It was a sad day when we finally said goodbye to our hammock. (Read From Tent to Hammock for our review of the hammock we use.) For months we contemplated this decision, but the switch back to a tent eventually won. The one and only reason we had to consider retiring our Hennessy Hammock – Safari Deluxe Zip was simple, it was getting tough to find places to hang it. Once we got to South America and started following the Andes mountains south, the trees disappeared. It is important to us to be able to stop and set up the house whenever the situation arises. As uncomfortable as the tent can be, it can be set up pretty much anywhere.

Too many times were forced to rent rooms, due to the lack of available camping options for a hammock, which wasn’t great for our budget. During the 9 months that we had the hammock, we only camped 100 nights (20 of those nights were in Canada). In the 3 months that we’ve had the tent, we have slept in it over 50 times.

Once we reluctantly made our decision it didn’t take long to start seeing the benefits of a tent. The biggest and best is having our own indoor space again. All of our things could come inside with us. If it rains we can hang out inside. We can change inside. We can eat inside. And no matter the surroundings you can zip yourself in and be somewhat comfortable. Still, sleeping on the ground has been far less enjoyable than swaying in the hammock, seeing as we still don’t use a sleeping pad, but our backs have gotten used to it.

In the end, it the hammock wasn’t the best option for a trip around the world. However, once we return to the land of the pines, we will be adding it back to our arsenal.

In honour of our hammock, here is a compilation of our most memorable hangs of the past year.

10. Using the hammock as a tent was our worst experience we had with it. We didn’t get much sleep that night….and never did it again.

9. Beach camping looks and sounds more romantic than it is, in our opinion anyway. We find the sand, and the sandflies, dreadful. However, Costa Rica has some of the best beach camping in all of Central America. And waking up to scarlet macaws and toucans is worth every grain of sand and sandfly bite.

8. Emergency midnight hang at the Walmart in Okotoks, Alberta.

7. Playa Mizata in El Salvador. One of our first nights in El Salvador, and the first time it hadn’t rained in thirty-some days. 1L beers were $1, shrimp dinners were $5, and we had the whole beach to ourselves.

6. The night of the big storm in Puerto Viejo. We would always keep our bags wrapped in a tarp under the hammock. Bren stayed up most of the night building a trench around us diverting the water from our stuff. We saw our first poison dart frog that next morning.

5. Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta. Just an unforgettable place all around.

4. A coffee field in the foothills of the Peñas Blancas mountains in Northern Nicaragua.

3. This one isn’t necessarily a favourite, but it most certainly was one of the most memorable. During the 24 hours we were camped here, we were both stung by jellyfish and had a colony of ants move into our boots in the night.

2. Deep in the Amazon jungle. Yasuní National Park, Ecuador. It’s hard to forget being jolted awake in the middle of the night by the slap of a caimans tail as it struck the water. When they are only fifteen feet away, the sound reverberates through your body like a crash of thunder.

1. Our favourite and most memorable hang was the night we went hiking up Volcán Acatenango in Guatemala. We swayed in the breeze at 13,000 feet, while Volcán Fuego rumbled continuously in the background. It will be hard to ever top this one…