A few months ago, Thurstan Bassett, of Etcetera gave me an excellent suggestion – why didn’t I include a little map at the end of my travel posts, to give readers an idea of where some of these locations were? I sat on his idea for a bit, due to lack of time, but yesterday I inserted a map into Diving Tulamben, my most recent travel post. It seemed like maps were on everyone’s mind because The Daily Post then published this week’s challenge: Map it Out.
I love maps – I love the sense of possibility they give, the details, the sense of space unexplored, the blank spaces that indicate wilderness, the spiderwebs of lines and dots that represent cities. I love seeing how many places I’ve been to, visually represented on a map, but most of all I love seeing how many more places there are for me yet to go to.
In 2010 I spent 10 weeks in South America – my itinerary seemed comprehensive, but like so many other places in this big, beautiful world, once I was there in South America, it was obvious that there were huge gaps, new places I’d never even thought to include, and that I would have to return, some day.
Brazil is an obvious omission, though I chose not to visit due to lack of time; I wanted to spend at least a month there (favelas, Rio, beaches, Carnevale, Pantanal, the Amazon, rainforest – I need a month!) and it will have to wait until my third trip to that continent. The southern-most tip of Argentina, Ushuaia, is another place I didn’t visit, because when I do, I’d like to hop on a boat and head to Antarctica, only a tantalising 3 hour trip away. I’d like to visit Venezuela, and Colombia, trek the W in Chile, revisit the Galapagos.
That is the beauty of travel – you will never run out of places to go.
This post was inspired by The Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge. This week’s brief was to “incorporate the Google Maps embed feature by plotting out some of the favorite places that you’ve been, or the places you want to go. ” Because the latter would basically result in a map stuffed full of pins (honestly, it’d probably be easier to mark the places I don’t want to go to), I’m already working on the “A Few of My Favourite Things” series, and I’d never actually mapped out the entirety of my trip, I figured this post may come in handy for other travellers looking to see how much could reasonably be squeezed into a 2.5 month trip to South America. Happy trails.xx
I have been using tripline.net for mapping my location. It’s great, it does a timeline and. You can play it to see your route.
Sounds good Michael, I will have to go check it out!
I totally agree that mapping out where you’ve already been, makes you see where else you want to go! It’s a vicious cycle indeed.
You MUST go to Colombia – it was absolutely our favourite place in South America and possibly, the world!
One day… I’ll make it to all the empty spaces on the map!
The beauty and the misery. We will run out of time before we can see everything we want to see in this world.
Peggy,
You are a very good writer. I liked this paragraph so much, I reread it several times:
“I love maps – I love the sense of possibility they give, the details, the sense of space unexplored, the blank spaces that indicate wilderness, the spiderwebs of lines and dots that represent cities. I love seeing how many places I’ve been to, visually represented on a map, but most of all I love seeing how many more places there are for me yet to go to.”
Keep it up!
Thank you so much Sarah! Really appreciate your kind words.
Pingback: {Weekly Writing Challenge} Map it out! « 3rdculturechildren
“That is the beauty of travel – you will never run out of places to go.”
Yep!
I love maps too, and I obsessively collect them through my trip and at travel shows. While other people declare their food and souvenirs at customs most of my luggage space is taken up by maps!