ve placed on hold for over a year, and visit at least three new countries and a new continent. Let’s see how it goes. 😉 Can you guess one of the countries on my 2026 radar from the stock photo above?

Wrap Up

I can’t believe we’ll be saying Happy New Year again in a matter of days! Time surely flies. Thanks for reading and supporting Adventures from Elle in 2025, and I wish you nothing but happiness, success, good health and new adventures for 2026 and beyond. Sound off in the comments section below, and remember to support the blog on all platforms because it’s free. 🙂 Subscribe to never miss a beat, and see you in 2026!

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