23rd Nov: A quick look on the web re dengue vaccination turns up an NHS page which suggests it is recommended for people who have had or might have had dengue in the past. Wikipedia (which I've only skimmed) seems to suggest there are two vaccines Dengvaxia only being recommended for the previously infected while Qdenga is for people not previously infected. Qdenga is approved in UK according to Wikipedia. It is not approved in the US and while this in itself doesn't feel like a red flag (I know lots of medications are inconsistently approved around the world), but my gut feeling is that this vaccine doesn't seem to be recommended to people like me - I note for example that Boots travel clinic doesn't include it on their list of vaccinations, suggesting it is unpopular/not generally advised/not widely demanded. I'll see if anything comes up as I do further research but my inclination at the moment is to forget about dengue vaccination for now.
25th Nov: Looking at my vaccination booklet (well, a scan):
- I had the typhoid booster at the end of 2023 and it's valid for 3 years, so that's fine
- I had tetanus/diptheria/polio in 2018 and it's valid until 2028, so that's fine
- I have some (apparently incomplete) wafflings in last year's blog entries pre-Colombia about hepatitis A vaccination lasting longer than the yellow booklet says, and a quick web search turns up multiple official-looking sources about this (including a gov.uk one saying 25 years after the second dose). I had my doses in 2006 so I'm probably good until 2031, and even if it's 20 year protection I am good until 2026. Which handily is when my typhoid booster would be due for renewal, so I could get the hepatitis A done at the same time if the travel clinic advises.
I haven't checked for any specific destinations yet, but this does suggest I'm probably OK with vaccinations.
9th Dec: I should probably be writing more about my vague indecisiveness and plans for a 2025 trip, but since it would be extremely waffly I haven't been.
I have been intermittently buying various travel supplies - I am *probably* taking a trip and if I don't most of it won't go to waste. I kind of need a new PackTowl Original, the current one is going into holes and e.g. the loop in the corner to hook it on to something has ripped off. I infer from looking at the dimensions of those available online that I probably had a "L" size before. There is an "XL" which doesn't cost that much more and might be nicer for e.g. swimming or general "changing in public" type situations, but the listed weight of the L is 60g (my own spreadsheet shows 77g for mine, FWIW) whereas the XL is listed at 130g and presumably is correspondingly more voluminous as well. So my gut feeling is I will stick with the "L", it is a smidge smaller than is ideal in some circumstances but it does get the job done and I'm not sure I want to increase my pack weight/volume by upgrading to the XL.
10th Dec: My travel insurance renewal is due in a few days. The renewal quote is actually not bad (£160) ad has gone down compared to last year. That said, *I haven't got any flights booked right now* and for all I know I won't book any, though I do intend to. So I am half wondering if I shouldn't renew.
For reasons I think I've waffled about in the past, I have a relatively "premium" travel insurance policy with a company I somewhat trust not to cause problems if things go badly wrong (e.g. with a medical claim). That said, a quick comparison search turned up only one noticeably "cheaper" policy, at about £100 but without me checking the fine print and with a maximum trip length of ~60 days - which is likely to be adequate for a possible trip in January (more on this later, I need to write it all up) but not as good as the 90 days on my current polucy. And that is without as I say checking to see what activities are allowed etc.
I did submit an anonymous quote request to my current provider and got an identical quote (i.e. £160) so I could probably just choose to take out a fresh policy with them if and when I am on the verge of booking flights. I suspect there is no benefit to continuously holding travel insurance so technically speaking taking out a fresh policy when I have a concrete need for it isn't a bad thing, although I slightly worry the price will be crap by then.
Of course I also "need" to be booking flights soon-ish. But for reasons I don't want to write about just now it's all just slightly up in the air on top of my standard ditheriness.
19th Dec 0926: I got a Google Flights saved alert yesterday (though it went into spam and I didn't see it for hours later) and long story short I wasn't sleeping great and checked (maybe an hour ago now, as been dithering) and I've paid BA £10 to hold a direct flight to Cancun (just under 8 weeks) for just under £475 (and there will be the bloody seat reservation charge on top of that). I do wonder if anything amazing will come up in the Boxing Day sale I've been led to believe they had but I've had my eye on this approximate flight for some time and this *does* seem like a pretty decent price especially for a direct flight.
I've been avoiding waffling about it in here but I have been vaguely formulating some kind of plans for a trip over the last month or even longer. I just didn't want to write endless undirected crap in here as I scribbled down flight prices and possible routes etc, so I was making some "mostly price-related" notes separately. Now I am close to booking a flight I may write up some of my thoughts both so I can look back on them in the future and to help convince myself that actually going ahead and booking the flight is reasonable.
I don't want to write this up right now but I will come back to it later. I will say that after getting some online quotes from their site at the same price as my renewal, I let my existing travel insurance policy lapse on the grounds that it would be nice if I could push the renewal date to nearer to Christmas so that (assuming it is likely to be at least somewhat "sticky" across future renewals) I am less likely to be in a position where I'm taking a pre-Christmas trip and the renewal date falls while I am still away. I don't know precisely how this works, but I could see that making it impossible to do anything except accept a renewal at whatever price I'm quoted. I don't particularly anticipate a pre-Christmas trip (especially after I've seen what governments did about coronavirus) and the Guatemala trip when I *did* do this came after a four year work stint with no travel so I was particularly keen, plus of course it was pre-2020. I think the insurance thing will at least work out nicely - I am unlikely (even if I am 99.9% certain I want it, I see no point shutting down options earlier than necessary) to actually book the BA flight before Saturday 21st so I could renew the travel insurance the same day and still not be out of cover. It might have been nice to push the renewal out an extra day or two but this is still an improvement and close enough to Christmas that it's unlikely I would deliberately choose to fly back so close anyway. I could probably technically book the held flights in the early hours of Sunday 22nd, but that might be taking a bit of a risk in terms of it falling through - although I suppose I could see how the flight prices are looking and maybe take a chance.
I do vaguely intend to keep checking in on the BA prices over the next day or two and if they happen to drop further I might see if I am allowed to take out a second hold - for example, if they drop >=£10, that would be financially sensible anyway *and* it would allow me to push the travel insurance renewal date out an extra few days *and* it would push my option to take or not take the trip out a few more days too.
It would be annoying if there was some epic BA sale on Boxing Day but TBH I feel this price is already pretty damn good and I am not that confident (not that I really know) even a sale price would be better. If they happened to do something like free seat selection that would probably amount to £40-£50 off, but I have no real reason to think that's something they do - I'm just speculating. And even so, while I may not end up with the absolute best price possible, I think this is a pretty decent price.
22nd Dec 2300: Been a bit of a hectic day in different ways, but I did take up the hold booking for a slightly under 8 week trip to Cancun this morning, and I have until tomorrow morning to cancel this if I want thanks to the BA 24h cancellation offer. I am almost certainly not cancelling it of course, but if I suddenly have a nasty turn in the night or something I can.
I took out a new travel insurance policy today, so this has also nudged the renewal date pretty decently close to Christmas. I also splurged (£12) on the personal possessions and baggage cover; I do generally feel this isn't worth it, but as it *wasn't* that expensive and it *might* cover a certain amount of cash in my possession and I am also taking an expensive-for-me phone (my refurb Pixel 7 Pro) with me on this trip and that should be covered I thought after much dithering I would just go for it.
I don't think I've already said why this is an 8 week trip. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it's basically for a few personal reasons which mutually suggest that a "really" long trip isn't ideal. This is a bit of a shame given the late Easter would have given me the chance to do a 90 day trip and still be back for Easter, but it's not the end of the world. I was toying with a 6 week trip but talked myself/let family talk me up to 8 weeks, and this feels fairly decent. It's certainly not a negligible amount of travel, and unlike the 2024 trip which effectively got sliced into three short and slightly time-constrained sub-trips by the flight and the boat trip, this should be a relatively free-and-easy route.
I was poking around on the FCDO website to double check things and I realised that although part of the Mexico-Guatemala border is advised against, it is not the whole border. With some help from rome2rio I (finally) noticed that there is a train from Cancun to Palenque and that it's relatively easy (and presumably safe; FCDO doesn't have it in amber on its map for either country) to cross the border near Palenque. I had been thinking I could maybe go via Belize, but it feels a bit of a clat, I am not immediately desperate to go to Belize and the FCDO site makes it seem a bit dangerous and I also hear it's super expensive.
I intend to remain flexible, but my current rough plan is to have just a couple of nights in Cancun to recover from the flight (trying to avoid a dorm; I did a spot check and there was at least a half-decently affordable private room with shared bathroom available), then start meandering by bus over towards Palenque. I can judge how much I want to stay in Mexico, and if I decide that's what I want to do then fine, otherwise I can head over into northern Guatemala and go to places like Flores, Coban and Tikal and (maybe) Lago de Izabal/El Golfete and then return back into Mexico, perhaps taking the train back from Palenque to Cancun towards the end of the trip. My thinking is to avoid the train on arrival, because I want to get a "feel" for Mexico and decide how much I want to see more of it vs going into Guatemala when I arrive. I might consider a flight at some point to minimise backtracking, but that would be a decision for later and probably booked at fairly short notice. I think this could all be fairly free-and-easy. I did have vague ideas of maybe going down towards El Salvador and I'm not saying that won't happen, but my current thinking is that I'm more likely to focus on Mexico and Guatemala. It is possible I will never leave Mexico.
As I say things have been a bit hectic today and (mainly due to trying to decide about taking up the held flight and then needing to be up early to book it before the hold expired) I got very little sleep last night so I'm trying not to push things too far today. It makes sense to start organising various things once the 24h cancellation window has expired and I am "definitely" going, which means doing those things today is slightly premature even if I wasn't tired/slightly busy.
When I discovered the train and the possibility of crossing into Guatemala without going via Belize or going through advised-against areas that did give my enthusiasm a real filip and I started to feel quite excited somehow.
25 Dec 1804: Have just had a quick look at booking.com for accomodation for first couple of nights. I really don't think I want to be in a dormitory straight after the flight, especially (perhaps stupidly) in a potentially *very* "party" town like Cancun. There are plenty of decent looking affordable options, but they are all apparently private stays and thus are likely to be very un-sociable. Hostels with private rooms seem a bit thin on the ground, at least at the cheap end of the market. This I think is fine for the first couple of nights.
I was toying with making it three nights but TBH it is probably best to go for two. The flight doesn't land (barring glitches) super late and if I've (as I probably will and ought to) pre-booked some accomodation in another town for afterwards the only thing I would have to do on my first day is sort out a bus for the following day. I have been to Cancun before and in any case since I am going to have to be there at the end of the trip for the flight home and will naturally want to leave a safety margin, I will almost certainly be spending a few days there at the end of the trip, so there is no point hanging around excessively at the start. Particularly when by being in a private homestay type place I am probably not going to be meeting anyone. I obviously might see about buying a local SIM the first day too, but particularly as I do now have a semi-affordable international e-SIM in the P7 that is not so urgent, even if I am likely to buy one during the first few days anyway. And in any case sorting out both an onward bus and buying a local SIM is not excessively demanding for the first and only full day in Cancun at the start of the trip anyway.
A lot of the private homestay type acommodation doesn't offer free cancellation, which is understandable. It's fine, but while I don't want to dither unnecessarily and will probably try to book in the next few days, I don't feel the need to rush in right now. I was just having a bit of a look to get started and use up some downtime on Christmas Day.
Just put flights on my calendar. Timezone stuff is always a nightmare, I've adjusted all the timestamps to be in GMT but I'm sure they'll manage to be mangled somehow.
I think the actual next step in terms of trip planning (rather than buying stuff and preparing travel gear type prep) is to decide my first stop *after* Cancun and then have a look at buses and so forth. Once I do that it will probably feel easier to commit to booking something for the first two nights in Cancun.
Thu 26th Dec 1426: Been skimming guide book for Cancun and environs. Fuck me do I hate the guide book. It's so bloody smug. Shittily specious arguments about how you shouldn't feel ripped off by shifty-seeming Mexican market traders because they're struggling to survive and a big coffee chain will charge you USD6 for a latte back home even though the production cost of the coffee is a fraction of that cost. There's no logical connection between the two propositions. This is economically illiterate on multiple levels and even given what I assume are the politics of the author the fact that a substantial chunk of that USD6 is going to be going in taxes at various points in the process is surely not something they disapprove of but can't then be argued as evidence of "a rip off" in terms of the price at point of sale being way above the price of production of the coffee.
Moving off that specific point which is obviously minor but just rubbed me up the wrong way, a certain preachy smug tone pervades the book even when I might actually technically somewhat grudgingly agree with their actual points. And I'm getting the same old "yay, expensive tourist party venue, brilliant!" vibe I've always hated - it's not *just* a certain "there's a party and I'm not invited" feeling, if anything I think that's diminished in my side, it's also the feeling that like, no, that sort of "manufactured" and overpriced atmosphere type stuff is kind of naff. Meh. I'm probably not being very coherent and I've rewritten this to tone it down a couple of days later and so may now be misremembering exactly what I read.
The guide book also appears - maybe I'm just missing it - to be omitting useful information about buses and stuff, but to be fair I am only skimming at this point.
Checked old blog and I did do a hasty day trip to Tulum and Coba. Not saying I wouldn't go back, depending on whether I happen to pass through, but that would definitely make them a lower priority especially if they are not naturally en route. Also - while there's a risk I say this and never visit - while I am sure there is cool and interesting stuff that isn't insanely tourist rip off and/or not too suitable for aging solo travellers around Cancun, it does probably make more sense to get away ASAP and visit nearby places at the end of the trip as part of a safety margin when catching the return flight, rather that puttering around the local area when I first arrive. I do also often seem to get a bit of a bad attitude when I first arrive and I suspect getting away from a blatantly touristy and expensive area is a good plan to try to reduce the risk of starting to feel shit etc. (Obviously I will try not to develop a bad attitude etc, but the more I can do to feel good the better.)
Sat 28th Dec 2254: A couple of days ago now I read an e-mail from JFC with a link to a not onebag.com "one bag travel" site and TBH it's all rather uninspired and (call me a fanboy) I feel it's rather feeble JFC didn't link to onebag.com as well or simply instead. Not that it really matters of course. I did skim their e-mail and the travel site and it didn't really have much of interest to me, thought it did mention "Turkish towels" aka peshtemals. These sound vaguely interesting but OTOH even the article I found (linked?) said they weigh more than viscose towels. Still, perhaps worth making a note. I won't deny my viscose towel does sometimes get musty despite its relative quick drying qualities, but I am a little dubious that these peshtemals are somehow immune to this.
One of those articles also talked about how "trousers that will survive a subway ride won't survive a trek to Macchu Pichu" and it suddenly made me feel that my cheap-arse lightweight combat trousers are going to fall to pieces the instant I find myself on any kind of hike. Which is utterly irrational given that I've done plenty of hiking wearing these kind of cheap-arse "outdoor" type of trousers. Maybe my reaction here is a back-handed tribute to the effectiveness of the imagery in the original article, but OTOH this also feels like rather OTT advice.
To be clear, I don't actually dislike JFC as a flight-finding service. Still, it's worth noting that for a second year running my £1 trial subscription taken out with a view to booking trip flights hasn't paid off. IIRC last year they sent the offer I actually took up out as a freebie, and this year all I really got from them was a kind of "reminder" (since they suggest using it so often) that Google Flights exists, and I then spotted the (I hope) bargain flights myself through exploration and a saved flight search on there.
29th Dec 1650: Quick look online suggest both Mazatlan and Veracruz have a carnival around last week of February/first week of March. I don't know if this is a general thing but (one of my pre-trip prep notes is to check for this sort of thing so I don't get caught out) I need to be broadly aware of this so I can book accommodation in advance if I'm going to be in an area where there is a carnival surge in tourism.
2021: Very quick look at guide book and Bacalar sounds interesting - touristy but sort of low key so, and not that far from Cancun. There seems to be a chronic lack of bus information in the guide book. However, rome2rio suggests is it £20-23 for a shared shuttle and takes 5h. Quick poke on booking.com suggests there are a variety of not-insane hostel options, I could consider a dorm but there are also private rooms and some camping by the lake. Gut feeling is I may go for this, but I feel oddly harried and will probably sit on it for at least a couple of hours.
Oh, and although r2r hid it at first, there are also apparently straight buses in the £12-£40 price range. So it probably is OK to get there rather than risking being stuck asking for a shuttle but no one wants to share it or something like that. (Some of the more appealing cheap options in/near Bacalar are not free cancellation, or are free cancellation only up to about a week before the booking date.)
2054 Feeling oddly excited about Bacalar or environs. I do need to bear in mind my regular "problem" with rushing around too much and not spending enough time in individual places. I don't need to over-book in advance, but I need freedom to extend if I want to and it's not super expensive. It may not be unreasonable to book four nights in Bacalar though, giving three full days. (It isn't a problem to "rush" out of Cancun on arrival, as I will be back there later and it's just somewhere to recuperate a little after the flights and start to find my feet.)
Techncially I don't need to book Bacalar now. I will normally only be booking a few days to maybe a week ahead at most (depending on how "busy" things feel). I do need to book something for Cancun, but I could technically wait. However, since I am fairly sure I will want to go and that I am not going to be wanting to extend in Cancun on arrival, I should probably try to get the best possible price etc by booking early. Gut feeling is I may sleep on this (and perhaps do a bit more online browsing for accom etc) and then perhaps book it tomorrow.
31st Dec 0015: FWIW am unlikely to book any accommodation just yet, I will probably sleep on it for a day or two then book it early in the new year. Am slowly doing a bit of sewing on travel trouser pocket zips. I brought one pair back with me over Christmas to try to ease pressure a little when I'm back in London. I had a quick look tonight and gut feeling is that given the construction I am unlikely to try to put a zip inside one of the knee pockets to create a zipped inner pocket, this might work but it might also constrict the way the material moves and look and/or feel odd.
1426 Have switched to a new pair of shoes to start breaking them in for the trip. I'm not sure this is necessary - they're the now-traditional Karrimor Summit walking shoes and they don't generally cause me particular problems when new - but with any pair of new shoes it's probably prudent to give them a bit of time before going away with them, in case they turn out to have some kind of latent defect as well as for breaking in.
1st Jan 0322: Slightly drunk, but tempted to make a promise with myself: I am in no rush. If I'm having fun somewhere, stay there. Just don't hang around in a vague aspirational or lazy way when I'm *not* having fun and have no solid reason to expect to be having fun in the near future. Yes it would be nice to see northern Guatemala or even to get down to El Salvador. But there's no reason to pressure myself a lot and ruin potentially fun experiences (even if they are no more than genuinely enjoying lazing around in congenial mildly sociable environments) - not visiting those places will not be deathbed regrets, nor am I likely to be having my last chance to visit them. And you could equally say I need to appreciate the chance to be in Mexico again after so many years, especially since my first "proper" travel there in 2006 and 2007.
I do feel I'm a bit behind with general trip prep but there's always going to be an element of that, especially with both the disruption of Christmas and the extra disruption of asking for some travel gear as Christmas presents involved. It's fine. Things are probably pretty good and they don't need to be perfect.
Mexico does have such a bad reputation going there scares me a bit. But at least the last time I looked, the FCDO etc advice was not really any more generically scary than just about any Latin American country, and I've waffled before about how it makes even places you wouldn't normally think twice about (like Spain) sound horrifically dangerous too.
1924 Toying with setting up the postal redirection. It's nearly £40 and it grates a bit - I deliberately arrange it so I get very little post anyway - but TBH I probably just have to suck it up. I don't want to be worrying about some nastygram waiting in my mailbox to give me a shock when I get back, or someone taking advantage of accumulating post to steal it.
3rd Jan 0047: I am being chronically slack/procrastinaty about getting stuff sorted for trip. However, I have just set up the postal redirection - which feels excessive but can't be helped. I used a payment card registered at the "from" address of the redirection and I didn't get asked any awkward security questions based on my credit report ("which bank did you open an account with in 1973?" type stuff).
1231 Got a flight price tracking notification e-mail about my flights (well, maybe one day different) and the current price is apparently £751. I'd probably never have left booking this late but still, this does make me feel good about having got the price I did, even if I'm shortly going to have to pay ~£40 to pick seats.
5th Jan 1610: Feel like I've been super slack with preparation and I probably have, though it is hard over Christmas with the fun and also other annoying general distractions of visiting parents.
Having a very quick look at Cancun accommodation. Gut feeling is that especially since I'll be back there at the end of the trip anyway, I don't particularly want to be in the beach/hotel zone but would prefer something in the centre and ideally within borderline walking distance of the bus terminal. I don't know how this fits in with getting from the airport, but presumably I will have to pay for some kind of shuttle service or just maybe a taxi anyway. I also probably haven't seen the centre yet, whereas I probably have (maybe in 2010) seen the beach area to some extent.
Exchange rate is roughtly 25 pesos to the pound. Guide book says a shuttle from Cancun airport costs around MXN270, so about ten quid, which isn't terrible when I have all my stuff with me. Bus is MXN110 and doesn't take that much longer but I could easily see myself getting lost and it will probably be dark (if early evening) and probably best not to.
rome2rio is suggesting £9.70 for Yamevi Travels (from terminal 2) at airport to "centro" for shared, so that is vaguely consistent. (The hotel/beach zone looks arguably closer to the airport so I did wonder if the guide book prices might be for the hotel area and thus centro would cost more.)
1633 Right, obviously I don't want to write names in here - I should probably make these notes somewhere else as it would be better to be able to write candidates down and so on - but there is somewhere with free cancellation, private room with shared bathroom, not a million miles from bus terminal/centre at £34 for two nights including taxes and charges. There are quite a few decent-ish options but most don't seem to have free cancellation. That's not essential but nice to have.
OTOH there is an option for a budget double (same as other) room at £23 for the two nights with breakfast included and decent-ish reviews based on a skim. So (not saying the two are precisely rquivalent) I would effectively sort of be paying £11 extra for "free" cancellation. If there are a few nearly equally good options but some are free cancellation and some aren't, or if (e.g. due to uncertain plans) I can't be completely sure I wlll turn up on a particular date, free cancellation is a definite plus. But here I *know* I plan to be in Cancun on that date because of the flights, and if I don't make the flights then something much bigger has gone wrong and being out £23 is neither here nor there (and would probably be covered by insurance anyway). So I guess I really shouldn't obsess over free cancellation here.
1818 Usual doubts about accommodation. One has generally great reviews but a few "I am an experienced traveller" types posting reviews saying it is filthy, cockroaches etc. Another looks good but wants a triple-digit damage deposit in cash. Another looks good but has one review. Another looks good but the room is way too "big" (quadruple or something) and while it probably is single-occupancy, it is really weird that actual (say) "twin" rooms are *more expensive* than the quadruple and I wonder if it just might turn out to be a dorm-ish type situation being sold in a tricksy way to look like a private - as I say, it probably *is* private, but I'm finding it hard to trust. Back to London tomorrow and TBH while it's maybe been helpful to start looking I suspect I may not actually book tonight - there's so much last minute stuff to sort out here etc that I feel pretty pressured even without being incredibly lazy and tempted to procrastinate.
2113 Looking at Fit For Travel malaria maps, both Mexico and Guatemala seem to be low to no risk, antimalarials not usually recommended.
Vaccination looks fine, hep A and tetanus for Guatemala and nothing recommended for Mexico at all, and I already have diptheria and typhoid and as discussed at length I'm not doing rabies without a strong justification.
2143 While there is a strong element of indecision, procrastination and laziness, I think it will be easier to force myself to buckle down and deal with all the final-ish bits of trip prep once I am back in my own flat with no disruptions and the trip date increasingly looming.
6th Jan 2138: JFC! Just experimentally gone onto BA website and the *cheapest* seat reservations *for the outbound flight alone* are £42! The ones I'd probably want are £47. It would have been £52 (and I reduced it further with avios) for *both* legs when I flew to Costa Rica in 2023.
I am going to have to sleep on this. I am a bit knackered anyway after travelling back to London and wasn't actually intending to book tonight, but this has shocked me. The one consolation is that this doesn't appear to be a "the price went up because I dithered" thing, as the prices are equally outrageous for my return flight in March. What an absolute cocksucker of a slap in the face though. I don't think the prices are high *because* I got the flight cheap, so I'd potentially be looking at paying these fucking arseholingly insane prices even if I'd paid £600-700 for the flights.
You can't see the price in Avios until you go through to the payment page. And I will have to click a probably no big deal but mildly scary "Confirm seats" button to get there.
I was reasonably willing to pay ~£50 for both flights, even if it feels horribly fuckingly chiseling (but par for the course these days), but ~£94 for both flights is making me think "fuck you". I *have* flown - just not long haul - in non-aisle seats and it has been OK, but I really would prefer an aisle seat. There is a *slim* chance they will allocate me a half-decent seat at check in for free, it says I can pay to change it at that point and presumably there will be some tolerable options but who knows.
Anyway, that's shaken me up a bit but I am going to sleep on it. As I say, at least this doesn't seem to be because I left it too late, since it equally affects the March flight.
(I honestly don't know what happens if the plane is full or nearly full. Will they really decline the option of "free" money by allocating all non-choice-paying passengers to seats and then not letting anyone pay to change, because at that point they have after all allocated everyone a seat?) I guess there is a slight bit of wiggle room here as they allocate you a seat at check in, so if you're checking in the max 24h before the flight presumably not all cattle class passengers will have checked in yet and therefore some seats will be unallocated even if the flight is full.
7th Jan 1035: Had another quick look at seat prices - no change - and poked around on web and not finding much constructive advice. For a start it *seems* BA had a policy change (maybe I'm confused) and as recently as early 2024 there are posts about being allowed to choose your seat at checkin 24h before the flight, but BA are saying (quite clearly) that you just get allocated a seat and can pay to change it.
FWIW there are £42 (i.e. the cheapest) seats at the right end of a block of four, and which even have the expensive two seat rather than three seat rear or the plane seats to the right and thus possibly a little extra space. As waffled before, given free choice I'd sit in a seat by aisle with it on my right and towards the back, as the toilet doesn't bother me and things generally feel a bit more spacious round there.
I feel a bit edgy about not having an aisle seat reserved and could imagine feeling stressed on the day and leading up to it. OTOH while cynicism says that *of course* they are going to allocate me the shittiest seat they can for free to chisel a selection fee out of me, I can't help thinking I *might* get lucky and what little information I can find suggests that prices for seats won't go up (or down) by booking one last minute - it's just the availability may suck, there may not be an aisle seat at all or it may be a super expensive one so instead of paying £42 I end up paying £80 etc. Also presumably they cannot allocate *everyone* into a shitty seat so there is a chance the gamble will pay off. Continuing to toy with it.
1041 OK, FWIW I just found a casual mention six months ago on reddit saying that the hand baggage only fares have this "seat selected for you and you pay to change it" thing. So maybe this is just a confusing shittiness of the ultra-cheap tickets and not a general policy change which has gone unremarked.
I am forming the impression that up until about 72h before the flight, there is unlikely to be a sudden run on seats. But at that point all sorts of highly ranked people get to start choosing and the selection available will drop dramatically and although it's super hard to know there may not even be an aisle seat. Still, as long as I don't just completely avoid thinking about it and end up not sure what to do, I can probably safely let this sit for a few more days. I fucking hate it but I'm currently leaning towards paying the chiseling bastards for one of the lowest-priced seats with an aisle at the right end of a block of four. (Oddly, I can't help feeling this is maybe actually better than an aisle seat in a block of three, despite it being marginally cheaper on these flights at least. Yes, there are more people in the block, but it's open at either end, so surely you only have *one* other person needing you to get up to let them out instead of two? I guess you're a metre closer to one extra person but is that really such a big thing? OTOH when I've paid for seat selection before at not-quite-so-chiselly rates I've always picked an aisle seat in a block of three, maybe just out of habit or seeing it was't any more expensive than other aisle seats on blocks of four and having a general three-better-than-four feeling. Meh.)
1255 OK, I did some poking around on booking.com. I made some notes elsewhere so I could include place names, but in the end I went for a private homestay-ish feeling room in a probably relatively nice suburb. It's a bit out of the centre (mainly an issue for the bus terminal) but I think I can get a bus to the centre if I need to wrt booking onward travel during my full day in Cancun, and doing that without my bag may well be educational/confidence building/etc. It may - I need to check, and this is a general point not specific to this accommodation - be that I'll even want/prefer to book a shared shuttle place online and can even do it before I leave home. I will look into this once I've done some more thinking about where to go next and booked some accomodation. There were places which were more central and probably walkable to/from the bus terminal, but although probably fine and even quite "interesting" in a way *some* (by no means all) of the reviews mentioned the areas being very slightly sketchy (probably not in a serious way, given the generally positive tone) and given that I'm arriving after dark (albeit hopefully not incredibly late at night) after a long flight and that I don't particularly want or need to be in the heart of things at this point (e.g. I can stay in and explore the centre proper at the end of the trip, if I want) I think this perhaps-nicer area is a decent-ish compromise. It's a bit like staying in that suburb near the airport in Bogota at the start of the 2020 trip. (Albeit I was also due to fly out rather than bus out from Bogota then.) It does also have free cancellation - I tried (and probably succeeded) in not letting this overly influence me, I'd probably have picked this one anyway *but* I'd probably have dithered and mulled and slept on it and so on for a few days if it hadn't had free cancellation. (Which I guess is one reason free cancellation is good for the accommodation providers. I probably won't cancel, but it made me feel better about booking right now.)
Even if (as is likely one way or another) I get a shuttle or a taxi from the airport, I think a nice area is still worth something because there is that iffy moment when you get out of the vehicle and because it's basically a private residence it's not immediately obvious where it is or you can't just walk into reception but have to faff on the street etc. And sometimes the driver isn't quite sure where it is etc etc which also doesn't help.
There seems - I didn't spend ages trying to investigate - to be a real lack of what I'd consider "proper" (there will be other tourists there and social areas etc) hostels which offer affordable private rooms, but maybe this is a Cancun thing. In any case, I am happy to stay in dormitories intermittently, I just don't want to do it fresh off the plane and (more generally) I'd like to be able to roughly alternate dorm and private, rather than being forced into dorms excessively on cost grounds (as happened in Costa Rica, albeit it wasn't that bad, and maybe but I can't really remember on the 2024 trip to some extent).
It does feel quite good to have this booked.
Harping back to the flight seat reservations, while it sucks, it's worth remembering that this was still probably one of the better flight options. I probably wouldn't have got the basic flight much cheaper even with one of the options via the US, and that would have involved the expense and hassle of an ESTA and added to the overall stress of the flight what with the changes and security checks and of course taking more time, and I'd probably still have ended up having to pay something to choose seats, even if the prices may not have been so insane.
1632 Just checked and there do seem to be trains running to Gatwick on 16th, so probably no strikes or anything. Annoying the price seems to blip up from ~£10 to ~£14 after the very first couple of trains. Not the end of the world. My flight is earlyish so given the need to arrive 2-3h early in case of delays etc it may be that I am naturally on one of those £10 trains anyway.
The accommodation has offered me an airport transfer for MXN600 (approx £24). This is roughly twice what I hoped to pay. However, poking at the Yamevi Travel website I am currently unable to get into any actual details to see if I can book to this acommodation. *And* the tripadvisor reviews of YT (while not super dense in time) alternate between "OMFG fabulous" and "worst service ever" so I really don't know what to make of that. OK, it looks like the YT site proper is for agencies, and you have to book through an agency. I will maybe see if I can find an online agent later, if they won't offer service to my specific accommodation or the price sucks I don't even have to worry about the tripadvisor reviews.
cancunshuttles.com says USD18 one way shared but they don't have my accommodation on their list. I suppose this does at least show that the accommodation's own transfer is "only" about £10 more, not £12 more. (And I *might* need to tip the cancunshuttles driver, albeit this isn't huge, but it does add up. Whereas I can't help feeling for a privately arranged pick up - I have a gut feeling it's probably the owner or a friend of the owner doing this as a bit of a side gig, rather than a regular taxi, but maybe I'm wrong - I wouldn't do that.)
https://airportcancun.travel/cart/ says "shared service" is out of stock when I add it to the cart (it would be USD9.99 on some sort of offer for booking online, or apparently USD17 normally) - the USD38-ish option did work, so this probably isn't just my browser or something. AFAICT my accommodation is not on their list either, although they do let you choose a destination of "Cancun" so maybe in theory they will take you anywhere.
2011 Starting to go through packing list to check I have everything and get it all together and so on. I found my two prong aeroplane headphnoe adapter and am wondering if I need it. A quick web search is a bit inconclusive - people talk about having taken flights in business class on (IIRC) Cathy Pacific and maybe other airlines as recently as 2022 and them using a *new* multi-prong connector, but my old adapter wouldn't help with that anyway of course. I can't actually remember the last time I used the two prong adapter, but I guess I'll take it, it doesn't weigh much and for a long-haul flight it would be annoying not to be able to use my noise-cancelling headphones even if they do hand out free headsets to anyone who wants them. I didn't see any comments in my quick web search from anyone saying the "traditional" two prong sockets were still in use on planes operated by any major airline, but I can't really rule it out.
2051 Dug out my old Mexican notes. As far as I can tell they're still legal tender, though my MXN500 notes with Ignacio Zaragoza on are being withdrawn from circulation and I'm not overly optimistic I'll find someone to take them - but you never know. I did find confusing hints online that these notes are valuable, but at least one website is offering to buy them for about 60% of nominal face value. One sold on ebay in the US for slightly under its nominal face value recently, in circulated condition, looking better than mine in the photos but not massively better than mine. Not sure if I should take mine or not. Then again, one also sold in the UK for about half its nominal value, which suggests these are not in general tremendously valuable and I have five of them so they are worth a fair bit face value and if they are still legal tender I may be able to persuade someone to take them or get them changed in a bank. It may not even be hard to persuade someone to take them for all I know.
I have a handful of Guatemalan notes, I haven't checked their validity yet but they are probably not all that high a face value anyway - but it probably makes sense to take them given there's a reasonable chance I will go into Guatemala, and especially since having some local cash can be helpful when crossing borders. Yeah, I just counted up and I made it 105 quetzales, which is nearly £11. But if it is still legal tender definitely worth having for initial border crossing type situations and just because I *can* spend it over there and so it will reduce withdrawals etc.
8th Jan 0004: Slowly going through packing list. Power bank got hidden under one of my half dozen or so plastic bags of random travel supplies on the floor and I spent ages hunting for it.
Have just checked and both Mexico and Guatemala use US-style plugs (I was fairly sure, but good to check) so I can take my US-plug USB charger and avoid taking a plug adapter as that will be my only mains-powered device.
0200 Have given the rather stiff short (white) USB C cable I had on the last trip a test and to be fair it does seem to work. However, I have bought a new one which is much more flexible and also works well, so I will just keep the white one in a drawer at home in case it comes in useful and take the new one with me this time.
1437 Been over packing list and I have most of the stuff I need, a small shopping list but stuff I can probably buy at a local chemist - or abroad at a pinch. Have started to try to finish off trouser sewing stuff.
Having a poke re weather and starting to think about clothes,
https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/mexico would seem to suggest that the "Tierras Templadas" can get reasonably cold at night (6C-ish min) and parts of those regions are places I could easily go without (which may happen, of course) straying away from SE Mexico. Obviously lots of the places I am going to go will be warm to hot. I think this argues for taking the beanie hat and gloves. The light-ish weight rain jacket and fleece are no-brainers anyway. There is enough prospect of rain plus while I've been slack about reading the guide book etc and don't know what's on offer, there feels enough broad prospect of some kind of multi-day hike where you never know if it's going to piss it down that the waterproof over-trousers are probably worth taking - these never seem to get a huge amount of use, but (without actually going back over old blog entries in detail) they nearly always seem to be something I'm glad I have with me at one or two points even if I get lucky enough with the weather that I don't actually need to wear them.
While - if I am not too old - I would love to do some of the more strenuous but not over-technical volcano hikes in Guatemala (Tajumulco??), and if age is a factor I maybe shouldn't put this off forever - I think it is unlikely on this trip that I will be getting into those regions. I think there's a fair chance I will decide to go into Guatemala (but it's maybe 50/50 at this point), but if I do it's likely to be concentrated on the north of the country (which I think is mostly flat and hot) given both my slightly compressed timescale, the fact that I will be entering from the north so the north is naturally the most obvious part to visit and the fact that I did already spend some time in (albeit not many places) the south in 2018.
I haven't looked into it much but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some kind of high-ish altitude trekking on the cards somewhere in Mexico I have a reasonable probability of visiting, and this is the sort of situation where even if you never wear it, having the cold/wet weather gear is worth it.
I suppose the key thing is that there is enough uncertainty about where I'll go and what I'll do that taking this stuff is a sensible gamble. The added weight of the more marginal bits (the waterproof overtrousers, the beanie hat and the gloves) is about 400g, which isn't negligible but isn't huge. Most of that is the trousers (283g), and they do at least have marginal value in other use cases (I might wear them as trousers in a dry environment if I want to washing both my main pairs at once, for example). Probably even more important with the waterproof trousers is that after every trip I do say "I didn't use them much but I think it was worth having them".
Obviously if I knew I was planning to go and spend 75%+ of my time studying Spanish somewhere warm-ish or trying to learn to surf, I'd probably not waste weight on this sort of cold/wet weather gear, but this isn't that sort of trip - or even if it does turn into that on a whim, it isn't what I've planned as I'm leaving home.
For some reason I'm suddenly reminded of the odd occasion when I'm vaguely tempted to do some kind of cave tour and decide not to do it because (apart from claustrophobia worries) you can't wear swimming gear as you need long trousers to protect your legs but they are going to get ruined and I don't want to destroy either of my two main pairs. I am *not* going to try to add a pair of old worn-out trousers for this sort of situation - not being able to do this kind of thing has never been a huge regret and with the claustrophobia concerns on top (I'd *probably* be OK - until I struggled to climb up, I did do OK in the Potosi mines, for example - but I'd really need a reason to push myself) it just doesn't feel likely enough to justify the extra weight. (If I did want to take such a pair, one of the older pairs of travel trousers from an earlier trip would probably be a reasonable choice - they are not ruined but they're beaten up enough I wouldn't really like to risk relying on them as a main pair for a long trip.) Of course, if some such experience was one of the absolute "OMFG you must see this" highlights of somewhere I expected to go and I knew that in advance I'd probably reconsider, but I don't think this trip is like that.
1549 Quick and not terribly helpful poke online to see if Mexico is likely to require swimming caps in pools. I'm finding contradictory information and not much of it. Gut feeling is I am going to try to get away with just my bandanna as a fabric cap. I could always buy something over there if necessary and I'm sufficiently desperate. I suspect in reality any pool anal enough to actually be enforcing these kinds of rules will be like those very officious ones in Colombia where there are extremely tight restrictions (at least in theory) on acceptable swimwear and I would fall down on other requirements too. (I do have a never-worn cap I got free for signing up years ago, but even if it's in half-decent condition/fits I'd rather not take it with me just on the offchance.)
(It also seems absolutely bizarre to me that some countries - France and Italy, at least, I think - apparently actually mandate Speedo-type shorts rather than trunks.)
1702 I do wonder if, similar to the plan of wearing the short-sleeved T-shirt in the evenings (only) I sometimes adopted, I should perhaps experimentally try to set one pair of trousers aside for "day" wear and the other for "evening" wear, at least at times, instead of wearing each pair solidly and alternating them only when I've washed them.
Thu 9th Jan 1331 I wore my black travel trouser out for a shopping trip this morning to give them a bit of a test. They are slightly tighter than my probably a bit slobby normal trousers but they do basically feel OK. FWIW if I didn't already say, for this trip I didn't get two otherwise identical pairs of trousers but in different colours - it just didn't work out with the range/availability of colorus and sizes for the pairs I found. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is still a bit unusual/experimental. The grey pair are - I think - a bit looser, which may make them more comfortable for walking round in and especially hiking while the black pair may be just a little bit smarter or look better fitted. I think both pairs are fine, but this may feed into my vague idea to try swapping trousers by day/night rather than alternating over several days. (But it is worth remembering that given there's stuff in the pockets and the belt to swap and so on, swapping a pair of trousers over is a little more faffy than swapping a top.)
It grates but I am thinking I am probably going to suck it up and pay to reserve a seat on the outbound flight, probably (assuming it hasn't changed) the absolute cheapest which may in fact be as good or better and not the one I would have naively gone for. I have IIRC sat in non-aisle seats on short haul flights before and it's been OK but given I have been slightly mentally wobblier over the last few months than in the past and that this is a long-haul flight it's probably not that smart to be economising here, even if it does (as I say) really grate, since £80-90 isn't negligible and it's "almost" an unnecessary expense. I just logged on and the seat selection and prices seem the same, but I probably need to commit to this in the next day or two, maybe even this evening.
It also grates - though much less - but I am probably going to take the Cancun accom up on their airport transfer offer. It's more than I'd like to pay but as I've said ad nauseum arriving zonked after a long-haul flight after dark in a city I don't really know with no metro system and (albeit this bit is avoidable if I change the accommodation, but probably not a financial win) in accommodation which isn't on the lists of shuttle operators is inevitably going to be difficult and involve some costs. When I can I like to use public transport, but it's not always sensible or feasible. Thinking back without checking notes, in 2019 I probably got the airport bus into the city in Buenos Aires and in 2024 I got the TransMilenio in Bogota, but both times it was early morning so daylight and I knew the cities and transport systems to some extent. But in 2018, 2020 and 2023 circumstances were different and I did have to pay reasonably high prices to get from the airport and in some of those cases it might have saved money and would probably have saved stress to either have it sorted in advance or to not try too hard to keep the cost down. The accom transfer in Cancun is a bit more than I'd hoped to pay, but it's probably less stressful than a shuttle (which may not even go to my accom, or may struggle to find it) and being a kind of "package" deal it should reduce stress (e.g. the driver is going to know where the accommodation is) and given the general cumulative stress of leaving home early and getting to the airport and the flight and security and customs etc etc etc every little saving helps.
I don't know what will happen if I say yes to the airport transfer and then cancel the booking.com booking. I'm guessing it would probably be fine, especially as I'd probably be paying cash to the driver on the day, but although I don't want to leave arranging this til the absolute last minute it probably does make sense to sit on this for a day or two at least, perhaps until I do my booking for the post-Cancun accommodation in case that makes me rethink any of my plans.
1405 FWIW looking on expedia the *cheapest* ticket showing for my flight is £1687 for Economy Fully Flex. This is a one way ticket which may mess things up though. Direct on BA website it is the same. OK, if I switch to a round trip I get a kick in the guts. There is a sale and for my dates it is showing £343 economy! (Also utterly fucking bizarre how the return trip is cheaper, but airlines.) Oh no, those are individual leg prices. The round trip is £607.47. So I did still get a decent price.
I am doing this based on some misc web advice to check how busy flight will be by trying to make a booking.
Let's pretend I'm booking for 9 passengers now. £514 outbound, £281 return, £794 per person total.
Not sure what to make of this, it was a bit of an experiment. I guess this (modulo overbooking issues?) suggests there *are* at least 9 economy seats left. The fact the per-person price is rather higher for 9, based on pure guesswork and not experience (logically it should if anything be *cheaper* per person for a big booking, and I'd expect it to at least match the per-person price if there's plenty of space and per-person price isn't affected by the 8 bookings done before the last one), may suggest the flight is full-ish but not necessarily absolutely full.
I am unlikely to feel confident enough to not make a seat reservation on this basis but I'll continue to mull it over.
1533 Skimming the guidebook, Bacalar does look a decent option after Cancun. I did see on booking.com some nice-ish looking places *out* of town, but I think - I haven't looked at booking.com again yet - it would probably be more fun to be somewhere in town, and then just possibly either immediately afterwards (if I'm liking it) or towards the end of the trip before heading back to Cancun and the flight out I could consider staying in that more rural kind of area. And the Chacchoben ruins sounds pretty cool, especially if you are still allowed to climb them.
I've rambled before about my tendency to rush round too much, even when I try to fight it. There's also that tension - which obviously *does* depend on how busy things are, and can in part only be gauged once I'm there - between booking for an experimental night or two somewhere to see if I like the accommodation (maybe it's nice but overly dead and if I just had the balls to go wander in to some other hostel and have a drink in the bar or even just ask to look round I might do better moving elsewhere) vs booking for a night or two and then not being able to get in for an extra few nights and having to move.
I think I probably need (as I did before?) to aim for three days/four nights as a minimum stay unless I have a very solid reason to book less time (there's almost certainly nothing there and it's just to break a journey, or as with Cancun at the start of the trip I can will have to come back later on and there's no point lingering). Quite possibly four full days might be a better "average" target. We'll see what prices etc look like but I will probably book four nights in Bacalar and maybe extend another day if I can to allow for time for a day trip to Chacchoben without rushing - I do (modulo the "it's OK, really" warning about crocodiles in the guide book) think it might be nice to bum around by the lake a bit and if I'm lucky socialise and perhaps try paddleboarding or something.
After Bacalar, maybe Xpujil or Celakmul, although just eyeballing the map I half wonder if Celakmul is somewhere I visited in 2010, as I do remember being on a boat on the river with Guatemala on one side and Mexico on the other. Then perhaps Campeche, although it may also make more sense to go through the "northern" edge of Yucatan on the return to Cancun towards the end of the trip - I have already visited some but probably not all of the major places along that route in 2010 (not sure about Campeche, but definitely Merida). So perhaps after Balacar, maybe taking in X/C or not, moving into Tabasco/Chiapas may make more sense.
Right, digging through old blog entries, the tour I'm thinking of was from Palenque and took us along the Usumacinta river, which is not near Calakmul. Actually I'm a bit confused as the U river does not appear to border Guatemala. Anyway, old blog entry also says it was Yaxchilan and the archeological site (not the town) is indeed right by the border with Guatemala in a strange loopy bit, so that's where I went before, and it definitely wasn't Calakmul. (If I do cross into Guatemala from Palenque, it may well be that the bus passes through that region.)
Guide book suggests using Xpujil as a base to see the archeological corridor - it has tour companies etc, and I'm inferring it therefore has accommodation, though not checked booking.com yet. (I do also intend to poke at hostelworld and airbnb and so on on occasion.) If so, Xpujil may well be the actual next accommodation stop after Bacalar, although one I would not intend to try to book (I might check to see if there *is* accommodation) until I'm in Bacalar and have decided whether I want to stay longer etc.
After or instead of Xpujil etc, I'd probably be looking at Villahermosa and/or Palenque if we leave Campeche for the return route. That said, Laguna de Terminos and Isla Aguada look intriguing and nearer and mostly en route, albeit the guide book doesn't mention them at all, and it would be good to at least look into these nearer the time. At about the Villahermosa/Palenque point I'd be wanting to decide (just because of how the geography and non-risky border crossings work) if I want to cross into Guatemala or not.
This feels like a half decent plan as a starting point. Will have a bit of a break and maybe look into the accommodation situation later.
1617 The guidebook map casually indicates that the "controversial" Tren Maya runs through Bacalar. And a quick look on a booking site suggests there is an 0900 train from the airport (I don't know if you can get on anywhere else in Cancun) at 0900 which takes 4h36m to Bacalar and costs MXN1113.50 for "international tourist" in the lower of the two available classes ("tourist" not "premier"). So that's about £45. If it really is £20-23 for a shuttle, I'd probably rather do that - yes trains are kind of cool, but I'm not that desperate. Also, the different pricing for local (presumably QR citizens), national and international tourists on the train grates. Not ruling it out, especially if when I look into it the shuttle or public bus situation to Bacalar looks awkward or expensive. I did look up the 18th Jan specifically BTW.
Looking at a map on some random website, the train probably does only stop at the airport in Cacun itself. Incidentally the train also goes from Bacalar through Xpujil and Calakmul up to Escarega (where the map indicates the road would fork to take me on to places like Laguna de Terminos or Villahermosa). I really hope (travel bore mode) this hasn't "ruined" the atmosphere of some of these places, but it's probably fine and I can only go and see. Still, this does also suggest that if I wanted to (for the novelty etc) depending on price and competing bus services, I could also use this train for other parts of this journey, and/or use it for the end-of-trip route up through Campeche and on towards Cancun if I wanted to. (When I originally wrote about it, I think I wasn't envisioning it having so many stops, and it felt like something I'd potentially get on in Palenque and take all the way to Cancun, or vice versa.)
1634 Been testing some of my SD cards. I copied a load of photos onto one 32GB full-size card and generated checksums from the card images. Coming back to it a day or two later, lots of checksum failures and some of them are transient. Spot-checking a few, the image files are actually fine, down to the bit. What I suspect happened is that when I generated the checksums from the on-card images, I got a transient read failure and that got baked into the checksums. Some of the other files do have correct checksums but intermittently read wrong. This sucks but it may not be as bad as it superficially seemed, and SD cards being what they are especially after some time (even if not huge amounts of use) it may be the others are just as bad and I merely didn't notice. I will probably mark this card as "potentially slightly iffy" and try to avoid using it (I do have plenty of others) but it is big enough and light enough that taking it with me on the offchance it's useful is probably not a big deal. As I say, I can't really be sure the others are significantly better, although I guess they did at least avoid transient read failures using the written-a-year-ago test data already on there. (I only had to copy new data onto this card as it's the one which had real trip photos on and I had *moved* them off when I got back from the trip, to avoid confusion at finding them on there and wondering if I needed to copy them off later.)
I just pencilled a "?" on the back, and I noticed there is a "D" (probably) already pencilled in there. The other 32GB card for example doesn't have "C" or "A" or whatever on, so maybe I put this "D" on e.g. when copying trip photos off after 2024 trip to indicate "defective"? I am obviously terribly disorganised about this and/or too cheap to just want to throw away at least borderline good SD cards, especially relatively high capacity ones.
1842 I've asked online and the flight is probably looking fairly quiet, but obviously no guarantees (I'm assuming I can trust where I got this information for the moment).
That said, I also had another thought independently of this response. *If* my ticket came with free seat selection at online checkin 24h before departure, I would almost certainly not have considered for a second paying to reserve a seat. I'd maybe have been a bit edgy about not getting an aisle seat, but I wouldn't (rightly or wrongly) have been seriously thingking about various privileged frequent travellers or people connecting from other flights or whatever hoovering up all the aisle seats and that maybe there might not be one available for me to select at 24h before departure. I would have taken the probably-small risk of that happening vs paying extra to book a seat.
So, *if* the seat prices do not go up because it's close to departure - as I think is probably the case based on something I read - I am taking a risk by not paying to reserve a seat until online checkin opens if I don't like what I'm allocated, but probably no more a risk than I'd have taken if I had free seat selection at checkin. Yes, it is quite likely I'll get allocated a shitty seat, but I guess it's not guaranteed. For example, they may have n people travelling together seated together in an n+1 size block and the spare seat is a theoretically desirable aisle or window seat and they want to allocate a solo traveller to it to fill up the gap. (Also, I would assume most of the people with privileged status of some kind or another are not actually going to be flying economy - maybe some, but surely not loads? So they're not competing with me to reserve seats.) I personally wouldn't consider an aisle all that desirable, but the point is that I may have a non-negligible chance of getting a seat I'd be OK with (and if it's aisle I am probably prepared to accept anything else in return for saving £42+, even if given the choice I'd book with the aisle to my right and sitting right near the back for more open space around me), and that as long as I'm on the ball with my online checkin I am probably not running an excessive risk of not being able to pay to get what I want.
I still could see myself paying to select an aisle seat if I haven't been assigned one at online checkin, even if the flight "might" be fairly quiet and there might be a chance of e.g. an empty seat next to me. So I could well end up paying, but at least I've given myself a chance, and while I'm taking a risk that risk is only the same as I would routinely take if I had free seat selection at checkin.
On the flip side - and maybe I just didn't think it through and/or hadn't travelled for a while so had forgot things, but maybe it was just down to how the individual airlines worked - I *did* pay to choose a seat on my BA flight to CR in 2023 and with Avianca to Colombia in 2024.
1951 OK, I don't think I'm thinking clearly. I may still not be. I guess with regard to the flight seat reservation crap, the difference now vs "having free seat selection at online check in" is that with free seat selection, all I really want is *an* aisle seat free somewhere on the plane - some may be better than others, but they are all free. Whereas when I have to pay, I also want a "tolerable price" aisle seat - it's no good to me if there's a £100 aisle seat available but none of the £42 ones available, since they are no longer all the same flat price (£0) they were in the free selection case.
I'm going to sleep on this but I may bite the bullet and reserve a £42 seat tomorrow. The whole thing feels scummy as fuck.
2253 Flip-flopping some more, for people with free seat selection, surely they are going to pick the more desirable seats first as it's all free to them? So *if* there is an aisle seat free at all, isn't it quite likely to be one of the cheaper and less desirable ones anyway? If that is the case, then once again waiting until online checkin opens and then seeing what I get in the seat lottery and paying to change it if I don't like it isn't taking a significant risk compared to waiting until online checkin opens to pick a free seat.
There is an argument to be made that all this fucking stress and indecision and so on isn't worth it to "maybe" save £42 (or £84 or whatever), especially if you scale it by the (pulled out of thin air) 2/3 probability that I don't get an aisle seat for free in the first place and end up paying just the same as if I'd reserved a seat now and then could forget about it. But while I do care about the money, I also kind of care about not paying this rather extortionate seat selection price if I can avoid it. As I think I've said, if the price had been about half this or maybe a smidge more, which is what I was expecting when I booked the tickets, I'd just have grumbled a bit at the general chiselly practice of it but not worried about it overly much and just paid.
Fri 10th 0119 I did some sewing on the grey trousers earlier, they were actually maybe nearly "good enough" anyway, but at worst this extra bit will the bonus reinforcement for this pair which the black ones still need. The inside label on the grey trousers is not really suitable for my usual conversion to hold an emergency note, I may have to do without but will see if I can think of something.
I may try to do a small mod to my new fleece to see if I can add a zip to at least one of the pockets.
I did some research on Bacalar accommodation and have booked something. I have some private notes about different places I looked at which I'm not posting here as I don't want the libel concern or (mild) security loss of giving hints on where I am/am not staying. I've booked a tent for a couple of nights, I was going to book for four nights but this felt a little risky with a tent so I will instead take a gamble on being able to extend or book into somewhere else in town depending how the first night goes. It isn't on the lagoon as nothing remotely acceptably priced is - not a huge surprise - but most places seem to be borderline walkable to it, as is this one. There are borderline acceptably priced places on the lagoon a few km/miles out of town, but they're still pricey and I think at least to start with I would prefer to be at least borderline close to e.g. the zocalo nightlife (a cheap taxi or a walk, depending on dogs and distance and general perception of safety) if I want it, and as I think I said earlier I could always consider coming back to Bacalar or one of the places just outside it at the end of the trip. Or quite possibly going to a place like that straight after 2-4 nights in central-ish Bacalar rather than feeling I have to rush on to somewhere completely new, if I'm keen to stay. [How many times can I write "borderline"? But never mind.]
I don't know to what extent weekends matter, but FWIW the two night booking is to arrive on a Saturday and leave on a Monday, so the fact I'm not looking for weekend accommodation may help slightly when booking something (at same place or somewhere else) short notice if I do want to stay more than two nights. (As I almost certainly will in Bacalar, although maybe not at the original accommodation I just booked.)
I've been having a brief toy with travel clothes, which is what made me think about maybe adding a zip to the fleece.
I bought a second short-sleeved plastic T-shirt a month or so ago, so I have two new ones - one red and one blue. I might do some weighing when I get all the clothes out properly, but my current gut feeling is that I will stick to four long sleeved tops and one short sleeve, rather than three long and two short. If I decide it's desirable, nothing stops me marking a particular long sleeve top for evening use (when I don't need the sun protection of long sleeves, although the possible mosquito protection may help). A short sleeve top might be marginally cooler at night, but I think my thin long-sleeve tops are nearly as cool, and having four long sleeved tops offers far more between-laundry flexibility in terms of daytime wear with the sun protection. If the short-sleeve tops are *significantly* lighter than the long-sleeved ones that might tip the balance, and I'm not saying 2+3 is a bad idea and it may even be better than 1+4, but still, my current inclination is 1+4. The short sleeve top's primary benefit is that it is a relatively cheap and cheerful yet hard-wearing (I've had quite a few over the years) material and I can use it for e.g. swimming in the sea or non-fussy open-air pools to minimise the need for sunblock - using it (when it's clean enough and hasn't been recently used for swimming etc) as evening wear is a way of getting more use out of it, rather than something for which its short-sleeved hardwearingness is a specific benefit.
One advantage I may not have explicitly mentioned of staying longer in places which "deserve" it (even if that's entirely social rather than in terms of stuff to do, or even if it's just pleasant to hang around and idle about in even if I'm not being sociable) is that it reduces the amount of time spent planning onwards travel, booking accommodation and buses and time spent on buses etc. The goal is not to cover as much distance or tick off as many places as I can in the time available. And I think in terms of mental energy burned, if I were having to book an onward journey once every five days instead of every four days (and even more so if you do it every three days), that probably makes things feel quite a bit more relaxed and not as if I'm constantly wondering what to do next or spending time trogging over to the bus terminal to buy tickets after I've only been somewhere two days/three nights or whatever.
I'm probably repeating myself, but that's hardly new for this blog.
I don't *think* I have ever slept in a tent (this is I guess glamping, albeit not that glam - there is supposedly a power socket and a fan though) as such, although I guess Bolita was kinda-sorta camping style beds - oh, and there was the biggish shared tent at the top of Acatenango (albeit that's a little different) - and Miguel's Surf Camp also had a little bit of that kind of vibe. So this is (I hope) going to feel just novel enough to be cool and maybe just slightly comfort zone stretching but not a huge deal.
The tent is about £10-12/night and dorm beds seem to run about the same rate, but the tent is effectively a kind of private while still being at a vaguely hostel-y kind of place where there might be social options. There's a fair range of dorm beds and tents at this kind of price point (may be a few pounds a night extra). Very few hostels seem to have privates, and those that do seem to be pretty damn pricey, but there are hotels (so probably a bit unsocial, but definitely an option for intermittent privacy, assuming Bacalar is typical) with private rooms (some en-suite) starting around the £22-ish a night mark.
0153 I might have a look tomorrow and see if I can book e.g. an ADO bus from Cancun to Bacalar online and maybe even print the ticket out here, then I would not have to trog over to the bus terminal on my one full day in Cancun but could probably just get a taxi (ideally with host's help) or an Uber or whatever over to the terminal on the Saturday morning to get the pre-booked bus.
All else being equal, *if* I like Bacalar and want to e.g. try the out of town places by the lagoon and/or a hostel by the zocalo, it probably makes more sense to extend my time there on the initial visit rather than saying "I could come back". It would certainly be doable, but it's far enough (approx 5h by bus, I think) from Cancun that it's not trivial to pop back there, *especially* if I do end up going via the north side of the peninsula on my way back to Cancun at the end of the trip.
0202 Already find myself thinking as I clean my teeth "hmm, maybe 2 nights in the tent plus perhaps another 2-3 nights extended there or say elsewhere by the zocalo and then maybe another 2-3 nights at somewhere out of town - FFS, that's maybe 8 nights total just for Bacalar, I can't afford that much time". And maybe 8 nights is a smidge OTT, but *if* I am truly enjoying it and truly want to do all of this then that's hardly a waste, is it? But this kind of shows the "OMFG got to get a move on" feeling I find so hard to shake off. In reality unless it does feel "OMFG wow" or e.g. I meet someone who tells me how cool it is at the place out of town right on the lagoon, the chances are it would be more like 4-5 nights total even if I did quite like it. And it's also possible that one night would be to accommodate a day trip to Chacchoben, and just writing that makes my irrational "box ticking" side think "OK, that's not so bad, because it's not just (say) 8 nights for Bacalar, it's 7 "days" of Bacalar and 1 day of Chacchoben.
It's fine, I'm just trying to show what I'm fighting in my brain here. :-) And Bacalar is just an example, as it's what I'm currently thinking about - I may well be ambivalent about it or even find I don't like the place at all.
1631 Just checked seat bookings, nothing really seems to have change wrt availability or prices. Still dithering.
1706 Fingers crossed, but weather forecast for next week up to and including Thursday is relatively warm, so I hope there won't be any significant problems with tube/trains/planes.
2213 Yay. Was going to start pseudo-packing and I can't find my vaccination booklet. It's not *critical* but it is bloody annoying and it is kind of nice to have it just in case, and it's a bit of a souvenir since I got it for my very first trip back in 2010. It will probably turn up but I've looked everywhere and I just can't find it.
2255 Packing going very slowly. I have managed to assemble my liquids bag. I am probably taking one 100ml bottle of Trek saltidin spray - I suspect this will in fact last adequately based on previous experience, I have a second equally full bottle which appears new but the weight and (perhaps more importantly) volume in the fucking liquids bag is not negligible, and the second bottle doesn't expire until 2026 so it will probably be useful on a future trip. I am probably likewise contenting myself with my usual 50ml bottle of sunblock and leaving behind the rather bulky half-tube I have left from the 2024 trip. Of course if I have to buy replacements for these I will end up with a big bulky container to carry round, but at least that's post-outbound flight security and in some ways no worse than lugging around my own supplies from home the whole trip. (Albeit I may not be able to get saltidin spray over there, but still.) The spray bottle says it would last 2 adults 1 week if used every day, but in practice I don't seem to use that much - perhaps because I tend to cover up during the day (and indeed at night to a fair extent) or maybe I apply it too sparingly or whatever. I have cut my rather mangled green "laundry" soap chunk up into pieces and will probably take approx 47g with me, as my notes suggest I used about 40g on my 11 week CR trip. I have left this on the side to see if it will dry further - it is pretty dry but still slightly tacky (it's been sealed in a plastic bag since I got back) - to try to ward off problems with security deciding it's a liquid. It would probably squash into the liquids bag, but the less I have to force in there the better. Luckily I just remembered - despite having a clear note on my packing list which I ignored - to buy myself a solid stick deodorant the other day so I won't be taking a roll-on that has to go in the liquids bag. And my vaseline tins, while I am allowing space for them (especially the spare one), are I think technically not liquids either.
I need to decide how much USD I am taking with me. Probably not that much, given I have (albeit of slightly dubious acceptability) about £100 worth of MXN500 notes and a bit of extra in other notes. I'm sure USD is fairly widely accepted in a pinch in Mexico but any I take with me and don't use is just extra cash I have to lug round and risk losing without being properly spendable. It's not like going to CR where I understood (correctly) a lot of tourist stuff likes USD payments, or the Colombia/Panama trip where I had the boat trip issues plus the fact Panama is actually a USD country. The Cancun accommodation is going to be paid on credit card via booking.com, so for (touch wood) absolute emergency arrival stuff I only really need enough to pay for the airport transfer. I will also inevitably have some GBP notes on me (I'll need some notes in case - touch wood again - I end up having to get some sort of emergency taxi to the airport) which I could change in a pinch.
I also have traveller's cheques in an emergency, though I am not over-optimistic about getting anyone to accept them - but you never know, and they don't weigh much, etc.
I'll perhaps sleep on it but gut feeling is that USD50 of actual cash is probably more than enough. I should definitely favour small bills, including singles, as these may prove acceptable if there are any fees to be paid at border crossings or the airport. Much better to withdraw a wodge of pesos and stash *those* away as a reserve once I'm there - the theft risk is the same, and they are much more directly negotiable.
Sat 11th Jan 0035: Just managed to find the three (two blue, one black) brand new Raging Sport tops I had from Christmas 2023/Jan 2024. They had slipped inside the top of an open carrier bag full of really old travel clothes in top of bedroom wardrobe - I hadn't dragged that down with all the other travel gear as I knew it was old travel clothes. I should keep better notes on supplies and where they are stashed. I will look at all the clothes in daylight tomorrow.
I have another completely unused long-sleeved "plastic" top which I will try on but my suspicion is it's a bit tight and revealing. If that's true, I am probably going to take the new short-sleeved cheap-but-good red T-shirt and four Raging Sport tops, two new (one of each colour) and two old (one of each colour again). Before remembering fully about the new ones and checking diary/accounts to see about being given them and buying them, I was looking at the old ones and they all look borderline OK and some look pretty decent. I also have the unused Craft red top, the same otherwise as the blue I took to Colombia/Panama, but I'm a bit worried it's over-bright and I guess it's not coming to any harm sitting unused in the wardrobe - I perhaps ought to wear it out to meet a friend or something at some point over the following year to see if it gets a reaction and I could then maybe take it on my next trip.
FWIW I spent some time Friday afternoon/evening on the new fleece and I have ~75% sewed in a zip on the left outer pocket. I may do the right outer pocket time and energy permitting, but I do still need to also strengthen the black trouser pocket zips and ideally take a look at my cap. (I'm toying with promoting my daily wear cap to my travel cap, given it's probably in much better condition.)
0123 Done a bit more sewing and although some extra reinforcement wouldn't hurt, the left fleece pocket is pretty much done. I think the black trouser reinforcement is next on the priority list.
0129 Quick look on ADO website, there is a bus Canun-Bacalar 0910-1450 MXN 404 and 1010-1550 MXN 428. There are later buses but they are significantly more expensive and I might be technically pushing it with the slightly crappy check-in times on my Bacalar accommodation. 42 and 38 seats left respectively. If I can get an Uber or a taxi or something (or maybe even a public bus, which *might* go direct to the terminal for all I know) - I hope host can help here - this might even be pretty straightforward. I could probably book this in advance in the next day or two, then I don't have to worry about getting over to the terminal during my full day in Cancun and can concentrate on buying a local SIM and vaguely finding my feet. The price for the bus is approx £16, which feels far more reasonable than the Tren Maya price.
Hmm, the Cancun accommodation rather worryingly and oddly says check out is just one hour. I assume this isn't a real restriction.
0139 Quick poke on web suggests Uber is available in Cancun and although there has been (putting rights and wrongs aside) some trouble, it is probably not too bad now. I don't think it's super advisable from the airport, but I should probably try to set it up on my phone and (perhaps with advice from host as to current safety situation) I can then maybe use it to get to the bus terminal from the accommodation. The one bit of advice I saw that I need to remember is that if the car has the licence plates removed you should cancel the booking and contact Uber. But TBF although I haven't used it much or in ages, I think they send you the registration up front via the app so if the car didn't have it shown I'd probably be suspicious anyway, although I just might have let it pass.
1154 Not sure if I was clear earlier, but FWIW I cut the green soap I plan to take with me into three chunks - I left it on radiator in case it would go a bit more "from the factory"-style solid (probably not, but you never know) but before I gave it long I cut it into three bits while it was still soft and wouldn't crumble as a result. Small bits of soap might be annoying for washing body but this is for clothes and I just run a chunk under the tap or into the wash water, so I don't see a big problem with small bits and this way I only have one small-ish soggy lump to deal with at a time and the remaining ones will be pretty solid and un-disgusting.
1603 Just tried on the never-used Tri-Dri grey-ish top. It is a tiny bit tight, I am not sure it's unacceptably so but I will play it safe and not use it.
I have missed the best of the daylight, so I think I will put off checking the non-new tops to see which ones I will take until tomorrow. I would like to do a "rehearsal" pack tonight, but I can easily just use four non-new RS tops for that.
The toothbrush I found (new in packet, although the packet a tiny bit open at the back) seems be priced at 30 rupees, is labelled in English and on the back it says "Only for sale in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives". Could this really have been something I bought in India in 2013? Or did I somehow pick it up at a shop (probably in Latin America) where it had somehow found its way despite the sale restrictions?
1630 I have been feeling some concern about my first two stays both being just two nights. I think there are solid reasons for both (not lingering in Cancun at start of trip, then not-overbooking for the hostel with the tent and where the location may not be ideal in some ways) but this could still be a little awkward in terms of laundry and feeling pressured. Of course, if I basically like the idea I will probably either be extending if I can at the Bacalar hostel or booking in somewhere either walking distance or a short taxi ride away, so moving accommodation is less disruptive than travelling to a completely new town, but it's still not ideal. But of course I also don't want to miss out on stuff (maybe some not-too-OTT nightlife near Zocalo or actually staying by the lagoon out of town) by over-booking the tent place, while at the same time I did want to give the tent thing a try.
Right now the flight seat map and prices look about the same. I am starting to wonder if I should just book the damn seat now and stop having to worry about it. The whole thing just pisses me off. To repeat myself yet again, if the prices had been about half this I'd have grumbled a bit but not felt too hacked off, but at £42 minimum per leg it's just feeling like a pisstake. Anyway, I suspect I'll be OK until tomorrow at least.
I am going to take the travel clothes line, although I often feel I don't use it much. I think I do usually get a little bit of use out of it and it doesn't weigh that much, but just possibly I should reconsider taking this in future. We'll see I guess.
1956 Intermittently packing. A set of uw I am 99% sure I had - I remember counting out the uw set I'd bagged up from last year's trip a few days ago - has apparently evaporated. It doesn't matter as such, I have spares and indeed I planned on mixing one or two "new but purchases a year or two ago" sets in to guard against everything suddently suffering age-related failure at the same time, but still, it is kind of annoying.
2005 OK, the uw has turned up. :-) It had migrated to another room.
2012 Luckily just read the instructions on the new PackTowl and saw that I need to machine wash it to "activate" it.
2035 I think I'm going to re-use the mesh bag for the old worn-out PackTowl as a toiletries bag (to take into bathrooms with me), which I probably was doing anyway. I will take the new mesh bag from the new PackTowl as well, I can either use it to keep the towel in or perhaps try it out for holding clean but perhaps still damp from the wash underwear or something.
I haven't actually packed anything in the main bag - as my swimming stuff is wet and I've been test-wearing various items of travel underwear and so on I'm really reluctant to start faffing. I am going to need to give stuff a wash tomorrow and then it's going to take time to dry but we'll have to see how it goes. I have at least packed individual sub-items and gathered the stuff to go into the main bag. That's probably good enough for today, I think I might go see if I can do a bit more sewing on the trousers.
I haven't booked it yet but assuming nothing's changed I inclined towards booking the earlier of the two buses to Bacalar. It's earlier than necessary but not massively so, I'd hope the time zone difference from home will work in my favour and it's also allows an extra margin of safety if something goes wrong and I do miss the first bus - even if the checkin times probably aren't pedantically enforced, I don't really want to be getting into Bacalar after dark (if only because of dogs) and the second of the two buses is probably just a bit closer to dark than I'd like (though I haven't checked sunset time and it may not be too close).
Sun 12th Jan 0041: Just watched a YT video about the different straps on hiking packs. I knew most of it but this has been quite helpful. Mainly because I think I now see how some of the toggles and loops on my ultralight pack are probably intended to hold "long thin" objects (like hiking poles or ice axes) vertically down the pack - no use to me, but at least I understand what they are for.
I do wonder a bit if I'm going to struggle to fit everything in. It should be fine and I've certainly lightened my weight and probably reduced my volume in a few areas (e.g. the fleece and rain jacket), but OTOH I am probably taking some flip flops (admittedly I bought some during the 2024 trip so had to lug them round, and the ones I am taking are my Chile 2019 ones which are cheaper and more compact) and I have the LifeStraw water bottle with filter (albeit this is hopefully something of a wash/net win compared to lugging around disposable plastic bottles full of water, since I hope I can afford to carry less water in transit if I know I can use the filter to get water even late at night once I reach the destination - I only need enough water to get me to the destination, not to get me through to my next shop visit, and maybe even less if I'm willing to refill the bottle in rest stop toilets) and I also have a Bluetooth keyboard to try to compensate for not having the K1/improve on its ergonomics even if this isn't as conveniently compact as the K1 keyboard.
Just have to see how a test pack goes, if/when I can get round to one.
0603 Quick random online check suggests traveller's cheques are still "a thing", regardless of their popularity.
0608 Jesus, listening to reggae remix/cover of Back To Black which ISTR hearing in pizza place in Capurgana in 2024 and I just realised that being in Tunja (?) and hearing Muerte en Hawaii and Ya No Se Baila Como Antes was only January 2024. It kind of feels like years ago. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a thing.
1322 Flight seat map and prices looks fairly similar.
I have been reminded by booking.com that the free cancellation period for my Cancun accommodation ends today. I really ought to get on to them about the airport pick up - if they said I couldn't have it now, I might (probably wouldn't) wish I'd cancelled. The trouble (in general, not specifically here) with flexibility is that I tend to over-use it as an excuse to procrastinate - e.g. I could have arranged the airport pickup and bought the bus ticket to Bacalar already, but I haven't.
Bus tickets Cancun-Bacalar look about the same. I should probably book the 0910-1450 - that isn't too insanely early a start (if I can get a taxi or whatever I probably don't need to leave the accommodation before 8) and gives me a decent safety margin wrt both the check in window and sunset. I just checked and actual sunset is about 18:30 (about what I'd have guessed, to be fair). It also, if all goes to plan, gives me time to pop out and maybe eat something in Bacalar without any worries about being out after dark. I could also/instead perhaps go to the bus terminal a bit early (because I'm bound to be feeling edgy about getting there successfully on time in a taxi) and maybe have a kind of breakfast there if (as is likely) I get there with loads of time on my hands.
1413 I must admit I'm feeling vaguely "lost". I have a lot to do but not really that much but it all feels a bit overwhelming - there's lots of "IT"-ish prep to do (like checking I can access banks and setting up money in accounts) which I've (sensibly enough) put off while I've been working on the physical packing and booking stuff. I also really need to get travel clothes into the wash but they're not likely to be dry until tomorrow and it's starting to feel (somewhat stupidly) as if I've left everything too late. I had really hoped to have my bag packed and sitting there ready and all the travel supplies I've pulled out of cupboards and which are currently scattered around the flat put back away by now, and simply because I have to let stuff dry that isn't happening until tomorrow at the earliest. I'm also probably going to have to keep scrabbling around trying to find my vaccination booklet too.
I have messaged the Cancun accommodation to accept the offer of airport transfer and also mentioned I want to leave "early" (not really that early) on Saturday to get the 9am bus. Fingers crossed they come back to me saying this is all OK before the free cancellation window expires, though I don't seriously expect any problem.
1426 I just logged on to my main bank account from the P7 with the web browser. (I'd rather not install the app if I can help it, and I have the app on the K1 and would rather not fiddle with that - it stopped working for a while and only started working again recently.) I had to give a code texted to my UK number but I can receive those texts (as long as I have the SIM) abroad, and I also told it to remember the device and since I have no special privacy type cookie clearing settings in that profile this may be remembered.
1513 Putting in a load of trip laundry. Not going to re-wash the bandanna, I had it on the radiator after taking it out to de-mustify it and it feels quite nice and doesn't smell. Am machine washing most other stuff, new and old - I want everything to have had at least one machine wash and for the old stuff while it was washed when I got back from the trip after being in the wardrobe for months it may be a little musty etc and a wash won't hurt.
1550 Have just made a load of transfers from main account into various travel-related accounts. I did this using the P7 as an extra test.
1813 Doing a little packing/experimentation with arranging stuff in bag. I have 111g of carrier bags and bin bags in a little package I just put together! This feels vaguely insane. But thanks to the eco-idiots it is hard to pick up supplies of these as necessary as I go. I guess this isn't a huge amount of weight but it does add up. Maybe I should try to optimise this a bit and (say) halve it.
OK, got that down to 55g approx by omitting the bin bags (which I will probably never use, and are not large enough to put the whole backpack in if I go on a boat or similar, and I have rubble sacks as well) and some particularly heavy(-duty) re-usable carrier bags, trying to strike a compromise with lighter but relatively robust ones.
Actually I think (hope) I only have one rubble sack. I just checked and that weighs 38g. This is a lot considering I have never used it, but having one does feel a reasonable option - it is pretty heavy duty and may save my bacon if e.g. (touch wood) my main bag absolutely collapses, although of course it has no handles so I might struggle to carry stuff in it.
2212 Have wasted some time trying to look for vaccination booklet. On slightly more productive side, I have cut my hair and fingernails. Was going to do toenails but they don't really need it. So if all goes to plan the next haircut will be pretty much the mid-point of the trip.
Mon 13th 0046: Have deleted a load of photos from my Google account. I don't plan to be using it for photo storage during the trip, but this does at least give me the option if I want. While a bit faffy deleting all the photos day by day (I guess they don't want to make it easy) on PC, it's much easier than trying to do this on a mobile phone during the trip.
0148 Done a bit more sewing. Also had a bit of a play (first time back in London) with the bluetooth keyboard plus P7. As I already observed, I can just about use this "mini laptop" with my normal glasses on, but because I am relatively close to the screen when sitting and using the keyboard, my sadly aging eyes can't quite focus properly and even with a large-ish font it's a bit of a strain. Without my glasses I have to lean in to see it, which isn't great either. (Without the keyboard, it's easy enough to position the phone close with no glasses or far away with normal distance glasses and have it usable, but the keyboard constrains the distance.) It is *so* much better with my reading glasses. I didn't really want to take them, but I will probably have to. They only weigh about 26g and I have an "eco" soft case that came free with a newish pair which only weighs about 16g, so this is probably OK. I could bubble wrap them, but then it's a real faff to get them in and out and I'd have to worry about the bubble wrap maybe scratching the lens - I am trying to be more carefully with keeping the lenses in good condition than I used to.
0239 Decided the other day I'm not going to take my new USB C to headphone jack adapter. This has potential value for listening to music from my phone if bluetooth isn't allowed on a flight, but I suspect bluetooth usually is allowed and the key point for this trip is that the O6 *does* have a physical jack of its own, so even if there are restrictions in place I can still use the O6 to play via headphone cable without needing this adapter. So although it's not particularly heavy or bulky, I don't see any point in taking this this time. Small savings add up etc. (It could certainly come in handy at home, or on future trips, but not this time.)
1248 Has occurred to me (probably not for first time) that in some (perhaps even many) accommodation situations I may not have a table-like surface to put the bluetooth keyboard down onto. We'll just have to see. I really don't want to take the K1, it is not super comfortable to type on for long amounts of text (albeit way better than an on-screen keyboard), would be extra weight, is not in the best condition etc. We'll just have to see. I suspect it will be OK, and I do also intend to use voice typing if I have privacy but it's inconvenient or awkward to use the bluetooth keyboard. (I'm sure there will be a distinctive style to bits of the blog written using voice typing.) It may also be possible to put the keyboard on my lap and have the phone itself perched elsewhere nearby.
Absolute worst case is that I end up writing the blog up less frequently than daily. This would be a shame, but not the end of the world, and I don't suppose it will come to that.
Does feel like everything is unpleasantly last minute but I guess we're not that close yet. The Cancun accommodation hasn't replied confirming or refusing the airport transfer, I wish they'd get back to me. I don't want to be an arse especially after I took so long to get back to them, but it is still annoying.
1252 FUCK! Just looked at flight seat map and it's practically entirely boxed out! There are a handful of £87 seats in the aisle by the two seat blocks at the rear and that's it. I had not expected this.
Chill. I maybe had read about this and then got confused. I knew that from 72h before privileged people would have their choice. However, I didn't expect that the entire flight would be blocked off like this, presumably to "give them maximum choice" (or am I making that up?). I had expected I would be able to choose from a lightly decreasing selection of seats (I assume most of these privileged people are not flying economy anyway) over time up to the point maybe 30h before departure where ordinary "free selection at online checkin" people with connecting flights were checking in, so that I could book a seat (say) tomorrow with nearly the same options as yesterday.
I don't want to pay £87 for one of those (admittedly nice-ish) seats. There is also *one* aisle seat at £73 and that's it.
The return flight is still fully open for seat selection, so this is probably something to do with my specific flight and timings, rather than a general thing.
Undeniably feeling a bit stressed out. However, while it does make feel decidedly edgy, I am probably just about OK to sit in a non-aisle seat on this flight. A window seat (which is relatively unlikely anyway) is a bit restrictive in terms of getting out, but it does have some elbow room at the edge. And a middle seat (assuming I'm not stuck next to anyone immensely fat) only has one other person to get past. I had been thinking about this and it matters more for the return flight, when it will be overnight and people will be sleeping and I want to know I can get up whenever I want without having to piss people off by waking them up - I had already been pretty much thinking I would have to pay to reserve a seat on the return flight as aisle mattered so much more, but was waiting to do it until much closer to departure or even after I fly out, just to avoid wasting money if for some (touch wood) reason I didn't fly out in the first place.
I think it will probably still be OK. My best guess is that realistic worst case is that all these seats remain blocked out (which must be to allow selection etc, not because they have all been taken - the crappy seats are equally as blocked out as the good ones) until online check in opens, at which point (I do need to be quick to maximise my chances) there will probably be a borderline tolerable seleection of seats available at the prices I have been seeing until now and if I don't like my allocated seat I can pay to change. Obviously there is a risk there will be no good seats.
I need to try not to be a complete wuss about this. As I say, this day flight is in some ways less critical than the return night flight, and if I do e.g. end up stuck with a free middle seat it may be a valuable experience (just pushing my comfort zone enough to be helpful but not absolutely terrible) and I will save ~£40 of cash/avios.
Just looked again - maybe I missed them before - and there are two rhs-of-plane blocks of three seats which are fully available at £47, so I could pay the extra £5 to get a less-desirable left-of-me aisle.
1312 Just submitted the passport number etc, partly as it needed doing and partly in case it helps.
Need to be calm. I'm sure this is fine. I have "survived" flights - including ISTR a night flight back from Sao Paolo - in non-aisle seats before. And while it may be stressy (at worst), it *is* temporary being stuck there on the plane.
It is just super weird though. Like, it's not the *entire* plane blocked off - there are a handful of seats left. But it's not just the good seats - there are some pretty desirable seats (those £87 two seat block ones) which are still available, so it's not free seat selection people, whereas all the middles in huge blocks of the plane are blocked off, there are no middles free on their own anywhere with the good seats in that block occupied. AFAICS from something at bottom of page, privileged people get to start picking seats either immediately on booking or a week before, so the 72h thing feels weird. I can't help suspecting things may change over the next few hours or days and there may be some weirdness going on.
1325 expedia will sell me 6 (their max) seats on my flights, FWIW. BA will sell me a single seat in Economy "from" £575 for the outbound, and if I change to 9 seats it is still £575. I would *assume* that if the flight was heavily booked up, the price would be higher, but I don't know.
There's not much I can do. As I say, while a bit stressful, the worst case is probably educational and probably not terrible even if it's uncomfortable. I suspect the likely outcome is that when online check in opens I am allocated a crappy seat and there is an aisle available at £4x and I bite the bullet and pay that. But we'll see. I will keep checking in (pun not intended) every so often and see what happens. If this "un-glitches" and I suddenly have the option to book a £42 aisle seat as I was toying with before I might do it, I don't know. I was already sort of playing chicken with myself and the booking system.
1557 BA e-mailed me a pre-flight check link, been through the iatatravelcentre.com questionnaire (giving mildly false details on broad privacy grounds, like my precise birthdate) and it seems to say I'm OK.
Seat map is pretty much as it was a few hours ago.
1610 Had a message from Cancun accommodation, just says "OK". But I guess it's better than nothing. I can maybe send paranoid "so someone will be waiting for me at the airport? What's the WhatsApp number if I can't find them?" stuff tomorrow if this doesn't come through anyway.
Reading on web and there's a suggestion you are supposed to have your passport with you at all times in Mexico and that technically a colour copy is not valid, but of course nearly everyone is saying they just carry a copy and of course there is risk of theft etc so I probably will. FCDO site (which hasn't updated, BTW, i.e. all good) has a link to some sort of official Mexican page where it says (it's a bit vague) you can get a digital copy of a document about your status, I had a quick look (it's in English, despite what FCDO says) but you look like you need to create an account. I may faff with this once I am there, there's no point doing it now as I will not presumably have the necessary status given I haven't entered the country at all yet.
Did randomly end up on a Reddit (I know) page about "am I too old for hostels?" and was pleasantly surprised (albeit it is kind of consistent with my own experiences) to see a fairly consistent "no (but maybe avoid explicitly party hostels if you're over 30)" response.
1729 Skimming some (probably public access anyway) and rather dated articles on JFC prior to cancelling my trial membership. The tone of some of the travel articles is pretty much identical to that slightly smug "OMFG travel is so great - are you sure *you* are cool enough to do this?" kind of vibe I get from guide books. Meh.
2155 Making mildly heroic sewing efforts. It feels like I'm slacking off generally but I'm probably not. Did some fiddling with Uber on P7 earlier - don't know if I'll need it, but as well to have this available if I can. I have sewn in a zip on the right pocket on the fleece - not saying it couldn't use some reinforcement, but it's not bad.
I was going to take 5 clothes pegs with me but since the set I bought (in Bastimentos!) seems to consist of 4 sets of three in different colours, I will probably take 6 so I have two full colour sets. :-) They weigh 5g each so this isn't great but it isn't terrible. It's also a spare etc.
Probably said this already but while this all feels like rather hard work and I'm a bit edgy about going away for various reasons, I hope that once I *am* away and it's too late to faff with preparations, I can be a bit more relaxed. As I've said ad naseum, I really need to make an effort not to charge round like crazy. I don't want to actively waste time but if I'm genuinely tired and need a day of just sitting around doing nothing or if I'm just enjoying some particular place I'm in, that's fine.
Swimming stuff is drying as best I can on the radiator and I may try to do a full test pack later tonight once I've finished the sewing.
Just checked bus Cancun-Bacalar and the 0910 is now expensive, even though the ones either side of it are not. Even though it has more seats free than the others. FFS.
Tue 14th 0015: OK, I think I have actually finished the sewing. I don't say things couldn't take a bit more reinforcement, but (touch wood) everything is probably solid enough. I am going to have a cup of tea and then I'll probably try to do a "full dress rehearsal" pack.
0115 OK, full dress perhaps an overstatement. However, I have packed "nearly everything" - there's a handful of medications and foreign currency and stuff I still need to decide about and I haven't been over the packing list in excruciating detail, but I have packed the main bag with practically everything. Luggage scales are a bit inconsistent but coming in between 6.25kg and 6.45kg. This has the fleece in and the LifeStraw bottle with about 550g (I splashed a tiny bit as I was pouring it out to measure) in. It also has the daypack in - basically barring stuff I've "forgotten" and the handful of stuff which still needs sorting out, everything except what I'll be wearing (but as I say, the fleece is in the bag not being worn for this weighing).
Compare that with 6.95kg with 83cl of water heading out to Bogota in January 2024. If we take the water off and call the with-water weight of the bag now 6.3kg (I did get that on some occasions), current bag without water (but with LifeStraw bottle itself) is 5.75kg and 2024 bag was 6.12kg. Even if the few extra bits and pieces do add up to enough to cancel that out, this still feels pretty good. And even if we say the 6.45kg weighing is correct, that still gives a no-water weight of 6.0kg, so 120g better off. And the 2024 bag does include LifeStraw, flip flops and bluetooth keyboard in terms of additional functionality, although of course there is a possible and hopefully unimportant trade-off for this trip that e.g. the fleece and rain jacket are lighter weight and thus perhaps not so warmth-giving or hard-wearing.
And the current pack has not used the extension collar of the main compartment at all, so the bag looks pretty small. I can't remember if this was the case on previous trips, but I have a feeling I did have to use it, particularly when the fleece and some water bottles were in. Oh no, the start of the London-Bogota entry for 2024 says (not by this name) I didn't have to use the expansion collar bit (maybe it isn't called that, not sure).
I will probably make the decisions about what money to take and where to stash it and the other few remaining items and do an absolutely anal "pack line by line from the packing list" re-pack tomorrow - I'd *really* like things to be as ready to go by the time I go to bed on Tuesday night as possible, so Wednesday is a complete buffer/free for panicking about seats ;-). I still have a fair amount of "electronic"/"IT" stuff to sort out before I go, but I have been doing a few bits and pieces and I'd hope to be able to make a solid effort on that tomorrow.
0152 OK, it's not quite as good as I thought. I forgot to put flip-flops and swimming trunks in. Flip-flops are 167g and trunks (pretty dry) are 144g. This puts me a whisker under the 2024 weight if we go with 6.30kg - 59g. Slightly disappointing but can't be helped. And it is still roughly the same weight for the extra functionality I mentioned. (I bought flip-flops during 2024 trip, but they weren't in the weight on departure). I *hope* these items aren't going to massively affect the bulk, the flip-flops are likely to be mildly annoying but probably not too bad - the ones I'm taking are, as I've said before, cheaper and simpler and less bulky than the ones I bought for the boat trip in 2024.
I did have the swimming goggles in all the time FWIW. And I just crammed in (not ideal, I'd probably put the flip-flops right at the bottom if I'd packed properly) the missing items and I still don't need the extension collar area.
While I really wouldn't want to, especially in transit, there is also the possibility of bodging the flip-flops securely onto the outside of the pack by e.g. looping the compression straps through the straps of the flip-flops.
0218 Flight seat map remains almost but not completely blocked out as it was earlier.
In case it's not obvious, the flip-flops are not something I've taken in the past but if I might be swimming more they are useful for e.g. walking to beaches or pools "near-ish" to accommodation without having to go barefoot or risk taking my only pair of shoes with me and leaving them e.g. on the beach unguarded, and (perhaps the main reason) I have seen and read about some public pools insisting on having footwear around the pool. (I am not sure I actually swam, but I do STR walking very painfully barefoot down the road to the "town" beach when I was in that beachy place on the south coast of Panama in 2024, presumably with some intention to swim.)
Wondering if I ought to book (say) the 1010 bus before it goes up, or the 0810 (but that's a bit damn early to be getting up, albeit not terrible especially when my body clock will probably be on UK time). But I half wonder if the 910 might go back down. I don't know. I'm probably going to sleep on this and look tomorrow, then get pissed off at wasting £10 because all the buses at vaguely acceptable times have gone up in price.
I am flip-flopping about the flight seats. Sometimes I imagine feeling really shit and stressed out for the entire flight (and indeed before the flight) if I have a non-aisle seat. Sometimes I imagine myself being pretty chilled about it. Given the seat map remains in this weird state I suspect I won't get to do anything useful until online check in opens, but I do need to be 99% "pre-decided" what I'll do if I've been allocated a seat I don't like. Of course, if there *are* no aisle seats left at that point, I'll just have to suck it up. And of course a lot of this does fit in with the (admittedly not something I've done recently) idea that things are in some ways not that much different than if I had free seat selection but only from online check in opening.
I don't believe the seat map reflects real booking. There is no way there wouldn't eg be a smattering of middle seats free to choose, this near-solid pattern (while the fact it's not absolutely solid is weird) smells like some kind of deliberate (not necessarily *arsey*, although maybe, but at least planned) thing, although I can't really see why. (I mean, while I'm the lowest of the low with my hand baggage only booking, surely when it comes to *paying* to reserve a seat, I surely ought to be allowed to pay to reserve any free seat now just as I was a few days ago, regardless of my lack of tier points and status and general desirability as a passenger. Since I'm paying, surely that's just as "good" as a high status passenger choosing that seat for free? So why block me off from them, assuming that's what they're doing?)
1248 Flight seat map is the same as yesterday. ADO bus at 0910 is still expensive but 1010 isn't, I probably ought to book that - assuming it actually works for a foreigner - pretty soon. Absolute worst case is I lose about £20 by buying a ticket I have to write off somehow, which would suck but isn't the end of the world, and it would be good have this "probably" sorted and be able to message the Bacalar accom with arrival time *before* it's too late for me to cancel my reservation for free.
1317 On a random note, even if the LifeStraw works as well as I hope (and I'm not super optimistic somehow), I do still expect to be buying plastic bottles of water relatively often. I think Mexico is one of those countries where bottled sparkling water isn't a premium product, and I can see myself buynig a chilled bottle of that sometimes either to drink back at the hostel or while out and about instead of buying a bottle of pop. This will also mean I have a disposable plastic water bottle available most of the time, which I might refill from the Lifestraw and take with me on random wandering round excursions, so I'm not carrying the probably slightly fragile and valuable Lifestraw around with me on day hikes or while wandering round town.
I am probably going to take an empty 33cl disposable bottle with me and aim to use it as my teeth-cleaning bottle, since a nice small size like that is convenient to take to a shared bathroom and may fit inside the repurposed PackTowl mesh toiletries bag. If I find it getting in the way I can always dispose of it en route.
Woke up this morning feeling some trip dread, albeit not too crushing. I am intermittently somewhat excited and dreading it. Apart from the fact it will probably be fun and maybe give me the chance to experiment with e.g. trying to be a bit more outgoing, it will probably be a good thing just in terms of shaking things up and breaking my regular daily routine.
Also eight weeks away is long enough to be scary but I think (maybe just making this up as I go) also not so long as to feel massively intimidating. But then again I did 11 weeks in 2024 and it was fine, albeit the reasons that motivated me to make this trip shorter weren't a thing then. (And those reasons won't be there forever, of course.)
1927 OK, let's finally try to book this bus. The cheap options are 0810-1350 (MXN446) and 1010-1550 (MXN456), the now-expensive one is 0910-1450 (MXN 678). I think the 1010-1550 is fine, that gives me a nominal 40 mins before theoretical check in closure and I honestly can't see them being that fucking anal about it either. It's also 1h40m before sunset, plus of course it's *probably* OK on the street in the early evening anyway even wrt dogs.
Choosing seat 6, which has the aisle to its right and is one row back from front. Not sure if this is really great or not but it doesn't matter that much, although I do have a preference for aisle of course (weaker on a bus than on plane).
1942 OK, just completed purchase (the timer ran down to zero as it was authorising the payment, but I have a PDF ticket). Tiny bit stressful and I was trying to read various T&Cs etc to see if there was anything about foreigners which burned up some time. Probably all OK.
The day just seems to be flying by and I seem to be getting nothing done. I am slacking off a bit but even so it doesn't feel like I'm slacking that much.
1951 99% sure I can show the ticket on my phone (which is a good option to have, and I will try to remember to do that as a test as this may well be helpful if buying more tickets online during the trip - could save a lot of trogging over to bus terminals etc) but I have printed it anyway. Actually the first thing I have printed for this trip!
They tried to add on an MXN17 insurance-ish thing but I read the T&Cs and it was all about hospitals and dental care and so on. Given I have travel insurance I don't think I need this, so I turned it off, and the price was what I expected. They asked for my phone number and I entered it 44blahblah but no idea if they would ever actually be able to call it, I don't really see why they need it anyway but it was AFAICS (I was feeling a bit rushed) mandatory.
2006 Have sent a message to Bacalar accom saying when I'm going to arrive, went into too much detail really but trying to hedge bets wrt the slightly tight check in time. Looking at booking.com's online showing of the booking, the checkin window is much more reasonable (until 9pm). I don't know why this is blatantly different in the e-mail - which also came from booking.com - but whatever. I don't seriously anticipate a problem here but if something does go wrong I can at least point at the booking.com page showing 9pm.
I note it says there is a "drying rack for clothing" so while I may be a bit pushed for time (unless I want to and am able to extend), I can presumably fairly openly wash some clothes at the Bacalar accom, which would take a little bit of pressure off.
2142 I have been feeling a little bit "OMFG never going to get everything done" overwhelmed. However, I have exchanged messages with Cancun accom re the airport pickup and have done a test WhatsApp back and forth with them, so I should have someone to contact on arrival if I can't find someone waiting for me at the airport.
I have also finally got round to setting up termux on the P7 (tinkered with this a tiny bit last night and maybe a tiny bit over Christmas) to rsync photos back to my home server. I have something which I think will be crude but reliable and simple and I must admit it is really freaking cool to be using the P7 as a kind of tiny laptop with the bluetooth keyboard. (I will probably set this up on the O6 at some point, but it is something I can do remotely - I made a point (except for looking at instructions on web browser on main PC for convenience) of setting this up entirely from the P7 itself.) Hell, I'm even running vim to edit stuff. :-)
I don't need the keyboard to do this photo upload, it's just that for writing the little mini-scripts and so forth it was way more convenient. In normal use I'd be fine just running a couple of shell scripts using the on-screen keyboard.
2218 Just reactivated my Skype credit ($4.51) so I can use either phone with wifi to call ordinary phone numbers. Also copying a few films onto phones and my 128GB USB stick - they may be useful for entertainment, and I can always delete them if I need the space. (Or perhaps shuffle them off onto some of my SD cards.)
Wed 15th Jan 0024: Somehow feel I'm wasting time but not that actively slacking. Haven't done a full repack and unlikely to tonight. Anyway, in terms of money, I am taking:
USD200 traveller's cheques
USD57 in small-ish notes
MXN440 in small notes and 5xMXN500 notes
GTQ105 in small notes
0138 Been tinkering with some "IT" chores and also repacking tube cube a bit and deciding on where to stash various cards and so on. Tube cube is bulging a bit TBH, it doesn't help that for example I have three pairs of glasses (spare "normal"/distance pair, prescription sunglasses, reading glasses).
I am thinking I might try to always have the Lifestraw bottle empty in transit, not just for the flight but for any transit, and maybe use a disposable water bottle (re-used endlessly, of course :-) ) to actually hold drinking water. This way I can probably pack the dry-ish Lifestraw away in the middle of e.g. my clothes (maybe inside a semi-sealed plastic bag) rather than have its somewhat awkwardly-sized body and the slightly (maybe) fragile filter and all the heavy water in it flopping around in e.g. the top part of the pack. We'll see how it goes. I have mixed feelings about its practicality vs nuisance value, but at the moment I am perhaps overly-inclined to regard it as fragile, plus if all I use it for is filtering water into a disposable bottle most of the time then that's fine, it is still doing its job and that would allow me to reduce the amount of water I take with me in transit since I know I can filter tap water at the destination accom even if I don't feel comfortable going out to buy water when I get there (unknown place after dark or whatever).
Bit edgy about online check in but we'll just have to see. I guess if I *can't* get an aisle seat I will just have to manage, and it really ought to be fine. If I *can* get a half-decent aisle seat but only by paying ~£40 I probably will, since I was dithering before the sudden 72h surprise change about this anyway and I have been intermittently feeling just edgy enough about the trip as a whole (probably tied in with slight excess mental wobbliness in general) that paying ~£42 (ideally semi-lessened by using some Avios) to avoid an extra source of "oh fuck" feelings is worth it. And who knows, maybe I'll get an aisle seat for free. I will to some extent have to play it by ear. If I get a window seat for free, am I going to feel I really ought to keep it? You are more "trapped" in a window seat, but OTOH you do get a bit of elbow room and only one side of you can be squashed by someone fat or inconsiderate.
0208 On random note, it's a vague shame I usually seem to be travelling at peak times, but I guess this is just a combination of preferring to go in UK winter after Christmas and when tends to be peak-ish where I'm going.
0222 FWIW the flight seat map is still almost solidly blocked out.
1056 Into the lining! I got allocated an aisle seat for free. The selection to pay (AFAICT; I didn't want to faff and risk losing my allocated seat) was pretty poor, much as I'd been seeing for the last 48h - I really don't understand this, as there are not even any middle seats available there to choose and I cannot seriously believe the flight is so full that those seats have been picked. But anyway. I guess since I *didn't* pay there is maybe a chance I'll get forcibly reallocated on the day - maybe I can argue that I *would* have paid to change if I hadn't had an aisle seat and at least try to argue for keeping aisle, or maybe I will just have to suck it down as I would if I hadn't got one and couldn't have changed now. It is aisle on the left but that's not a huge deal. It is also the very last row just before the toilet block over the wing, so I do wonder if seat recline might be limited, but I can live with that a) on a day flight b) to save £42.
I saved a (slightly bad) screenshot of the seat map and it looks like the cheapest seat available to buy would be £47, not £42, but I could have bought an aisle seat from the limited selection.
1107 The sense of relief is still palpable. Maybe this means I should just have paid up front, or maybe it just means I've been making too big a deal of it. Still, I won't deny the sense of relief.
I *am* probably going to pay to reserve an aisle seat on the return flight, because as already noted on a night flight people are likely to be asleep and I'm going to feel more trapped and/or piss people off more by trying to get up if I'm not in the aisle. Of course the flight may be half empty but it probably isn't worth the stress to take a gamble. It's easy to say now but I'd probably have been OKish with any seat on the outbound day flight, even if I do have a strong preference for aisle, but night is a bit different.
That said, I am probably not going to pay for a seat at least until after I'm in Mexico (I should be able to do it on my phone, and if not I have weeks to find an internet cafe which will let me do it) just to hedge my bets - what if (touch wood) I miss the flight tomorrow or something? This is super unlikely, but there's no major advantage to booking from home. It's not as if I can print off my boarding pass for the return flight. I suppose the one advantage is being able to do the booking on a large screen, but I don't think that's a huge deal. If I were to put booking the return seat off until ~2 weeks before I come back I'd equally hedge against the (admittedly negligible) risk of having to come back early due to an emergency and having paid for a seat selection I can't use.
On the flip side, since these contingencies are so unlikely and if they do happen having wasted ~£40 is likely to be far down my list of worries, I may just go ahead and book a return flight seat later today and then it's off my mind. I'd probably pick one of the absolute "cheapest" £42 aisle seats in a block of four in the middle rather than pay £47 to get an aisle in a block of three, and I'd probably pay a small portion with Avios even if it's not strictly financially sensible (I can turn them into Nectar points, and within moderation I can spend them on groceries, and last time I saw any information the exchange rate was more favourable to Nectar than it was for part-payment of seats, but you never know - but even so, I *haven't* turned Avios points into Nectar and there's maybe a time value of money argument and also an emotional "they don't feel like money" argument for using them). Plus using a few Avios keeps my balance alive, although I expect to earn a tiny number of Avios for this flight so that would probably also keep my balance alive. I suppose another advantage - if I'm not rushing around too much - of booking the return flight seat today from home is that it will be a bit easier to open up random web sites and mull over the "exchange rates" between Avios, Nectar and pounds when paying for the seat. So I might. But not *right* now.
I think I'm going to try to relax with a coffee (having one, but not in a relaxed way) for half an hour and then push on with prep etc. I may send this massively over-long blog post as well and start a fresh one.
Have printed boarding pass and the Cancun accommodation (to show to immigration), just one copy of each at the moment, I may or may not print more copies later but since I do have electronic copies on two separate phones I may not print more, we'll see how I feel.
1116 I suppose there is *maybe* an argument for playing the seat selection lottery on the return flight and then hoping I can pay to choose an aisle seat if I don't win. That said, given I will be abroad and doing it from a phone with possibly crappy hostel wifi and/or possibly crappy local data, and that making myself available to do the online checkin the very instant it opens might well go towards spoiling my last night abroad (not that it's likely to be super chilled and relaxed, but you never know, especially when the flight back doesn't leave til evening of the following day) and given that I would semi-rationally care more if there was no "cheap" aisle seat available to buy, I probably won't. But I can let myself chew on all this over the next few hours, and it wouldn't be a huge deal if I chewed it over for a few weeks, albeit I really need to stop pushing optionality so far that it becomes a burden rather than a blessing.
1523 Puttering round the flat tidying up/pseudo-packing and have been doing some "IT"-ish prep.
https://lifestraw.com/pages/faq says:
"Do LifeStraw products work for boil water advisories?
Yes. All LifeStraw products protect against bacteria and parasites which are the primary concerns during boil water advisories."
While I appreciate an "advisory" in some sort of emergency situation in (say) the US may be different from the general "boil water from the tap before using it" situation in somewhere in Latin America without potable tap water, this does at least seem to back up what e.g. IIRC Liam told me about not having any problems using Lifestraw to filter tap water. I think it basically won't filter out viruses and chemicals, and although boiling may kill viruses (not sure) I guess it won't generally remove chemicals, and I would hope (!?) most tap water doesn't contain viruses.
1548 Discovered another (empty) 50ml sunblock bottle in my travel supplies both while repacking it as part of a "try not to leave the flat looking like a bomb site and maybe find the vaccination booklet" tidy. I am torn about filling this up from my leftover big squeezy tube and taking it. I already have one such 50ml bottle *but* this is probably about 50-60g when full and it would probably save me buying a big (and probably overpriced) tube when I am away and having to lug that round for maybe half the trip. Unlike taking the second 100ml bottle of insect repellent, this 50ml bottle isn't going to strain my liquids bag terribly. And I also guess locals want insect repellent so it's maybe not too overpriced (even if I may be a bit disappointed at the range on offer), whereas sunblock is probably a tourist-only product and may attract a price premium. Just guessing though.
1714 Checked FCDO Mexico site and no updates since 10th October, so that's good.
2028 Found the vaccination booklet! I was thinking about how it might be in with the other paper "souvenirs" (flight and accommodation printouts etc) from the 2024 trip and I finally managed to locate the carrier bag full of that stuff in my overcrowded cupboard. I was losing hope as I worked through it and then there it was! Woohoo! This feels like a good omen.
I'm half tempted not to take it with me, since I *don't* need it and it is kind of a nice travel souvenir and I'd hate to actually lose it. OTOH, I just *might* need it and part of its value *as* a travel souvenir is that it's been basically everywhere I've been, so I really ought to take it anyway. (IIRC I've never been asked to show it, but I do very occasionally see advice that travellers coming from some country which I haven't been in need to show e.g. proof of yellow fever vaccination. It is monumentally unlikely this would affect me, but I guess it *could*.)
2134 OK, the flight is at 1050 and boarding is notionally at 0950. I probably want to aim to arrive at the airport about 0750, three hours before departure. Indeed I think I'm actually not "supposed" to arrive more than 3h early! The 0705 from London Bridge gets into Gatwick at 0734 (faster than the 0700), and the 0715 gets in at 0744. All these are £13.80.
So if I'm on the local transport at about 0630 I'm probably good. So I probably want to get up about 0530 to give myself a bit of time to check round etc. Actual sunrise isn't til 0759 tomorrow and civil twilight starts at 0720, so I am going to be leaving in the dark but it can't be helped.
2244 Putting 753g disposable water bottle (litre if full?) inside daypack. Adding second "50ml" refilled sunblock bottle at 79g. 317g 33cl bottle of water.
Right. With fleece and all that water in but *not* with swimming trunks or goggles, three successive weighings give 7.25kg, 6.95kg and 6.85kg. Make of that what you will. It just fits without using the extension collar. This *is* quite a lot of water but since I am taking those two bottles with me it feels only smart to head to the airport with them full-ish. The lifestraw is in there but it is dry and empty. There is 1.07kg of disposable water bottles and water (almost all water, of course) in there, so the "dry" weight is probably about (taking 7kg as the weight with water) 5.93kg. This is probably about comparable to heading out to Bogota in 2024, although I do still have the modest weight of the trunk and goggles to go in. Actually I claimed to have 33+50cl bottles of water then, I suspect I have 33cl+100cl-three-quarters-full this time, so there may be 250g in my favour this time. Anyway, considering the extra functionality I have this time (traded off for lighter weight fleece and rain jacket) this isn't bad.
A final weigh came in at 7.05kg FWIW.
To be scrupulously honest I did *not* repack the tube cube. It is pretty chocka and I have been repacking it quite a bit lately. I did just spot check that it contains my SD cards, USB OTG cable and 128GB USB thumb drive, and I also saw the reading glasses and spare distance/normal glasses in there - I did open it up and have a quick poke, but I didn't tip all the stuff out and repack it.
I've also shoved the relatively neatly packed bags of spare travel clothes and accessories back into the top of the bedroom wardrobe, except for a bag of bags which I am keeping out in case I suddenly decide I need one. So while not sparklingly clean, the place shouldn't look too distressing to come back to.
2341 Right, cleared away a load of e.g. laundry which was hanging around drying.
Leaving my Lloyds bank card here, I hope I don't regret that but I don't think I usually take it.
I'm going to have a bath, I don't often but it might be sort of nice and it will probably be last chance for 8 weeks (not a huge deal, just saying).
Thu 16th Jan 0011 OK, had bath. Let me try to post this (from the P7). Been writing on desktop all this time, of course.
