Weird Way Round

Alex Maycock

Description

A 40-year-old Sydney-based Englishman at a personal and professional crossroads in his life embarks on four months of solo global travel, which he resolutely refuses to accept might be best described as an exercise in 'finding himself'. Epic landscapes, humorous encounters with an eclectic mix of Airbnb hosts, a late-in-life induction into dating apps and a keen eye for the curious and bizarre combine to turn the trip into a thought-provoking adventure. From unexplained crimes in Panama, sex tourism in Costa Rica and disastrous dating in Guatemala through to hire-car burial in the Californian desert and an encounter with a toothless lady in a bar in San Francisco, it's a story about strange and unpredictable things that happen when you hit the road in search of the unknown.

Sujets

• Travel writing

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528974776
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

T he W eird W ay R ound
Backpacking Through a Midlife Crisis
Alex Maycock
Austin Macauley Publishers
08-01-2021
The Weird Way Round The Weird Way Round Prologue Peru An Incan Introduction Summary – Peru Panama Adventure Planning-on-Sea Summary – Panama Costa Rica Sloths, Monkeys and Sex Tourism Summary – Costa Rica Guatemala Volcanoes, Lakes and a Plastic Bag Summary – Guatemala Mexico Mayan Monuments and Taco Trauma Summary – Mexico USA Conquering Nature Whilst Bumbling on Bumble USA – Summary Canada Winter Comes Early to the Rockies Summary – Canada Japan Romance (at Last) in the Land of the Rising Sun Summary – Japan Taiwan The People’s Republic of Stinky Tofu Summary – Taiwan Vietnam Planes, Trains and Scooter Tours Summary – Vietnam Epilogue Final Summary Acknowledgements
Alex has a successful career in the professional services industry, which he took time out from to travel and write his first book, The Weird Way Round , a travel story written in the style of his literary idol, Bill Bryson. Alex lives in Sydney, his home since moving from the UK to Australia in 2006.
Copyright © Alex Maycock (2021)
The right of Alex Maycock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528974752 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528974776 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2021)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Prologue
And so there I was, seated on the pavement in a gated residential community somewhere in Guatemala City, tying my shoelaces and adjusting my hastily thrown on outfit. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was just after eight in the morning. Sunday, I think. Did I get all my clothes out of the house? Did I leave anything in her car? I couldn’t say for sure, but I wasn’t going to get a chance to get them if I had, so those questions were a bit irrelevant really. There were questions I did need answers to though. It was no good, I was going to have to send her a message to ask.
A – “Maria, I don’t know where I am. Can you tell me somewhere I can go please?”
M – “Are you still outside the house? You need to go! He’s coming!”
But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take a moment to explain who I am, and how on earth I came to be sitting here with just two bags of travel luggage for company and a mildly neurotic date-gone-wrong urging me on my way.
I’m Alex, and I am an accountant. Cue sympathetic applause from the group and earnest attempts to make some reassuring eye contact to break the tension of the uncomfortable moment. I have been an accountant for coming on for 19 years or 228 months, and the chips are weighing heavy in my pockets. The problem is, I’m not sure I really am an accountant – sure, that’s what it says on my business card, and that’s what I get paid to be, but is that what I am meant to be doing with my life? Is being an accountant my destiny, my purpose even? While that sounds more like a punishment than a purpose, it’s a fact that in society, someone has to add stuff up – I get that. But is it meant to be me? Or have I been falsely imprisoned in a pair of chinos and a checked shirt that was intended for someone else?
I have started with a lot of questions. Relax, I’m not expecting you to have the answers – there won’t be a test. We are not calling it a crisis – actually, ‘we’ are not doing anything, as this is not a two-player game – that’s just me hiding behind the shield of the first-person plural for some imaginary support. So let’s put that shield down – dammit, I’m at it again…
I’m not calling it a crisis. But it kind of is. Let me be more brave and use the whole sordid expression – I’m having a mid-life crisis. I have recently turned 40 so feel entitled to use the phrase, though in honesty it’s been brewing for a little while now. I have been with my wife for twelve years and married for nearly eight, but we have been stumbling towards divorce, via a separation and unsuccessful reconciliation for the last two. And last month we decided it was time to call it a day. I won’t be going into the details as to the why, as that’s not the best subject matter to go to for humorous content. But it’s definitely needed for context – so consider yourself sufficiently briefed on that topic for now.
So the crisis in a nutshell – misgivings on my sense of purpose at work, the breakdown of my marriage and my arrival back on the singles market, which now seemingly includes ‘swipe right’ and other terrifying procedural developments (of which I am yet to learn) since my last visit there many years before. And while that probably doesn’t sound that interesting as the starting point of a book – and in truth, it may well prove not to be ‘that’ interesting, or even interesting at all, but here’s the thing – the next bit hasn’t happened yet, so at this point, the rest of the story is a mystery to me and you both.
That said, I can tell you roughly what I think is going to happen. With the combination of the relationship breakdown and work misgivings described above weighing on my mind, I decided it was time for a break, and my employer has very kindly agreed to allow me to take six months off work. I am going to spend four months of that time doing some travel with the aim of seeing a bit more of the world while also using the time to re-establish my individual identity and to get back into the rhythm of single life, after a hiatus of about fifteen years.
In recent years I have found myself yearning for a creative outlet outside of work and found the first steps towards that goal in an unusual place – writing match reports for my football team, the ‘Mighty Rozelle Dads’ Over 35 Division 7 team. These reports were less about the actual events of the game and more about drawing out the humour of the moments we shared as a great group of friends before, during and after the games. Through the power of Facebook, the audience for these reports grew to a broader network of friends and relatives, and each week I felt that my story-telling was bringing just a few moments of joy to those people that they may not have experienced if I had not put pen to paper – and I found that quite a heart-warming feeling. That had been the extent of my writing to date, but I am thinking that perhaps a random, largely unplanned jaunt around the globe will bring new adventures, experiences and stories worth sharing, and at the very least is an interesting idea to explore as I make my way.
Before I take you on the journey to Guatemala and beyond, I want to share a little bit of history on my historical travel experiences and to give some context as to the person behind the pen (or the warrior behind the keyboard, as I’m currently typing this madly on my iPad, seated in the departure gates in Toronto Pearson International Airport). Bear with me, it won’t take long.
Born and bred in the UK but now happily residing in Sydney Australia since relocating in 2006 aged 28, most of my travel has taken place since the move to the southern hemisphere. This relocation was a catalyst for many changes in my life, but I think the one that stands out most is the change in my attitude to travel. The short version of my childhood travels is that they were relatively limited, comprising annual iterations of the same holiday in Cornwall (albeit a very pleasant one), a trip around Scotland in a motor-home and a handful of overseas trips to Germany, Portugal and Florida, as my parents spent their money on more worthy pursuits than overseas travel, like my exorbitant school fees for example. I didn’t make much more progress in my teen years, didn’t have much spare cash during university for travels and then before I knew it, I was preoccupied with getting ahead with my career. In short, I had laid no foundations to build an interest in travel, and holidays were just something I looked to fit in at the best time so as to not compromise my career progression.
I had no plans to work overseas, and I hadn’t given a lot of thought to more extensive travel until my hand was forced in 2006 when my then Australian girlfriend received the bad news that her father had some serious, potentially terminal health issues. Six months later, after quickly packing up my current life, I was off to the other side of the world. In a story for another day, the Australian girlfriend ended up being superseded soon after by an English girlfriend (later wife, later still ex-wife), but after that initial break-up, I had already decided Sydney was an exciting place and that I would stay for my two years nonetheless.
The planned two-year time frame on my stay in Australia ended up kick-starting my interest in travel, as faced with a country more than thirty times the size of the UK with interesting-looking places to visit in all corners of it, we decided we had better get on and see some of it. With neither of us having families in the country that required periodic visits and having only a small network of friends, we had lots of time for travel and booked long weekends away to whatever cities had cheap flights on any given week, and generally had a good look around. Before long we had amassed an impressive list of places we had been, eliciting surprised responses from the Aussies we worked with, some of whom would say things like “Really? I have only been out of New South Wales twice!” (My smugness here is qualified by