I wasn’t quite prepared for this trip. If I had been, I’d have started this blog before I left. Instead, my time was filled with moving my things home from Tahoe (thank you so very much Miss Maria), painting some houses (I was happy to help with the work on the Crikos rentals to earn a few extra bucks for the trip), a couple family-home-video projects, and spending time with the people I love all over the bay area. If I didn’t get a chance to see you, I apologize. I won’t be gone so long this time and we better kick it when I get back.

I couldn’t have asked for much more of an American send off. Complete with a large quantity of cheap American beer (and the binge drinking which comes along with it), classic drinking games (beer pong, flip cup, etc.) but then also classic American creativity leading to chicken tossing, freeze dancing and subjective trivia. Thank you so much to Robin and Greg especially, as well as everyone who came out to have a good time on my behalf that night. 16ft, 3.5 in- wow, truly a record toss. I often wonder what could’ve been achieved had Greg thrown Cluck instead of Babs. The world may never know.

Tuesday, May 8th, I strapped on the trekking sandals, loaded up the backpack (downsized from before), said goodbye to everyone in the north-bay (including Gail Bachman, back from the Peace Corps!) and caught the bus down to SF. I got to see some lovely faces for a night, which I see all too seldom, then it was off to the airport the next day. I traveled fairly easily- carrying on everything I’d brought, so it was just a measly 10 hour plane ride, across the Atlantic Ocean, to London, England.

I didn’t see much from the plane. I was in the center seat, which sucked, but even still the city was covered in fog. Kinda perfect actually- just the weather I expected of London. Through the airport without hassle (lying to the immigration officer about having a set plan after I’d heard they grill you if you have a one-way ticket and no plan), got some money out with my trusty Charles Schwab account which refunds ATM fees (win), and got onto the tube (minding the gap of course). Took the Picadilly line from Heathrow to Covent Garden (tourist central) where I broke a £20 note on a bottle of water so I could use an awesomely cliché, red telephone box to call my friend Rosie.

Rosie, a British friend I actually met in South America where she was studying abroad and the guys and I were trekkin’ hard, kindly met me in the city and was an awesome tour guide. We saw St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, the Parliament Buildings, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral,  the London Eye, and had a nice walk along the Thames River before the jet lag started to hit, halfway through a pint at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (ancient pub underground downtown- very cool, very London).

Since then, it’s been more awesome sightseeing, with a little biking the streets of London thrown in (terrifyingly fun). I’ve seen John Soane’s Museum, the Hunterian Museum, the British Museum, the Tate Modern Museum, Hyde Park, Abbey Road, the Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert’s Museum (the museums are free here, can you tell?), took the Thames Clipper out to the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, and a whole lot more. The tourist circuit really.

Somewhere in there I met up with the amazing Peter Levi- great friend who I met while he was studying abroad at UC Davis. One of the top priorities while in Europe was to visit Pete. He’s living in the city and working as an engineer (putting that good education to work). So very awesome to see him and get to spend some time. And, coincidentally, another friend of his from the states (Santa Rosa even!), Casey, flew out on the same flight as mine, one day earlier, to visit Pete as well. So the three of us have been hitting all the tourist spots, and a few not, in London.

In between each tourist destination, we’ve been looking for the typical British meal. I’d heard mixed reviews of the cuisine in these parts, but I’m glad to be able to get an impression first hand- I totally dig it. We had proper fish and chips out in Greenwich, which I don’t think any Londoners eat unless they’re showing it to tourists, and breakfast that day included baked beans- an awesome addition to the standard eggs and toast. Got a proper curry with Rosie and company- there’s loads of Indian food here. It was delicious. And of course there have been many tasty pints. I can’t even tell you- they’re all delicious. Enjoyed a nice Guinness with Casey as we watch the excitement of Manchester City taking the Premiere League title from Manchester United. One for the sports history books as well as mine.

The tentative plan right now is to see a bit of the English countryside before heading to continental Europe where any number of epic things are bound to happen. But for now, thank you for reading, enjoy the pictures, I love you all and will be in touch before you know it.

Stay well
-willrl

A quick shout out to some of the volunteers I was in Africa with: Dr. Bill Fleenor, Geetika Joshi, Dan Nover, Aaron Luna, Amelia Holmes, Sean Kearney, Paige Bonno, Lee Reiners, Elena Botella, Gail Bachman, and Dave Gomez.

Back in the States a few changes stood out. First of all, after being stared at and talked about for the whole trip we were no longer the center of attention at all. Hell, we weren’t getting any attention- we were just two more American guys. All of a sudden public bathrooms had toilet seats, toilet paper, running water, and even soap sometimes. I caught myself contemplating a sink shower with the soap and hot water and stealing toilet paper to use later, but I realized all bathrooms would be that way. All of a sudden cars would stop and wave us across the street- even when we were totally j-walking. They would also signal when changing lanes (there were lanes!) and follow the other rules of the road.

Other things stood out because they didn’t change. We still heard Spanish just about everywhere we went, but it was nice that English had become the standard. And, we were still living out of our backpacks. Most places we’d been that wasn’t that big of a deal because people didn’t have a lot of stuff anyway. But being surrounded by the consumerism that is Southern California made me feel it much more.

We spent a bit of time in So-Cal seeing a few friends and hanging out on the beach. To be honest, there were a couple of times, standing on a beautiful beach surrounded by beefed up, tattooed bros and big boobied, scantily clad, blonde bimbos that I felt further from home than I did surrounded by the native people of Paraguay. It was a good reminder that home is more the people you surround yourself with than exactly where you are.

But, home is also geographical, and we still had a ways to go until we were geographically home. We spent some time with another Travis in LA. He was nice enough to let us crash until we found a way to get up to the bay area. In true, cheap-traveling fashion we got a ride to SF with an Aussie who had rented a car and was driving north anyway. Craigslist ride share- gotta love it.

So we were dropped in SF about 2 blocks and about 10 minutes from where we caught the Golden Gate Transit 80 Bus going north. Not 3 hours later we got off at Rohnert Park Expressway and Commerce Boulevard, walked a short stretch down the road, across the golf course, up my parents driveway, and into their front door. Home sweet home.

I just wanted to take this chance to once again thank all the amazing people we met/visited on this trip. Most of you will never get this thank you, but you absolutely made the trip what it was. Seven months and no bad days- just smiles and laughing the whole time. Not a bad way to live. Thanks again.

Much love to you all.
Stay well.
-willrl

From the coast we went inland to the city of Granada on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. Our hostel there conveniently had bikes we could use to tour the city, free of charge, so we went on a bike ride along the water’s edge. That’s about all Granada had to offer, besides a couple of beautiful sunsets and delicious bakeries.

The next stop was the capital. Daniela had family friends who said their door was open to us and we took advantage. We spent one night there and left most of our stuff as we headed back out to the beach for one more night. It wasn’t quite my birthday, but it started looking like my actual birthday would be spent on a bus so we celebrated early. Our hosts in Managua recommended a small beach town called Pochomil. It was absolutely perfect. We swam in the ocean for hours, ate delicious food and drank giant cheap beers under the star filled sky. Not a bad way to celebrate a birthday.

Back in Managua we said our goodbyes to Daniela and our hosts, packed up our things, and made our way to the famous Tica Bus around 4 am. Tica Bus runs long distance buses all throughout Central America. We had tickets all the way to Tapachula, Mexico. The ride was about 12 hours one day, a night in San Salvador, and then 12 hours the next day, with a brief stop in Guatemala City. Regrettably, we skipped over loads of amazing things to see, but we had recently realized that our money had started running low and our desire to be back in the states running high. Plus, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are supposed to be the more dangerous areas of Central America, so we didn’t feel as badly.

Although we didn’t get off the bus much, we still got to see everything we passed. I can tell you that Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are absolutely beautiful countries- so green, mountainous and lush. We tell ourselves that we are certainly likely to come back to the areas we skipped over to see what we missed. Hold us to it Central America.

We were back in hard trekking mode. After 2 days busing we slept in the border town of Tapachulu, then took an overnight bus to Mexico City. From there we bused all day out to Guadalajara and then took a local bus out to Lake Chapala. Karl’s grandmother, Lorraine, lives with her husband Johnny on the coast of Lake Chapala in the town of Ajijic. We finally made it there by the evening of the 28th and were definitely ready to kick back.

Kick back is exactly what we did. For 5 days we did nothing but sleep in, nap in hammocks, go out for amazing meals with groups of retired ex-pats, and just generally get spoiled by Lorraine and Johnny. We were in the largest ex-pat community in the world and I dare say we got a bit of culture shock going from staying in the cheapest possible hostels to touring multimillion dollar homes and eating gourmet meals to the ambiance of live violin and a stunning view of the lake. Needless to say, we got in plenty of R & R in the few days we visited.

It wasn’t all good. In touring one of those million dollar homes I dropped my camera into an infinity pool. It seemed ironic to see the harsh end of a $200 material object (which has been a huge part of my life for the last 8 months) in a place where $200 is a cheap price tag on dinner for two. But yes, despite my diving in after it as quickly as possible and us drying it out for days, it is still unable to take pictures or videos. A tragedy, I know. Hopefully we will be able to find some alternative to help us document the end of this trip like we have documented the rest. For now, the pictures and videos may be lacking.

Ajijic was our last planned stop and when we left we really set our sights on home- or at least on California. We bused back to Guadalajara and from there all day to Mazatlan. With no overnight ferries out of Mazatlan we had to spend the night. The guards at the ferry terminal were kind enough to let us just sleep on the benches there for free. The heat and bugs made it miserable, but we couldn’t beat the price.

We spent a day lounging on the beach in Mazatlan while we waited for a 4pm ferry across the mouth of the Gulf of California. There was sort of a strange vibe on the boat as it was full of truck drivers and we were the only gringos, but we made friends nonetheless. We got into La Paz, Mexico, the next morning around 10:30 am and the first thing we did was look for a bus out. We were happy to find spots on a 24 hour bus to Tijuana- straight to the border with California.

We explored La Paz a bit, finding food to carry on our bus ride and an internet shop to get in touch with friends we would meet once we got there. The bus ride was long. I think it seemed longer because it was at the very end of such a long trip and we were getting so close to home. The scenery wasn’t bad: deserts filled with cacti on one side and beautiful blue ocean on the other. We passed a few seemingly out of place resorts from time to time- that was strange.

When we reached Tijuana we expected to be facing heavy drug-lord gunfire based on what we’d heard from American warnings. But, of course, like every other place that was supposed to be dangerous, we found it quite peaceful and relaxed. We got a cab to the border crossing and got in an extremely long line to cross.

Crossing over land was the way to go. The whole time in line we were wondering if we’d have to fill out customs forms and list all the countries we’d been to and answer for them and submit to a search through all our things. We didn’t. It was maybe the easiest border crossing of the whole trip. The guy swiped our passports, asked us what we were carrying, and said “okay, welcome back”. That was is. Just like that, back in the states.

Thanks for reading.
Much love.
-willrl

Back in the middle of April, when we were in La Paz, I bought a guitar. Learning the guitar is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time and it came to a point where we were waiting in enough bus stations for enough hours that I decided, why not?- especially in Bolivia where things are so cheap. So we found a nice small one that wouldn’t be too tough to travel with and a cool bag to put it in all for about $35 US.

The question seemed to be not would we lose the guitar, but when. I carried it into Paraguay, back through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia and even across into Central America- all the way annoying people with my lack of skill and constantly trying to pick up tips from other travelers. There were a couple close calls where we barely remembered it but were still able to run back and grab it. Then, just after we got into Panama we took a bus going from the capital to the town of David. We got off in the small town of San Felix. The guitar didn’t.

It took me until we were checking emails in an internet cafe in San Felix to realize that it was gone, but once I did I was crushed. I had grown attached to it. But, proactive as we are, we had the great idea to call the bus company’s office in David to see if they could help us out. The David phone number conveniently printed on our ticket stubs, the nice guy working at the internet place letting us use his phone, and the kind, patient lady searching the bus on the other end came together to provide us with a guitar waiting in David when we passed through 5 days later. The guitar was out of tune, just like I left it.

Earlier in the trip, Karl had just taken out as much money as we would need for the rest of our time in Ecuador. We didn’t know when or if we’d see any ATMs out in the cloud forest, and Ecuador uses the good ‘ol US Dollar, so we figured he couldn’t take out too much. That means he had around $160 in stone cold US twenties in his wallet, safely stored in his pant’s zipper pocket. On the ride out to the forest we didn’t pay for the ticket until we were just about to get off. When the time came to pay, Karl unzipped his pocket, busted out some cash, paid the man, and replaced his wallet, forgetting to again utilize the zipper. Only moments later, we got off the bus with all the bags we were carrying. It took a while because we had just done all the shopping for all the volunteers for a week. It was all very distracting.

Just as the bus drove away I noticed Karl checking his pants pockets and saw his face drop. He immediately turned and ran down the cobblestone road in sandals yelling ‘my wallet!’. That day we found out that those mountain buses haul ass, but Karl kept running. We lost him around the bend and just stood there waiting for what seemed like a while. Eventually he rolled up in the passenger seat of a big white truck with a grin on his face. Apparently he had to flag down some guy coming the other way and ask for his help. They finally caught up to the bus and were able to get them to stop. Karl’s wallet was there, sitting just below the window next to the seat he was in, fat with all the cash he had just taken out, not to mention all his cards. What a relief.

Four days later on our way out of town, we hopped on the same bus but had to get off 5 minutes later, because Karl forgot his passport in the Andean Bear Project house. We tell ourselves we’re getting better.

Months later, around 4 in the morning, just after saying our goodbyes to Daniela in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, Karl and I took a taxi to the TICA bus office. We had to catch our bus out of the country. When we took our passports out to begin the check-in process, Karl realized that in with his passport was also Daniela’s. Damn. At the few borders we’d all crossed together it was just quicker and easier to keep all our passports together. Well, it wasn’t making things quicker or easier in the moment we realized Karl still had it.

There wasn’t really much of a choice, we couldn’t leave the country with Daniela’s Mexican passport. So, Karl snagged a taxi for a round trip back to the house we were staying at. The whole time he was gone, of course, I was standing around wondering if he’d be back in time to make the bus, and if not, whether I should hit the road without him (only 1 wasted ticket instead of 2!). He made it, of course, with some time to spare. But he did have to spend ten bucks on the trip and that made it so we didn’t have enough money to pay for the entrance into Honduras. Good thing the bus conductor was nice enough to spot us the $2 we were missing.

These are just a few of our many, many mess-ups that threw us for a loop just when we thought the travel couldn’t get any more exciting. That, and they also reminded us how vulnerable we are without the help and kindness of people around us. I’m sending yet another thank you to them, although they may never read it.

Don’t forget your people, and thanks for being mine.
With love,
-willrl

In Panama City I called my great friend Kayla, who lives out near the border with Costa Rica, to get info on how and when to meet up with her. Her instructions were to get a bus going toward David but to get off early in the tiny town of San Felix. She recommended spending a night at the coast near to there because by the time we got there it would be too late to meet her. We did as she said and stayed the night in a cabin on the beach in Las Lajas. The beach was nice, but coming from the San Blas Islands we weren’t too impressed.

Plus, we were excited to see Kayla, so the next day we headed back to San Felix and rode in the back of a truck from there to Oma. We were greeted by tall, beautiful, red headed Kayla Howard-Anderson running toward the truck. She’s the tallest woman in the state of Chiriqui, I swear it. We gave our hugs and said our hellos and then started the hard trek out to Kayla’s site.

The site is called Cerro Banco (Bank Hill) and you can only get out there by walking or riding a horse. The walk was only a few kilometers but took us almost 2 hours because of the steep climbs, mud pits, river crossings, and the rain pouring down by the end. Finally we made it to her house which is made of bamboo slats that she cut herself. No electricity, no running water, just a water filter and propane stove- and we thought Tess lived in a shed. But Kayla’s is certainly homey with all the pictures on the walls and the welcoming hammocks hanging out front.

Kayla, like Tess, is a Peace Corp Volunteer whom I met at Davis. She is working in the sanitation sector and trying to bring the hot, modern, technology of pit latrines into the region. When Kayla arrived there was 1 latrine in the whole community. It was at the school and no one used it anyway. Now there are many, but it will still be a lot of work to make them functional and get the people to actually use them. Kayla also keeps a blog which can be found here.

We spent about 4 days in the site, most of it hiking around to discover the amazing local people and stunning geography. We met all the families Kayla lived with and the people she works with. They gifted us food all along the way. We played a bit of soccer at the school on the most ridiculous soccer field I’ve ever witnessed- it’s seriously a steep hill covered with slippery rocks. We took a hike down to the nearby river for a swim (although we were already soaked by the time we got there) and did a lot of cooking with many local ingredients (pifa!) we’d never tasted. It rained spontaneously every day we were there, but we didn’t expect much less from that region.

Our visit with Kayla was much too short but very sweet. She escorted us back to San Felix where we helped her do some shopping. Then we said our goodbyes and hopped on a bus the rest of the way to David. We weren’t there long before crossing into Costa Rica. Because of the timing, just after crossing we were nearly stranded in a strange border town overnight. Eventually we opted to pay the expensive cab ride out to Playa Pavones- a nice beach town at the end of a long dirt road very popular with surfers.

We decided to cut our time in Costa Rica very short for a few reasons: first we found it very expensive and rundown with American ex-pats, stores, restaurants, and attitudes. Beyond that, it rained on us the whole time we were there AND we ran into our first big disappointment, the Irazú Volcano.

After a couple of days in Pavones we went straight for Cartago. We spent a short night there and got a bus the next day to the highest volcano in the country, Irazú Volcano (11,250 ft.). We were excited to see a Central American volcano because everyone seemed to be raving about them. Well, the day cost us about $15 US each and was a complete bust. The top of the volcano was cold, windy, and covered in fog, but even if the weather had been perfect it wouldn’t have been worth the trip. We could see down into the crater and there wasn’t anything cool or interesting or exciting about it. We decided to cut our losses and just be glad we’d finally have something to tell people when they ask about something that was a total let down.

After the volcano failure we went to San Jose, the capital. Daniela got in touch with the friend we were hoping to visit, but unfortunately he was unable to meet with us at all. Feeling bad vibes from all around, we made straight for the Nicaraguan border and crossed it the next day, amazed at how many countries we could hit in so few hours on buses in Central America (in South America it would’ve been impossible).

The rest of Central America and Mexico still to come.
Thanks for reading- much love.
-willrl

I mentioned in a previous post that we had beautiful beach-front accommodations in Mancora, on the coast of Peru. We were a 10 or so minute walk out of town, but it was a very pleasant walk along the calm beach, so we hardly minded it. At the hostel, on the way out to the beach, there was a sign posted with warnings. From not swimming alone, to wearing sandals on the scorching hot sand, one of the warnings was to not walk the length of beach between the town and the hostel late at night. They reccommended taking a cab into and out of town. We of course assumed that the hostel was getting paid a premium by the cab drivers to post that warning and saw no reason why two, 6+ foot, hairy, able-bodied guys couldn’t walk anywhere they wanted at any time.

Well, it turned out that we were in town pretty late one night, doing a bit of drinking with fellow travelers and locals alike (we actually spent most of the night cutting the rug in the living room of a big, local, Peruvian family home that was celebrating a birthday- one of the rare nights that I forgot my camera, such a shame!) and of course opted to walk back along the beach. I don’t think the warning at the hostel entered our minds for even a second.

During one of the particularly dark parts in the walk, I noticed a hooded guy walking a few meters behind me. I turned to tell Karl, and as I did I noticed two more guys walking a bit behind him. We seemed to notice at the same time and just as we started to vocalize our concern, the guy behind me ran up to my side with a glass bottle raised above his head shouting “MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!”.

I don’t know if it was liquid courage, general stupidity, or just plain not wanting to be a victim, but somehow both of us had already decided that we weren’t about to get ripped off. It all happened so fast and the vision I have of it in my head is a reconstruction, but there are certainly some things I distinctly remember. We both started yelling at the guy, NO TENEMOS! NO TENEMNOS! (we don’t have) and AFUERA! (get away). Around then the other two muggers seemed to get the memo to attack and ran up to Karl to try to rip his backpack from his back. I pushed the guy with the bottle away from me and headed over to where Karl had fallen to the ground. Karl smashed one guy in the face pretty hard and got him off. I helped get the other guy away and Karl got back to his feet. We then noticed the guy with the bottle try to break the bottle on the ground and totally fail, and another guy try to pick up a rock to threaten us with, but drop it. That’s when we started running towards our hostel and yelling for help.

When we got back to the hostel  we found some people crowded around trying to start a campfire. Apparently they heard nothing. Looking back, I think it was a combination of things leading to the outcome we had. First of all I’m pretty sure both of us were taller and bigger than each of the  three muggers which I’m sure was frightening for them individually. Second, they definitely seemed like amatuer muggers who had maybe never run into conflict in their muggings. Finally, I think our initial reaction, once we noticed what was going on, helped us a lot. We were very loud and firm with our words and I’m sure they could tell we were determined not to hand anything over. The funny part is that we really didn’t have hardly anything to steal. I didn’t have my camera or ipod, Karl didn’t have his laptop. The most they could’ve gotten was maybe $20 US in cash, which I’m sure they would’ve been dissappointed with. We did lose something- Karl’s sunglasses were on his head and fell off in the bout. Yes, the purple plaid ones. Damn.

When we ride long distance buses, we usually check our bags under the bus (although they’re probably small enough to carry on) and take a small bag with us that has all of our valuables (camera, ipod, laptop, passports, that’s about it). That way we can keep a close eye on the important things and won’t be totally screwed if our big bags get taken.

The bus from the coast of Ecuador to Quito was overnight and from sea level to about 9400 ft. All the climbing means that the ride was full of switchbacks and hairpin turns. Trying to sleep on a thrashing bus when you can barely stay in your seat is miserable. We were lucky that the bus wasn’t very full so we could split up and have a set of 2 seats to ourselves, though it didn’t help much. I even strategically placed my bag behind my leg so that if I ever fell asleep it wouldn’t fall on the ground and slide around the floor of the bus.

Well, I dozed off briefly at one point and when I woke up my bag wasn’t where I left it. I found it on the ground behind one of the seats I was in. At first I attributed the move to the swaying of the bus, but then when I reached down and grabbed it my passport fell out. The drawstring was loose. That’s really the only reason I looked through it to see if everything was in there and found that my camera was missing.

I first went to Karl, apologetically waking him up to make sure the camera wasn’t randomly in his backpack. We made double sure. Then I checked my bag again to be certain I didn’t miss it. Still nothing. It had to be somewhere, I had it when I got on. I gave the guy sitting behind me the benefit of the doubt and envisioned my camera sliding across the floor of the bus. I started crawling around looking for it. The conductor of the bus even got involved and turned on the light for us in the middle of the night. I woke up a few people in my search, asking them if they’d seen anything. Nothing.

Well, the guy in the seat behind mine was conveniently ‘asleep’ during the whole search. Eventually the lights went back off and everyone went back to sleep. There seemed to be only one more place it could be. Karl and I approached the guy together, telling him that I had lost my camera and needed him to move so we could look for it. He said he was sleeping and made no effort to listen or be helpful. We apologized, but told him it would be quick and easy. He didn’t want to move. He leaned forward to do a quick look around and told us it wasn’t there. Thankfully he didn’t have a bag to stash it in or even pockets to hide it so when he leaned I barely saw the corner of it poking out from behind his back. We told him we knew he had it and demanded he give it back. He swore he knew nothing about it. We got louder and firmer and told him that we knew he stole it and would tell the people on the bus if he didn’t give it back. With that he asked us to quiet down and handed over the camera.

We didn’t sleep the rest of the ride- not because of the winding roads, but because we had a bit of adrenaline keeping our blood pumping. We were stoked to have narrowly averted getting jacked, once again- we were glad that we had the balls to take action and prevent it. The more we travel the more we learn how to avoid problems and hopefully the fewer we run into.

We love you all. Thanks for reading.
More to come.
Until then,
-willrl

There is no way to drive from South America into Central America, and if you really want to make the trip without flying (like we did), there are basically 2 choices. First you could hire an experienced local guide and make your way through the gap- I think it’s a combination of hiking and canoeing. This route is supposed to be very dangerous, as the gap is notorious for housing guerilla warriors- it’s the one place where the government can’t touch them. The second option is to take a boat. According to what we read there are freighters that will take you. It apparently takes a few days and doesn’t quite break the bank. But what most travelers we talked to had done was taken a sailboat. Five days in the Carribean and three of those days dedicated to chilling out in the picturesque San Blas islands. Some time to snorkel and kick back on a boat sounded exactly like something our sore, bus-worn bones could get into.

When we got to Cartagena we started searching immediately for a good deal on one of the sailboats we’d heard about. Unfortunately, based on what we had heard and what we found in our search, it looked like the sailboat ride was going to be rather pricey. The number that kept getting thrown around was 450 US Dollars. With a plane ticket costing three hundred and something, we started second guessing the choice to sail. But, with 5 nights accommodation and food included in the trip, we decided it was worth the extra money.

Then we met Eric and Isabella. Eric is a Canadian pilot who traded his dual engine airplane for a sailboat a few years ago. He and his wife (Isabella) have been shuttling tourists between South and Central America for a few months. Usually they take 6 passengers on their 40 foot sailboat, The Flamboyant. This time, they were looking to leave in 2 days, but already had 4 people booked. With us being 3, we’d put them up to 7 and they didn’t know if they would have space. But Eric was willing to cut us a deal: if Karl and I didn’t mind sleeping on top of the boat (yes, under the stars, in the Caribbean), he’d take the 3 of us for $1,000. So we ended up saving about $120 per person. It still wasn’t traveling cheap, but for what we were getting, I’d say it was damn economical.

So, on the 4^th of July, 6 months exactly since I had landed in South America, we got on the boat and left the continent for Panama. On board with Karl, Daniela, and me, were Seb and Dean from the UK, South African couple Odette and Clive, and of course the captain and his wife. We spent the first and second days purely at sea and with no land in sight. That was an experience. We got sunburned real quickly with so much sun and so little shade. I think we all got a bit of sea sickness. We got rained on but it was well worth it for the lightning show. Dolphins swam with the boat a few times and I think if we’d tried we could have reached out and touched them. I’ll sum it up by saying that I think it was the most entertaining and exciting way to jump the Darien gap without putting our lives at any unnecessary risk. We were fed well and were very well taken care of by Isabella and Eric the whole time.

Then, our second morning on the boat, we woke up in the San Blas Islands. A collection of hundreds of islands just off the coast of Panama, this place truly is surreal. There’s no real good way to describe it short of turning to calendars and post cards showing pictures of paradise. That is literally what it looked like, paradise (or what calendar makers tell us paradise is supposed to look like). Tiny islands, some of which you could walk across in seconds, covered with palm trees sticking out over the crystal clear water washing up onto bleached white sand beaches. I think the islands were so surreal because they seemed absolutely untouched by the rest of the world. The native Kuna people living on the islands helped that image. Yes, they live in paradise- in huts made of sticks and covered with palm fronds no less. I’m not sure how they make their living or even how they get fresh drinking water out there, but they do. We had the pleasure of meeting a few families on the islands and they were very kind and welcoming. Of course the islands aren’t untouched as I’m sure loads of tourists are always passing through, but the charm was in the fact that it didn’t seem that way.

As it turns out, there isn’t much to do on those islands once you get over the charm and beauty of it. All they are is a pile of white sand with trees coming out and the Caribbean on all sides. So most of our time among the islands was spent on the boat still (which is much easier to sleep on when it’s anchored). We really only went to the islands to eat meals and as a base for snorkeling. The coral growing around these islands made for the most amazing snorkeling I’ll maybe ever get a chance to do. Just booming with brilliantly colored fish and other sea life, and the visibility was of course impeccable. We spent hours snorkeling which didn’t help our badly sunburnt backs. Other than that, we chilled out in hammocks, drank cold beer, and ate fresh lobster (bought from the local fisherman) while on the islands. Not bad, I’d say.

But, like everything eventually does, the islands of paradise soon lost their charm. Sunburnt, bug bitten, and having exhausted some of the most beautiful underwater and sunset views we maybe will ever see, we started hoping to move on, off the boat and into Central America. Our boat was met by some immigration officials while anchored and we ended up getting stamped in before ever even making it to the mainland (for a price). So instead of having to sail the 10 more hours to Portobelo for the immigration office, on our last night Eric took us to one of the much larger and more populated islands. I think that was the most interesting night of my life. To avoid a ridiculously long and incriminating blog post, I’ll have to just summarize here with a few key phrases: a very drunk and finally talkative captain, Kuna puberty festival celebration, cocaine and marijuana drug search, making local-albino-native-friends, buying delicious local rum when we already had too much, a camera falling into the sea, a drunken dingy ride barely making it back to the boat, profane dissertations from the drunk captain, taking drunken dares to get naked and jump off the boat and thereby discovering that our boat was parked on top of a reef, a second drug search in the pouring down thunder storm, and finally about 2 hours of sleep before our ride came at 7 am the next day.

So we said goodbye to our naked, passed out captain and his very patient wife and got on our transport to the mainland. We ended up being forced to pay a hefty sum for the taxi service (and all the hidden taxes and fees we found to be typical of Central America), but we really didn’t have any choice. Although, it was nice that they took us straight to the bus terminal so we could jump right back into our travels.

We love you all, thanks for reading.
Enjoy the pictures, I think we got some gems.
More to come soon.
-willrl

I’ve found that a big part of being able to stay super cheap is carrying the right things (or rather, not carrying the wrong things), so I’d like to just give you an idea of what we’ve been carrying. We’ve gone through a good amount of stuff, either throwing or giving it away, and we were lucky to get a chance to send stuff home with John & Gina when they went. So these aren’t the things we’ve had the whole time, but it is what we’ve had for the majority of our travels.

I have 1 pair of shoes. Not even. I have 1/2 of a pair of shoes: a pair of Chaco sandals. The prefect traveling shoe: no socks to get dirty, it doesn’t matter if you step in a puddle, no heavy boots to lug around, they slip on and off if you want, your feet stay well ventilated and not smelling as bad- I could go on for days. I bought them just for this trip and soon saw the glory I had heard about from many. They’re so good that Karl was inspired to pick up his own pair of epic trekking sandals, leaving us both free of the need of socks.

In the clothing department I’ve got three T-shirts, one pair of pants (which zip off into shorts), three pairs of shorts (one that doubles as a swim suit and one that used to be pants but are now cutoffs), a waterproof jacket, some back up underwear, two long-sleeve shirts, and one pair of socks (in case my feet need protection from mosquitoes or the cold). We do laundry about once a month so we have about a week with clean clothes, two weeks with dirty clothes, and a week with unbearable clothes. We certainly get our money’s worth when we finally get around to getting our clothes cleaned.

Besides clothes we don’t have much. A few electronics: I have an ipod and camera (and their respective chargers) and Karl has his laptop. We carry sleep sheets for times that we have to sleep outside or in other places where we would like a bit of protection. The essential toiletries of course (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, contacts and solution, glasses) and a few extras (bug spray, baby powder, pain killers, malaria meds, a first-aid kit, etc.). Some random stuff that has proven to come in handy from time to time (super glue, rubber bands, zip-ties, string, a knife, hand wipes, electrolyte packets). We both carry water bottles but rarely use them to carry water because we don’t trust the local water we’d fill up with.

We’ve got our passports, or course, and we also carry a bunch of books. We had a travel book for South America that was really big and heavy so we were glad to get a digital version for Central America. We also had a Spanish/English dictionary (before trading it) and then lots of other books for pleasure reading. We trade old books for new books whenever we have a chance.

Finally, we carry a few food items. Mostly just mustard and salt, but sometimes ketchup and peanut butter as well. It’s just a few things that can help make snacks and makeshift meals (bananas, crackers, bread, etc.) seem a little more substantial.

Carrying the right stuff helps save money in a few ways. For example, having little enough stuff that we can carry our bags comfortably for a few mile walk (I found out recently my pack weighs about 12 kilos) means we rarely have to pay for taxi rides. With our sleep sheets we tend not to shy away from staying in the cheapest accommodations and our few food items keep us content with cheap snacks from the supermarket instead of the restaurants listed in our tour book.

Of course we’ve found loads of other ways to save money. We learned quickly to always negotiate prices and/or ask for discounts (even on things that supposedly have set prices). We get student discounts here and there, and used to get bulk prices when we were traveling as a bigger group. We’ve often found asking prices to be over twice what the seller would actually accept. It seemed that in Peru and Ecuador we never bought anything for the asking price, although I’m sure we were still paying more than the locals- the gringo tax is a killer. The real trick is to not actually want whatever they’re selling at all- then it doesn’t matter how much it costs, we ain’t buying.

Not holding comfort too highly makes it possible to get much cheaper long-distance bus tickets. I don’t think we ever took a “cama” bus (where the seats lay flat) because there was always a “semicama” option (less comfortable, but much cheaper). We always try to take overnight buses because it saves us the cost of accommodation for a night. Once in a town, we save money by either walking to our destination, like I mentioned (tour book maps have been very helpful in this), or by asking around for which local bus goes where we need. If we do have to break down and take a cab we always try to find someone going the same way to split the cost (and ALWAYS establish the price before going anywhere).

Knowing exchange rates is very helpful in saving money. 1 US Dollar = 18.5 Uruguayan Pesos = 4 Argentine Pesos = 457 Chilean Pesos = 2.7 Peruvian Soles = 7 Bolivian Bolivianos = 3861 Paraguayan Guarani = 1756 Colombian Pesos. Not only can we make sure we’re getting a good rate when changing money, but also when spending the foreign cash, we can know roughly how much it’s costing us in dollars (some countries have their currency tied to the dollar and some accept dollars, so that makes it easier). One tip: make sure that when you exchange money, the guy selling you the local stuff has a calculator that obeys normal multiplication and division laws- we definitely ran into ones that did NOT. We also save a good chunk of change because one of Karl’s checking accounts reimburses him for international ATM use fees. That saves us around $5 per transaction and we have a lot of transactions because carrying large amounts of cash is never a good idea.

When it comes to food and accommodation, there have really been two phases of this trip. In the beginning, through Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, food and accommodation were very expensive. I don’t think we spent less than $10 per person for a night in any of those countries and the most we spent was probably around $20, even with our winning strategy of finding the cheapest, reasonably well rated place on hostel world. Back then we were desperate to camp or crash with friends to save some real cash. We almost never ate out. Instead we would buy food from the supermarket and cook it ourselves in hostel kitchens, one of our criteria in choosing a hostel. We also searched for hostels that had breakfast included. Often it was unlimited food so we’d eat as much as we could, trying to avoid buying lunch (and sometimes even stashing food from the breakfast to eat for lunch- shameless, I know). At one hostel they provided unlimited pancake mix, all you had to do was make the pancakes. I think we had 2 or 3 meals that were pancakes each of the 5 days we were there. We even went to the supermarket just to buy things to put on them.

The second phase started when we moved into Peru and through Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Colombia. I’m not sure we spent over $10 per person to stay a night in any of those countries, and the lowest was definitely under $3 (with a view of Lake Titicaca). Usually, in these countries, eating ‘out’ (meaning, eating the cheapest set meal deal at a family run comedor) was considerably cheaper than what we could cook for ourselves. They just cook in such bulk and sell huge plates of it for so cheap that we can’t compete. We learned that places listed in our tour book and online meant they would have gringo set prices by default. Usually we’d just ask locals to point us in the direction of a high value place.

We always try to avoid activities or tours that we think we’d be disappointed in. It sounds obvious, but often fellow travelers are very excited about a certain excursion just because they opted to do it. We’ve constantly tried to get as much info on things as we can from other travelers, locals, websites like Trip Advisor, etc., to make well informed decisions. And when we decided that a tour, or whatever, would be worth the cost, we usually don’t go with the top named company (as we would be paying for the name) but would put time into searching for a similar quality tour by a lesser known (and therefore much cheaper) company. That strategy has worked for us many times.

In places we went where there wasn’t much to do whether you were willing to pay for it or not, we try to find something free and interesting that we could do on our own. Usually that means picking the highest hill in town (usually with a Christ statue at the top) and hiking up it to get a view of the city and surrounding area. That, timed well with a sunset (free of charge), has made for some very high value evenings.

Finally, staying with friends has proven to be the best way to save money. We haven’t been able to do much Couch Surfing on this trip, though we have tried (usually there isn’t a strong community for it in the towns we visit or we are traveling as too large of a group to accommodate). But our time with Ahkim in Buenos Aires and with Tess and other PCVs in Paraguay saved us loads of money, and of course were amazing good fun because we were with someone who knew the area and the people and we were welcome in the homes of the friends of our friends right away. Yeah, I’d say that’s the simplest way to save money: make friends. If you’ve got friends- hell, you don’t even need money.

Love you guys. More to come soon.
-willrl