We are on a bus trundling through the pampas of Uruguay, it is a lot of open fields, the occasional little town, various orchards and some grain elevators. About what you would expect to produce all the delicious food coming out of the countryside. Pastoral and diverse, similar but different than the monocultures you see while driving across the US.
We are on a bus between the famed Colonia de Sacramento on La Plata river and Salto, a town 8 or so hours from Colonia on the Argentinian border. Every so often the bus will stop on the side of the road to pick up or drop off passengers, with the cutest being the school kids getting off at their farms on the return home, with expectant moms waiting for their arrival.
We have started a section of our trip that will be heavy on movement, taking buses and ferries quite a bit with some monster days. I am actually looking forward to this time, as it allows for some nice reflection and relaxation. IN that vein I thought I would share how the Korol clan uses this transport time and share some of the tools and tips that work for us. On a related note, I had quite a few buddies back in the States ask about our various electronic devices and this will cover that topic as well.
Before I get into the specific tools, it is relevant to mention how many more options we have now versus just 10 years ago. The movement to Mobile is really a boon for traveling, you can still do all the same stuff that passed the time before (sleep, read, stare out the window) but now have a bunch more options (podcasts, iTunes U). Some of the stuff we are doing is a blend of old and new, such as planning our travels through a blend of traditional travel guides, i.e. lonely planet, and mobile tools like Wikitravel. All for the better in my view.
Devices: a 5:2 screen to people ratio might be a bit much. We spend a fair bit of thought ensuring that all of the devices have sufficent battery charge, funnily enough.
- Tablets: IPad 2, Nexus 7
- Unlocked phones: an older Android and iPhone
- An iTouch
If you ever find yourself on a bus, train, boat or plane for hours and hours on end, we recommend the following;
Listening
Music: an old stand-by, and one where the leverage of mobile music on various devices is astounding. I still clearly recall listening to an MP3 player in a 4x4 motoring around the Bolivian desert in 2004 and intuitively getting how powerful it was to have all those CD's in one little device. On our trip, I have music loaded on an 64 gig iTouch and my old Android phone. Listening to Quantic Soul Orchestra as I write this post.
Podcast: a podcast is basically a long form (usually) interview or show, and I have gotten Mu into them after having an unhealthy obsession with them for a couple of years back in the Bay. In fact, mu is listening to an NPR podcast called "Tell Me More" right now. I gravitate towards podcasts that focus on sports (BS Report, Behind the Dish, Men in Blazers, Real Talk with Jason Whitlock), comedy (Adam Carolla, Walking the Room, and others) and gems from NPR (This American Life, Here's the Thing). The long form nature of podcasts make them ideal for lengthy travel, the time kind of melts away.
Writing
Blogging: both of us have loved having this medium and forum to share our trip, and thoughts. It has led to greater engagement on our end, being more critical and thoughtful about where we are and the history embedded in its walls and memories. My guess is that about a third of our posts are written all or in part in transit. Personally, I find the movement stimulating for my creativity and perceptiveness, and prefer the posts written in movement to those authored elsewhere.
Emails: with the iPad and Nexus, you can write email easily while offline and have them send once you connect. This is perfect for us and it is why we are able to write lengthy emails to you back home. Instead of waiting for a dingy internet 'cafe', we are able to write away on these trips.
Reading
Instapaper: on all of the deceives, I have an app called instapaper that comes very highly recommended. Basically, it allows me to 'save' articles for offline reading. When I am on an article, for instance a lengthy New Yorker piece, I click a tab in the bookmark of the browser and the article gets sent to the app. Then, while still online, I open the app up and let it load all the saved articles. Then, I am able to open it anywhere and read, with the app saving where I am at in the piece. Ideal for commuting as well, it has allowed us to read many more feature pieces from major magazines than I was able to back in the working world. The only issue is that we now share the app, as Mu grew to appreciate the app and the articles along our travels.
Books: this is obvious, and just 10 years ago was basically my only activity for these long travel legs. I am reading a great book at the moment, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has been particularly timely as we cruise through countries know for their grass-fed agriculture, contrast to the corn addicted version we have in the US. Mu is working her way through volume five of Harry Potter in Spanish as her book of choice at the moment.
News: on the trip we have migrated from a NYTimes household to one that favors the BBC. Their app is much better for getting a global perspective of events around the world, on more than one occasion it has been very helpful in giving us a heads up about issues that are going on in a city or area we are visiting. It is also super fast to load, even on slower wifi connections and caches the stories to be read, key for the long rides. Finally, it is 100% free. Thanks British taxpayers!
Learning
Language app: this one is more the province of my lovely wife, who has really taken to this great app called DuoLingo. She has been using it for spanish, and really gotten better and more fundamentally solid in her communications as a result. There are lots of options, but this one seems to be working for her and in my limited use thus far it has been doing well.
iTunes U: this is one I have really enjoyed in the last month. There are now thousands of courses available on this resource, some are video lectures, others audio and others still with the slides/handouts. They come from colleges, universities and schools all over the world, and my current 'classes' are from Oxford and Stanford. The former is a class on Critical Reasoning while from the former I am watching lectures from an Energy Seminar series and one on Entrepreneurial Leadership. Great stuff.
Watching
Somewhat surprisingly, we do not find ourselves watching all that much stuff. But the availability for getting stuff is astounding, and the wifi most of the places we have been has been strong enough to load episodes or full movies as need. Right now, we have a bunch of Breaking Bad on the iPad and always enjoying fitting one of those episodes into a ride. Also, on the nicer buses in South America we can catch a movie or two, some of which are quite recent.
Meeting people
One of the great joys of traveling is meeting people along the way. When cooped up in a bus or train, going through the same expiernece, it gets easier to break down personal barriers and make some new friends. A great example of this came on a bus trip from Calafate to Puerta Natales in Patagonia a few weeks ago. On the trip, we met Jose, a trekking loving New Yorker who was sitting in front of us on the bus, and a new friend. We got to talking and learned of many shared interests and values. Now, I am sure we will go hiking with Jose somewhere down the road.
Staring out the window
After the Overland trip in Africa, this has become a favored pastime in transit. I try to do it for at least an hour of daylight each trip, and find that the vantage point leads to the landscape and some of the culture seeping into my conscience, as opposed to a more direct pull. Also, staring out the window lends itself to some great pondering. I underrated this pastime before our travels but won't make that mistake moving forward.
Sleeping
One nice thing about long rides is that if the urge to close your eyes and take a little siesta come along, you just roll with it and conk out. Relatedly, this is BY FAR the most popular activity of the locals, wherever we are traveling, from South America, to Africa to Europe.
Managing
Budget: as we move around, it has been imperative to track our expenses and assess how we are doing relative to projections and our overall travel funds. Since this can be a bit tedious, it is great to save it for the rides, pop on a podcast and crack through. In my system there are two main activities, first tracking all expenses on a daily basis and then converting the various currencies back into USD for daily and rolling averages. For the second part, XE makes a great app.
Photos: keeping track of our digital photos takes some effort and I also have two steps that I like to do in transit. First, uploading the pics from the memory card on my digital SLR to the ipad and the, secondly, culling the pics to keep the ones that we like. The second step requires me to put pictures in their respective country folders, do our time lapse (in order or it gets messed up in iphoto), and delete a fair bit, due to space and not wanting to override my, or anyone's, senses with too many vacation shots.
Planning
Apps (wikitravel): Lastly, you have to make plans as you travel, so you get the right bus, understand the context of where you are going, and stay at a decent place. We use a variety of mobile apps to make this process flow, including the excellent WikiTravel that allows readers to access all wiki-info offline. This has been great, especially for larger cities and attractions.
Lonely Planet: of course, we still use a travel guide, and for us Lonely Planet is the best of the bunch. The South America version we have is a little on the old side, but it has still been working and helps with orientation upon arrival.
Personal Recs: we have been mining our friends' recs for places where they have traveled, and this advice is perfect because they know us so well and steer us unfailingly in the right direction.
Am I missing anything, I bet people have other great tips and tricks and would love to hear them in comments, facebook, email, etc?
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