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Travel life
Karel’s letters written during travellingLetters written when working while travelling, part 4. Travel life So it was a nice drive through the mountains on my way off the island. I was sorta stuck in its middle, in the capital city (long story) for about three months. Various adventures, like the police thought I was a spy and demanded to examine all my electronics, but finally got out of there so that I could make it to my beloved coast. Took a special route to the port Lemassol which I haven’t taken yet and spent the weekend on Mount Olympus, the island’s highest point. There was still snow here and there, but it was a nice refreshing change to get back to some cooler temperature. It was so cold in fact that my car battery got too weak to start. I was parked on a bit of a slope and thought I’d try jump starting the beast, but that didn’t work and ended up practically crashing into some bushes. Fortunately I’m a good tech head and rewired things, using my caravan batteries for extra juice. Got to the port but it turns out that the price they quoted me did not include any port fees. I must have phoned them about five times confirming this and that, and you’d think that of all those times they could have mentioned the port costs. Like when you buy a plane ticket, they also mention the airport fees and various taxes. So I had to spend an extra 300 Euro, which pretty well drained my account to zero. All that hard work and saving up money and now I am back down to zero again. I have to chuckle at my occasional predicaments. But should have about 1500 Euro coming in very soon, so will just have to survive. Have to send my truck by ship and fly out separately (new goofy island policy). Meanwhile I have a translation so I’m trying to meet that schedule while on this hectic move. At least another 500 Euro in the bank. So glad to have this new customer, even though I’m so sick of translating, but the income is appreciated. Getting better and better and eventually hope to bid on the Euro projects myself, increasing my price in the process. Today went for my first swim of the year and its nice to be back
at the sea. Water surprisingly warm for this time of year it seems. Will
hang out in Athens until some payments come in and will have some gas
money. That should give me about a week to scope out Athens and plan my
trip for the rest of the country. Giving myself a month to get to Bulgaria
and very much looking forward to it. Hope to convert my truck to kitchen
grease so that I will not have to pay for gas anymore, and lower my costs
even further. So with my increasing amount of work and decreasing costs,
I hope to finally start putting some savings in the bank. Never want to
live through this poverty again and this will be the first time in my
life I’ll be actually putting some savings into the bank. * * * Island Hopping in the Philippines * * *
Published - August 2012
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