The internet I’m on is like sort of working right now, shockingly. So here’s some pictures.

So I think things are winding down on this blog (look don’t worry people, you can follow me at whyteachingbrattysevenyearoldsinspainsuckstoday.tumblr.com). So anyways, it’s time to rank the mass transit systems I’ve ridden. LETS DO THIS.

Santiago Metro

The South Americans got it right. Besides putting a station right next to my apartment (thanks guys), Santiago’s subways ran like every 30 seconds during rush hour. Like they ran so often that if I saw a train approaching and I was running late, I didn’t even run after them, because by the time I got down there, there would be another train right after. Rides cost 75 cents. On some trains, they were all connected so you could walk from one end to the other if you wanted, just for kicks. Food allowed on board, full restaurants and other stores underground. Man, that was the life. It did close at 11, even on weekends, but it didn’t matter because the bus system was also awesome and I like barely ever even paid for it. Add in the fact that if you were sneaky, you could get two people through with one payment, or enter through the exit. Everything automated, and stops with names like “Tobalaba (mine), Einstein, Los Leones, El Golf and Cumming,” and you’re golden. 

Also, no such thing as farecard machines. FACE TO FACE INTERACTION. How nice.

CONS: It was often crowded, but whatever. Trains were fast, sometimes very hot but it ALWAYS worked. ALWAYS. Even when people committed suicide, you rarely lost more than like 5 minutes on that thing. 

NYC Subway 

PROS:

New York Subway is great, also. Thanks for running 24 hours, every day (this might not be true. But I think it is). Tourist-proof. Most of the tourists walk or take a cab or just get lost but there’s so many trains and people that you don’t notice them. Or maybe I was the tourist. But I doubt it. Cheap and it goes pretty much everywhere. Their map is also the most helpful and useful, since it’s laid over an actual map of New York.

CONS: 

Stations smell bad but whatever get over it. Probably a lot of germs on there but my immune system needed practice, anyways. One time, I waited like 35 minutes for a train that never came. I’m going to give it a one-time pass.

Chicago El

PROS: It’s pretty cheap, unless it costs $2.25 per ride, in which case die CTA for making me carry change. It goes most places, is fairly reliable. They have heat lamps that make me feel like a lizard or a chicken nugget when it’s below zero at an outside stop. The buses are pretty easy to use. Transfers seem to be synced up sort of, unless I just got lucky the few times I’ve ridden it. Hard to know for sure.

CONS: They need more places for standing people to hold onto. That whole nonsense around the loop is kind of annoying. Need to take the bus more often than I’d like to.

Washington Metro

PROS:

OK, I hate Metro, but at least it goes pretty much everywhere anyone needs to go, more or less. Also, CARPETED FLOORS AND PADDED SEATS ARE WORTH THE EXTRA $6 you pay for an average roundtrip. Just sayin. ALSO THE ARCHITECTURE. AWESOME. BEAUTIFUL. Also not that many ads, which is totally worth paying more money to preserve some sort of “integrity” or something. Horrible.

CONS:

I feel like I’ve gone through many of these, but the most obvious one is that I have to take out a mortgage to ride it every day. Then, there’s the part where it works much worse than most of the other systems.

London Tube

PROS:

MIND THE GAP, MOTHERFUCKER

Platform 9 3/4

The people on it have English accents, for the most part.

CONS:

I literally emptied my bank account to buy a day pass.

Rome Metro or whatever

PROS:

It took me to the Coliseum

CONS:

The Coliseum was like, a seven minute walk.

Atlanta MARTA

PROS:

You can pretty much sit at any time, because no one rides the thing. There are TVs on most of the trains, which is cool I guess. Also, the farecard machine dispenser things both accept and give-as-change the Sacajawea golden dollar, which is AWESOME.

CONS:

It goes NOWHERE and is pretty useless. Train waits are really long. I think Atlanta has forgotten MARTA exists. It sucks.

Buenos Aires Subte

PROS:

It is one of the only places in Buenos Aires where you can get coins without having to take a loss on the exchange. It’s called “subte,” which is pretty cool.

CONS:

It is one of the only places in Buenos Aires where you actually need to use coins. It is really, really crowded, really, really hot and not a great place to go with a bunch of bags. It moves slow and doesn’t really go anywhere useful. Lots of pickpockets.

Baltimore Light Rail

PROS: It makes Baltimore seem like a real city worth visiting, with a subway. It goes relatively close to Camden Yards.

CONS: It is not a subway, it is all above ground. Trains come every 30 minutes, which is not convenient. Trains maybe stop for things because they are above ground. I forget if they do this, it has been years since I rode it.

Boston T

PROS: They have a stop called “Wonderland,” which is the name of a cool bar in DC and reminded me to go there when I got home.

CONS: Only Boston would have a farecard called a “Charlie Card.” Idiots. People from Boston ride on the T. Sometimes tough to tell if the person wearing the Redsox hat is a harmless bandwagoning moron or someone from Good Will Hunting who will beat me up if I look at them the wrong way. They don’t tell you when a train is coming until a train is imminent, when a robot says “A train is approaching.” But you can see the train, so it’s really not helpful. They tell you about construction when you’re one stop away from the construction and you’ll have to take various shuttles to get anywhere when you’re on a very tight schedule. You’ll miss your plane. It takes 40 minutes to get to the AIRPORT after you’ve gotten off at the “airport” stop. They make you buy farecards in $5 increments even if you don’t need them.

Desolation in Puerto Natales, Chile

Better times on the motorcycle

We were going to Bolivia. It wasn’t necessarily part of our original plan, but we’d never really had an original plan. I was up for anything since I had been in South America for four months already. After a comparatively tranquil first three months studying in Chile, the last few weeks had been a blur of action and travel. My 21^st birthday spent sleeping on a beach in Uruguay, 20 hour bus rides to Iguazu Falls in northern Argentina - nights spent in airports, hostels of varying quality and trendy nightclubs in Buenos Aires. A week earlier I had been in the cosmopolitan Argentine capital, but two flights and a bitterly cold, 25-hour bus ride later, I was somehow in Cuzco, Peru. We had already conquered Macchu Picchu, and now it was time to head to South America’s poorest country. I guess staying in a cockroach-and-rooster-infested hostel-slash-convenience-store wasn’t enough for me, I needed more adventure.

This is the story of my failed attempts to operate several vehicles within the space of about an hour. It’s the story of how I came to love Bolivia. It’s maybe a warning to roadside motorcycle rental agencies run by teenage boys and old fishermen. My mother may have forced me to get an international cell phone to keep tabs on me, but that didn’t mean I had to be safe.

So Bolivia it was – Jackie, whom I’d met during my study abroad program, wasn’t thrilled about the $150 we’d have to pay at the border, but the promise of jeep tours across salt flats and prison tours and biking down the world’s most dangerous road had us tempted. The alternative was far less appealing, for me at least. The ever-present threat of a transportation strike had threatened to keep us in Cuzco for the foreseeable future. Someone is always threatening to go on strike in Peru, but this time, we were assured, it was for real. I had less than two weeks left in South America until I was scheduled to go home, so I didn’t want to waste any time. Jackie was going back to Peru to stay with some extended family and teach English after I left, so she wasn’t worried that we had only caught a few highlights of Peru before moving on.

Our preparations for our next move were about par for the course of our trip – we had none. We barely caught the last bus out of Cuzco – after returning from Macchu Picchu, Jackie packed our things while I bought some water, snacks and some warm clothing for the bus ride. We grabbed a cab from our hostel to the bus terminal and caught the bus just a few minutes before it left. We were told the ride to Puno, a city on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca, was supposed to be about eight hours. It was then another hour or two to Copacabana on the Bolivian side of the lake. By this time, we were bus veterans – the Peruvian buses weren’t quite as cushy as the Argentinean ones; the movies were older and they certainly didn’t offer us champagne or blankets, but we had splurged for semi-cama seating and we were ready to pass out as soon as possible. We arrived in Puno, as planned, at around 3 a.m. We were expecting to get onto a new bus to continue to Copacabana, but someone neglected to tell us we’d have to wait until 7 a.m. to catch that bus – we had to spend four hours shivering in the terminal. Jackie took a huge risk, buying some mystery-meat soup from the bus terminal’s snack shop while I stuck with hot chocolate.

Either the altitude or the soup got to Jackie, because by the time we hit the border, she was definitely sick. We struggled through the process, basically throwing money and documents at the border patrol to get through it as quickly as possible. By the time we got to Copacabana, I quickly flagged a cab and got the nearest hospedaje. Jackie was out for the rest of the day - altitude-sickness pills seemed to help a little. In the meantime, I explored the city, which consisted of a couple dusty roads, about 30 money-changing stalls with construction-paper letters cut out to signal exchange rates. They wouldn’t have been out of a place in a kindergarten class. I had already walked along the lake and had trucha – lake trout, the town’s specialty. It was certainly made-to-order – I watched as a fisherman caught my fish and the chola (a mestizo Bolivian woman) who owned the kiosk cooked it. I was thinking about renting a bicycle when I saw a group of students from Alabama who were staying at our hostel.

Showing off my skills

“Want to rent a motorcycle?” one asked me. How could I say refuse? Renting a dangerous motor vehicle that I had no idea how to operate in a very foreign country sounded like a great idea at the time. Our rental “agency” was a single man standing on the shore of Lake Titicaca with several motorcycles next to him. The price was $20 Bolivianos for a half hour, which comes out to roughly $3. There were four of us, three large dirt bikes and one miniature, automatic dirt bike. Unfortunately, I had to ride the small bike, which was like riding a Barbie bicycle when compared to the other bikes. This wasn’t the United States – I’d assume Bolivia has driver’s licenses, but I certainly didn’t need one, and helmets weren’t exactly in the cards. Despite my speed-challenged bike, I had a great time riding along the shore of the lake. It was much easier than I expected, similar to riding a bike - and I didn’t even have to pedal. The rental was a complete success. We even decided to let a fisherman drive us around on his boat for an hour to watch the sunset. I returned to the hostel in a great mood.

“Jackie, tomorrow we have to rent motorcycles,” I said. She was probably half-asleep or too sick to care, but my mind was made up. The next day, we were going to rent motorcycles and then take a boat to see Isla del Sol, the birthplace of the Incan sun god.    

That night, I went out to eat with the Alabamans, and it was the first and only time I had ever been to a restaurant, had the power of the entire city knocked out, and still get my food. The gas stoves were unaffected by the outage, and we ate by candlelight. It was pretty bizarre.

Either the day of sleeping or the medicine helped Jackie, she felt much better the next day. We walked around the town a bit and bought tickets to go to Isla del Sol. We had about 45 minutes until our boat was supposed to leave, just enough time to rent a motorcycle and still make our boat.

“Maybe we shouldn’t rent the motorcycle, I have a feeling something might go wrong,” Jackie told me. I told her it would be fine, I rented one the day before and everything worked out alright. She decided to go along with it. This time, the rental agency was being run by a teenager, he was definitely no older than 15 years old. I was with a girl this time, so there was no way I could rent the Barbie bike again. We decided to share one of the large dirt bikes, which will now be known as a motorcycle, because it had a huge motor and many gears and appeared to be a motorcycle. I think someone who knew about such things could make it go much faster than I made it go. Maybe Travis Pastrana would do a backflip on it. If we’re being technical, it was more of a gravel / sand bike, because it certainly wasn’t a road we were driving on, but it wasn’t mere dirt either. The surface was more of a blend between gravel, sand, trash and broken shards of glass, so I’m going to go with motorcycle. The young Bolivian asked me if I knew how to ride the motorcycle. I told him I absolutely did not know how to ride the motorcycle.

“No problema,” he told me. “Here is the throttle, here is the brake, here is the shifter and here is the clutch.” I was lost somewhere around “shifter.” I know the basic theory behind manual transmissions, but that doesn’t mean I know how to operate one. I told him I was absolutely up to the challenge. It was time to show off my motorcycling skills for Jackie. We hopped on and I miraculously got the motorcycle to move forward without it exploding, and we were off. It was just like riding the Barbie dirt bike, only much faster. I started hitting the shifter and playing with the clutch, and somehow got it into second, then third gear. We were flying. The wind was whipping at my face, Jackie held on for dear life and snapped pictures as we rode – maybe not the best idea, but then again, none of this was really a good idea. Everything was going fine – I decided to teach Jackie how to drive the bike. She almost hit a tree within ten seconds of making it move, so we abandoned that experiment. We still had about ten minutes left. We decided to see how fast we could make it go.

As the trail ended and gave way to the rocky beach, things started getting tougher. I had to keep putting my feet down to keep from falling over, putting my shoes into mud puddles and pushing off rocks. As we started to turn around on a rocky stretch of beach, the inevitable happened. We finally crashed. It happened so quickly, I wasn’t quite sure what had gone wrong. It wasn’t a horrible crash; we just fell off the bike, onto some rocks. I scratched up my legs and chest. I had my wind knocked out. Jackie was also alright for the moment. Unfortunately, our motorcycle wouldn’t start.

Our first crash - notice the great riding surface

We had gone about two miles. I decided to run back for help. I took off my sweatshirt and started to run when I saw our rental agent coming towards me. “El motocicleta no está funcionando!,” I yelled. He told me to hop on the back of his motorcycle - we would go check it out together. This is when things started really going downhill. Somehow, Jackie had managed to get the motorcycle started. She came zooming at us. I saw the next ten seconds in slow-motion. She was out of control - it was so obvious she was going to fall. I think she forgot where the brake was, because I’m pretty sure she never cut the throttle. Then, it finally happened. She hit the dirt right in front of us. The motorcycle hit a rock, and I immediately went after her to make sure she was alright. She was bleeding much worse than I was at this point, but they were still relatively minor cuts on her shins and knees. She was OK. The motorcycle, however, was not. The back wheel was still spinning furiously, the throttle was still on. No less than three pieces of the motorcycle came flying off, including the speedometer, a plastic piece that guarded the wheel, and part of the rearview mirror.

The Bolivian entrepreneur just looked at us and shook his head. It had all been going so well. He got the motorcycle started again, gave it to us and said that we were, under no circumstances, to put the motorcycle in anything higher than first gear. It was the ride of shame. He went to get his father, who had rented me the Barbie bike the day before. They added up the damages, and I feared the worst. They charged us $280 Bolivianos, which is about $40. Considering the damage we did to the motorcycle, I think we got off pretty well.

Hoisting the sail

Any normal person would have given up at this point. We had missed our boat to the island, we were hurt, our wallets were lighter, my pride was bruised. But Copacabana is a very small town – there’s not too much to do. I suggested we rent a sailboat. We walked up to the dock and rented a sailboat from a man sitting there. Calling it a sailboat is a bit generous, it was more of a canoe with a sail attached. He asked if I knew how to sail. I said I had no idea how to sail. “No problema,” he said. He would give us a ten minute tutorial, then we would have an hour with the boat. I learned very little during these ten minutes. But after we were on our own, I managed to successfully get the sail up, and we only glanced off one parked boat on our way into the lake. Sailing was considerably less fun than riding a motorcycle - it was hard work rowing into the wind. After barely moving for 20 minutes, we decided to turn around. As we tried to maneuver back into the dock, we were blown off course. Within a couple minutes, we were hitting the shore, hundreds of feet from the dock.

Jackie’s battle scars

This time, it was Jackie’s turn to run for help. I fought with the shore, pushing an oar into the ground so the wooden bottom wouldn’t break on a rock. She soon returned. The Bolivian entrepreneur just looked at us and shook his head. It had all been going so well. We didn’t rent any more vehicles.

Tikal jungles.

I spent the last 12 days in Guatemala. Monday morning I had an interesting trip back to the United States. This is long and I apologize, but I think it’s interesting.

Bus companies that cover short routes between Guatemala City and neighboring towns stopped service and blockaded roads in demand of a subsidy similar to that given by the government to city buses. - AP

For a bit of background - Guatemala is not a very safe place, and Guatemala City is especially dangerous. Gangs essentially run the country and force bus drivers to pay them a fee for protection. I spoke to one guy who said “They don’t mess around. You miss one day, you get tired of paying, they shoot you.” It seems to be true - there have been dozens of bus drivers killed so far this year, and at least one was killed late last week. To strike back, the bus drivers decided to go on strike Monday morning - the same morning of my flight back to the States.

On this website, the author writes:

I watch as a group of tourists return to their hotel after they missed their 4AM flight. They were held behind a roadblock, there was no way through to the airport. 

Not entirely true. I know at least one person who got through the roadblock - me. Here’s the story.

I was staying in Antigua, a nice colonial city about 35 minutes outside Guatemala City - essentially the antithesis of the city, actually. The kind of place where jewelry boutiques line the cobblestone streets. My flight was scheduled to leave for Miami at 7:35 a.m. I signed up for a tourist shuttle to the airport that was supposed to leave Antigua at 4 a.m. - I would be there in plenty of time. The white minivan was, shockingly, on time. We went all around Antigua picking up passengers, about 12 in total - there was the mother and son from Vancouver, two 20-something English girls, a couple from Colombia and a few other travelers - most of them had a lot of luggage. As we went to pick up the final passengers, a Guatemalan guy ran out of one of the hotels and stopped our driver to have a very grim-looking conversation. Here’s what he told us:

There’s a problem with getting to the airport. I don’t think we’ll be able to get there. The bus drivers have gone on strike and blocked the entrances to the city. We can either turn around now, or it’s really early and there shouldn’t be much traffic yet. We can try another entrance to the city and maybe you can walk past the protest and get a taxi on the other side. Business should be running as normal on the other side.

I knew this was probably not something to mess with. But I really did need to get home for Tuesday, and surprisingly everyone else on the bus naively wanted to try to go. So we decided to continue on. 

There was a lot of nervousness in the bus at this time - about ten minutes into the ride, the bus driver turned on the radio. Here’s what we heard - how appropriate.

Anyways, the radio was also pretty ominous after that - people were calling in saying to take the day off of work, there was definitely “no paso.” 

We get to about 16 km from the airport, and there are cars stopped and turned around. People are walking down the side of the road. This was not good. It was the end of the line. A 1970s school bus painted like a rooster was parked across all lanes. Our driver told us we could go back to Antigua or try to continue on foot. He guessed we could get a cab pretty easily on the other side. Everyone decided to continue. “Buena suerte” was the last thing he said to us as he drove away.

********

I decided I didn’t want to deal with the rest of the people on the bus - none of whom I knew, and none of whom spoke Spanish (except the Colombians, who were pretty annoying), so I continued by myself. I only had a normal school backpack and another really small bag. It was about 4:30 at this point and still pitch black. I had to suck in to squeeze past two buses on foot. The other side was complete chaos. Cars were pointing every direction, hundreds of people were standing around and others were trying to hitch rides on the backs of motorcycles. I kept walking along the highway, towards the exit ramp for Guatemala City. At the top of the ramp, someone shouted at me “TAXI!” He was definitely not a taxi driver, just an opportunistic entrepreneur. I started explaining to him that I needed to get to the airport and I was willing to walk if he got me closer to it.

“There’s no way you’re making it man, go home,” he said. I lied and told him I had six hours til my flight and I was going to start walking anyways, and was there any way he could help me. He had an internal struggle. “Shit, I don’t know man. Shit, we’ll never make it.” I told him I was willing to just go as far as we were able to. “150 Quetzales (About $20),” he said. “No matter how far we go. If it’s around the corner, that’s it.” I was out of options. I hopped in his car.

I learned he had lived in Long Island, NY for a year - he was a pretty young guy, maybe 26 and looked pretty strong. We got on the highway, and IMMEDIATELY came to another roadblock. Luckily, he knew another possible way - through some of the back streets near his neighborhood. We made a U-Turn … against oncoming traffic on a three lane highway. Cars were literally going everywhere, honking and hoping we wouldn’t hit anyone were the only rules of the road. As we went through his neighborhood, things kind of devolved. It seemed we were going further from the city. I was glad the window was open and the door unlocked. I was ready to jump out and run if things came to that. He seemed trustworthy, but you never really know. Finally, we came to another bus parked in the middle of the road. This was it - it was time to continue on foot. “I’m really sorry man. I’m so sorry. Good luck. Good luck,” he told me. I gave him 200Q and was left with just 100Q. It was now about 5:15 a.m. Aren’t you supposed to be at the airport about a two hours before the flight? Oh well. I was still in a suburb of the city and 10km from the airport.

As I started walking, the sun started coming up. Thankfully I wouldn’t have to do this in the dark anymore, which made me slightly more confident. I continually asked people if I was going the correct way and I kept being told it was dangerous for me to be out and that it was very far away. But what could I do at this point? I was in some random part of Guatemala with no one and very little money. Even if I got the airport sometime in the afternoon, I could just sit there or try to get on another flight.

After another 15 minutes of walking, I flagged down a taxi. Cars seemed to be moving OK and I thought I could get a little further, maybe some advice. I was very lucky the taxi driver turned out to be Rudy. I’ll take you to a place you can walk for $40 he told me. I told him I only had about $12 and he said “well that’s like $40 for me. Get in.” 

Rudy also thought I was crazy, and that’s probably saying something. Rudy is in his late 50s and spent 21 years living in Miami as a truck driver. He was one year from getting his US citizenship when he got into a fight with a Cuban man, was sent to jail for 3 months and, after his probation, deported back to Guatemala. “One year,” he told me. “One year and then the ICE showed up to my house. They messed me up good man. I lost everything.” Rudy had a prison tattoo on his hand and a propensity for smoking marijuana. He made me promise him to send him back rolling papers from the United States because they’re extremely expensive in Guatemala, if you can find them at all. I told him if he got me to the airport, I’d send him a lifetime’s supply. He was the kind of older-adult who listens to Akon remixes in his free time. Like this one.

After getting in the car, Rudy immediately decided we should go get some juice. He had his OJ with two eggs and tomato in it, I had mine plain. He knew the juice lady and we got it for free. As we zoomed through his town, it was clear Rudy knew what he was doing. We did not slow down at a single intersection, he instead sped up and blared the horn. They drive pretty crazy in Guatemala and I thought I had grown used to how they drive, but this was pretty terrifying. 

We left town, and headed for … a landfill of sorts. Dust kicked up as we went over trash-surrounded hills. We turned the corner, only to find a stuck pick up truck. “This is the problem with my people, they don’t got no good tires,” Rudy said. The pickup couldn’t make it up the hill facing us - and it was pretty clear why. The hill was steep and dusty - and at the bottom was … water. A lot of water. The only way to describe it was the entire road had at least a foot and a half of water on it, for about 40 feet. It was literally a standing river. It wasn’t something I could have predicted a tiny white taxi would be able to drive through. It really wasn’t something that I would have tried to drive a truck through. It was a river. But Rudy got us through it, somehow. As we went up the hill on the other side, it was time for another stop. Rudy had to pee. He stopped the car and peed on the side of the road. As he got back in, he told me we were in this together.

“I like you man, you’re my friend. You ever come back to Guatemala and you have a friend. I’ll show you around. I’ll get you to the airport. If you pay me 250Q, I’ll get you to the airport no matter what,” he said. I decided that was reasonable … we just had to make a stop at an ATM. It was now 6:30 and my flight was in about an hour.

Luckily, things were starting to look up. We were moving pretty well, and the only roadblock we encountered, Rudy was able to find a back road around it. He asked me if I wanted to smoke with him and if we had time. I told him I thought it’d be better if we tried to catch my flight. Rudy told me to put my phone number in his phone and he’d give me his number and address, so I could mail him rolling papers. This was a fast-budding friendship. I saw a sign for the airport. We were in the city. I also saw people trying to get out of the city.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get home,” Rudy said. It was time to stop at the ATM. I got out just enough money to pay him, and we continued driving. Rudy suggested that we get some breakfast, but it was now 6:50 … I didn’t think that’d work out.

He got me to the airport at just past 7. He gave me a half hug and made me promise I’d call him when I got home. I told him to expect a package in the next few weeks. I ran into the airport and it was … empty. There were a few people there, but for an airport at 7 a.m., it was desolate. I ran up to the American Airlines counter and told them my flight was in 30 minutes. The attendant tried to check me in but said I missed it. Lucky for me, there was a flight to Dallas with a connection to DC at 8:35 - and plenty of people were going to miss it. She put me on that flight free of charge and I walked around the airport. I never saw anyone else from my airport shuttle. I don’t think anyone made it. I couldn’t believe I had. 

For the record, I support the bus drivers who went on strike. Hopefully this helps change things in Guatemala. 

This is the debut of a series I like to call THE WORST KINDS OF PEOPLE, and it will profile the worst people to encounter while traveling. It’s very hard to say anything to these people in practice, or at least for me, because I’m way too nice. BUT NOT ON THE INTERNET.

So I’m talking to you, WINDOW CLOSERS.

Traveling through South and Central America is basically a series of bus rides that range from completely horrendous to the holy shit there’s free whiskey onboard, but they generally fall into the overcrowded / very long / our wheel might fall off category. Drive times are generally “a couple of hours,” no matter the distance, which actually means FOREVER.

Also, CENTRAL AMERICA IS HOT. ALMOST ALWAYS. If you’re lucky enough to get a bus manufactured sometime after the color television was invented, and the windows don’t have bullet or rock holes and aren’t welded shut, USE THEM. The worst thing someone can do is CLOSE THE WINDOW. Especially when everyone else is sweating and wearing t-shirts and can’t breathe. There is literally nothing worse than closing the window. I would rather you smell bad or be hugely obese and knocking me off my chair than sit in a windowless, hot bus. GET A SNUGGIE, GET A BLANKET, GET A SWEATSHIRT, GET ONE OF THOSE TABLECLOTHS THE NATIVE PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK ARE DRESSES. DRESS IN LAYERS PEOPLE. YOUR PERSONAL COMFORT IS NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYONE ELSE’S.

There is only one thing worse than a window closer, and it’s someone who asks you to close the window. Because what can you say? No? You can’t say no. And then you can’t reopen the window, because then you’re an asshole. Window openers, on the other hand, are my heroes. We need more window openers in this world.

Do people actually read travel blogs? I don’t. But I have some good stories you know? I think it’s mostly because I don’t worry too much about getting my organs harvested or anything. I’m also a journalist so I pay attention to things, and I’m really talkative when I’m drunk. That can always be a help. So, this is my blog. Right now, I’m in Maryland until at least May. After that, who knows. Maybe I’ll get a job and a house and a wife and a dog and a kid and we can take vacations to the Outer Banks and every three or four years we can go on a cruise. I hope that doesn’t happen. Maybe I’ll decide this is all a stupid idea tomorrow and never write again. Let’s find out.