The month of my 23rd birthday has arrived. 23 is kind of a blah year, so I want to make it special for myself because, well, I'm special. I officially want to buy myself a plane ticket to somewhere, but, help! I'm not a vacation person, and thus, I have many, many unused vacation days for work that will just disappear if I don't cash in. This is an emergency.
I have rules. Everyone's allowed to have standards right? Here are mine:
No places I've already visited:
Going to a restaurant and ordering the same sandwich every time is one thing, but not taking the opportunity to try a new country when I really have nothing to lose is quite another. I am a Latin America enthusiast by trade and blood, and I really would love to go back to LA+C, but: Dominican Republic, Chile, Brazil, Jamaica, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Ecuador--love you betches, but you're disqualified.
No "neutral" countries:
I'm looking at you, Switzerland. You think you're better than everyone else and I totally see through your peace-loving, humanitarian-oriented foreign policy façade. It's like when people say they don't judge other Facebooks, it's just not true. Everyone does and I refuse to hear another word about it.
No landlocked countries:
I'm not going. I'm just. Not. Going. It creeps me out. I have no good explanation for why, and I'm not ashamed to say so.
No countries on the verge of default:
I know that many of the places I've already visited have actually defaulted in the past but...this is a new rule. Get your shit together. You are a risky investment of my time.
No insane visa prices:
Let's keep it below $150. Brazil was a little pricey--but it's good for 10 years so it doesn't seem such a waste. Going to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia while I was in South America would have cost me $170. Whatever--it's landlocked anyway. Sorry I'm not sorry that you keep your navy in a lake incase somebody decides to give you access to the sea, Bolivia. Going to Peru, on the other hand, only cost me about $2, but that was probably because my friends and I took a taxi that drove us right to the border and then took our passports away to a secret room for some reason. Seemed unsavory, but the price was right.
I have no real agenda for my travel--I just want to BE somewhere and explore for myself. I need somewhere with some respectable eco-tourist options. I'm also open to the idea of voluntouring, but it would need to be legit. I'm not going to give money to volunteer for an orphanage that doesn't exist, so...
This is a plea to anyone who reads my blog: Please, please, please help me decide my next adventure! It could be kind of like reading a Goosebumps "choose your own adventure" book, except no haunted carnivals please.
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Play nice.