Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Original Plan

When I originally started planning for my travels abroad, I mapped out the general itinerary in my head of the places where I wanted to travel and the order in which I wanted to travel to them. I knew when I made this plan that things were going to change as I ran into obstacles or I found other opportunities and decided to take them.

My grand scheme started out in my head with a list of places I wanted to go. The list is as fallows: China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Figi, Thailand, U.K., Hawaii and Alaska. I then began brainstorming a single path to which I could take that would allow me to hit all of these areas. I started with Hawaii.

I have always had a drive to go to Hawaii. I think all Americans should go there at some point in their life. A chain of small, beautiful islands out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with warm climate and warm water. What more could you ask for? Anyway, I stray. I will fly to Hawaii first, I thought. From there I can then catch some sort of relatively cheap transport to some other islands in the south pacific then make a hop to New Zealand or Australia. Perhaps I could even go directly to Japan from Hawaii. Mainly my thoughts hovered around the south pacific though. I figured once there, I could easily hop to the places that I wanted to go or that sounded interesting. Thailand would be very easy to get to once I had my fill of the south pacific islands. From Thailand it would not be very difficult to travel north through Cambodia into China. The Trans-Siberian Railway leaves out of Beijing and I could take that all the way to London then take a rail up to Scotland and a short flight to Ireland. This was the initial path I had laid out in my minds eye for my Trek.

My thoughts centered on this island hopping that I was going to be doing in the south pacific. Charter flights or boat rides could add up fast, I thought. I needed a way to be able to get around from island to island without eating away at my money to much. Sailing. I could become a knowledgeable sailor to get from point A to B. I might be able to make some money on top of it, I hoped. Then when I was in the U.K., at the end of my trip, I could even sail back across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean Islands and eventually back to the States.

The plan was taking shape. It was all coming together in my head. Now on the execution. Seeing as how I knew nothing about sailing or sailboats, I thought it would be a good idea to learn. I made a connection with a captain of a boat heading down the coast of Mexico that was willing to take anyone with half a brain. Seeing as how I almost had half a brain when it came to sailing he made an exception and let me on his boat. This was my chance to learn as much as I could about sailing so that once I was down in Mexico I could find a boat heading out into the great blue of the south pacific to get to the places of the world that I really wanted to go. I am glad to say that I made it off of that cork in the water alive. I made the decision on-board that if I were to make it off alive, that I would be going home for Christmas and New Years holidays. Once home I could then determine how my original plan was to be modified. Mexico was never on my itinerary of places to see in my lifetime, but I did not, however, want to pass up the opportunity I had to volunteer my time and energy to a worthy cause in a place I knew nothing about. So I held up for a while and found R.I.S.E. where I helped watch over and play with kids whose families could not care for them for one reason or another.

I am home and the holidays are now over; I am no sailor, but I still want to travel for cheap. How does one get across a large vast expanse of water without paying large sums of money? Early on in my plans of sailing I devised an alternative backup plan if my sailing career should fall short. Cargo ships. Excellent, I thought. My plans for sailing did not work out, but to get across the Pacific Ocean and continue with my original plan should be easy enough on a freighter bound for Australia or Japan right from the major shipping port of Oakland, California which is not but a half an hour away from home. I assumed that this would be simple. After all, who in their right mind would ever travel on these things when they could fly. A plane can cover in an hour what it takes a freighter a day to do. The crews of these freighters must be giving away tickets to anyone willing to even think about getting on board one of these behemoths, I assumed. I thought myself quite clever.

Well I do not think myself so clever now. The cheapest I have seen tickets for any freighter headed anywhere in the world is 90USD per day, per person...and that is on the CHEAP end. I have seen as high as 250USD per day, per person. Well for this kind of money the crews must give you lavish drinks, comedy performances and rub you down with baby oil every night right? Wrong. Your money goes towards your room, which is nothing special, and 3 meals a day that you eat with the crew. Leisure activities include walking around the deck and pondering the great expanse that is the ocean, reading, walking and reading, talking with the crew and sticking your hands in your pockets where money used to be before these freighter companies stole it from you. I am not exactly sure what is going on here. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why it costs so much money. Perhaps the combined total of my weight along with my luggage (200lbs) slows the megaton vessel down and they need to make up for that lost time by running the engines extra hard. In any case, I will not be taking a cargo ship out into the south pacific. That leaves me with one option...to fly somewhere out that way, or alter the plan.

At this point altering the plan sounds much better to me. I can get to London far more cheaply by air as compared to anywhere in the south pacific. I suppose I will just have to flip the original plan backwards. Start in Europe and end in Australia or New Zealand. This will give me the chance to see my cousins in the U.K. much earlier then expected and I find that quite exciting. I will also be going to a country where English is a native language, which I also find very exciting. The only draw back that I can see for this change of events is that I liked the idea of going to Australia/New Zealand right now because it is summer time there. I am quite fond of California weather. The idea of following the warmth around the earth appealed to me.

The plan is changing. There is no telling how much more it will change or what will happen along the way. I guess that is what makes it fun and exciting.