During the final days of our trip we made a promise—a pact, actually—that our explorations together could not and would not end with the punch of a reentry stamp. We swore that no matter where our individual paths led us, we’d go away together every year for the rest of our lives to guarantee that the bond we’d forged would remain strong. It took us longer than expected, but twenty-six months after we returned home, we dug out our old backpacks, double-checked that our passports had enough blank pages, and hit the road again. Our first post-trip destination: Santa Catalina, a fishing village turned surfers’ paradise on the Pacific coast of Panama.

After a five-hour flight, six-hour bus ride, forty-five-minute cab ride, and ten minutes in the back of a cattle truck, we arrived at Oasis Surf Camp, a collection of rustic bungalows on an isolated volcanic-sand beach. Well, almost. As our driver pulled onto the sandy earth littered with twisted driftwood and broken coconut hulls, he gestured to the far bank. Because it was high tide, he couldn’t go any further. We’d have to travel the rest of the way on foot. So, dry clothes and backpacks notwithstanding, we did what we’d always done in a situation like this: we hiked up our shorts, hoisted the bags above our heads, and waded across the river.

After retrieving the keys to our triple—a small but clean room with bunk beds, concrete floors, and a cold-water shower—we did something we almost never do: we each claimed a mattress and immediately collapsed into a deep sleep.

The afternoon had almost fully transitioned into evening by the time we woke to the sound of animated voices. Creeping outside, we were greeted by our next-door neighbors, Paul and Itzel from Miami and Juan, a local Panamanian who managed a 150-acre cattle ranch nearby. A little embarrassed to be rolling out of bed at 6 p.m., we explained that we’d just been in an accident.

Earlier that day, just three kilometers shy of Santa Catalina, our driver had jerked his taxi into the opposite lane—at the exact moment that another truck had whipped around a curve. By the time the three of us had realized we were going to be in a head-on collision, there was little we could do but send up the world’s most abbreviated prayer, then brace for impact. Despite the sickening crunch, we—along with everyone else in the accident—had walked away with nothing but scrapes, deep bruises, and a mild case of whiplash.

We hadn’t gotten two sentences into our story when Itzel interjected.

“Oh, my God, that was you?” Her face was aghast as she leaned forward in her white plastic chair. Although it had been only a few hours since it had happened, they’d already heard about the accident—apparently, everyone else in the town of 350 had too.

“Yeah, those cars were totaled,” said Paul, echoing his friend’s sentiments. “You girls are lucky to even be here right now.”

Breaking out a bottle of rum, Paul suggested we toast to surviving the near miss—and to finding our way to Oasis. We all decided to contribute a few words—to our health and safety, to new friends, to continuing on with the journey, come what may. But it was Juan, making his toast in Spanish, who said it best. “Hoy es el día que ustedes nacieron. Bienvenido al resto de su vida.”

Today is the day that you are born. Welcome to the rest of your life.

After our experience in the taxi that morning, it had been our knee-jerk reaction to want to hop the first flight back to the States, to retreat to the safety and familiarity of home. We resisted, and our trip turned out to be exactly the reunion we’d been anticipating. During the ten days that followed, we went scuba diving off the deserted Isla Coiba, explored hidden beaches, went horseback riding with Paul, and surfed each morning and night. We stayed, because if there was any resounding lesson that we took away from our year of wandering, it was that we would no longer make decisions based in fear. We wouldn’t hightail it home at the first sign of trouble or remain in a stagnant situation simply because we were afraid to challenge the status quo.

Back when we first starting calling ourselves The Lost Girls, a tongue-in-cheek nickname we invented long before we ever stepped outside the country, we sort of assumed that the goal of the journey would be to get un-lost. We thought the trip would yield the kind of earth-shattering, value-bending, shout-it-from-the-mountaintop epiphanies that would help us discover just what we wanted out of our short existence on this planet. We thought the trip would instantly change our lives. We wanted to be found.

Looking back on it now, we might have been putting a teensy bit too much pressure on the universe—and ourselves. Though we’d had some epiphanies along the way, we wondered: Had we learned enough? Did we really change? Would our new attitudes last after returning home?

As it turned out, yes.

After traveling solo for a month in Australia (and finally digging her electronics-free existence), Amanda returned to New York, confronting her fear of morphing back into a stressed-out workaholic. She accepted the senior editor position when it was offered but negotiated a more flexible schedule with fewer hours spent behind a desk. Thanks perhaps to this change in attitude—or maybe just the change of pace—she found that her heart was open to new friends, new passions and, shortly after her return, her next great love. After writing an article on a dance program benefiting young girls in Spanish Harlem, she decided to pick up where she left off in Kenya and now teaches and mentors through city youth programs.

Holly came back to her old apartment, but not to her old life. Though she and Elan reside on different coasts, they still keep in touch. To live more in line with her priorities, she began to spend more time with the people she loves and pursue the activities she cares about the most. She decided to turn down editorial job offers in order to take the less secure route as a freelance writer. She now spends her nonworking hours traveling to Syracuse to visit her family. She trained for her second marathon as well as her first triathlon and continues to practice yoga a few times a week. She remains in contact with Sister Freda in order to support Esther’s education. She’s also checked off more destinations on her travel wish list: hiking the Leaping Tiger Gorge in China; swimming with stingrays in the Bahamas, and visiting her seventh and last continent, Antarctica.

Despite her fears that Manhattan might be geographic kryptonite to single women, Jen returned to the city, where she threw herself headlong into dating. To her surprise, she quickly found romance…then didn’t…then did again…then didn’t. Until she finally chilled out and remembered one of the most important lessons she’d learned on the road: it’s okay to be alone for a little while. Of course, once she accepted this, she found the real love she’d been searching for. In addition to immediately landing a dream gig at an independent film channel, Jen decided to devote a portion of her time volunteering with kids in inner-city schools. Though she still isn’t a fan of Internet cafés or doing assignments on the road, she continues to create Excel spreadsheets and travel itineraries and is currently planning her next international getaway.

For all three of us, friendships have taken on a much greater significance—and not just between our trio. Instead of canceling plans, we started making them again, and we’ve been amazed to watch our circle of Lost Girls grow. The three of us, as impossible as it sounds, have become even closer on a new journey together: writing this book about our adventures. And those adventures aren’t over—not even close.

As we were putting the finishing touches on this book, we learned that A Tree Grows in Kenya, the play we wrote with Irene at Pathfinder, has now been distributed across the country. Girls all over Kenya perform the play and have made Wangari Maathai, a woman all but unknown to them before, into a role model. That’s something that couldn’t have happened if we had stayed on the tried-and-true path in New York, if we’d never decided that our dreams were bigger than our fears.

Though we can’t predict where the road ahead will lead, there’s one thing we know for certain: uprooting our lives to take an unconventional detour was one of the most challenging things we ever did, but the experience taught us that getting lost isn’t something to avoid, but to embrace. The only leaps of faith you’ll ever regret are the ones you don’t take.