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| Trip Preparation and Leaving |
y wife couldn't travel with me. Even if she could, this wasn't the kind of vacation that would appeal to her. My wife has a fondness for things that look familiar, and for bathrooms with toilet paper. It was a bittersweet farewell when I left my sweetheart and got on the plane by myself.
We arranged to keep in touch by email. I selected a web-based email service to use while I was away. My wife forwarded personal email to my web-based email address, which I read at Internet cafés, common in most towns that I passed through.
| Note to fellow travelers: Getting your email Use a hotmail account when traveling in South America. Nearly all the computers in all the Internet Cafes I visited had their computers configured to bring up the hotmail email login page as the web browser's home page. I began by using a different web-based email account, but it sometimes didn't work because its login page redirected the browser to an HTTP connection at a non-standard TCP port, and the proxies or firewalls at some locations blocked it. NOTES INDEX |
Before leaving, I tried to learn as much Spanish as I could using a local tutor (thanks, Carlos!). It worked out well to spend my first two weeks in South America in a Spanish school. I didn't learn enough of the language to hold a fluent conversation in Spanish, but every little bit helped.
For money I relied on two credit cards which were set up to work with ATM machines internationally. In towns of any size, I seldom had problems finding an ATM that would accept one of my cards and give me money in either dollars or local currency. I never used the handful of traveler's checks that I carried with me. Those places that accepted traveler's checks generally charged a hefty fee. I did miscalculate my money needs at one point. I traveled to the little town of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, and stayed longer than I thought I would. At the end of a week when it was time to pay for room at the hostel ($US60 for the week), I didn't have enough cash, and the town didn't have any ATM machines. I found cheap transportation ($1) to Loja, an hour away, only to find that all the ATM machines in Loja were temporarily out of order. (Apparently they all used the same communications network which had occasional down times.) After waiting for the ATM machines in Loja to come back on line and then getting back to Vilcabamba, I used up most of an afternoon. But by that time I had adjusted to local Ecuadorian pace of life, and spending an afternoon to do what in the US is usually a 10-minute job wasn't unpleasant at all.
I took redundant copies of my passport, immunization record, and other papers. I generally distributed those copies among my luggage and "secret" money pouches - those pouches that most tourists carry and aren't much of a secret.
In case of loss, theft, or emergency, I also carried several paper copies of important phone numbers, passport number (which I often needed to rent a room or get a bus ticket), driver's license number, credit card numbers, embassy and other important numbers. I used a simple encryption scheme to encode my credit card numbers. It was simple enough that I could use a pencil and paper and a simple formula to recover the true numbers if I needed to, but it was just complicated enough that a common thief would have a difficult time figuring it out if my list of numbers was stolen along with one or more of my credit cards. That let me carry the list of important numbers with me in my pocket or fanny pack, knowing that it would be useless to anyone else if lost or stolen.
| Note to fellow travelers: Calling cards In Ecuador, telephone calling cards, like AT&T and Sprint, are pretty useless except when used from certain residential phones. A cheaper and more convenient way is to buy prepaid cards from the local phone company after arriving, or use company-owned phone centers. Perú public phones are little more forgiving and may allow you to use AT&T and Sprint calling cards, sometimes without having to deposit any coins. NOTES INDEX |
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