Travel

It’s just over one year since I’ve worked full time, and I thought it would be fun to make a bunch of lists of what I’ve done in that year. Distance About 33000 miles by airplane, visiting 14 airports Around 6000 miles by car 2000 nautical miles by sailboat 1000 nautical miles on the Alaska Marine Highway (a car ferry) Types of vehicles My Slumbaru Airplanes Buses Taxis Pickup trucks with dead goat without dead goat Boats Wonderland Ferry from Haines, AK to Bellevue, WA Ferry on Lake Geneva Senegalese water taxi Lanchas in Guatemala A camel A horse My hiking boots A zipline Places ...

Llegué con securidad en San Pedro ayer por la noche. Mi viaje de San Cristobal a San Pedro era fácil. Me plazco a volver a San Pedro. Es aún más bonito en invierno que verano. No hay mucho lluvio ya, solamente sol y poco nubes. Ayer en la noche, dormí en la hotel Sak’cari. Esta noche, voy a domir en el Hotel San Francisco, porque es mas barrato. En algunos días, voy a moverme al casa de parientes de Juan, mi compañero de trabajo. ...

Well, it turns out things don’t go like you planned when you travel. Who knew? I was feeling pretty smug in Cancun, with my ticket bought, plenty of time to go around and get dinner, then shop for snacks on the bus, use the Internet, etc. Only problem was my watch was two timezones wrong, so I had two less hours than I thought. I feel so dumb now, because there were three things that should have tipped me off. First, the clock in the bus terminal. I ignored it because Mexican clocks are always about 2 hours off. It turns out the clocks that taught me the “always ignore the clocks in Mexico” rule were the ones in the Metro, where the time of day has little to do with getting a train. In a Mexican bus station, the clocks are right. In fact, they are right to the second, like in a Swiss train station! ...

Well, traveling with AirTech was a breeze, except for the having 12 different backup plans part. I simply showed up at the airport 2 hours early (no big deal for an international flight) and the nice lady behind the counter gave me a confirmed seat on the plane in minutes. I’m sure it is not always like this, but it was pretty painless. I am booked on a 20:30 bus out of here, and will arrive in San Cristobal tomorrow around noon. (16 hours… ugh!) That probably means I’ll be too late to get to Panajachel tomorrow, but it will give me plenty of time to arrange my ride to Pana for the next day. I happen to know a great hostel in San Cristobal from last time, so no problem. ...

Tomorrow morning, I am going to attempt to board a Suntrips flight to Cancun using AirTech.com’s standby travel system. So, the adventure begins. From Cancun, I will take an overnight bus to San Cristobal de las Casas. There, I’ll find myself a tourist bus making the trip to Panajachel and then onward via boat to San Pedro. The whole trip will last from early Thursday morning until Friday afternoon, if it all goes according to plan. But it’s likely something will go wrong along the line. So much the better, at least for the stories later. ...

When an airplane is about to leave, and there’s still room on it (taking into consideration pre-planned, unchangeable limits, like “we only put in enough fuel for 170 people”) there are sometimes seats the airline would still like to fill, if they could get some money for them. They know about these seats so late, they cannot offer any kind of reservation system for them. They let third-parties sell vouchers to get people onto the planes, but the airlines don’t want the third parties competeing with them, so the third parties are prohibited from advertising. So there’s this little micro-industry of people who sell these vouchers, and you basically have to hear about it from someone who has done it to know about it. It’s called air-hitching, or standby travel. I heard about it from Erika of Pangaea. ...

Tomorrow morning I will be getting on my easyJet flight back to London. I have been having a nice time here, and so I’ve postponed and delayed and conveniently forgotten to write anything down about my time here until the absolute last second. Which is now. I have been meaning to write in Spanish, to keep from losing what I’ve learned so far. But that takes a long time and there always seems to be something more interesting to do. At least some of the things I’ve been doing here are preparatory study for my RedR class next week, so it’s not like I have been completely slacking off. ...

I arrived in Geneva this morning to see my friend Sima, who I met in Montreal a long time ago. Better not to count the years back, at least in public. I will stay here a week or so. Sima and I don’t really have a plan, but it will involve a little of me on my own, since she has to work next week. Here’s a little globalization for you. All through my trip to Guatemala, I was haunted by this annoying song called Gasolina. It’s like the song for the Macarena, but about gasoline. Well, if you listen to the lyrics and the interplay between the man and the woman, it’s pretty clear she’s not at a gas station when she chants, “Give me more gasoline!” Ahem. ...

Hoy tomé mi primera clase de RedR. Este clase se llama “¿Etonces, piensas querer trabajar como ayuda humanitaria?” En sentido estricto, no era necessario, porque yo se querer trabajar como ayudar humanitaria. Pero visitaba Londres en cualquier caso, etonces uno mas clase era facìl para atender. Eran muchas ingenieros civiles allì, y algunos ayudantes de sanidad. Pero eran poco trabajadores de informatic, solamente yo y uno otre. Estoy comenzando a pensar que debo haber sido ingeniero civil. ...

I just enjoyed a few days with my parents up at the cabin. I got lots of my stuff cleaned up and ready for a new trip. Mom and I cooked one of my favorite dishes we cook together (Vegetarian Lasagne). Dick and I finished cleaning up the lot so that it is ready for the summer fire season. Alas, my cold did not abate. I’m on my way to London in a few hours now! ...