Belize bound

Dallas is rainy and gray and so is Belize, but so far everything is on time. Some of you will freak out that I still don't know where I'm staying tonight, but at least I kinda (sorta) have a plan. :)

Next post will be from Belize...

And I'm off!

Well, I'm off to Dallas anyway. I'll be hanging out with some friends I haven't seen in awhile - this trip was planned before the Central America one - and probably remembering all the little things I forgot to do or pack.

Packing was made easier because I wrote it all down once before. Good thing, too, because there are lots of things I'd forgotten about. On the flip side, packing was made more difficult because I waited until seven hours before my flight to do it. What can I say? I like to live dangerously! But it's all in there and I think I packed more clothes than I did last time, so everyone who said before "Only three pairs of underwear?" or "What about the socks?" can rest assured that this time I'm taking four pairs of underwear (and I didn't just plain forget the socks like I did last time!).

So, parting shot of me, ready to go and waiting for my ride to the airport:

I'll be in Dallas until Tuesday and then I fly to Belize City. Probably won't be a whole lot going on here til then, though, so be sure to check back next week.

What are you going to do in ______?

It was nearly three years ago that I wrote the first "What are you going to do in _____?" post and since the first question I usually get when I tell people where I'm spending my summer is "why?!" I figured I'd give a little bit of an explanation. 

Mostly I just want to take things slow and have a nice summer. As I briefly mentioned in one of my recent posts, spending some time on the beach is definitely on the to-do list - I've been working my butt off for the past year, so down time with some sun and a book is something I'm highly looking forward to.

I can't lay on a beach for three months, but while I'm there I might as well get in some snorkeling and diving, yeah? The last time I went diving it was in the Great Barrier Reef and I got to see this handsome fella:

Belize has its own reef, too, and I believe it's the biggest one in the Americas. Perhaps the most well-known feature is the Blue Hole:

(This actually kind of scares the bejesus outta me. source)

But...I'm not actually all that positive that I'll make it there (see above caption). That, plus it can be pretty expensive. Also, I've read that the best views of the Blue Hole are from the sky and since it's a collapsed volcano, visibility isn't all that great. But now I sound like I'm making excuses and really there's just damn good snorkeling and diving in plenty of places, not just Belize.

Then there are the Mayan ruins. These can be found throughout Mexico and Central and South America, but the area I'm most looking forward to is Tikal in Guatemala. I loved the wats in Cambodia so much I spent three days there taking shots like this one:

But take a look at a Mayan version - also surrounded by jungle - and tell me it doesn't look just a little bit awesome:

(source)

Then there's all the cities to explore. I am a city girl, after all. :-) There are a few that are particularly interesting to me. Antigua, Guatemala with its cobblestoned streets and Spanish flair, and Granada, Nicaragua with its colonial architecture (and more Spanish flair).

(by Pedro Szekely)

(Granada. source)

So...there's all of that. The next time you wonder what I'm up to or why I'm spending the summer in Central America, you'll know. :-)

Collaboration

I'm going to be trying something different on this trip, something that never occurred to me as a possibility during my last trip. A couple of my couchsurfing friends here in San Diego have traveled somewhat extensively through Central and South America. I wanted to read their blog to see if there'd be any tips or pointers that I'd find useful and I found out that they wrote reviews for a bunch of the places they stayed at in exchange for free rooms. I was intrigued and asked about their processes and how I could do the same thing.

So, all of this is my way of introducing La Aventura Project. I will be collaborating with them by posting reviews there and linking to it from here, so you'll have the choice to read it or not. It should be an interesting experiment that will help me to not only hone my writing skills a bit, but also save some cash!

Getting ready...

Next

It's time to dust off the cobwebs around here and stop neglecting my passport so much and that means that there's another trip in the works. (If you're new around here and want to find out more about my last big trip, the wrap up might be a good place to start.) 

On June 14th I'll be heading to Dallas for a long weekend and from there I have a one way ticket to Belize City. The plan is to spend three months in Central America, hopefully hitting each of the seven countries in that time. There's no real agenda, but I'd like to dive, snorkel, see pretty beaches, explore Mayan temples and ruins, drink yummy coffee, and traipse around some old-world style cities.

Be sure to check back often - it's about to get exciting! 

The list

Way back in July 2009, I posted some of the things I hoped to do or see over the course of my travels. It was a wish list of sorts, certainly not a score sheet (especially seeing as how I had mostly forgotten all about that list and what was on it until a few minutes ago). The only things I didn't do included seeing a football match at Camp Nou (too expensive) and practicing yoga in India (although I did in Thailand and a bunch of other places after my friend the yoga instructor wrote up a practice suited to me). As for everything else...check, check, and check with bonus points for doing things I wasn't sure I'd be able to do at all and for doing things earlier than I expected to!


So, by popular demand (oh, alright - two people asked to see it!), I'm posting the list I mentioned the other day. I'm just typing it up word for word, as I wrote it originally, and not adding anything that I happen to think of now. It's mostly chronological because as I started the list, I went back to the beginning of the trip and worked my way forward.


What I SAW:
* La Sagrada Familia (Barcelona)
* ancient Roman ruins (Barcelona)
* gothic architecture (mainly Barcelona, but Prague too)
* Prague Castle
* Europe untouched by WWII (Prague)
* Acropolis (Athens)
* Hagia Sofia (Istanbul)
* Blue Mosque (Istanbul)
* Great Pyramids (Giza, Egypt)
* world's tallest building (Dubai)
* Taj Mahal (Agra, India)
* world's largest reclining Buddha (Bangkok, Thailand)
* Halong Bay (Vietnam)
* Hanoi Hilton
* Angkor Wat (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
* Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
* orangutans in the wild (Sumatra, Indonesia)
* Great Barrier Reef (Australia)
* Sydney Opera House
* sea turtles and sharks (Australia and Indonesia)
* Southern Alps (south island, New Zealand)


What I DID:
* stayed in lots of strangers' homes
* made friends with those strangers and lots of others
* learned how to navigate
* got better at converting to/from metric system
* rode a camel
* pet tigers
* rode elephants
* took cooking classes in three countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia)
* volunteered at a school for orphans
* learned how to scuba dive
* pet a kangaroo
* had my first overnight plane, train, and bus trips
* tried lots of new foods
* bungee jumped
* experienced heaps of diverse cultures
* met people from 44 different countries
* hiked a glacier


What I THOUGHT or FELT:
* confusion as to what exactly I was doing as I flew into London and BCN (and a city or two after that)
* smallness at the pyramids
* life is a blink of an eye in Athens
* utter chaos upon arrival in Mumbai
* utter peace walking the grounds of the Taj at sunrise
* welcome relief for large cities in Bangkok and KL
* crushing homesickness
* appreciation for what I have
* surprise at my own accomplishments
* gratefulness for the kindness of strangers
* lost, scared, frustrated, angry, annoyance, shame
* happy, excited, thrilled, amazed, proud


That's a hell of a lot crammed into one year, wouldn't you say? I'm pretty sure there are things I've forgotten, too. Does anyone out there have anything to add to my list?