You Go Home Make More Money and Come Back: Whirlwind Trips 1969–2004

By Edwin M. Woods

You Go Home, Make More Money and Come Back is a non-fiction book that takes you to six continents and many diverse places and cultures. It covers a 35 year period from 1969 to 2004. It is about a man who develops an interest in geography in college. He lives a conventional life while having a dream of seeing the world. He travels by working and saving his money for vacation trips of a few days to a month long over a lifetime. The book tells of adventure on the Yangze River, an African photo safari, the outback of Australia, seeing the pyramids of Egypt, traveling solo by train through Europe, train travel in the USA and Canada, and more. It takes you around the world traveling alone with few advance reservations as well as going on organized group tours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595628186

Edwin M. Woods

Between Latitudes is the the third book, along with Sightseeing and You Go Home, Make More Money, and Come Back, in a series that tells of the author's travel on seven continents and eighty-five countries and territories. Mr. Woods was born and raised in Washington State. He received a BA in Geography from WSU in 1965. Most of his work years were as an investigator until his retirement in 2003. Woods has lived in Washington and California, and presently makes his home in Yakima, Washington. The author adds a personal touch to the travelogue, along with descriptive details, to give the reader an insight into his day to day experiences: the good and the bad.

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You Go Home

Make More Money

And Come Back

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Whirlwind Trips 1969–2004

EDWIN M. WOODS

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

You Go Home Make More Money And Come Back

Whirlwind Trips 1969–2004

Copyright © 2005, 2008 by Edwin M. Woods

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-52765-6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-62818-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

IN LOVING MEMORY

BARBARA ANN WOODS

1944 - 1996

Table of Contents

Europe By Train

Pacific Rim

Around The World

South America

Kenya

Australia

China

Central America

Jalisco

Colonial Cities Of Mexico

Alaska by Land

Alaska by Air

Alaska by Sea

USA Railpass

North America Railpass USA and Canada

FORWARD

You go home, make more money, and come back! Those words were uttered by a taxi driver in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1983 as I was negotiating with him for a departure ride to the airport. We had been talking about the economic problems in his country and the fact that he relied heavily on tourism for his livelihood. He wanted me to stay as a customer, but I had to go. The story of my life, it seems, has been trying to make (and save) a little money at home so that I could continue my travels.

This book is about a little bit of traveling on six continents and over forty countries from 1969 to 2004. My experience has only been a very small slice of what is out there—just a moment in time and a snapshot of place—whirlwind trips.

It has taken many years for me to get this far. Misadventures certainly occurred along the way; and sacrifice. I have wondered if it was worth it. On the plus side, I found that travel seemed to energize me, like a shot of adrenalin. It taught me an appreciation of other cultures and lands. I could use all of my senses of touch, hearing, sight, smell and taste to experience the things I had read about.

Europe By Train

This was my first trip overseas. The year was 1969 and I was living and working in California. I had been experiencing indecision and was pondering whether or not I should continue with my stressful job. Ever since college, I had been dreaming of seeing the places that I had learned about; but I never had the opportunity to travel. I went to a travel agent and found that I could do Europe by train and we worked out some ideas about solo travel. I checked with my boss about the possibility of taking some leave time and he agreed. I had surgery on my left ear in March. In April I took vacation for a month long whirlwind trip in Europe and east coast USA.

April 15. I arrived on pins and needles at JFK airport in New York with minutes to spare to board the plane to Iceland. I had left Stockton three hours late, because the plane wouldn’t start; and had to rearrange the five hour flight to New York from San Francisco on United Airlines. Now, I needed to find a bus at JFK to the overseas terminal. Icelandic Airlines’ turbo-prop was scheduled to leave at 9:30 pm. I made it with only 15 minutes to spare, and then sat on the plane for another 1½ hours while they worked on a problem. The plane is smaller, less roomy than a jet, and tends to vibrate a lot in the air. The food was good and they served cognac with it. The flight was eight hours to Keflavik, Iceland.

April 16. I arrived at 12:30 pm local time (8 hours ahead of Pacific) and after going through customs, took the 23 mile bus trip to Rekjavik where I checked into the Loftleidir Hotel. I thought I had made reservations but they had no record.

I took a sightseeing trip around Reykjavik. The city has one hundred thousand people, about half of the population of the country, and is the capitol. Most of the people seem to have blond hair and blue eyes and are racially the same. Generally, the buildings are two and three stories high but there are also several taller apartment and downtown buildings. Many of the structures are concrete construction and have corrugated galvanized metal roofs. The city is heated solely by steam from nearby geysers and underground hot springs. The steam is mixed with cooler water and pumped into the buildings. The island nation is 40,000 square miles in area, created by volcanism. Most of it is relatively barren, rocky ground with low-level growing plants and some mountain ranges. The warming effects of the Gulf Stream, coming from Florida and circling the Atlantic, reaches Iceland and they don’t get a lot of snow. I stayed here 24 hours.

April 17. My trip continued with departure from the Keflavik airport at 11:00 am and the five hour flight over the Atlantic and northern tip of Scotland to Luxembourg. We had a rough landing due to a cross wind at the Luxembourg airport. The plane bounced three times on the tarmac, and when the captain saw he couldn’t make it, he gunned the engines and took the plane up, and circled for a second try. It was successful and the passengers applauded.

It was six o’clock in the evening when we got into Luxembourg City. I had met a Japanese doctor on the plane at Iceland who was on his way to Bern, Switzerland, for a year-long research project. We had walked around for a couple of hours together in Rekjavik and now killed some time in Luxembourg City before going on to Basel on the 1:00 am train. Since I had no particular schedule to meet, I tagged along with him for a while; he seemed to know what he was doing and had given me some valuable tips to get me started. I had my 21 day ‘Eurail Pass’ validated at the Luxembourg railway station and had to be back here in three weeks to meet my return airplane. The pass allowed me to travel first class (or lower class) for 21 days of unlimited travel without having to make reservations, as long as room was available. The Eurail pass had to be purchased outside Europe.

April 18. The night train to Switzerland went, first, through the northeastern French towns of Metz, Strasbourg, Colmar, and Mulhouse before reaching Basel at 6:00 am. The Swiss town was already awake and we took the trolley to the Rhine River, which flows through the middle of town, and then walked back to the railway station.

At that point, the doctor went off to Bern and I took the train to Zurich. On that train, I met a young British man, about my age, who was in despair about continuing to live in Britain, and was contemplating a move to Switzerland. I don’t know what the problem was exactly, other than he didn’t like the ‘class system’ in England, and that good jobs were tough to get.

At Zurich, I was completely alone. This is the German speaking part of the country and I don’t speak the language. Fortunately, I found that many Europeans speak English; if not, someone would point out another person who did. I walked around Zurich streets for a while until I became lost in the winding maze; then began to slowly work my way back to the central station on Hauptbahnhofstrasse. The tourist hotel reservation booth at the train station got me a room and I walked through an older section of town until I found it. I had slept pretty well that night since I had had only one night’s rest out of three.

April 19. It was chilly and an inch of snow had fallen overnight. I departed from Zurich on the train to Innsbruck, Austria, via the scenic route around Lake Constance and through the Alps. Several skiers got off at a village in Austria, and headed for the slopes. I only stayed about three hours at Innsbruck. I walked a couple of blocks but I wasn’t dressed for the cold weather. I had intended to head south into Italy from here, but I heard the Italian trains were on strike, so I caught the next train, north, to Munich, in Germany.

Traveling through part of the Austrian and German Alps, I arrived in Munich at 8:30 pm, so I had to find a hotel and something to eat. I had trouble with German menus all the way through. The long words in German, that they use to describe something, had me fooled for a while. I would point to the menu thinking I was getting a big meal and would find that I had ordered a wiener and French fries or turkey noodle soup.

April 20. I left Munich in the morning, heading for Cologne. I had to figure out how to pronounce the German name ‘Koln’ to get directions to the train car. From Cologne to Stuttgart is about two hundred miles, and I had to stand all the way because the train was packed with Greek men (apparently guest workers). We crossed the Danube River at Ulm. At Stuttgart, the Greeks got off and I found room to sit. I met a German guy on the train but he couldn’t speak much English. I asked what the laughing was about, that we had just heard, from some people in the hallway. He indicated that today was Hitler’s birthday; and they had made a comment about it, and laughed. He said there were ein hunnert fraulein(s) for every man in Essen, where he is from.

Most of the European travelers carried a large briefcase to use as their luggage. We followed alongside the Rhine River for a few miles. The Rhine is a highway with barges and boats carrying cargo up and down the river. It begins in the Swiss Alps and ends at Rotterdam, in Holland. In the background on the hilltops, I could spot some castles overlooking their dominions. The train passed Koblenz and Bonn and stopped at Cologne, where I got off and found a hotel and something to eat.

April 21. I walked along the streets of Cologne, Germany, and visited the Cologne Cathedral, a dark gray stone church that is impressive in size and gothic architecture. It must have been 700 years old. It had small chapels on the sides, opposite the main room. It missed being destroyed by the heavy bombing of WWII. I snapped a picture but I could not get one of the entire building. I continued walking until it began to rain, and then, headed back to the train station to wait for the night train to Copenhagen.

Most of the train stations in the larger cities in Europe are located in the city centers and seem to be about the same. They have a long roof extending up to one hundred yards over the tracks as you enter. The bigger the station, the more tracks there are at the site. Inside the station building are ‘buffets’ that include both first and second class restaurants. The fist class ones have table cloths and the second class ones don’t--the only difference that I could tell. In addition there are some small snack bars where one can order sandwiches and drinks. Thick coffee is relatively expensive. Plain water is never used; most people drink the bottled water that tastes like alka-seltzer. Cola drinks, without ice, are expensive; the standard beer is comparatively cheap. There are money exchange banks, and information booths, hotel reservation boots, storage lockers for baggage, kiosks selling necessities, and book stores.

April 22. I had been traveling all night from Cologne. At 7:00 am, the train arrived at Puttgarten, Germany, where we had to cross a strait on an arm of the Baltic Sea on a ferry to reach Denmark. The ferry was big enough to load several train cars and carry them 13 miles across the water. It also had a restaurant on the top deck. During the voyage, I met two Americans and a Swede; somebody to talk to. The Swede insisted he did not speak English but he could speak American. He said that in the Swedish schools they differentiate between the British and the American dialects. I took that to mean he had a choice of which course to take. I arrived later in Copenhagen and checked at the travel booth for a hotel room. I walked a few blocks, with my one piece of luggage, to the Savoy Hotel and checked in. Since I always had to show my passport and the information in it was noted on the register, I asked what they did with it. One copy goes to the police, was my answer.

In the afternoon I took a sightseeing trip around Copenhagen. I found that I could find a local tour company through the hotels or travel desks, and sign on for a city tour that was reasonably priced. We stopped off at the ‘Little Mermaid,’ and some city water fountains; and the harbor; passed by Frederiksberg Castle and the king’s palace grounds; and, saw both the meat market, and the fish market. The city has many stone buildings with the weathered green, copper roofs. Later I strolled past Tivoli Gardens, but it was closed for the season.

April 23. I took the 10:00 am train from Copenhagen to Goteborg, Sweden. On the way we had to take another ferry across the salt water to Halsingborg, Sweden. The train continued up the west coast through smaller towns of Angelholm, Halmstad and Varborg over the green coastal plain to Goteborg (Gothenburg), the second largest city in Sweden. I walked around for a few hours and went past a pedestrian area where there were huge shopping malls that were several blocks in size. At 6:00 pm, I caught the last train going to Copenhagen that day. When I arrived at midnight, everything was closed except the main lobby of the train station. I didn’t figure I could get a room at that hour so I caught the next train heading for Rotterdam, Holland. I only had to wait 15 minutes. I had intended to go to Amsterdam, instead, and the two trains left at about the same time. The reason I didn’t was this: In Europe, they use a 24 hour time table where 12:00 midnight is written as 0.00 and 3:00 pm is noted as 15.00 hours, etc. Well, I got confused and was off an hour on my figuring. I thought my intended train had left when it actually had not—and I jumped on the nearest train when I heard the announcement to board for Rotterdam, as that was the closest. It didn’t make much difference to me anyway, especially at that hour of the night, and with no place to sleep.

April 24. From midnight, I had traveled all night, retracing much of what I had seen during the daytime on the way up. The train went through Hamburg to Osnabruck, Germany, where the car I was riding in changed trains, and headed west to Rotterdam. When the railroad car reaches its cut off point it is pulled off the train and hooked on to another train to the final destination. One train may have several cars, each one going to a different destination. The traveler has to find the right car on the train. On the North German plain, I saw an occasional farmer plowing fields with horses. I crossed into the Netherlands and its farming country. Along the way there were brick houses with thatched roofs and, on the farms, plow horses and tractors; haystacks instead of baled hay; and a lot of dairy cattle. I arrived in Rotterdam early in the afternoon, after 18 hours on the train. It was raining hard and I had caught a cold; and spent only three hours in Rotterdam, without venturing out.

At 4:00 pm, I took the next train to Brussels, Belgium, and arrived at that city four hours later. I found a room above a café near the railway station and slept for twelve hours.

April 25. I left Brussels heading for Ostende on the Belgian coast. At Ostende, I took a ferry for the 75 mile crossing (3½ hours) to Dover, England. At Dover I went by train on British Railways, 80 miles, to London. I had to pay extra for this as British Rail was not partnered with Eurail. I arrived in London’s Victoria Station at 7:00 pm and had no trouble finding a hotel, which had concerned me. Two hotel representatives were trying to hustle up customers for rooms; it sounded like a good deal and they gave me a free ride. The cost was only 3 pounds, 10 shillings ($8.40) per night and included an ‘English breakfast.’ The hotel was located in west London near Lancaster Gate in the Paddington area. The hotel was really old but it had a private bath; and I took the first shower that I had managed to get in ten days (even though the hot water ran out). Most of the hotels I stayed at were really old, but clean, and had the bathrooms down the hall. At least one of them had one bathroom for both sexes.

April 26. In the morning, a Saturday, I took off walking down Bayswater Road past Hyde Park to Oxford Street. Oxford Street is the main shopping district and it was crowded with throngs of people. I continued on, looking at my map and asking questions of passersby, to Berkeley Square and Piccadilly Road.

I found a sightseeing tour and spent the afternoon on a guided bus tour of the city. We went through the Parliament building and passed by Buckingham Palace. I took a snapshot of the guards but we missed the ‘changing of the guards.’ We entered Saint Paul’s Church, site of coronations and royal weddings. We toured the financial district and took in a few of the historic buildings and monuments. I stood on the very spot in where Winston Churchill laid in state on his death. There were modern buildings in the bombed out areas, from WWII, but the town was not full of skyscrapers. We arrived back at the starting point and I had to walk two or three miles, yet, to my hotel. The sky began to cloud up and I got lost again. I walked around in circles until I found a familiar street name and then found my way back. I had asked directions a couple of times but they were lost too. After cleaning up a bit, I went back out that evening to find some night spots and ended up in a pub talking with an Irishman and a German.

April 27. I left London by train, past the cities of Canterbury and Kent, to Dover where I boarded a Belgian ferry to Ostende. The ferry was a large one and reminded me of a miniature ocean liner. It was a beautiful day and I stayed on the outside deck toward the aft and took several pictures of ships crossing this main shipping lane on the English Channel.

At Ostende, I continued by train to Brussels, where I immediately caught a southbound to Paris. I arrived in Paris at 10:00 pm to the sounds of some cheering or yelling as I approached the north side railway station. It was Sunday night, the same day of the French elections, when President De Gaulle resigned the presidency. I had anticipated a little trouble and, apparently, there had been some the day before, but I found none. I secured a room at the Hotel Terminus Nord across the street from the train station.

April 28. I went on another sightseeing trip with a local tour company around some of the buildings and monuments of Paris. I went inside Notre Dame Cathedral located on an island in the middle of the Seine River which runs through the middle of Paris. I really marveled at its fantastic architecture of stone and marble especially in light of the age when it was built. It took many years to construct and probably at a high cost of manpower and finance. During the Middle Ages, they discovered the flying buttresses, adjacent to the outside walls, made it possible to construct the high arches to support the roof and enlarge the overall size of the building. The stained glass windows are black on the outside due to the effects of weathering, but inside, the colors show through perfectly because of the imperfect construction and air bubbles in the glass which allow light to show through.

We also stopped at the Palace des Invalides where Napoleon’s tomb is and then traveled through both the left bank and right bank. The Latin Quarter is located on the left bank. I got near the Eiffel tower and took some pictures but there was no time to climb up. I saw the Arc de Triomphe. We passed the Place de l’ Opera; Rue de la Paix; Place Vendome; Rue de Rivoli; Place de la Concorde; Avenue des Champs Elysees; Avenue Maraschal Foch; Palais de Justice; Palais de Chaillot; Tuilleries; Palais du Louvre; Hotel de Ville; Place de la Bastille; and Grands Boulevards.

After the tour I wandered around until evening. I stopped off at a sidewalk café to watch people walk by and went to a small restaurant for a French dinner.

April 29. I had to take the subway from the Gare du Nord (Northern Railway Station) to Gare de l’Est (Eastern Railway Station), across town, in order to take the train south. I left Paris at noon and traveled all the way through France that day. The route took me past Orleans; Tours, which has castles (I saw two in the distance); across the Loire River; Poitiers, where the Moors reached their northern most advance; and Bordeaux. At Bordeaux, most passengers disembarked. A Frenchman, whom I was talking with, and I were the only persons remaining in my car and he got off the train at Dax in southern France.

Realizing I was the only person left, I became uneasy and moved down to the next car. It was 9:00 pm and soon the only passenger on that car left. The conductor came by and said we would be arriving at the Spanish border at 10:00 pm and he went on, leaving me completely alone. I worried about finding a place to stay. I didn’t have any Spanish money, or French francs; only American twenty’s and some traveler’s checks. The train has to stop at the border because the Spanish use a narrow gauge rail and we are on a standard gauge so I couldn’t just continue on the train overnight.

We passed the last French town and it looked closed. The closer we got to Spain the more I worried about finding a place to stay and the more that ‘alone’ feeling had crept in. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a little Spanish man appeared and asked in Spanish and sign language if I needed a place to sleep. The man was a saint! At the town of Irun, Spain, I followed him thorough customs where two Englishmen joined us. The saint took us to a small hotel. The rooms were clean, with a bathroom down the hallway--and cheap; only $1.50 a night, including continental breakfast of cookies and coffee. The hotel couldn’t cash a ten dollar traveler check so I had to borrow enough pesetas from one of the English guys to pay for the room.

April 30. I left Irun and headed towards Zaragoza. I jumped on the train just as it was pulling out of the station; one of the English guys was just behind me and the other missed. The one man on the train got off at the next station to wait for his buddy; they were going to Pamplona.

There were several small towns and villages on the way and the train traveled very slowly. I met a Basque man on the way and tried to converse a little by sign language and a word or two here and there in Spanish. We stopped at one of the villages and some ladies got on. One of the older ones made the ‘sign of the cross’ as if she were going to go a thousand miles. Her family cried as she boarded. There were three travelers and the young lady thumbed through a wedding dress catalogue and discussed it with the other two each time she found something she liked. They went about 75 miles and then got off the train at their destination.

We arrived at Zaragoza where I got off the train. It was siesta time and I couldn’t find a bank to change money. I hadn’t eaten since that morning, and then, only a cup of coffee and three small cookies.

After not finding anything open, I grabbed the Express to Barcelona twenty minutes later. This train had a diesel-electric locomotive; I could feel the switch changes from transfer of power to the wheels, like changing gears, as we accelerated. I saw a few steam engines being used for hauling freight but the passenger trains were diesel-electric.

The TEE trains, Trans Europe Express, were the newest and fastest and good for long distances, but the regular ones were okay for shorter runs. This was a TEE train and it moved right along, following the Ebro River. It seemed that quite a bit of farming was being done with horse and plow. I arrived in Barcelona at 7:00 pm and found a real good room at the Majestic Hotel with private bath and shower, at $3.50 per night. This was my first shower since London; and it had hot water.

May 1. I walked around downtown Barcelona on its wide avenues and narrow streets. I passed by the cathedral. Some of the back streets were really narrow with buildings on both sides of way. Laundry was hanging out to dry from many windows. New apartment buildings were being constructed among some of the older, stone buildings in some areas. On the streets you see armed uniformed soldier-police called ‘Guardia Civil.’ In some of the streets they are on each corner. They seemed helpful, though, and polite if you don’t cause any trouble. Things run pretty much in an orderly fashion because of the numerous police. Spain was still under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco when I was there.

May 2. I had boarded the train in Barcelona last evening and was on an all night trip along the Mediterranean coast through France heading toward Rome. The night was peaceful as the train traveled along the coast—an even clickity-click, clickety-click of the wheels rolling along the rails, while the moon, shining above, cast its light on the water and the sandy beach.

At 5:00 am the train came to a halt in Marseilles, France, and the conductor called for everyone to disembark. It was the end of the line for this train; not the express that I thought is was supposed to be.

I bailed onto another train and continued to Nice. An American, who was sharing the compartment with me on the train, was getting off here because we were on the Riviera. He had just finished up a tour of duty with the army in Morocco and was heading home; and doing a little traveling on the way. He had driven 1500 miles around Morocco before coming here, to France.

I decided to stay here for the day. We looked over Nice and the rocky beaches, which were lined with numerous hotels, and took a train for fifteen miles to Cannes and its sandy beaches; also lined with hotels and restaurants. I saw a yacht harbor with expensive boats. I returned to Nice and took the 6:00 pm train, alone again, traveling all night to Rome, where I landed at 7:00 am. From Barcelona to Rome is about a thousand miles. I had had no sleep for two nights and had spent two full days sightseeing.

May 3. I found a hotel recommended by a taxi driver at the main train station in Rome, the Pensione Nella. By 8:30 am I was on a sightseeing trip around the city. I was pretty tired but I didn’t want to miss anything. The tour visited the Catacombs; the ancient Coliseum; Saint Paul’s Basilica; and, Basilica of Saint John Lateran. We went on several streets: Viminale; Merulana; Manzone Avenue; Ardeatina Street; Cristoforo Colombo Avenue; Seven Churches Street; Ostiense Street; Aventino Avenue; San Gregora Street. We drove by the Caracalla Baths, Pyramid of Cestius, old city walls, and Saint John’s gate; Domine Quo Vadis, Drusdo Arch, Holy Step and San Sebastian’s Gate.

At 1:00 pm, I ate lunch and took a nap. I had the first big meal in several days. I woke up in time for supper at the small hotel and walked around some more that evening in circles and finally found my way back by ten o’clock. I didn’t do too badly here—a room (bath in the hall), three good meals, my laundry done, and a tour only cost $20.

May 4. I checked out of the hotel, walked to the station, checked in my one travel bag to a locker, and grabbed a city bus to the Vatican. I went inside Saint Peter’s Basilica, the largest in the world, and spent most of the time in the church itself. I tried to take several pictures inside but only one turned out. The outside ones were fine. The ceiling is done in gold and fresco paintings by Michelangelo. There is a main altar area with a number of side chapels. I think only the pope can say mass at the main altar. This building is huge and my little flash bulbs couldn’t even begin to reach for a picture. The marble statues and columns inside are a work of art.

Later in the afternoon I walked all over, after crossing the Tiber River, and tried to find a bus to take me to some famous fountains. I never did find any but I had two sore feet searching.

I would have liked to stay longer but there was a lot of ground to cover between here and my return destination and I had to be there in four days when my rail pass expires. Most of the time I had traveled by daytime but, for six nights, I had to train at night; because, either it was the only train out, or I had to keep going due to the limited time factor. I pulled out on the night train to Venice.

May 5. After traveling all night, I reached Venice at 7:00 am. I had met a couple of American ladies on the train who were in the same compartment as I. They lived somewhere on the east coast of the United