Global Travel Community
Its vacation time!
The automated ‘not in due to well earned summer-flee’ email reply-service is activated.
All running projects are done, or left in proper hands. Finally the office door can be closed behind me for a few weeks.
It’s beachside hammocks and visiting ancient Inca temples for the coming period. The available brochures on Peru, and the travel guides provided by my urban tour-operator provide me with a lot of information on this culturally rich South-American country. Having packed compactly, without forgetting any vital devices and travel-gear, leaves me with little space for the huge stack of magazines and exotic travel-guidebooks sitting on my living-room table. Even the smallest one seems a hassle to carry around. Somehow these guide-books manage to get gradually destroyed during one of these trips.
The portable MP3-player is neatly tucked away in a side compartment of the backpack. Luckily the little pod is water-resistant, so it won’t fail on jungle-hikes, would a tropical rainstorm surprise us. Through the Podfly website I have downloaded a modest 2 GB of Peru travel-data, ordered on topic and region.
How do I find the good restaurants in the outskirts of Cuzco. Naturally, I don’t want to get sick, having had some unidentifiable riverside mammal, half-baked on a dodgy looking grill at a neon-lit food stand. On the other hand, eating a quarterpounder with ‘keso’ at the local franchise of a well known American fast food chain wouldn’t be in the adequate adventurous mindset either. Luckily, through the online Podfly community, I was able to find just the information I was looking for. Would I have missed anything vital for the trip, I could always update the Podcasts at an internet-point in Peru. The personal tailor-made travel experiences of the adventurous people, who visited this remote region of the world before me, will prove to be infinitely valuable visiting remote locations.
The foldable 7-inch LCD screen provides me with view-only options, would the local Andes-guide get too drunk off the bottle of finer Scotch -a gift from two Scandinavian girls who did the same track a week before- on a late campfire sit-in, and lose his way through the Andean mountain trail, the pre-stored detailed maps would provide me with an emergency getaway plan. Although read only, it’s takes little effort to scan through the downloaded files and pictures with the NEXT-button on the compact porta-pod.
My friend and co-worker -who left for a few days before my own departure to this remote Latin-American country- arrived on his main travel-destination Kyoto. Having returned safely and eagerly impressed, but somewhat dizzy suffering slightly from altitude-sickness, luckily the somewhat classic version of a desktop PC at the local side-street internet cafe is equipped with a upc-port. While I start on the cheerfully colored soda-drink in my hand, the pictures my friend took in Kyoto are being transferred to my MP3-player. I will check them out later, on the long bus ride back to Lima. Of course, I swiftly send my best digital-snapshots back to him, so he can get a glimpse of the impressive mountain-trip I just did.
Before I return in my hometown, I will be sure to download the latest work-data at the Lima airport Internet-cafe. The upcoming promotion seems to get within grasp. Losing out on the latest developments of the newly acquired projects could be vital in this case. The movie they are showing on the plane is the same one I saw on my flight in, so I can start on a digital work-briefing as soon as the airplane reaches cruising altitude.
Written by Oliver Bruno
07-02-2005
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