And without the internet, you took some chances.

I am not exactly nostalgic, but some memories are really priceless. I didn't always (read ever) want to spend the money on Lonely Planet books. Before Lonely Planet was the gorgeous book, "Europe on $5 a Day". Can you imagine? And some days you really couldn't manage to spend $5. The real problem with Lonely Planet was that they were heavy, especially if you were going to a bunch of countries. This was before the Internet, remember. One tactic we used was to get the book and rip out the pages we knew we weren't going to use and then throw away the ones we used after we had been somewhere. Not a very nice solution, but carrying stuff has never been my strong suit.

And getting strait info from locals took some adjustments. In Central America, it took us a while to figure out that people wanted to make you happy and didn't want you to be disappointed. So, if you asked if the bus was coming soon, you always got a strong positive answer. "Si, muy rapido, no problema." Soon might be tomorrow morning, but they left you with a smile on your face. Until you were cursing them and all their ancestors.

One time, after being assured by everyone that we could get to Key Caulker on New Years day, (looking back, what the fuck were we thinking?) we got to Belize City from Tikal by the good graces of a drunk taxi driver who assured us that his mother made a brew that sobered him up and he was fine. The special joy of his mother's brew was that he could get drunk 4 or 5 times on a given holiday and start over again after drinking her magic concoction. But, of course, there were no boats going on the the Island on New Years day or most likely for many days after and that was the bad old days in Belize City where no where was safe and I had the kids along. So we got drunk taxi driver to take us to the sorry excuse for a private plane airport. I walked into the hangar yelling "Is anyone here?" and found some bush pilot passed out on a couch. I woke him up and he said he could fly us over after he had a few cups of coffee. I offered him 100 bucks and he said fine, but I would have to run it through the charge machine because he couldn't remember how.

After we loaded ourselves and him into the plane and got up in the air over the beautiful western Caribbean waters. He said "shit." I said, "What shit?" he said he didn't think we had enough gas to make it. I said "shit" and "Shut up, I don't want the kids to worry." He said "Fucking fine, lady." I said seeing as how I paid him, I thought it should be his problem not mine and I didn't want to hear another word about it.  We made it and landed on the sandy beach.

Now, really, with the internet, this just wouldn't have happened. Everything would have been known in advance and booked and paid for and all that. Not all our adventures were so easy and we might not have had nights like the night when we were in a town cut off by the army and there was no food and we stayed up all night talking about roast beef sandwiches. Big arguments about mayo vs mustard. Hunger does strange things.

My conclusion about old time travel is that not knowing was a big part of the game and it was always an adventure, but sometimes a bit of a stress, too. Letters, when they worked, were a lot of fun. Phones were mostly useless. If you knew what city you were going to you had letters sent to Poste Restante and when you got to the post office they handed you a box with letters as old as 30 years and you looked and prayed that there was something for you. I bet if I checked in Antigua, Guatemala I would find a letter after all these years.

More than anything I am grateful for the Kindle with the built in light. I was forever running out of books and finding a half way decent reading lamp was often a sick joke.