Free Advice Friday - Traveling with your Significant Other

Celebrating Valentine’s Day while traveling with your significant other reminds us how important it is to treat each other as loved ones and not just traveling buddies.  It’s not easy spending every living moment with each other and still remembering to be romantic occasionally.  Traveling as a couple will test the strength of your relationship, something I suggest doing before you venture out on a 3 or more month journey.

Having a significant other, or spouse and living at home can be a challenge in itself, but that doesn’t even begin to compare to traveling with someone.  For those that have not done long-term travel, it may seem like an extended vacation, but it’s not.  It’s a new lifestyle, that still requires some planning, effort and patience.  Articles often tout the many benefits of traveling solo, and there is good reason to do so.  You can go where you want, when you want, how you want.  Basically, the same benefits of being single.  However, you can’t easily share those experiences.  Photos can’t even begin to capture what we see with the naked eye, the goosebumps felt on our arms or the sound of wind or animals surrounding us.  I always think of the movie “Into the Wild” when I imagine traveling alone.  Everyone has their own preferences, but I confidently know, mine is to travel with Aracely.

1. Don’t Test a Relationship On the Road

This is not the place to test your compatibility. Be confident of your relationship, before planning your long-term travels with them.

2. Discuss Travel Preferences

If one of you enjoys traveling in local buses and broken down roads in order to have a local experience, make sure the other does too.  Are you an adventurer seeking high peak climbs or would you prefer to relax on a beach.  Can you tolerate a communal dorm room, or you do prefer your privacy?  Are you willing to experiment with food?  This is probably one of the most important topics to spend time discussing.  You may not have the same desires, but you have to come to a compromise before departing from home.

3. Budget & Spending Behaviors

Agree on what you each intend to spend and stick to it!  Even in your stable lives in suburbia, one of the top reasons for divorce is financial disagreements.  Understand how your desire to see certain places or do specific activities will impact your budget.  I like to spend money on beer, Aracely would rather enjoy a nice meal, but we both are okay with it.

4. Inviting Friends & Family

Often when traveling long-term a friend offers to join you, or maybe even a Mother-in-Law!  Expect to receive a few self-invites and know whether or not you have agreed to have company.  Granted, a Mother-in-Law may not have been discussed.  When traveling with friends or family the travel decisions, sleeping arrangements and transportation arrangements all become more difficult.

5. Dedicated Together Time

Your probably wondering, “Don’t we have together time all the time?”  My answer is, “Not the kind of together time I am referring to.”  Much of our time is spent planning, eating, traveling and unfortunately waking up early.  I know, I didn’t think I would have to wake up early either, but most buses and adventure activities start early in the morning.  As travel bloggers and on-line consultants, whenever we get free time, we do work.  In order to stay lovers and not just travel buddies, dedicate some personal time with each other, just as you might do at home.

As I mentioned in the opening of this article, it’s important to know when to be a travel buddy and when to be a lover.  It’s easy to forget the second role, always getting caught up in the busy planning and traveling chores.  It shouldn’t just be Valentine’s Day when we decide to enjoy a nice dinner and hit the sack early, but Valentine’s Day can be a reminder to do that.  It’s not only more difficult because we are often busy, but it’s a challenge because we are together constantly.  There isn’t much escaping for some personal time, especially in our case.  As we travel in Latin America, I am entirely dependent on Aracely’s Spanish speaking skills.  The only escape I can do is walk around the block.
You will be together constantly with your significant other while traveling, but not the kind of together that brought you together.

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F*#king Vegas

This dude may be the best Vegas Tour Guide I have ever Seen!

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Robbed in Guatemala City

I have done a lot of traveling.  I am a travel-holic.  When I had a website in the late 90's, I used to post excerpts from my travel diaries.  Lo and behold, I found those articles this last week and from time-to-time, I am going to post random travel stories that I have experienced throughout the years.  I hope you enjoy and feel free to comment.  

ROBBED IN GUATEMALA

Guatemala City is not the most beautiful city in the world, nor is it the friendliest or cleanest, but there are a few sights to see.  Most tourists do a short stop in G.C. before moving on to Lake Atitlan, Antigua, and the Mayan ruins.  That was my plan.  After spending just two days in the capital city, I decided I would take off to Antigua and then on to Lake Atitlan.  I ran into a small problem though.  While trying to get to the bus station in Guatemala City, I was robbed.  This wasn't just a little mugging, but a full blown robbery.  The only other time I experienced something like this was in Brazil (That story will be told later).  
 
It was about a twenty minute walk to the corner of 18th Calle and 10th Avenida, where several other backpackers had told me that buses bound for Antigua (my next destination) were to be found.  Another guy from the hotel was leaving that day too so we decided to walk together and take the same bus.  It was 5:30 AM and the streets were nearly deserted.  For once, I actually felt safe walking the streets of G.C.  During the day and at night, there was an aura of danger throughout the city.  Gangs of young guys and boys would walk around and I saw them threaten several people, but so far I had avoided them.   About 10 minutes into the walk, a young man of about 20 started following us, but he disappeared when we reached the spot where the buses were sitting.  

The buses were all sitting in a line and as we approached the third bus, the driver called out "Antigua" to us.  I felt relieved that I would make it out of Guatemala City without incident, something that many travelers cannot say.  Even the guy from the hotel, an Aussie named Derek, told me that he was mugged his first day in G.C. and lost his wallet and watch.  The driver took my large bag and tossed it up to a kid on the top of the bus and I climbed on the bus, holding my smaller backpacker.  

The bus was mostly full, and we were making our way towards the back, when the driver´s assistant met us half way up the aisle and told us to sit here, on either side. Slightly odd, but these guys were always telling me to sit down, so with a shrug we began to perch ourselves on the edge of the two benches. Then he told us to put our bags up on the rack. This as well was odd, but not unheard of. On crowded buses I had often been asked to put my bag up over my head. Vanessa, clever girl, held on to hers. I, meanwhile, acquiesced. After all, I had done it before, and if you just keep one eye on it all the time it is relatively safe (attentive readers will begin to perceive that hubris and complacency had begun to set in after so many uneventful trips). 

At this point I already think the bus attendant is behaving a little bit strangely. I can distinctly remember watching him and thinking, "He is odd, I should keep an eye on him." Then he does something that should beyond any doubt have set off screaming alarms in my head. Having placed my bag on the overhead rack, he pushes it back a little bit, as if just tucking it away, muttering soothing words the equivalent of "Here, just like that," until it is a good foot or two behind me. It remains inexplicable to me why I did not at this point stand up, tell him to fuck off, and take my bag back. I swear to God, I think the guy had me hypnotized. I can remember looking at him, and thinking "OK, now this guy is really acting weird," but still I failed to react. 

Finally, he made eye contact with both of us. Backing ever so slowly towards the front of the bus, saying "You two just sit there and relax, we will be on our way in five minutes." I´m convinced he even used his index fingers, pointing first at our eyes and then waving them slowly in to point at his own, directing our attention to his face. 

I believe, although I can´t honestly be sure, that at this point he turns away and the bus begins slowly to roll. Contact broken, I glance back for my bag and in the same moment that I see it is gone I catch a glimpse of the emergency exit at the back of the bus closing. Screaming bloody murder, I charge to the back of the bus and out the back. Scanning the crowd ahead, I run a few paces, stopping when I see no sign of my bag. At this point Vanessa hollers¨"There!" from the back of the bus, and turning around I see some guy with my bag, not four paces to the side of the bus, climbing into a cab. 

Still hollering, I give chase, and I think I´ve got him when I reach the cab. Surely hearing my screams the cabbie will stop. But no, as I reach the open driver´s window he screeches forward, accelerating rapidly. I keep pace for a handful of steps, actually putting my right hand in the driver´s window and grasping the edge of the door as if I´m going to singlehandedly hold back this cab. A few more bounding paces, still accelerating with screeching tires, and I´m being carried forward by the car rather than my own steam. Finally, either just in time or a moment too late depending on which side you look at it from, I realise the folly of this plan. Letting go, I quickly discover that my feet alone are not up to the pace, and Í go down, sliding on my side and cracking my skull on the grimy, encrusted asphalt. 
That´s about it. Not really having alternatives, I climb back on the bus, at least intending to make good my escape from this evil city. The bus attendant, of course, was not the bus attendant, and had scuppered out the front as soon as he turned away from us. 

To summarize my losses: 

• One iPod (no more music this trip) 
• One digital camera 
• 250 odd pictures, 150 of which are gone forever (Steph, don´t trash my pictures). Many would have adorned the pages of this blog. I can now say with complete confidence that these were among the best images ever captured through a lens, exquisite in their composition and unbearably beautiful. Their loss is, I venture to say, the cruelest of this tragedy. 
• 768 Megs of compact flash memory, 512 of which wasn´t even mine (I´ll be buying you a replacement Phil - do you know the specs?) 
• 1000Q cash (perhaps $165 CAD) 
• One credit card and two bank cards, easily cancelled. 
• One passport (this is proving a nightmare to replace. I have to go back into the belly of the beast, twice, to get the job done) 
• Birth certificate, driver´s license, medicare card (I really hope they haven´t figured out identity theft here) 
• Various books and miscellaneous items 
• Those damned clip-on sunglasses 
• About three square inches of skin from my shoulder and elbow, liberally replaced with oily ground in grit and grime. Vanessa is proving to be a miraculous nurse, and with no sign of infection it appears I may keep the arm. 
• A significant amount of pride, and good riddance. I spent most of the last twenty-four hours berating myself for being so stupid as to fall for such a pathetic ruse. In the end, I almost think having been taken in bothers me more than the actual losses. 

This, combined with a couple other incidents this year, has me convinced that God is trying to tell me something. Perhaps that I am not supposed to have expensive things, at least not things I can´t afford to lose (and what other definition of expensive could there be). 

As if to drive the point home, having arrived in Antigua and signed up for Spanish classes we were invited to participate in the creation of an Alfombra. For the uninitiated, an Alfombra is an extremely intricate, multi-coloured image that Antiguans at this time of year like to make on their streets (a picture would help here. too bad huh?). Painstakingly put together by packing many different layers of coloured sawdust into wooden stencils, while continuously watering the work-in-progress so it doesn´t blow away, a reasonably complicated Alfombra takes a team of some twenty to thirty people 8 hours of continuous labour, hunched over on their knees on the cobblestones, to make. It is generally timed to be completed perhaps half an hour to an hour before a religious parade comes through and stomps the thing into oblivion. 

A concept not unlike the Buddhist Mandalas, created by monks over a course of days by dropping individual grains of coloured sand until a spectacularly complex illustration of the meaning of life, the universe and everything is created, at which point they stand up and grab their brooms. 

Now I´m not thick. I get it. All things are transitory. So as I sat there contemplating the Alfombra and its impending doom, and considered my iPod, my camera, my pictures, my sunglasses, I thought to myself, "OK, sure, but I don´t give a DAMN about this stupid sawdust."

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Terrifying Tuesday - New Years in Japan


This is what you would be seeing this time of year in Oga, Japan.  There, Namahage demons run throughout the town on New Year's Eve.  There are also plenty statues, such as the huge ones above, that remind people of the demon presence. 
 
The Namahage Festival consists of dancers dressed as the demons in straw skirts with cooking knives, mops, pails and other household items--who scare children into their houses.  While the parents are calming down there traumatized children, the demons are appeased with rice cakes and sake which, if accepted, will bring good luck on the town for the coming year. Oga's celebration is the most famous, but New Year's Eve Namahage celebrations take place all over Japan.

Sounds to me like a Cross between Halloween and New Year's Eve.  I would be game, although Sake isn't exactly my thing...

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New Year's Eve in Mexico City, AKA Chilangolandia

I think it was my second year living in Mexico--I was invited by some friends to go to D.F. (Mexico City for you who are not familiar with the Local Lingo in Mexico) for New Year's Eve.  They promised me it would be the best New Year's Eve I have ever had.  I was skeptical since I have spent New Year's Eve in New Orleans, Las Vegas and Rio de Janiero.  I thought "No Way it will be better than Rio". 

Well, to make a long story short, It wasn't better than Rio.  As a matter of fact it wasn't better than New Year Eve's spent in New Orleans, Vegas, Austin or even Monterrey, but it did trump New Year's Eves spent in Des Moines, Ames and Uvalde, Texas. 

So, in the most old-fashioned Letterman-style countdown, here are the Top Ten Reasons Why Everybody Should Welcome the New Year in Mexico City.

1. You can ice-skate in the middle of the Zócalo. For free.
2. You can buy almost anything in Mexico City, and I mean ANYTHING!
3. There are virtually no illegal Mexicans there (There are Illegal Hondurans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, etc)
4. It really is a huge party, much like Mardi Gras
5. You can say “Happy New Year!” a full 2 hours before they do so in California
6. Mexican churches still know how to protect their sanctity
7. You can swear every other minute and no one cares. 
8. Chilangos beat the hell out of the English when it comes to snack foods
9. You can have chilaquiles for breakfast. Everyday. Everywhere
and last, but not least:
10. Street taco makers will do anything to protect your health

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

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