Case and Point

Today Ricardo arranged our hotels in Guatemala. When I went through an online travel site, Enjoy Guatemala, the price for the hotel room was $120/night with breakfast included. When Ricardo called the hotel directly to reserve a room it was $125/night without breakfast. WTF? I do not get this. But I live with it.

Fun With Vaccinations

Tuesday afternoon Ricardo and I went to the doctor to talk about some of the meds we need to have for this trip. Only to find out that there are like a bazillion shots we have to get. I left having gotten Hepatitis A and B. I went to the free clinic on Thursday because that was the only place I could get the Yellow Fever vaccine. Turns out that I also needed the Typhoid Fever vaccine as well. Ironically all this cost me $144 (some freebie at the free clinic, eh?). So now all I need are the MMR vaccine, Dip/Tet, Pertussis, another Hepatitis B and a pneumonia vaccine. All I can say about this is ouch! If you can avoid Typhoid Fever vaccines, I highly recommend it. It's painful and nasty.

On top of all the vaccinations, we also need to take malaria meds for the entire time. This consists of the worlds most foul and bitter tasting pills which seem to disintegrate upon contact with any fluid and which you need every day for the whole trip and the week after yo return. So can't we just drink gin and tonics everyday? Wouldn't that work? It did in India.

And we need medication for the altitude. This is, apparently, some kind of diuretic that makes you lose the sodium bicarbonate in your system which makes you breathe faster and take in more oxygen. I don't think this sounds very good, personally. It's a little scary to trick your body into thinking that it's adjusted to high altitude when it's not.

When the whole Semester at Sea prospect was raised back last year it never occurred to me that there would be all of this health stuff involved.

Adventures in Latin American Trip Planning

No matter what I find online it seems not to exist when I actually get emails back. Plus whenever you find any kind of rate listed and then you have actual (or at least reputed) human contact the rate is twice as much. So that is daunting to me. On the upside, though, it's still cheaper than what Semester at Sea is charging for their trips. So far I have saved us $2000 off our trip to Machu Picchu (in comparison to what S@S wants) and about $1500 off San Pedro de Atacama. Those two are set, except we still need a rental car in Chile which is another whole to do. Seems you really need like an SUV (clearance on the roads is an issue). So what do they rent out? You guessed it! Citroëns and Puegots and other little wee cars. Finding a four wheel drive car is a challenge. We may end up, *gasp* in a pickup truck. I find this rather funny and if it happens I can't wait to post pictures.

So far the trip looks like it will be incredible. That is if I can ever get everything booked. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

To fly from Guayaquil to Cuenca in Ecuador there are two airlines you can use, AeroGal and Tame. Tame is cheaper, so I tried to book through them. This is an Ecuadorian airline whose site in Spanish does not work. Their English site works (although the English is funky for sure). In order to make a reservation you have to register. This is all well and good, but the registration page assumes A, that you are Ecuadorian and B, that you will be picking your tickets up in Ecuador. These are reasonable assumptions given that no one seems to fly this airline outside of Ecuador (except maybe a little in Colombia). So I went ahead and registered and then tried to reserve tickets. Well that's when you get the error saying that you need to log in. So you log in with your password and login name, but it doesn't work. So you try a couple more times. It kicks you out of the site for too many incorrect logins. OK, no worries. You can try in a bit. Maybe it's the wrong login. Well if it is, it sucks to be you, because the link to send you your login info doesn't work. Swell! So then you register a second time (because if you're me you have several email addresses you can use). This time it's great and you choose your flights, la di da, isn't life grand. It is! But then you go to buy them on the internet, a lovely choice offered you by Tame. It's great they offer it, except when it becomes clear that it isn't in fact an option. Because when you try that, you get an error message and Tame boots you off. No problems, right? Your login works now, you just have to retrace your steps. Right? Hell no, baby, because now the login that worked five minutes ago is not recognized any more. And now you've been on the Tame site for like a half an hour and you have no tickets.

In frustration you turn to AeroGal, the airline of the Galapagos. They don't make you register thankfully. That's the upside. The downside is that they also don't let you reserve tickets (or if you did manage to it's an accident and they send you nothing in the way of info, confirmation, or reservation). Oh and you can't buy the tickets. You have to get them 24 hours before you fly. Which is no problem. Unless you're arriving on a boat on the morning and oh that's right, you don't have 24 hours ahead to buy it. Nifty!

And this is just getting tickets in Ecuador. I'm doing this for: Acapulco, Panama, Chile, Peru, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

And that's not all. Take Peru for example. The plan is to go to Machu Picchu and spend some time in the ruins there. No problem, right? It's a major tourist destination. Should be a piece of cake. Should be. But is not. Because the national holiday is 7/29. And oh, that's right, we'll be there 7/25-7/28. Sweet! So this trip has included the following odd bookings:

• Taking a bus from Calloa to Lima
• Flying from Lima to Cusco
• Taking a combi (a multiple person taxi) to one city
• Taking another combi to a city called Ollantaytambo
• Taking a train from there to Machu Picchu
• Spending two nights there
• Returning by the same route to Cusco
• Flying back to Lima
• Busing back to Callao

And here's the really odd aspect of it. The train is this luxury type thing (because the cheap ones are already sold out). They have one train that costs $800 which has food service and other luxe aspects. But oh, that's right! They don't take credit cards. No problems, right? You can make a reservation and they'll hold it. But you have to pay for it in advance if you want them to hold it until the point you actually arrive in the country. So Ricardo had to go to the bank, wire them the money, scan the receipt for the wire transfer and email it to them to prove you did it. Then they will reserve your tickets.

If I ever entertained the idea of becoming a travel agent, it would not be in Latin America.