Not North, Not South. Central.

My sister has been back home for the past few weeks from Nicaragua,where she has been living for the past year.  As we were talking she was explaining to me how cool and beautiful Central America is.  So I hopped on the internet, to look at pictures and do a little research and I was intrigued.

At this time I was open to all and any ideas for a next adventure, and this sounded like it could be one.  So I hopped on my go-to site for airline tickets, SkyScanner, and looked at prices.  The first country to check was Guatemala as that is in the north of Central America and a great starting point for back packing travels. The first ticket to come up was $170 Detroit to Guatemala City.

Good enough.  Slept on it. Went to the bank. Deposited money.  Came home.  Bought the ticket.  Easy.

One of the hardest parts of traveling is getting over the fear and doubt and actually buying the ticket.  Once the ticket is bought, you're good to go.

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The Trip

So the general outline of this trip is to arrive in Guatemala, explore there, head to Honduras/El Salvador.  In Honduras I will go to Utila, one of the Bay Islands to get certified in Scuba diving.  This is the cheapest place in the world to get certified.  I'm not sure about Belize, I might head there, but I will figure that out as the trip comes closer or commences. From there, down to Nicaruaga to visit my sister in Managua.  Then down through Costa Rica and into Panama.  

From there it is up in the air.  It will all depend on the money situation, it is possible I may continue on to South America. Columbia, Peru, Chili, Argentina and Brazil are all possibilities.  Or I may find somewhere in Central America to stay.  We will just have to wait and see.  The idea right now is for this trip to last one or two months, but you can never be sure with these open ended things.

The slightly more detailed 'plan' is to arrive in Guatemala City on October 24th and immediately leave for other parts of the country as this city is notoriously unsafe and there isn't much to do there according to all   research so far. 

Arrive and head to a place called Antigua just a bit outside the capital.  A beautiful colonial city.  There is where I will stay for a couple of days to explore the city but mostly to get the head around the new surroundings.

After this I will be heading to Lake Atitlan.

Lake Atitlan

More specifically San Pedro La Laguna right on this lake and at the foot of one of the volcanoes.  A famous backpackers haunt where I will stay for a week or two to learn Spanish.

This is where the plan gets hazy because at this point any plan I shall make will most likely be thrown to wind anyway. This is where the fun of backpacking is, not making too many plans, being open and seeing what happens.    

Playing Catch Up

I am not very good at this blogging thing.  Not at all.  Almost 11 months since the last post.  Let's play some catch up.

I left off where? Just arriving in Barcelona...

Dammit.

Alright, to quickly summarize what happened in Barcelona:

I arrived in Barcelona, and within three hours had a job as a tour guide.  A massive case of right place, right time.  Within a week I was told I would be a manager of the Barcelona section of the company (at the time called Tours Non Stop).  The company also ran tours in Madrid and Valencia.

When I started the company gave tours for people staying at hostels (7 hostels throughout the city of Barcelona).  These tours consisted of two 2.5-3 hour walking tours of Barcelona (History tour and an Architecture Tour), a Tapas & Flamenco show tour on certain nights and, of course, our lynch pin, our Pub Crawls (Or "Party Tours" as Pub Crawls are  illegal in Barcelona).

By the time I left Barcelona 9 months later, our company had changed names (Tour Me Out), and we had added a few other activities.  We added a Beach Party, Wii Night, Trivia Night and partnered with another company to offer Street Art Tours.  We had expanded quite a bit.

So basically we would lead people around, talk about the amazing city that Barcelona is for a few hours.  Then take customers to the beach/play wii/MC trivia and hang out with them.  On certain nights we would take them out to a Tapas dinner (tour guides got free dinner), then a flamenco show (tour guides got in free).  And every night we would take them out and party in Barcelona on our Pub Crawl (tour guides drank... yep... free).  Three bars and one club.  Every night.

We got paid to do all of this.  Paid to give information, lay on the beach, play video games, eat and drink with travelers.

There was also the other stuff, the business stuff (accounting, marketing, hiring, training, etc.) but that is rather dull, so we won't get into that.  Just know it wasn't ALL fun and games (just mostly).

...And I left this?

Oh well.

Barcelona, for me, was interesting.  I met some absolutely amazing people, lived in some crazy places, culminating in living with 3 other tour guides in an apartment where one can only understatedly describe the living conditions as debaucherous.

I do miss Barcelona and all the people in it.  All the people I worked with: The receptionists at the hostels (Be Mar, Be Sound, Be Ramblas, Equity Gothic/Seapoint/Centric and Center Ramblas), the bartenders at our bars (Cosmo's, Ryan's, Can Eusabio, The Queen Vic, The Quiet Man), the bouncers at the clubs (Apolo, BLVD, Jamboree) and most of  all, all the staff of Tours Non Stop/Tour Me Out:

Cian, Conan, Kieran, Julia, Sue, Natty, Calum, Dave, Scott, Ruby, Matheus, Adam, and our glorious CEO Adrian.

Some of the craziest nights we shall never remember.  Love you all.


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I left for home on May 19th after exactly one year in Europe.  I left to prepare for a new adventure.  And up until a few days ago I didn't know what this new adventure would be.  

Until I lived up to this blogs name and bought a one way ticket to Central America.  I am leaving in three months.  October 24th is the date.

So here is what I am going to try and do with this blog (we shall see).  I am going to try and blog my preparations for a trip for the next three months.

The goal of this is to show people how easy it is to actually travel.

I have noticed that people make traveling out to be more difficult, complicated and more expensive than it needs to be.  So I am going to show how it can be done.