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July 10, 2004

My new TravelWeb URL
Continue reading "My new TravelWeb URL"

Posted by Hector at 05:03 PM
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May 11, 2004

EGYPT

The land of pharaohs and temples.

Continue reading "EGYPT"

Posted by Hector at 01:11 PM
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April 22, 2004

JORDAN

The desert of the bedouins.

Continue reading "JORDAN"

Posted by Hector at 06:50 PM
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Lebanon

Beirut: From the hell of a war to a fully westernized society.

Continue reading "Lebanon"

Posted by Hector at 05:32 PM
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SYRIA

Click to read about my 2 weeks in Syria

Continue reading "SYRIA"

Posted by Hector at 02:29 PM
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April 04, 2004

Turkey

TURKEY (12th March 2004 - 2nd April 2004)

First stage of the trip: three weeks in Turkey!

Continue reading "Turkey"

Posted by Hector at 07:22 AM
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March 04, 2004

Depature date set!

March the 12th, 2004. That's the date indeed!

Today I booked my one-way ticket to my first destination: Istanbul. I'll be flying there the 12th of March. I found an fairly good priced ticket with Air France, which costed me 170 euros, student card holder discount included.

I know in the first entry of this travel blog I said I was going to go for the OneWorld RTW package, but I've finally decided to buy as I go. I will probably spend one or two thousand euros more on the long run, but it simply feels the right choice. At the end of the day, I'm not taking this trip as a tourist with a planned out schedule, but rather open-minded willing to overtake whatever experience the journey brings in.

See you in Istambul next week!

-HECTOR-
Madrid (Spain), 4th March 2004

Posted by Hector at 05:28 PM
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February 17, 2004

Departure slightly delayed

Hello all,

I just wanted to update the travelogue by saying that, even though I was supposed to departure for my RTW the 30th of January 2004, some minor paper work and bureaucratic issues will delay my trip. Hopefully, it shouldn't take more than a month or so to get sorted out, but when it comes to paper work you really cannot tell for sure.

So that's it. All my trip preparations are done, and as soon as all these minor holdbacks are taken care of, I will grab the first flight to Istambul where my travels will start.

Cheers,

-HECTOR-
Madrid (Spain), 17th february 2004.

Posted by Hector at 10:57 AM
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December 17, 2003

Getting it all ready

Hello there!

First of all I'd like to apologize for any possible grammar mistake hereafter. I'm Spanish and therefore my English is rather faulty :p

Who is this guy called Hector?

Let me introduce myself. My name is Hector Yagüe. I'm a 27 years old male from Madrid (Spain) and this will be my first long travel adventure of my life. I've travelled around before of course, but mostly as a tourist rather than as a backpacker, and for no longer than a month at most. I'm what you could call "the typical twenty-something western guy": I had had a happy and comfortable youth. I've been living at my parent's for most of my life. I went to the university to study business management, and now I'm looking for my "place" in the world.

And how exactly did you come up with the RTW idea?

I guess I should start off by relating how all these crazy plans about circumnavigate the globe begun. To make the whole thing short, I had been working for a while in the typical corporate job. You know the drill: sales reports here, business meetings there, that kind of stuff. It seemed like the beginning of a successful professional career. As a matter of fact, I even got offered a promotion. So there I was, a 27 years old fellow with a promising career ahead...

But the cold truth is that all that crap was boring me beyond sanity. I could predict how tomorrow was going to be just by looking how yesterday had been, and the day before, and the one before that one. Every single day the same routine, the same hamster wheel, the same trade mill. It all became dull and grey quickly. I won't deny that money was good, but you can justify doing something that you don't enjoy for money's sake just for so long, and hell money wasn't even THAT good.

I remember one day having a coffee with an old friend of mine, and while he was speaking about something, I went totally mind-absent picturing myself escaping away to some remote places living some wild adventures... and the spark of a RTW trip suddenly lightened up within me...

But I'm digressing away the point here. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there HAD to be something better out there, something more fulfilling than a rat race in order to achieve some "social success". It felt like I was living my life for a system rather than for myself.

So not only I declined the promotion, but I left the job (and probably the corporate career) altogether two months ago. From now on, I've decided that I won't dedicate my life to something that I don't really like. And, since I decided to start it all from scratch, a trip around the world seemed like a good starting point. I'm not sure what I'm searching for with this journey, or how long will it last, or if I will find whatever I'm after, but what I DO know is this will be a life time experience that will remain deep in my heart till the last of my days, and that's a good enough reward.

By now I've probably bored the hell out of you with my philosophical struggles, so I think I better stick to the travel log itself :)

Preparations

Well, there's barely one month left for my departure deadline at the end of January 2004. I have spent the last couple of months getting it all ready:

- Vaccinations: I've taken them all. Japanese Encephalities, Hepatities A and B, Rabbies, Yellow Fever, Typhoides, Tetanus, Diphteria, Meningities, Polio, Rubella, Malaria pills and whatnot. Some of them need two and even three doses. Overall, it's been over 15 fixes ouch! I got vacc'd against everything because since I will keep my travel route entirely flexible, I won't know before hand what diseases should I be prepared for.

- International driving license: Basically just a 10 euros tax at your local government driving office. Not sure what I want this for, but it doesn't hurt.

- International Student Card (ISIC): They say it's useful to get some minor discounts here and there on some museums, rail tickets, etc. The problem is that it's been few years I haven't been a student, and I'm over the age limit for the Youth Card (26), so I had to ask a friend of mine who works in an English teaching school to make a fake enrolling application form so I could demand my own ISIC.

- Renewing documents: passport, debit and credit card. Since I didn't know how long my travels will take, I didn't want to risk them expiring mid-trip. I didn't bother with traveller's checks. From what I've read, everyone says they are most unnecessary as long as you got debit and credit cards.

- Browsing around the internet: This is BY FAR what has taken the longest. There's just so much to learn, so much to be aware of when planning a RTW. Plus I've never been the adventure type of guy, so I really had some heavy researching job to do. I found the best information tools being backpacking-specialized internet forums and reading other people's travel logs on the net. I strongly advice the Boots'n'all forums (www.bootsnall.com ) and the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forums (www.lonelyplanet.com); there's plenty of useful info bits in there shared by other travellers.

- Dessigning the route: This one's been a toughy one. The world is too wide and filled with too many wonders to try to visit/experience it all in just one trip, plus there's the budget issue too! Basically, what I did is spotting out in the globe (after some heavy internet research) the places I'd love to visit, and joining them up in a west-to-east lineal route. Originally, my plan is something like this:


The plan!

1) Starting in Spain (home country)
2) Fly to Istambul
3) Overland all the way down the oriental mediterranean coast through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and finally Egypt.
4) Fly to Tanzania, enroll in a safari and relax a bit at Zanzibar's beaches.
5) Fly to India and explore it for a month or so. Also I will take a short side-trip into Neppal for some breathtaking mountain trekking.
6) Overland around the south-east asian countries (Thayland, Cambodya, Laos and Vietman).
7) Fly to Sidney and backpart along the east coast. From there I'll jump into New Zeland.
8) Enroll a private cruise yatch towards some Pacific Island paradise such as Samoa or Cook Islands and relax about for few weeks on a hammock.
9) Fly to Peru and re-discover the land of the Incs.
10) Do some overland around south and center America (Brasil, Mexico, whatever). This stage is so far away that I still haven't planned much about it.
11) Fly back to Spain, probably worn out and totally penniless, but with my heart filled up with extraordinary memories.

All in all, I calculated it to last a full year, but the total duration was not my main concern. At the end of the day I don't really have any job, studies or responsibilities waiting for me back home. I'm mostly bound by my -tight- budget. Twenty thousand euros is my very limit (it's what I got from selling my beautiful Alfa Romeo car and a whole year of saving ups). From what I've read in different forums, that should be enough for my journey as long as I'm disciplined with my budget (meaning sleeping in cheap hostels and forgetting about restaurants, night clubs, expensive events, etc). I wouldn't mind to work occasionally for few months somewhere mid-trip if my funds wear thin too fast, but I wouldn't like to miss part of the fun because of the economic matter.

Stuff that still needs to get sorted out

- Two remaining points to sort out: I still got two main points I'm struggling throught: travel insurance and the flight tickets. The travel insurance issue is something that has caught me totally by surprise. A decent world-wide coverage policy sums up to 500 euros for a year, which is another dent in my already unhealthy budget. I'm still trying to find a cheap backpackers-based insurance that offers a reasonably good coverage. It's very important to have an insurance because you never know when shit might hit the fan. Imagine you brake your leg mountain-trekking in Neppal: just the rescue mission (helicopter and such) can mount up to 100.000 dollars, so if you ain't insured you will be in deep financial troubles for years.

As far as the flight tickets goes, I'm torn between two options: either buy a RTW ticket package from OneWorld or StarAlliance, or buy the tickets on-the-go. Let me explain what those RTW ticket packages are: basically, either of those two companies (which are nothing but a bunch of airlines allied together) provide you with a set route with a number of stop-overs for a set price. For example: here in Europe, StarAlliance allows you to choose a number of available destinations around the world for 2500 euros with a 30000 miles total cap. So, you can join up as many destinations as you want as long as the total flying distance doesn't surpass 30000 miles (which is way enough to circumnavigate the globe). OneWorld in the other hand bases its fares depending on how many continents you visit, with as many as four stop-overs per continent. In London, you can buy a 4 continents OneWorld package for 2000 euros. So, if I give up on Tanzania (which would mean adding another whole continent to the fee), I could fly around the world for as little as 2000 euros. That's really affordable in my opinion.

So, where's the catch in those RTW ticket packages? you OUGHT to set the route and the flight dates at the beginning of the trip. Drawback? you give up on one of the most important points: flexibility. Let's not forget that when you're involved in such a large scale trip as a one-year long RTW, you can't really tell where exactly you'll be in 6 months ahead, or how long you'll want to stay in each destination. Mind you, you DO can re-issue your tickets mid-trip, but that costs 100 dollars each time, which adds up pretty fast if you keep changing your plans. Advantage of these packages? they probably cost half the price than if you bought individual one-way tickets as you go. Buying up to 10 individual plane tickets on-the-go could easily hit the 5000 dollars mark, and that's not particularly cheap in my book.

Basically, it's a trade off: Flexibility vs. Budget. I wish I had 25 or 30 thousand euros in stead of 20 so I could just say "screw it!" and buy the tickets as I go without risking running out of funds. I guess I will end up taking the OneWorld deal and see how it goes. And, like I said, if I got to work few months somewhere along the trip to refresh a lil'bit my wallet, so be it. No big deal. I'll take it as one more experience to learn from :)


Can't believe I'm doing this...

Well, that's mostly it. As you can see I've been pretty busy the last two months getting ready for my departure. I have not been this excited since... years! Last time I remember being this excited was in 1998 when I decided to take a brake from the university (It was a similar situation than now: everyday boring and dull routine was devouring me inside out) to spend some time in London just for the hell of it. I ended up staying there two years and they were the most amusing two years of my life. So now I guess it's time for me to embark in another adventurous project to get the spark back in my life...

...And it's only one month away. I can't belive I'm doing this. God, I just can't wait!

I will post the next episode of my chronicles around the world once I'm on the road, probably somewhere along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea.

Wish me luck!


-HECTOR-
Madrid (Spain), December 17th 2003

Posted by Hector at 10:41 AM
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October 30, 2003

What do you do when...

What do you do when you've lost any sense of direction in your life?

What do you do when your job bores you beyond sanity?

What do you do when the most exciting event of the week has been getting a $60 parking penalty fee?

What do you do when, in your mid 20s, you can predict how your next day will be by looking how yesterday had been, and the day before yesterday, and the one before that?

What do you do when...

Aaaahhh to hell with it! To sum it up: I quit it all, dried out my bank account, and have gone berserker planning a one-year-long journey around the world! I needed a 180° turn in my life, and a RTW seemed like a good way to start.

So, here we go...

Posted by Hector at 10:57 AM
View/Add Comments (0) | Category: Prologue
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