A Map for Saturday

I interrupt my trip updates with an opportunity for you to be inspired to get out there and travel. Being a lifetime member of Hostelling International Canada, I get the occasional e-mail about upcoming events. One of them had been flagged in my inbox, but unfortunately, the event has already passed.

What you could have attended August 28 at the Vancity Theatre was a showing of A Map for Saturday, a travel documentary in which HBO producer Brook Silva-Braga (who was scheduled to be in attendance at the showing) leaves his job and travels around the world for almost a full calendar year. I stumbled on this in the spring while flicking through channels. By then, I had already resigned from my job and was slowly building my UK/Ireland itinerary. Silva-Braga, with all his filming gear, asks travellers he meets why they’re travelling; their responses were candid. Silva-Braga turns the camera on himself too, opening up the way I’m doing with this blog. When I finished watching, I just wanted to get out, right then and there, and never stop.

If you’re on the fence, wondering if you should go travel, for whatever the length, here’s the trailer. If the last person, a 73-year-old from the States, doesn’t get you motivated, I don’t know what will.

Day 19: Halfway already?

Well, it’s halfway if I’m still planning to leave on 20 September. Looking at fares online, they range from CAD 945 (CDG-YVR via FRA) to $2377 (CDG-YVR via LHR). That second one is pointless, because I can just take a train from Paris to London and save $1000 and even then I’d still have to change planes (LHR-YVR via JFK).

After almost three weeks away, I’m still in awe of all the places I’ve been. Right now, I’m on Achill Island, the largest island off Ireland. Just walking around yesterday, it ranks right up there with Skye as the highlights of the trip so far. One (or should I say five) of the main draws of Achill is its blue-flag beaches [wiki]. Basically, the beaches have to meet very high quality-assurance criteria. After seeing two of them, Dugort and Golden Strand, I can’t help but be impressed with the pristine beauty; the location of Dugort in particular, at the base of Achill’s highest mountain, doesn’t hurt.

It’s lucky I went yesterday, the only day in the trip where the sun broke out for the better part of the day. Mind, it was peppered with brief downpours, but that’s expected out here, even in summer. And being from Vancouver, the raincoat was always close by. Today is a bit more unpredictable, which is why I’m hanging around at the hostel typing this. There haven’t been a lot of “I’m not really going to do anything” kind of days; I should try to plan a few more before the chaos of my London-Paris tour.

Next: more photos!