TOR GOES TRAVELLING AGAIN

Welcome to my blog.

So many people have asked me recently why I don’t write a blog and my standard answer is simply that I can’t be bothered. I definitely don’t want to put in all the effort necessary to make a living from it. But recently I started thinking that it might a nice challenge to try and put what I see on my travels  into words, even if it’s just me and my mum (hello Mum!) who’ll be reading it. I always struggle to describe my travels to friends back home when I return. After all, how do you sum up three months of travelling,  staying in a different place each night and seeing a million news things every day?

So here’s my attempt at travel writing. Let’s see how long it’ll last!

Every year I travel for at least a month or two, usually three. It’s better than working!

My life is pretty simple – I work for a few months each year, then I travel for a few months. I nearly always go to a new country, feeling that the cost of a flight is wasted if I go back to the same place again. I tend to travel quite quickly,  staying just one or two nights in a place them moving on again. So of course I actually end up spending most of my time in bus stations! Which is great, because in developing countries this is where you get a real local experience – buying random food for the trip, shuddering at the sight of the toilets, fending off the hustlers and watching local families going on their own travels.

So, why Central America then? Mainly because I haven’t been here yet!  I also wanted to do a decent trip getting to see quite a few new countries (I’m aiming for five on this three month trip), mainly because last year I broke my rule and went back to New Zealand, a country I love and been to a few times.

Three months, five countries. Challenge accepted.

Skyscanner is my favourite website ever – I’m a frequent user of the United Kingdom to Everywhere option. For this trip I did several searches to find the cheapest place to fly to in Central America, and the winner is… El Salvador! Unfortunately via a 5 hr wait in the joyful Terminal 2 at Mexico City airport, but hey I saved £30 on the second option of Guatemala (2 hour wait in Mexico City).

So that was the flights booked – cue frantic rush to google El Salvador (a country I knew nothing about), buy a cheap and fairly recent (2013) Lonely Planet guide on Amazon, and start messaging Workaway hosts to try and set up some volunteering stays.

Central America here I come!