it all begins here in western canada in the small town of sylvan lake, a place that looks and sounds ideal, but amanda's childhood wasn't. her parents divorced when she was eight. her mother worked mostly cashier jobs to raise three children. the family always seemed to be on the move. life wasn't easy for mother and daughter. amanda yearned even at an early age for a world beyond her hometown. >> one constant was that i wanted to be a world traveller, thatty wanted to go to every country in the world. >> you're a kid. how old are you? >> eight years old. >> and you had stacks of national geographic. >> the images that i saw on geographic was everything my tome town wasn't. like something out of a dream really. >> in the 1990s when she was 19 she saved up enough tips for her first big trip to venezuela. >> we are driving in the back of a pickup truck away from the village back to the town. >> the whole world was wide open to me at that time. >> so wide open, she traveled to guatemala, then thailand, even the middle east. then on a trip to africa in 2006 she found not only adventure b