Check out Paradise Lost? under Glimpses of the Road, back on Randy's Travel Page.
You are going to enjoy your trip, of course! All of the notes I provide in my various Travel Tips sections are meant to help you make your trip easier, more relaxing, less fraught with hassles, and more enjoyable. Elsewhere I deal with techniques, attitudes, and packable items than can make your trip easier and safer. Here I mention a few things to take into consideration before you leave, when you are making the final plans for just what your trip will be like.
There are always new and exciting things to see and do out there, but you won't necessarily enjoy them all unless you feel comfortable in your surroundings. Comfortable doesn't just mean a soft bed with clean sheets, it means feeling relaxed, self-confident, and in control of your own trip. To relax and enjoy, go slowly; travel at your own pace -- not mine -- and in a style that is reasonably comfortable for you. Allow time to rest, get your bearings, and feel at home in the places you stop. You will feel safer, more confident, and have the time to make friends among the local people as well as with other travelers.
Fear, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, insecurity, anger, and theft; these can turn a pleasant vacation into a nightmare that you only want to escape from. Before you finish making up your itineraries and travel schedules, take a look at the section on Feeling At Home on the Road; it will give you a better feeling for the kinds of problems and frustrations that can be avoided by more realistic and flexible planning.
Making Schedules
Avoid making strict schedules unless you have specific time constraints. Put plenty of padding in your schedule (such as optional side trips). The more you try to keep to a schedule, the more frustrated you will become with travel.
Take a Break -- Rest Stops
For longer trips that span more than one month, plan for a few rest stops along the way where you can relax on your own for at least a week, if not two. Traveling can be tough, demanding work. You can do some strenuous traveling on a limited diet and the little inconveniences and annoyances can add up to some frayed nerves and frustrations. You need a break from time to time to rest up in an easy-going environment, free of the hassles of moving around from place to place.
Rest stops tend to be laid-back beach hangouts, where dozens or hundreds of other road-weary travelers gather to let their hair down, enjoy the sun and sea, eat heartily, enjoy the company of others travelers outside the social confines of cities and towns, and of course to swap lies about their travels, and get information and inspirations for the next stage.
There are also jungle, mountain, and hill station hangouts, all with the appropriate travelers' lodgings, cafes, meeting places, and watering holes. They change in popularity from year to year, becoming too commercialized, or too crowded, or too many rip-offs, discos, and hookers. Some, like Goa, Lamu, and Panajachel, just seem go on and on for decades and generations.
It is best not to make definite plans about when to leave a rest stop. You may make some very good friends, or just fall in love with the place, and in any case it spoils the relaxation to know that you 'have to' leave in a few days.
Don't be reluctant to declare an impromptu rest stop if you find a place that you really enjoy being in -- it could be a village high in the mountains that you just fall in love with for no particular reason. It could be a better break than a planned rest stop that turns out to be a disappointment. Take your enjoyment where you find it, and don't give it up too quickly once you've found it. Be flexible!
I have already recommended that you plan to see fewer places in more time. "Sure, that's easy for you," you say, "you don't have to go back home; I've only got three weeks to see all of South America!" Yes, there are so many exciting places to see and things to do, before you know it you have every day scheduled for a new activity, and no time for relaxing and just getting to know the place -- or for the unexpected. If I can get you to 'plan' just a few extra days or weeks for the unexpected, for the mundane day-to-day life, I believe it will make your trip less of a hurried vacation, and more of a meaningful experience, different from any holiday you have ever had.
I have a not-so-strict rule of thumb that I like to stay in a place until I just can't stand it anymore. In other words, I should never have the feeling that I have left too soon, that I wish I could have stayed longer, that I should come back someday and "really relax" and enjoy it here. When ever I hear myself thinking such thoughts, I just say:
"Don't just wish you could stay longer, dammit! stay longer! Stay until the very sight of the place makes you want to leave! But don't go away thinking that it is so wonderful that you would like to spend the rest of your life here! Just stay on a few more days, and you will eventually grow tired of it!"
Check out Paradise Lost? under Glimpses of the Road, back on Randy's Travel Page.
Plan a few high points of adventure to spice up your trip. Some may cost extra money or take plenty of time; but they will make your journey something above and beyond the normal circuit trip, and something you can tell your grandchildren about. While you're reading guide books and planning your itinerary, look for such potential high points as: Little-known places that just might be interesting; Special expeditions you could mount by car; or Group adventures you could join. More below.
Interesting Excursions
You can mount your own explorations just by getting off the beaten track. Pick out a few spots on the map -- or with vague mentions in a guide book -- that just might be interesting to visit. These might be coastal, mountain, or indigenous villages that no one goes to; or Mayan or Indian ruins that are rarely visited. Sure, one out of three may be dead-ends (and half of those hilariously so!), but you'll have your own little adventure.
While I was visiting the ethnography exhibits in the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, I saw a single photo of some colorful indigenous people with the caption "Yochib, one of the few remaining purely indigenous markets in Mexico". I wrote it down, and six weeks later I accidentally discovered just where Yochib was. I took the trouble to get there on market day (it ended up taking two days), and it was one of the high points of my trip. (See San Cristobal, Heart of Chiapas on my Travel Articles page for the full story.)
There are any number of more well-known special excursions that can be arranged for a price, but are none the less adventurous. Go on Safari in East or South Africa; learn to scuba dive in Australia, the Philippines, or Belize; take a week-long boat trip among the Galapagos Islands; or take a week-long canoe trip down the Zambezi river in Africa. While the cost of these excursions is significant to a traveler's budget, passing them up when they are available is something you might regret later; they are all once-in-a-lifetime adventures. You can also organize your own long treks in Nepal (Sherpas at extra cost) or New Zealand.
Some very cheap adventures are to:
Trek to hill tribes of the Golden Triangle from Thailand.
Take a trip into the South American jungles from Ecuador.
Travel from Pakistan into Western China via the Karakoram
Highway. Go on a camel safari in Rajastan, India
Climb a volcano: Kilamanjaro and Mt. Kenya in Africa; Fuji,
Bromo, Agung, and Merapi in Asia; Tungarahua in South America;
Agua, Fuego, Popocatepetl in Central America. White-water rafting
in a number of new locations.
Now I should tell you that while all of the excursions listed above are adventurous, you will not be the only one doing them. In fact, with the exception of the Karakoram Highway and trekking or volcano climbing on your own, all the above adventures are commonly conducted by local budget tour companies tailored for travelers. Note that while volcano climbing is usually almost free, it will cost you at least $380 to climb Mt. Kilamanjaro in Tanzania, and over $500 if you don't use the black market and 'freelance' guides.
For many people, the types of adventures listed above will be all they require to make their travels a really special adventure for them. A week or so spent in the huts of tribal peoples in the jungled hills of Thailand can be an incredible cultural and personal experience; one that you will tell amazing stories of for years to come.
More Adventurous
Other more experienced, independent, or daring travelers, will not be satisfied to do what a number of other travelers have already done. They want to do something really different. Doing something really different does not always mean doing something really dangerous. It might just mean going into a completely non-descript local town and staying there for a month or two, doing whatever you can to learn about, and even join in, the local culture and community. Here are some additional ideas.
Specialized Adventure and Educational Tours
You could join a specialized adventure tour. The best tours are aimed no so much at thrill-seeking tourists, but at people who want to learn something with their adventure. You can find them at home if you look hard; possibly at travel agents, but more likely at Universities, camping specialty stores, or advertised in adventure travel magazines. They will not be cheap but should be at least as good a value as the more commercial "adventure tours", and can sometimes take you to places you (and no-one else) could not otherwise see.
I took a great organized trip at the beginning of one of my travels, visiting rarely-seen Mayan ruins while rafting for a week through the jungles of Mexico and Guatemala. This kind of trip runs only twice a year for about 15 people, so we booked well ahead. The leaders were experts on both rafting and Mayan archeology, and they had experience doing this trip several times before. They also guided us through the Tikal and Palenque sites at the beginning and end of the trip.
Since these organized adventures usually include round trip transportation, you should be able to get a considerable reduction by meeting (and leaving) the tour in the destination country (as we did), and possibly even leaving out the expensive hotel stays at the beginning and end of the tours.
Aside from cost, the drawbacks are that you must plan and arrange these trips ahead of time (they don't go very often), and you must coordinate your time schedule to be there on time. For these reasons such an adventure tour is best planned for the beginning of your trip. If you will be buying a round-trip air ticket anyway, ask the tour company if they can get you a ticket leaving and returning when you want to ("open") at a better price than you might find yourself.
Two reasonable books that provide lists and brief descriptions of many international "adventure" tours you can look into are: "The Big Book of Adventure Travel", by James C. Simmons, and "Adventure Vacations", from John Muir Publications, of California. If you check in your bookstore you may find several others of varying usefulness.
Another source book specifically for educational experiences abroad is Peterson's Learning Adventures Around the World, from Peterson's. It has 850 pages of "Educational Vacations" offered around the world -- from learning a language, to archeological digs, and far beyond that. It's interesting reading and is updated yearly.
On your Own -- By Car
Yes, there are still plenty of unique adventures you can have on your own. The easiest and most expensive way to do this is to hire a car, jeep, or van. In some places you must also hire a driver and pay his meals, but it does not add much to the cost of the car.
If you think of all the places you can get to by bus or train, there are many more places that you can reach in a private car or jeep. Many of them are well known and on the map, but very little visited because they are isolated and there is no transportation. See my section on Transportation for more on the subject.
Into the Bush
Now for the really intrepid or penurious, there is adventure travel without the aid of rental car bucks. You can still think up quite a few exciting, and some even risky excursions that almost no one else has done. Plan very carefully and don't go alone. For example:
Well, you get the picture. Just sit around the travelers' "campfire" at any cheap hostel on the edges of the known world, listening to tall tales until you hear someone say, "Nah, NObody can get into that place." or "There's no way in hell you can cross that jungle/desert/mountain range!" Then you start to lay your plans...
Check
out Notes from the Lacandon Jungle
on my Travel Articles page,
back on Randy's Travel
Page.
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