This is it

So this is it.
When your trip is happening right now.
You plan months and months in advance, and even when your flight is in two days,
it still seems so far away in the future.
But I've reached this present moment where every passing hour is already part of the afventure.
It's 2.29 and my Thalys train from Brussels is at 7.52.
That means I'm leaving the house at 6.30, means waking up at 5.30.
Means I got three hours left to get everything right.

My bag is half packed, most of what I need to take is lying on the floor around it.
My bed is a mess, full of other stuff I should remember to take with me.
My PC is burning burning burning music for lonely bus rides and chill beach nights.
Next to me is this book, House of leaves, which isn't exactly a travel format
(the size of a dictionary) but there was no way I'd leave without a good book,
and this is definitely a good book so we'll just see how much of it will survive the trip.
In between burning cd's, I run around the house like a nutcase looking for my grey
'marcel' shirt and checking if my sweater is dry. Guess I'll have to do without my grey marcel shirt.
You'd think I had all time to prepare this stuff. But I didn't. For real.

The way I'm paying for this trip is I worked my ass off at a big food warehouse,
piling boxes of cookies above bottles of water above baby pampers above Kellogs cornflakes
above toilet paper above dog food above canned pickles above paprika chips. You get the idea.
That job sucked and with every box of something I piled I think I lost a considerable amount of brain cells.
Not to mention the radio playing all day. See it's summer and you get to hear those stupid
summer songs which aren't made for hearing every hour of the day, every day of the month.
If they only knew, I think the artists would have put more thought and time composing their stupid songs.
Ok, forget about the job, it's done and over now and my plan is to mentally erase any memory of July 2005.
August will contain enough memories for both months. The plan for august:

Arrival in El Salvador (though the original plan was to arrive in Guatemala, the plane to Guatemala city
would land a bit too late in the evening, making it a bit too dangerous for a solo traveller, while the plane to Salvador city would land 2-3 hours earlier. Trust me, a couple hours of daytime makes the difference...)
The following morning, bus to Antigua, then Coban. From there to Tikal. After that to Honduras.
Some more ruins and diving in the Bay Islands (probably the best part of this trip).
Then further south to Nicaragua, Isla de ometepe, south to Costa Rica, Parque de monteverde,
end my days in Puerto Viejo or Bocas del Toro or wherever the wind takes me.
That's the plan, but it's not much and it's quite flexible. We'll see how much I'll end up doing.

I'll try to keep this blog funny and informative for fellow travelers while at the same time
providing some news to my lethaly worried mother and friends.

Special thanks to Youri Licht for never uttering even a fraction of a whine :)

Yalla, better get some sleep...

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