I wanted to get outside for a walk. Just around the block. A month earlier I'd been in Antarctica. My knees complained though.

At nine o'clock one evening in San Francisco, I somehow ended up buying a ticket to Saint Lucia, a small island in the Caribbean. Once that decision had been made, I immediately posted a question in the WhatsApp group for the Travelers' Century Club.

The first thing I did after my plane landed in Saint Lucia was ask Jaden, the young man pushing my wheelchair, to teach me some Creole. “Saint Lucian Creole,” he corrected, with a grin. “We have our own.”

Yesterday was supposed to be a workday. I was in my apartment outside Castries, spending the morning working with coaching clients by phone and catching up on the unglamorous but necessary details of running a private practice while traveling through the Caribbean.

As I stepped off the ferry in Martinique, I could immediately feel the difference from Saint Lucia. In Saint Lucia, people spoke English. In Martinique, French. In Saint Lucia, they drove on the left. In Martinique, on the right.