Beauabram’s Travels

Trains, planes and rickshaws

In my travels, I have pretty much taken every mode of transportation available. As I sit here, days away from my biggest, baddest adventure to date, I am reminded of past trips—Central America, Mexico, and East and West Europe—and how I managed to travel in and around the countries there in. So, this entry is a look back on to my favorite, and least favorite, types of moving about.

Planes—This is the most obvious, but shouldn’t be left off, as it is the way I cover my biggest distances. I have not sat down and thought about how many hours and miles I have flown in my life, and I don’t want to. My longest flights to date have been to London and back, at around nine to ten hours—this of course will pale in comparison to my upcoming LAX to Sydney flight, clocking in at around fifteen hours as I traverse the Pacific Ocean. However, this distance will survive only a few short months, as my upcoming, Tokyo to London to Nairobi will surely not only blow the LAX to Sydney record away, but basically just blow, I think its 24 hours of flying out of 28. So, pre packaged meals, cramped bathrooms, fat wheezy flying companions overflowing from their coach seats onto mine, mind numbing hours of TV episodes of Two and a Half Men and movies like The Wedding Date re playing endlessly through the long, usually crying baby filled hours as my ass slowly conforms to the thousands of previous occupant’s butt contours as they flew the same airspace on these gigantic jet propelled aluminum alloy tubes hurtling through the high altitude atmosphere. This is how I get to where I am going, but once I’m there, the options of traveling the shorter distances begin to vary, as have my experiences using them.

Water travel (Boats, ferries, skiffs, kayaks, canoes sailboats, paddle boats, surfboards)

Ah, the allure of the water. Whether the body in question is the sea, a lake, a river or just an underground cenote, water has such a powerful and wonderful draw to us bipedal omnivores. Personally, I cant get enough of it, and try and spend as much time around it and in it as possible, in fact, a little thing I am trying to do in life is to pee in as many bodies of water as possible, which will now warrant its own mini outline;

a) The Pacific (Cali. Nicaragua and Costa Rica)
b) The Gulf of Mexico
c) The Caribbean (Mexico, Belize and Honduras)
d) The Mediterranean
e) The Adriatic
f) The Atlantic
g) South Pacific (Bondi Beach, Sydney)

Anyways, I plan to add to this Waters I’ve Peed In List many times over during the next twelve months, so, rest assured, world, there will be a whole lot more of my pee floating around in the world’s waters—stay tuned.

On the road (Trains, buses, taxis, rented cars)

Traveling within a country takes a bit of patience, getting there is the easy part they say, moving about is a little harder. Of course, the more developed the country, the easier it is to travel around it. Places in Western Europe are a snap—get on a train and take a nap ‘til you get there. But, if you are in, say, Nicaragua, where 40% of the country’s roads aren’t paved, then it becomes an adventure. One such Nica adventure came as me and my old buddy Max were trying to make it from San Juan del Sur, a developed town on the Pacific coast, to Propoyo beach, about 40 miles south west. This of course took 4 hours by via a rickety old yellow school bus (the preferred form of travel in C. America, by the by) and as they call these things chicken buses, it would have only been right to be sitting next to an ancient creased Nica man with a black trash bag full of peeping, little yellow, yes you guessed it, chickens. Classic.

As for the other modes, taxis are always a hair raising experience and it doesn’t matter if you’re taking one back from the Sydney Opera House, or trying to get to the National Airport in Panama City, either way, you are handing you life to a guy who NEVER speaks English and who only occasional follows traffic guidelines, of course, in Sydney there are SEATS in the taxi instead of trash bags over old metal coils, but who is keeping track?

Other Everything from go karts to push carts; from rickshaws to lorries, from elephants to just plain ol’ walking there will always be some form of transport available, efficiency be damned sometimes its just fun to do as the locals do.

Anyways, I am in Sydney now, enjoying the last of my First-world travel until I get to Europe, so the next 4 months or so will provide numerous experiences for me as the world of travel always does. Until that time…..

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.