I live on a tropical island where the ocean is accessible and warm all year round and for years I've heard about how wonderful and amazing the diving experience is. So I don't know why it took me so long to finally register for the PADI open water diver course to become a certified open water diver.
Wait, I remember now why it took so long. There were a couple of reasons. First it was a matter of thinking I could not afford the course. That turned out to be a complete misconception because becoming a certified diver costs as little as $169 on Guam. The other reason was a matter of not having the time to attend the classes. I found out that with MDA you can opt to do the academic portion of the open water diver course online, at your own pace and when it's convenient for you. Once you register for the online portion, you are given up to one year from that date to complete it, which is plenty of time. In fact, it's so much time that I'm having trouble focusing and getting it done (I'm about halfway through the academic portion). The sad thing is, if I don't have an immediate deadline, I'll put things off until the last possible minute.
So it turns out the real reasons it took so long are that I'm lazy and I procrastinate. Glad we had this talk.
This month marks the 10th year anniversary of my weblog. It's actually 12 years but I only count the years I've owned my own domain. Ten years! Wow.
Who remembers what my site was called before it became Latitude13 in 2002?
Now that I'm getting back into the swing of website things, I see I need to update a bunch of pages (About/Links/Contact) and improve the way things are archived here. Just letting you know in case things get a little buggy in the coming days. or weeks. or whenever I get around to it. You know how it goes.
I was in Tokyo in March, before that I was in Fiji in December, and before that I was in Houston and Boise in November. I've done more traveling the past two years than I've done the rest of my life combined and it's been a dream come true because all I really want to do with my life is make a little money and use it to see the world.
It's becoming easier to do that since I've paid off a couple of large debts. Paying off debt is such a great feeling and I finally paid off my car and a personal loan. So now that my focus and finances are free to shift away from paying bills, I'm making a shortlist of places I want to explore. Number one on that list has been Beijing, but on a whim I looked up flights to Cairo from Manila in October and was amazed to see how affordable the airfare is.
As a Free Independent Traveler (FIT), I find planning a trip to be almost as fun as the trip itself. My style of travel is modest in budget and requires a little bit of digging to find the gems. I do all my planning and booking online, with the help of Kayak, DoHop (great site for searching international flights) and Trip Advisor. Take Cairo, for example. If I booked with one of the two domestic airlines on Guam, a ticket to Cairo from Guam would cost AT LEAST $2,500. But I have enough miles to get a free ticket from Guam to Manila and from there I can get a ticket to Cairo on an international carrier for about $1,000. Neat! I also try to find out who flies directly from point A to point B and check that airline's website for fares and specials. But if getting from point A to point B means 2 stops and short layovers BUT a thousand dollar discount, I'll take that, too.
When it comes to finding a hotel, Trip Advisor is my main source for information and reviews on hotels. I love that I can enter a dollar amount of what I'm willing to spend per night at a hotel and Trip Advisor gives me a list of properties within my budget, along with traveler reviews written by people who actually stayed there. From there I make a shortlist of possible places to stay, compare them, read more reviews, visit the hotel's website (sometimes if you book directly with the hotel there are additional discounts) and whittle the list down. Another thing I like to do is look up the hotel on Google Earth so I can get an idea of where the hotel is located and the distance it is from the places I want to see in the area. Isn't technology grand?
So, anyway, about Cairo. I don't want to get ahead of myself (which is hard to do because I'm excited) so I've set a goal to save a specific amount of money by the end of September. By October I'll be free to decide where I want to go. If it's Cairo, great. If it's Beijing, great. The point is to leave my options open and see where my efforts take me. But one thing's for sure: I'm going places.
Eliminating stress has been one of my major goals in 2010. Reducing stress has meant declining social engagements and freelance work, reducing clutter and spending, reducing my intake of social networking and current affairs (knowing what all my friends are doing at any given time of the day is actually a source of stress, especially when one of them is having a bad day and posts a slew of venting statuses or tweets), and making time for doing nothing of significance. It hasn't been easy, but it is getting easier.
So far in 2010 I have not been down with sickness and have had but one minor migraine. I don't think this is a coincidence. Oh, and I play FarmVille on Facebook. It is (surprisingly) a great stress reliever. FarmVille is my zen garden...except with, uh, cows and tractors and stuff.
Maybe now that I'm not so wound up I can pick up with this weblog again. :)
Hello, friends. How have you been? Let's catch up.
I visited Gadao's Cave for the first time. It was super easy to get to and I was surprised to see other pictographs on the walls of the cave because all I've ever seen are pictures of the one famous pictograph. The cave is located on Inarajan bay, on the opposite side from Gef Pago. If you're coming from Gef Pago, drive to the other side of the bay, take the right turn there and go all the way down to the private property sign. Park on the side of the road outside the private property area and the trail is on the right.
I was very glad to not see any trash or graffiti around inside the cave. I hiked down to Pagat cave a few weeks ago and was so disappointed and disgusted to see so much trash, appliances and abandoned cars along the trail. I even saw pile of christmas decorations that had the Guam Seal on them and it looked like someone had tried to burn. When I got to the entrance of the cave there was a large group of locals getting ready to go inside and I saw they were carrying two cases of beer with them. I hope with all my heart that they took all their trash with them when they left.
A group of volunteers went down to clean up the area on Valentine's Day which was a good idea. It's not easy to argue that you want to keep an area of land open to the public because it's treasured historical property when it looks like an illegal dumpsite.
