4/20/14
Aboard Avianca 670, En Route SAL-JFK
As I checked my email for the
final time before we left the ground, I saw that I had received the nicest
email from Fernando, thanking me for the “awesome tip” and “awesome comments on
Viator.” I was so glad to provide him
with both, firmly believing in rewarding that which has been earned. He also added that he hoped life rewarded me
for the good I did, meaning that lives I helped through the money I infused
into the Central American economy. Ever
meal I purchased, every souvenir I bought, it all helped make someone’s life a
little easier, helped them feed their family.
That was not why I did not, certainly not to “do good,” in the world,
certainly not in hopes of some kind of Karmic reward. No, I did it for one single purpose, to say
“CA-4 Complete,” which was a necessary piece of the puzzle in saying “North
America Complete.” I had said that, not
considering U.S. and Canada, Mexico would be the only major obstacle between me
and “North America Complete” if this trip was a success. Almost immediately, I realized that I had
forgotten one of the biggest variables: Cuba.
I don’t doubt 4 days in Cuba would be enough to say “Cuba Complete,”
including spending sufficient time in Havana and seeing the cigar
factories. It’s getting there that’s the
problem. I’m not planning to go there
until next summer, and I am holding out hope that the travel ban would be
lifted before then.
After I said, “CA-4 Complete,” while Fernando
and I were having lunch today, he mentioned that he thought that my original
plan was to also include Costa Rica, which certainly would have been too much
for the limited time we had. I said that
I needed a 3-day weekend to visit all the WHS there and went to look it
up. My heart sank. I knew that there was a WHS bordering Panama,
one bordering Nicaragua, and a third off the Pacific Coast, easy enough to do
in 3 days. I then realized that the
island was 300 miles off the coast, obviously not doable as a day trip. It would take at least 10 hours each way to
get there, meaning I needed at least 5 days for the trip, and that was a very
aggressive estimate. I read that it
would take 30 hours to get there, meaning I would probably need to budget at
least 4 days just for the island, not to mention the cost in dollars. The thing was, I had known this, and yet,
when I booked my last-minute trip to Panama and rearranged my Central America
plans, I completely forgot about, relegating Costa Rica to a 3-day
weekend. I can find the vacation days I
need to do that trip as my 2016 Passover trip, as originally planned, which
should be enough time to say “Costa Rica Complete” in one trip. I can also just do a 3-day weekend for the
other two WHS and use Passover 2016 to do the island, the only difference in
price being the extra airfare, which will be much less than cost of the boat
charter.
I have figured out how to do
Mexico Complete in 2- and 3-day trips as necessary, so I am well on my way to
saying “North America Complete,” but it will not be as smooth as I had
thought. That said, I absolutely love
Central America. It is one of the most
beautiful places in the world, along with the similar landscapes of the interior
of the Caribbean islands. I was trying
to come up with a name to group Central America and the Caribbean
together. The best I could come up with
was “The North American tropics,” which is not much easier to type than
“Central America and the Caribbean.” The
roads with palm trees in the foreground and mountains in the background are so
beautiful that it makes you never want to leave. Fuck the turquoise waters and pink beaches. Those do nothing for me. Fernando summed it up when he said that I
don’t travel to relax. I do it because I
like the challenge. In that moment, I
realized that he fully understood me and why I travel. When I look at my calendar and see a month
where I am travelling for three weekends, I know that that fourth weekend will
be the relaxing weekend in Scarsdale. It
is even far more relaxing for me to come into work on a Saturday, spend half
the time working at the cigar store, and come home to parent’s house in
Scarsdale for dinner than it for me to be travelling. These are not “vacations,” they are
trips. They are journeys, quests in the
never-ending road to Complete.
As I was
getting changed last night, I started singing a parody of “One Day More,” which
summed up the trip. It went something
like this: “One day more./Another day, another legislature/On this never-ending
road to Complete/This guide who seems to know my way/Will surely stay another
day./One day more.” In the end, we did
it. He was excited as I was when I said
“CA-4 Complete,” rightly proud of the work we did, the challenges we
overcame. He was young enough to also
enjoy the challenge, yet mature enough to have enough of an understanding of
the world that he provided interesting analyses on the difference between his
culture and mine. One of the differences
was how people do not waste food here.
Every bite of food is precious, and they let nothing go to waste. When he picked up my burgers at McDonald’s,
asking for it without bread, everyone there was shocked. Why would someone not want the bread? It’s free.
It’s wasting money not to eat it.
It is something that I understand but have never really had to
experience. Sure, there have been times
in my life where I have nearly emptied my bank account on cigars and frivolous
expenditures, so much so to the point that I have had to struggle to eat, but
that was by choice. I chose the cigars
over having money for food. I chose to
spend my entire week’s food budget going to some ridiculously expensive
restaurant. These people have no such
choice. If they are struggling for food,
they are sacrificing everything else they can to make sure they have money for
food. It’s not the other way
around. The culture of corruption that
is abound in the police and government is something that is not found in North
America proper (U.S. and Canada).
The
police, too, are struggling for money.
They make an order of magnitude less than what a NYC police officer
makes, counting benefits. Of course they
are always looking for a little something extra, someone who went the wrong way
down a one-way street to buy them breakfast.
We don’t see that in North America.
Cops are well-paid, and they value their jobs. To get caught accepting a bribe would likely
mean jail time. Politicians also know
that they will go to jail if they accept bribes. It’s not like here where their political
career can survive a minor scandal, and they can just flee the country if it’s
something serious. Fernando said that he
didn’t think democracy was working here, and I agreed with him to some extent. He preferred a more socialist government, not
pure communism but rather one where more social services are offered.
I have been thinking why democracy and
capitalism works so well in North America but not in Central America. I don’t think it can be attributed to a lack
of natural resources, nor to the heat. I
think it’s because they don’t have a true democracy. By democracy, I mean a republican form of
government, where the people decide their own fate without oppressing the
rights of the minority. The military and
police still have too much control. There is not enough transparency, and there is
too much corruption. I have no doubt
that a completely free and open democracy with Lasseiz Faire capitalism would
be successful. It might take a while for
the wealth to be created through the capacity to think of people like Fernando,
but it would work eventually. There is
just still too much oppression for these countries to be considered a true
democracy. When I went to Panama, it was
a taste of Central America. This trip
was the real deal. Belize will just be a
trip to see a legislature and a reef, while Costa Rica will be something
different entirely. This was my trip to
Central America.
When I set out to see
the world, one of my stated goals was to see every continent. That quickly became every region. Though it is not one of my 17 goals, it will
be necessary just by the virtue of my crazy year of travel last year and what I
am planning for the next four. I love
Central America so much. I love The
Pan-American Highway. I love the tiny
road-side towns where you can stop for lunch and a beer. I love the Mayan ruins. I love that each country has its own
individual identity, in addition to the shared identity of Central
America. I love the beautiful
landscapes. Much of this is true for the
tiny islands in the Caribbean, and they make up for what they don’t share with
Central America with their own charm, as I discussed in previous reflective
entries. The charm of Central America is
different, and I think I like it better.
Other than my trips to Belize and Costa Rica (and Mexico), I will not
return to Central America, and CA-4 is really the heart of Central America, for
quite some time. I will certainly not
return before I turn 30, but I would like to include a week-long trip at some
point in my 30s, a trip of enjoyment and not fulfillment. My dinner is here, so I will need to pause.
I like to say that the Canadian Arctic is my favorite place in the
world, ignoring the fact that I have never been north of the Arctic Circle,
instead counting the zone between 60N and 66.7N as part of the Canadian
Arctic. The North American tropics are a
close second. For me, the Canadian
Arctic symbolizes relaxation, while the North American tropics symbolize
quaintness. My readers will recall how I
criticized people for coming back from Antigua thinking only of the quaintness
of the islanders and might call out hypocrisy here. The obvious difference is that I am saying I
enjoy the quaintness while understanding the reality of the situation. I know that a decade-old sign in front of a
library that says “REPAIRS ARE PENDING” is not quaint. It means that an entire generation of kids
has not had access to literature, to knowledge.
I enjoy the quaintness of the whole experience while searching for a
deeper understanding of their culture. I
am not about to do anything to change their society, nor would I even want to
try. I enjoy exploring new cultures,
learning the ins and outs of each one, comparing and contrasting different
societies around the world, but that is not why I travel.
I travel for the sole purpose of checking
boxes off my list. Sure, I will
incorporate other activities, but I will not plan a trip unless I can
incorporate one of my 17 goals into the trip.
I may have reasons that motivate a trip, but, if it does not serve one
of my 17 goals, I will not take the trip.
That is why I will not be going back to Comic Con before I turn 30,
maybe not even back to Dragon Con if I can find another way to do Congaree NP
without having to do a trip down there just to see that park. These are conventions that I love. It used to be that I would only travel to go
to one of these conventions, never missing a Star Wars Convention, and hitting
up as many of the major Comic Conventions as I could. Dragon Con was my lifeblood, and I so want to
go back, yet I know that I will miss at least 3 of the next 4. I really want to go one more time before I
turn 30, but it does not appear to be in the cards. Every time I have gone to a convention since
I got my passport has been just a side stop during a much larger trip. During Eurotrip, the trip so overwhelmed
Celebration that I just wanted a couple of days to relax in Essen. Sure, I went to the convention each day, but
it was just going through the motions.
Celebration VII will be different, the first new SW movie in a decade,
and the trip will be planned around it.
I may have to duck out to hit a National Memorial that I stupidly forgot
on my Redwoods trip, but the trip will be about the Celebration. I will do it up right, just like the
Celebrations of old, getting involved in the action, attending the panels,
collecting the autographs, interacting with artists, the very things that used
to make me love conventions, but priorities change. For now, my major priority is my 30 Goals,
but I can’t guarantee that it will last until I’m 30. One thing I do is constantly book trips 11
months in advance, which makes sure that I can’t just tire of my travel, since
I have things booked for the next 11 months.
It keeps the wheels in motion, making it very expensive to just get
bored and give up. Besides, I am so far
on the goals, 57% of the way there. I
have not yet said Complete to any of the goals, but I am getting very close
with US Winter Stadiums, just needing Salt Lake City, which was supposed to be
in June but keeps getting pushed back, and with Canadian Territories, which I
should finish off in Whitehorse this summer.
I firmly believe that that vision I have of smoking a ridiculously
expensive Cuban in front of the Hawaii Volcanoes NP plaque will provide me with
the encouragement and motivation I need to complete all 17 goals. There are times when I’m tired of travelling,
but I’m actually just plain tired. There
are times when I am ready to give up, but then I just start planning my next
trip on the flight home. I set 17 goals
for myself, and, in the process, I am seeing the world. I have seen more of the world in the past
year or so than 90%, maybe 99% of the U.S. population sees in their whole life,
and yet the next year so will take me further and further away from where I
have ever been, sending me to more extreme points of each cardinal direction,
bring me even further outside my comfort zone, testing the very limits of prudence
and possibilities. I will now close so
that I can get a little bit of sleep and then properly treat The Journey Home
when I get back to NYC.
4/21/14
En route, NYC Taxi 5A75
As I gave the taxi driver my address, I knew that The Journey Home was
coming to end, but I first must recount the steps that led there. After I closed, I breezed through security,
and I had plenty of time left to get to my gate. The gate was all the way at the other end of
the terminal, and, stopping for rum and cigars and to take a U, I think it took
me close to an hour before I stopped for dinner right by the gate. On the way in, I had seen tables marked for
inspections for U.S.-bound flights, but I hadn’t gone through that when I went
to immigration, so I thought I might have avoided it. I saw so many stands with great souvenirs,
but I constantly reminded myself that I had all the souvenirs I needed, and I
held firm. I considering stopping at
Subway for dinner, but I decided against it because the line was so long. My flight was at 7:50 PM, and I stopped for
dinner at 6:30 PM, ordering the steak.
At 6:57 PM, my food was not there.
I told him, in Spanish, that I had a flight and couldn’t wait any
longer. Somehow, magically, a minute
later, out came my overcooked, tiny piece of steak. If it hadn’t I would have just walked up and
left. There is no sense of urgency in
Central America, and it is what bothers me the most about this otherwise
wonderful place. I scarfed it down and
paid my check. Then I saw it, the inspection
tables.
I worried about two things,
first that they might unpack my stuff and make it a headache and a half to
repack all of my souvenirs. Second, that
they might say something about my cigars, seeing as I had over 50 of them. They didn’t care about the latter, and, for
the former, they looked at the first t-shirt-wrapped replica, decided the whole
bag was the same, and let me go. When I
got to the ticket counter, my first class ticket was waiting for me. My original plan was to write my reflective
entry, fall asleep, and then go straight from Kennedy to the office, writing “The
Journey Home” from the office. I then
changed to Plan B, where I would sleep first so that I could wake up after midnight
and combine the reflective entry with “The Journey Home.” None of that worked out. I couldn’t fall asleep, so I started on the
reflective entry. They served dinner,
the options being either ravioli, not an option, or fish, which I did not want
to have again. I told him that I was
okay and didn’t anything. Then, he
offered me chicken, which was perfect and delicious. Not wanting to drink anything more than the
glass of champagne I had had when I first got on board, I got a glass of water
to go with it. I paused to eat and
resumed after my meal. I was able to
soon fall asleep. I woke up as we made
our final approach and saw the NYC skyline, familiar even at night from the
distance. We were 30 minutes early, and,
so, we arrived at Kennedy, whence just over 9 days past, I departed on this
voyage. I prepared to head to my
office.
After struggling with the kiosk,
I got my receipt. My bag came very
quickly, and I went right through customs.
It was still before 2:30 AM, when our flight was originally scheduled to
land. I realized that I could write the
entry en route and be at my apartment by 3AM, asleep by 3:30 AM, get 4 hours of
sleep, and still be at the office before 8AM.
That was exactly what I did, which was why I gave the taxi driver the
address for my apartment instead of “43rd and Lex.” I proceeded to write this entry, which I will
now close, since The Journey Home is coming to an end, and I am almost at my apartment. It was an amazing trip.
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