Central America and Cuba

[blinkchick2134]

Some of you already know about my trip plans but I kinda feel like posting what I ideally want to do. I decided to take some time off from school and travel. I'm not trying to plan too far in advance or even lay out a specific itnerary but I know what places I want to hit up and a basic timeline.

June 20th (give or take a few days): Leave for Guatemala City, Guatemala - spend the first week or so doing the sight-seeing tourist thing complete with ziplines, cloud forest, volcanos and ruins. If we (me and my boyfriend) like one of the cities we plan on staying there for a month or so, depending how affordable rent is. Guatemala seems to be one of the less expensive countries I've found in CA. We also are getting WWOOF (and maybe Serves, just as a backup) memberships so we plan to do that more than anything else. Est. time in G-mala: 2 months

Belize: Ideally I'd like to live here for a month via WWOOFing but there aren't so many farms listed so we may only do the tourist thing.

Cuba: The second place I've always wanted to go to (after Kenya). Probably catch a flight from Belize or Mexico (depends on where we can catch it safely). I haven't done much research on it but I'm willing to resort to a travel agent when in CA to get there.

Depending on how we feel we may island hop for a bit, possibly find a job on a boat (I've had experience deep sea fishing and operating boats) and use that as transport. If not then we head back to mainland.

Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador: Haven't looked too much into what activities we want to do in these countries but all three have a number of WWOOF places as well as a lot of Ex-pat couchsurfers if need be.

Costa Rica: Chris has friends that should be living here by the time we work our way down there so we may join up with them for a bit. If not several helpx.net, WWOOF and couchsurfing listings will aid us.

Panama: I kinda want to bike across Panama but it really depends how we are $$ wise and energy wise.

We haven't thought about anything after that since we might spend the whole year doing just those places. It really depends how much we like our WWOOF hosts, how money budgets out and if our health stays constant. We're both sickly people.

Anyway we plan on being gone a year, my little brother is supposed to graduate in June 2008 (but he may be kept back a year) so I want to be home to see that. I'm budgeting about 6,000$ for the trip (after flights, insurance, visa and prior costs). We plan on couchsurfing (already talking to a few people), WWOOFing and freeloaders.com. Also I want us to get Servas memberships, just as a back-up if we need it.

So room and food (when WWOOFing) should be taken care of most the time. Transport and communication are my biggest worries but I know internet is cheap and if need be I can get a pre-paid cell phone.


So that's PART ONE of my RTW trip.