Back online!

After a long absence we are back ( though we have probably lost most of our loyal readers during our time in the virtual wilderness...)

One of the most obvious differences between traveling in 2013 as compared to 2001 or during the 1990s is how much the Internet and smart phones have changed the landscape in innumerable ways. I talked briefly before about how easy (and cheap) it was to get a cell phone in Ghana. As handy as it was (it is always hard to know for sure, but I think that parts of our trip there would have been impossible without it; for example because credit card use is so minimal in the country most hotel reservations all require a phone -- if you don't show or are late they call and if they can't get in touch they'll give your room away) it was not a smart phone.

We came to realize that even in the developing world it's a smart phone/tablet landscape that travelers have to navigate. There was Wi-fi almost everywhere we went and stayed. By contrast the number of Internet cafes and other means people used to rely on are falling by the wayside.

We had consciously decided to leave our iPod Touch and iPad in Canada and use our 11 weeks to unplug. During the first month of our trip we coped by borrowing all the other volunteers' devices and making use of the Wi-fi at the house. Later we kept in touch with some with our phone but stopped being able to write easily on the blog or Facebook.

We thought that it would be easier in Europe but that hasn't proven to be the case. The half hours at the library in England weren't enough to write anything meaningful. We had free Internet in Poitiers but again time limits and a crazy keyboard (what could the French have against QWERTY? Maybe it's an EU regulation) made posting difficult.

Apple's value was really made clear to us on our last day in Agen; Alice's brother and his wife both has their phones with them and we used them and the hotel's Wi-fi to plan the next part of our trip. We also used the phone to send an e-mail to my mother who was getting ready to come and meet us: "please bring the iPad!" It has made figuring things out here in Samur so much easier.

It's also made posting the blog a lot easier again. We'll try and be a little more regular, but I must warn you that the weather has been fantastic and given the choice between sitting in the living room of our rented gite and enjoying cafe and a pain au raisin on a sidewalk patio, modern communication and the internet will still finish second... :)