Stu's Tips for Travel: Part Uno

Rules 1 through 5:

1) If you are a guy: never travel in a group with more women than men unless you like complexity. Self explanitory really. This is especially true when going out to a restaurant and you don't like dessert because girls will continually ask you why you aren't ordering dessert and then they will turn back to their female counterparts and say things like "GUYS don't like dessert!", "why don't guys like dessert?" "I LOVE LOVE LOVE Chocolate... And cheesecake... and nugget" " I can't believe he didn't order dessert". The upside is there is a few moment of undistilled silence when the desserts arrive.

2) If you are traveling alone, be wary of who you choose to travel with. It's easy to start traveling with someone, but it is infinitely more difficult (legistically and amiably) to ditch them. It is especially vexing to discover someone's unlikability on the first day of a 4 day tour in a claustrophobic automobile in the desert.

3) Don't expect to find love in a Hostel. This is no slight to the female backpacker population (excluding the unshaven hippie ones of course), but the likelihood of finding a reasonable match, and then ensuring the clothes on her body have been thoroughly washed within a reasonable timeframe, and then wooing her, and THEN convincing her to shimmy up to your top bunk in a smelly room of 7 others (at least 5 of which are snorring uncontrollably) and then making out with her is less than optimal.

4) Buses are a necessary evil. You will be uncomfortable, you won't sleep, you may get peed on, you may be standing for an extended period of time, 3 to 4 screaming kids will be encroaching on your personal bubble of space, and if they aren't, a large person will. You will not be able to go to the bathroom at your leisure (unless you take the peeing on people approach like the little kid who found my foot to be an appropriate urine receptical), your bus will likely break down, you will be cold at night, you will probably get to watch "White Chicks" in Spanish, and if you take ambian you will need to either puke or diarrhea (allegedly). BUT, on the flip side, it is cheap and sometimes you get to where you want to go.

5) Citizens of Latin American countries don't use clocks, schedulers, calendars, alarms, palm pilots or any other instrument that might lead them to arrive somewhere on time. This is a good thing to know. Especially when waiting in the seedy part of town for a pick up. Rule of thumb: If they say 8pm, add a day and a half.