This is Not a Holiday

I never thought I’d say it but I’m missing my Dad’s phone. Since my last trip I really hadn’t realized the extent to which technology had become integrated into the budget travel experience. The three-pronged attack of smart phones, wifi and Skype have revolutionized backpacking. With free wifi in most accommodations, one can call home anytime for peanuts. On my trip through India in 1998 I communicated with home via postcard and called once, I think, when my bank decided not

“There is only one possible thing that could happen,” my father said to me last year, “that would necessitate me having to cut short our trip.” The thing to which he was referring was his prostate, with which he`s had trouble for a long time now. He has procrastinated for years over the operation that would fix it due to the minimal risk of resultant impotence or incontinence, and who can blame him? Unfortunately, the “one possible thing that could happen” has happened and su

It occurs to me that I haven’t yet explained anything about our actual trip. It’s been a longtime plan of mine to circuit the Caribbean Sea. I don’t know anyone else who has done this and it seemed a neat way of stringing together the parts of Latin America that I’ve managed to miss out on previous trips. The cheapest flights were to Cancun so that became our de facto start & finish point. I’d already travelled between there and Nicaragua in 2001, hence our decision to fly pr