Friday, September 17, 2010

Literature and Guidebooks

In preperation for our trip Mari and I have been hitting the Goodwill in search of travel books. Not that we have been vigilant about making stops to comb through the varied collection they have there, but we have gone a handful of times already and picked up a few great gems that we hope will help along the way.

As our trip starts in the Yucatan Peninsula area of Mexico, we will start there. The Lonely Planet's "La Ruta Maya". A guide to Mayan ruins throughout the Yucatan, Guatamala and Belize. Although this book was published in 1991, I think it will be really useful as it has a wonderfully detailed section explaining the history of the Mayan civilization and culture as well as all the major sites in each of the three areas.




But, just in case, we also have this more up to date version as well. The Lonely Planet's "Belize Guatamala & Yucatan". Maybe this is for the northward traveler, as it looks like they just swapped the order of the locations on the cover.


"Belize Guatamala & Yucatan" was published in 2001. 10 years more recent than La Ruta Maya. I havent looked through this one yet, but I assume it gives alot of the same information from La Ruta Maya. Hopefully between the two we can varify proper information along the way.

Once we hit the Caribbean Coast and kick back a bit in Cancun, the next book will come in handy - Chicki Mallan's Cancun Handbook. Although seriously outdated (1994) this book gives backgrounds, nature explanations, and location insights on the places in and around Cancun. This seems like a great book to get the ball rolling.

After we leave Mexico and head into Belize and Guatamala, we have the two books outlined above as well as our newest purchase - The Lonely Planet's "Central America on a shoestring". After finding many of the Goodwill purchases with copyrights back in the early 90's, we decided to splurge at Barnes and Noble and pick up a more recent travel guide. In many places, this book will be our travel bible. I expect this book will get many miles.

Published in 2007, Central America on a shoestring offers more up to date information researched by "travel experts" in the not too distant past. This will be a good way for us to double check some of the more in depth information covered in the older site specific books.

These books are about half of our collection so far, but seeing as though our trip starts in these areas I figured I would start here as well. I was trying to pre-read the books to cram large amounts of information into my head so I wouldnt have to lug all of them along on the trip. But I quickly learned that each one is a mini encyclopedia of necessary information. I have given up the thought of leaving them behind and now know they will be close companions on this journey.















Thursday, September 16, 2010

Deadlines, Tickets and Stuff


Mari and I finally solidified the start of our trip with the purchase of departing airline tickets. Kick off begins November 1st. We fly out of Seattle on an 11.5 hour flight destined for Oaxaca Mexico. It's a red eye flight that departs Seatac just before midnight on the 1st.


After checking prices and flight times, we settled on an affordable two stop flight. The first leg of the flight is on United Airlines from Seatac to Houston's IAH airport. In Houston we change airlines to Aeromexico and head to Mexico city. Changing planes again, we depart Mexico City on the final leg arriving in Oaxaca around 2:30 in the afternoon of November the 2nd. All in all, its a little less than 12 hours, and hopefully we'll be able to get some shuteye during the flight.


If you are not quite sure where Oaxaca is exactly within the Country of Mexico, click here.


With our departure date set, we have officially begun packing the house up. We have a corner full of boxes both full and empty, and as of now, nearly all the walls are artless as they have been wrapped for storage. Which reminds me....


Today also brought the rental of a 7.5' x 10' storage space -which works out to be roughly 75 square feet. Hopefully, this storage space will safely and adequately store all the goods from our apartment nice and snug until we arrive home. Its hard to judge an empty room on the merits of one simple question - can one stick their entire apartment into this empty box if they had to? I guess we will find out.


Roughly 6 weeks left before we head out into the great unknown.