Introducing a new series: Old Travel Journals!

When I was traveling in China (back in 2002), I met these two Aussies, Hamish and Simon, who held a contest to see who could get the most comments on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum.

Simon pretended to be an American who wanted to go to “Tieland,” except he heard from his mother that it was unsafe because there were drugs there. He won by a landslide. The comments garnered went along the lines of, “Please, please do us all a favor and don’t leave your little hick town.”

Hamish took the high road and appealed to people’s desire to help. He pretended to be a traveler overwhelmed by the task of keeping up with his journal. How often should he write, when was the best time to do it, how long should his entries be? People’s comments went along the lines of, “Look, man, you just have to do what’s right for you.”

I've been doing what’s right for me by keeping some pretty detailed travel journals. So I’m going to take selected entries (and e-mails) and transcribe excerpts for a new series: Old Travel Journals. It’ll give you a view of what I deem worth remembering when I visit a place (as well as, hopefully, some insight into the place itself).

Enjoy!

TRIP FLASHBACK: Ecuador

Basilica de Voto Nacional

The place: Ecuador (Quito, Lago Agrio, Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, the Quilotoa Loop, Chugchilan, Lake Quilotoa and Baños)

The dates: Feb. 16-25, 2008

Approximate cost: $830 for 10 days. Main components: $370 airfare from Washington, D.C., $41 Quito airport departure tax, $180 for four-day jungle tour, $25 for half-day of white-water rafting; hostels anywhere from $6-10/night

Highlights: Visiting the women’s prison. The Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve jungle. Riding in the back of a pickup truck through the Andes on the Quilotoa Loop. Quilotoa’s beautiful crater lake. Baños. Joking with the drivers and ayudante on the bus ride back to Quito.

Timeline:

2/16 (Sat): Arrived in Quito, visited Basilica de Voto Nacional, Old Town, other sites.

2/17: Arranged jungle tour for next day, visited women’s prison, took overnight bus to Lago Agrio for jungle tour.

Fishing in the Cuyabeno Reserve.

2/18-2/21: Spent three nights in jungle of Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve. On Feb. 21, left Lago Agrio by public bus and arrived in Quito by midnight.

2/22: Started Quilotoa Loop. Took public bus to Chugchilan, a mountain town.

Kids on the Quilotoa Loop.

2/23: With the dirt roads of the Quilotoa Loop impassable by bus due to rain, bargained for a pickup truck ride to Quilotoa’s crater lake. Hiked paths around the lake and then hitched a ride in a private van with a group of older English tourists who dropped me off 15 miles from Baños. Flagged a public bus to go the rest of the way.

2/24: Went white-water rafting and biking around Baños. Sang karaoke with locals.

2/25: Hopped on a bus back to Quito to catch a same-day flight that afternoon.

Click here to see more pictures from this trip.

Introducing Trip Flashbacks!

I’ve been a fair number of places, but with the exception of Vietnam have never blogged about any of them. So now I’m going to. And since I don't know when my next trip is, I’m starting with all my past ones.

The flashbacks will include where I went, when, how much it cost, and what I did, lovingly reconstructed from my travel journal and e-mails at the time. Most of the trips are short, and should give you an idea of how much you can squeeze into 3 or 17 days. Really, it's more a resource for people who are already considering going to the Flashback location and so are already familiar with the places I've named.

Anyway, enjoy my trip down memory lane! Hope it helps you with your planning.

Coffee shop vs. McDonald's

On Wednesday I went to a coffee shop to work, and no one said a word to me (and vice versa).

On Thursday I went to a McDonald’s to work. The difference was like night and day.

11:10 am: An older black man cheerfully walks up to me. “That’s great! That’s so small!” he says, pointing to the netbook the family gave me for Christmas (apparently embarrassed that my last laptop was so old the ‘A’ key had fallen off. “It reflects badly on us!” my brother said).

The man: “That must really help you students!”

“Thanks!” I say. “It doesn’t do much, but I only use it for Internet and Word anyway, so it’s perfect!”

11:50 am: I'm sitting at the table closest to the door. The door opens and a large black man is suddenly sitting across from me at my table. He whispers something incomprehensible. "What!?" I say, surprised at how quickly he appeared. "Would you buy me a delicious hamburger please?" "No," I say, still in shock. He says immediately, "Why not?" Me: "Why? Because I don't want to... And I think it's kinda weird that you just walked in and sat at my table like that.” He stays put for a few more seconds, staring at me as I turn my eyes back to my computer. He mumbles in an annoyed way, then gets up and as he walks by me, says, "I'm not Asian." I hear him moving onto the next person.

A few minutes later he passes me again on the way out the door and calls out, "I got one, dog." Indeed, he appears to be carrying a McDonald’s bag. I look at him and say haltingly, "I'm...glad."

We're getting the band back together!

So I haven't touched this blog in almost five years, not since I got back from Vietnam and saw no reason to document my life back in the States. It didn't help that by the end of my year in Vietnam the blogging had slowed to a crawl anyway.

But I will start again! I still love traveling, after all, and even if I haven't done it in awhile, who says you can't celebrate it for what it is? I'm going to try and make a trip out of the littlest things, and not only see new places, but see old places with new eyes.

Another thing I'll do is finally post pictures and stories from old trips. I've been lazy. But if you post something on the Internet, it'll never really disappear, and that's what I want, before another burglar steals my laptop (along with all my pictures from Vietnam and Guatemala) or another travel journal falls out of my backpack's side pocket (somewhere in Laos a child has picked up a pretty pastel journal, thumbed through it, and muttered, "Why does this girl write so much about hot guys?").

So I'm trying again. In a different city, five years older, and definitely no wiser. The goal is still to just know the place.