Anyone who knows me knows I have control issues and a tendency to over-think (more accurately, over-worry) a situation, especially a foreign adventure. My family refers to this as the "Marie Petitin" effect, the symptoms of which most frequently consist of lying in bed awake all night, twitching with anxiety and endless mental loops imagining the worst possible outcomes (e.g., "We'll miss the bus...no we'll make the bus, but it will crash...no we'll make the bus, and it won't crash, but I'll have a brain tumor."). (Marie Petitin was my great grandmother; she invented anxiety.) The guidebooks don't help. My recommended Footprints guide warns visitors to Cusco to travel at night by taxi only, and beware of "strangulation robberies." The bus line we're taking is recommended because it is least likely to be robbed (although, because it's high tourist season, incidents of theft on the buses on this reputable line are way up, the thieves even working in cahoots with the drivers). And apparently, the areas around any bus station are dangerous, rife with low-lifes, and are to be encountered only if they absolutely cannot be avoided. Oh, and the fly-overs in Nasca (to see the weird Nasca lines, which can only really be enjoyed from above, I'm told) are the subject of lots of critical commentary on internet forums (is it fora?) because of a crash or two and increasingly frequent emergency landings on the Pan-American highway. Why would anyone travel to such a place, one might ask. Are these travel guides unnecessarily alarming? Or is it just me?
I eventually realized that if I were to write a travel guide to my homeland, I would include many of the same kinds of warnings. O.K., not the strangulation robberies, but I would certainly caution San Francisco visitors about traipsing through the Tenderloin, to keep an eye on your stuff on BART or Muni, and to watch your step to avoid tripping on a body on the sidewalk. This realization made me feel better, kind of.
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I am glad you are worrying, Keith, about all of these things. B/c everyone knows that if you worry about it, it cannot possibly come true. So there. As you would say.
You and your posse will have a wonderful time. It is only too bad that your 5-month old traveler will not remember a bit of her third world adventure when she grows up! You will have to take lots of pictures for her.
And, yes, you hail from a tough tribe -- you're from Bunkie, for gawd's sake. The only person tougher than a Johnson from Bunkie is a Scarborough from Evergreen. Those Evergreen girls are just about as tough as they come, you know . . .
Love the posts so puhleeze keep them coming. Have you ever thought about being a writer?? You might have a future in it . . .
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