While I have been travelling some days have been good, some have been great, some have been naff but nothing much has ever happened when I have stayed in the accomodation and not ventured forth into the city at large.
Thinking back to many parts of South America, I think that it shares a common theme with the Far East and the Pacific, which is without a good economy there is not much spare money for the locals to throw into leisure pursuits and so most of their free time is spent with family and friends at one house or another.
When I was in Fiji I asked the locals what they did when they were not working and they said either playing rugby, watching rubgy, fishing or chilling on the beaches. They dont to anything that requires money or a special venue, just whatever they can get their hands on at the time and spend their time swapping stories and telling jokes.
In western cultures we spend so much of our time watching television, listening to music, playing computer games or driving that when they are taken away we are a bit of a loss as to what to fill out free time with.
Of course, my situation is slightly different again as I don't have a day or night job and so all my waking time is free time and being so far away from family, friends it can get quite hard to find things to fill it with and the language barrier and lack of everyday knowledge of the area that I am in make this double problematic.
Athough if I had a limitless bank account and perfect weather I could probably go on different day trips or safari's every day but on a budget and with the rain dogging my every step this just isnt possible and so I have to try and find cheap things to do with little or no forward planning or information.
It is at this stage that I once again feel that a trip around the world is too big a project to be completed by just one person with any aspirations beyond just gonig and coming back again in one piece. With maybe a team of researchers finding out about each city in advance and booking things it might be possible to make the most of each city that I travel through, but alone it sometimes becomes enough of a struggle to find my way to and from an airport or hotel plus some cheap local food let alone do anything awe inspiring.
This is why travel books, websites and agencies are so needed as they provide a traveller with the heads up on all the best information they might need which in turn means that they can organise and plan trips to make best use of their time away.
I did buy copies of the main Lonely Planet Guides before I left, but because mine is a RTW trip to carry them all would require a seperate rucksack just for them and I have just found the absolute perfect use for those e-books or whatever they are called, the thin and portable viewers that let you upload, store and view umpteen books on them. For perhaps a sizeable outlay I could have saved all the travel guides to one tablet that would not weigh much at all and then no matter where my travels took me I would have instant offline access 24 hours a day to it all.
It is extremely unlikely that I would ever do this trip again, but should I or anyone else attempt a similar grand adventure then this would be one of my first thing that I would think to include in my preparations.
