Roaming Tales

Things work a little differently in Nicaragua, at least when it comes to officialdom.

Scene 1: Border control

The immigration officer checks my passport and asks for $US5 for the on-the-spot visa. This takes me slightly by surprise since I had been told there was no visa but thankfully I still have some US currency in my wallet. I pull out the five-dollar bill, still newish but with a tear in the corner.
“Do you have another?” the man asks.
“No, I’m sorry, but surely this no problem. The money is still good,” I replied.
“It is a problem for us,” the man answered. “The Nicaraguan banks will not accept this.”
He asked me to go outside to either get money from the bank or from my hosts who would be meeting me in the arrivals hall. So he kept my passport while I went into his country and back again. But the bank did not accept my card and my hosts were yet to arrive, since the flight had landed 15 minutes early. Fortunately I spied Kiwi Jim, who I met at the airport yesterday, and swapped my five-dollar bill for one of his. He’s been here before and had loaded up on pristine currency before he came.
Later I saw some of the local money - some of the oldest, dirtiest and most dog-eared bills I’ve ever seen.

Scene 2: Baggage claim

My impromptu stay in Houston meant that my luggage arrived in Nicaragua yesterday. There is just one man on the delayed baggage desk, with about a dozen anxious passengers filing reports and claims. There are three of us whose bags are already here but he cannot leave his post to go and get them. It is 11.30am and the countdown is on, since at midday the Customs staff will go on lunch break for an hour and if we don’t have our bags we will be locked inside the terminal until they return. There are no food shops and there are people waiting for us outside.
The baggage officer radios for help but the only other airline representative is working on the plane. Meanwhile, over a dozen men in airport uniform are lounging around, sitting on the inert baggage carousel and leaning against the columns and walls. For them it is “cafe cito” time already.
Finally, the officer concludes his business and whisks the three of us through Customs and retrieves our baggage with moments to spare.

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I’ve been awake for nearly 48 hours and I’m about to shower and then collapse gratefully into bed. The plan was to sleep tonight in Managua in Nicaragua but I have only made it as far as Houston, Texas. I flew Sydney to Los Angeles with Qantas to connect with Continental flights from LA to Houston and then Houston to Managua. Unfortunately the Continental flight was delayed by five hours, leaving me stranded. At least they have put me up in the very comfortable Holiday Inn and given me meal vouchers, though I don’t know whether my bag is in Houston or has gone on to Managua without me, or is in fact still in LA where I last dropped it after clearing US Customs.

The best thing I can say about today is that I watched some cool movies (Swedish movie As It Is In Heaven was particularly good), read my book (On Beauty by Zadie Smith), and met some interesting people. There was Welsh Jim on his way to Columbia to do strategic communications for a development and inter-governmental conference. There was Kiwi Jim, a geologist from New Zealand who works on geothermal electricity projects using volcanoes in NZ, Indonesia, Nicaragua (he’ll be on the same flight as me tomorrow). And there was a lady from Houston who had spend 17 years working on a schools programme with ‘at risk’ kids.

Blogging has been sporadic while I’ve been on holidays in Australia, mainly because I couldn’t directly access the internet from this machine. I’m hoping it will be better now but I’ll be busy so I can’t promise. The next week is a coffee story in Nicaragua, then it’s on to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Cambodia, before back to London. Then I think I deserve a rest.

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The blog has been a little slow over the last week as I am in preparation to go away. There is always more work the week before I go away, not just with organisation for the trip but also with getting all my regular work complete. This week, we have also had house guests and if that were not enough, I am in rehearsals for a stage performance tomorrow night!

This time on Saturday I’ll be on my way to the airport to get my flight to Australia. My family is on the East Coast, in and near Sydney and Brisbane. The first two weeks are a holiday, which I am greatly looking forward to. Then the second half of the trip is work, spanning multiple destinations from Tasmania to Cambodia. I’ll be travelling with a photographer and working on four or five stories for various publications.

It’s a long flight to Australia - about 24 hours. London and Sydney are almost exactly opposite ends of the earth and you can buy flights that go via Asia or North America for very little difference in price or duration. I’m flying via Bangkok, as I am stopping over there on the way back. (Also, if you fly via the US, transit passengers must still collect their luggage and clear customs and immigration in the US, even though they have to immediately check back in).

Here are a few tricks to the trade to how to survive flying long haul.

1. Entertainment

If I can’t sleep I’ll watch movies or read a book if I can’t. I am normally a big reader but the selection of movies on most airlines these days is very good. It’s a good chance to see movies that I missed at the cinema (or that are too much of a guilty pleasure to inflict on my partner). I especially love it when airlines have video on demand as it is so important to be able to pause, fast-forward and rewind. Sometimes there are games to play as well, which is always fun. I have occasionally flown with cheap airlines (China Eastern from London to Sydney via Shanghai, for example) and while you can save money that way, it really does drag on when it’s anything longer than an eight-hour flight. Comfort is important.

2. Sleep

I’m not worried about being bored on the flight but I should try to sleep to beat the jet lag, since I arrive in Australia in the morning and I’m having dinner with some of my cousins that night. To sleep, I pack ear plugs and an inflatable neck pillow and I use the blankets and eye patch provided in the airline pack. I don’t tend to use sleeping pills as I am not a big pill popper anyway and I don’t like the idea of being too groggy to react properly if I need to get off the plane quickly in an emergency. I am hopeful that I will have enough frequent flyer points for an upgrade to business class on the Bangkok-Sydney leg - having the space to stretch out comfortably would really help.

3. Jet lag strategies

Jet lag, like hangovers, seems to get worse the older I get. Since I’m still relatively young, that means that I could be suffering some pretty serious jet lag by the time I’m 60! (If inter-continental travel still exists by then). Some people say that the trick is to set your watch to the destination time zone the moment you board the plane and then try to sleep and wake according to that. However, my belief is that you should sleep as much as possible on the plane. It’s rare that you will sleep so much and so well on the plane that you won’t be able to sleep that night. However, if you stay awake on the plane and then stay awake all day (a struggle but possible) then it takes days to recover because your body has lost an entire night’s sleep. Funnily enough, my body seems to adjust more quickly when I’m going all the way to the other side of the world, like the UK to Australia, than it does flying London to New York and then being consistently an hour or two out of kilter for up to a week.

4. Eating and drinking

I try to eat lightly on the plane because I sleep more comfortably and feel better when I disembark if I am not laden down with a heavy meal. This is difficult because they like to load you up with the calories and salt. I have been know to buy a salad or sushi at the airport to take on the plane, but usually I request a vegetarian meal and avoid the dessert. I love dessert but the airline desserts are never worth it - they are just there to keep you quiet and cure boredom. Sometimes I’ll take one of those free bottles of wine to have with my dinner because a little bit of alcohol helps me sleep. But I’ll also drink loads of water.

5. Water, exercise and the aisle seat

Flying can be very dehydrating and this is bad not only for your health and skin tone but also it worsens any jet lag. I drink a lot of water on flights - two or three litres on a flight to Australia - to stay hydrated and because the forced toilet breaks are a good prompt to get up and stretch and do exercises to beat deep vein thrombosis. (If you are worried about DVT, the compression socks are also a good idea). Since I’m likely to be up quite a lot, I’ll always try to check in early and get an aisle seat. You can never see much from the windows of trans-continental jets anyway. This does mean I sleep a little less but finding the golden balance between sleep and water intake is the trick to feeling good when you get off the plane.

* What are your tips for flying long haul? Do you sleep on the plane? How do you do it? How do you beat jet lag?

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This is my first time hosting the Carnival of Cities event here on Roaming Tales. I’m delighted to be invited to host and welcome anybody who is here for the first time, as well as regular readers.

This is a blog carnival; one blog hosts, and other bloggers send in one of their posts that pertains to the carnival topic. The readers get links to lots of interesting posts and the participants benefit from increased traffic. It’s a nice way to build community among bloggers, which is something I have been trying to encourage on Roaming Tales.

The Carnival of Cities is about any aspect of a single city (or mid-sized town). If you’re interested in learning more, the main Blog Carnival site has over 3000 carnivals listed.

So without further ado, here are the entries for this week’s Carnival of Cities. Thanks to everyone who took part.

• Seattle: Mary Jo at the Seattle Traveler shares the inside scoop on WhirlyBall, a bit of inside fun when the winter weather is getting you down. It’s a team game played in small cars, like bumper (dodgem) cars.

• Guam: Bill at ProjectsPossible has written about the island of Guam and the unique sculptures by artist Michael R. Genereux made out of a rare Micronesian wood that he takes only from fallen trees.

• Male, Maldives: Maldives Island Travel has written about flora and fauna on the islands. Not surprisingly for a tropical island paradise, colourful fish are a star attraction, so don’t forget to pack your snorkel and flippers or your diving licence if you have one.

• Monterey, California: If you want to see fish without getting wet, head to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, described by Patricia on the Kango blog. While you’re there, check out the rest of the family-friendly attractions the city and surrounding area has to offer, from the Dennis the Menace theme park to the Hansel and Gretel architecture in Carmel.

• Rotterdam: Sheila at Family Travel shows us that there is more to Rotterdam than you might think. The Dutch city is not just an industrial seaport but also has some interesting architecture and cool activities for kids.

• Paris: Stefan, the assistant art director at Intelligent Travel, spent a year in Paris as a student. Here he shares his Parisian museum picks - we’ve all heard of the Louvre but what about the Musée Gustave-Moreau?

• Barcelona: Me, My Kid and Life shows us how to enjoy Barcelona on the cheap, from graffiti art to chocolate. Meanwhile, the Spanish Language Site blog lets us know about a gourmet tapas walking tour in Barcelona. Food and sightseeing? Now that’s my kind of tour.

• Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Provence: It’s not quite a city, but I’ll always make a detour for wine, so let’s visit the French countryside, for this post on an organic vineyard in Provence on Diary of 1.

• Venice, Italy: Venice is one of the most beautiful and romantic cities in Europe but also one of the most expensive. Less Than a Shoestring shows you how to enjoy it without breaking the bank.

• San Francisco: Photos from Oak Grove in San Francisco, from Cat Synth.

PS I rejected a couple of entries that were either completely off topic or overtly commercial. Also, please accept my apologies for the fact that I am late posting this - I’ve adjusted the time stamp to reflect when it should have gone live.

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