I've spent many hours over the past week sitting in the aisles of bookstores, reading guidebooks and blocking other peoples' access to the travel section. As a result, I've been getting more and more excited about the trip. The more I learn and plan, the more real the trip becomes (which is good, because its going to feel pretty damn real when I arrive, alone, in a country whose language I barely speak). It's also been interesting looking at the variation, or lack thereof, among the different books. The information in all of them appears to be very similar -- the difference is in their target audience and in their presentation.
I wound up grabbing the lonely planet guidebooks for Chile and Argentina. From what I've been able to find in these books, as well as other books on the shelves on bookstores, talking to Tyler (who just got back from a six week trip in Peru, Chile, and Argentina), and the web, I've been putting together an itinerary in my head. Generally, I don't have a whole lot of use for a very strict itinerary, as travel plans change, and it's hard to predict what a place is going to be like, let alone the weather and crowd conditions, from a description in a guidebook. So, I have no intention of writing an itenerary that is set in stone.
While forming the itinerary, I'm trying to keep in mind my experience that the longer you spend in one place, the more interesting it becomes and the more you get out of it. There are obviously limits to this, but the central point is that the "whirlwind tour of ..." approach to traveling, sucks. However, it's difficult to keep that in mind when facing over 1,000 pages of descriptions of places I'd like to visit. I don't have a feel, right now, for how I'll handling traveling alone, or for what I'll like and dislike, so it's difficult to pare down the list. Ultimately, I'm thinking that a list of potential destinations along a route will be more useful than any sort of fixed list of what to visit and what to skip.
All that said, here's a possible start on the first leg of the trip:
Leg 1: Lima, Peru to Coyhaique, Chile
Dec 1, 2003 - Jan 15, 2004
Week 1: Spend 1 or 2 days around Lima. Travel south to Arequipa. Spend the remainder of the week around Arequipa and Lake Titicaca.
Week 2: Cross the border south into Chile. See Arica, spend some time on the beaches there?, then head west to PN Lauca. Spend a few days there hiking, and generally acclimating. Maybe climb some of the volcanos in the park. (Possibly, in the later part of this week or early week 3, visit San Pedro de Atacama, see El Tatilo Geysers and La Valle de la Luna. Renting a bike here sounds like a good option.)
Week 3: Head farther south. I should aim to make it Santiago by mid-to-late week 3. See Valpraiso and Santiago
Week 4: Christmas in ???
Week 5: New years in ???
Week 6: End this week by arriving in Coyhaique, with a few days to rest before the NOLS trip starts.
I've only made it part way through the northernmost district of Chile, and I'm already looking at the middle part of Week 3. Six weeks sounds like a long time, but when you consider that Chile is over 2,000 miles long, it seems much shorter. Especially when Chile has Peru and Bolivia to the north, and Argentina right next door. I think I'd be much wiser to write a list of attractions, organized from north to south, for this leg of the trip. Perhaps I will start on that tomorrow.
The short answer:
Spend a month or two here and visiting with my family, then travel the world for eight or nine months. When I come back from the trip, I'd like to go back to school and study geology or geophysics.
Of course, that's one of those answers that just creates a lot more questions. I don't have the answers to all -- or even to very many -- of them, but I have some loose plans.
I'm registered for a NOLS mountaineering course in Patagonia in January, so that puts me in Chile or Argentina for the first part of 2004. I'm super-excited about the course. Everybody I've talked to that has been on a NOLS course has loved it, and I've wanted to see and export Patagonia for a long time.
Before and after the course, I'll have some time to spend exploring the rest of Chile and Argentina. I'm looking forward to being immersed in a different culture and a different language. It's been a long time since I've done anything in Spanish (junior year of high school), but I expect that it will come back quickly.
I'd like to spend some time in New Zeland, and I'd like to do that before it gets too cold and wet there, so I'll probably head there after the NOLS course. I need to do more research before I figure out where/what exactly I'll do there.
After that, I'd like to come back to the Americas, and spend some time in Honduras. I've heard many, many good things about the Bay Islands, so I'm planning on going there for a while and doing some scuba diving. This will be another good chance to work on Spanish, and it also provides a nice starting place for exploring more of Central America. (I spent some time in Costa Rica with my mother and sister a couple years ago, and I'm curious how the rest of Central America compares.)
I'd also like to visit India and the Himalayas, though I haven't figured out yet when or how that fits in with the rest of my plans.
As far as going to school when I get back goes, there's not a whole lot to say. I started taking classes in the earth sciences during my senior year at Berkeley and I thought they were great. I'd like to do more, and I'd like to do some field work. I'm hoping that I can get into a program here at Berkeley, but I need to apply first.
This story rightly begins just over three weeks ago, on a Friday evening after work, in the park on the corner of Milva and Hearst. I'd come home from another average day at work, feeling a bit lonely and frustrated, to find that the house was empty. I didn't like the idea of sitting alone at home, but I wasn't really in the mood to hang out with other people either.
I ended up heading over to the park with my journal, my CD player, and a pen. I found a nice spot on the grass, and flipped to the last entry in my journal. I was shocked to find that it was over a year old. Sitting down to write again made me feel a better, but it took a few pages for me to get there. By the time I left the park, I had come to the conclusion that I absolutly needed to change something about my life. My current trajectory was taking me farther and father away from who and where I wanted to be.
It's tempting to describe that scene as an epiphany, but it really wasn't. I'd been thinking and saying that I needed a change for a long time, but I hadn't found the right combination of strength, courage, and frustration to act. That night all the ingrediants combined, and I decided it was time to leave CNET.
It was surprisingly difficult to come to that decision, but now that I've made it, I have no doubt that it was the right choice. I've learned a lot while working there, and I've met some great people, but in the end I don't want to be working for a big company, and I don't want to be doing eCommercce.
I've left my end date somewhat flexible, but I plan to leave after the second week of October right now.
