Counting my Transportation
I have been trying to create a way to log in my transportation from place to place, or from hotel to hotel. I have or less learned or figured out there is always a beginning, and a few middles and then the end trip.
This may seem mundane, however it is easy to say,
- Go to this hotel.-
However to explain how you got from the airport to the hotel, or from the bus, taxi, train, bus and all the transfers is not as easy as it seems. I am trying to create a log in sheet with all the questions needed, they I could make copies of this sheet. Carry it, log in the types of transportations, prices, names of companies as I go, therefore I would not forget. Remembering the exact cost is difficult, I more or less remember in dollars, however I have trouble remembering the price in local currencies. Then I sometime do not remember the dollar price. I have been doing this or trying to create this maze of questions from my start in Bogota, Colombia on January 19, 2006, aagh, I have only been in the Caribbean about 40 days, it feels like many months.
Well, the goal is this, give the evaluation sheets for
1. Transportation.
2. Hotels
3. Tourist Attractions
4. Airports
5. Airlines
Etc and so forth to a person, I will be the test person. I will take them, fill them out, then log them into a form on a page, it will then blog the results. This may seem annoyingly complicated, however when you are not on a tour, the transportation is not figured out. I am constantly moaning to myself on why does the guidebook leave out the best way to travel from the airport to the hotels. I know always there is a taxi, almost always, however without someone telling me the price, I feel like I have to work hard to learn. Airport taxis can cost more than the hotel. I paid 12 dollar U.S. for a taxi from the Anguilla Airport to the Casa Nadines, and now pay 20 dollars per night for the room. This makes zero value sense, the cost of the taxi would be fair at 4 dollars. I could have walked easily if I would have had a super light backpack. BUT, being I had no idea how to get there, I 95 percent of the time let the taxi figure out my first hop in a country or city. This first hop is the most difficult, after that I have time, no backpack, and can walk around asking questions easier. Nobody, including the information counter will tell a person normally a cheap way to get out of the airport. I need to ask about 5 people on the plane until one will tell me the cheap way, they normally think, let him pay tourist rates and tell you the expensive way, or they have a car and have never taken a taxi in their home city.
Nonetheless, I am creating and filling in a database of stop, starts, middles, ends to transport, I have a spot for the GPS coordinates and have tracked most of them. If I would have had the GPS coordinates for the Casa Nadines, I think it would have told me the distance. Hmmmm. I think I can calculate now and play the opposite way. I have the airport coordinates.
I was wrong, I do not have the coordinates of the airport, I walked out and instantly got in a taxi, no time to wander around. This is the part that is difficult, I have to fight, try to slow the taxi people down, they are grabbing my bags, trying to push me in a taxi, hard to slow myself down and keep on the right perspective when people are trying hard to help, too hard. However normal anywhere on the planet.
Directions: This is about asking for directions, as anyone that travel knows, directions can be extremely bad. A map is best,hard to have with you, however when there is no map, a well explained set of directions is good. However I find people leave out things like - I started at the bus stop down the street, or one leg of the trip. This one transit missing breaks the chain, therefore a person is standing around trying to figure out the next leg of the trip.
