book order

Received an order of books from amazon... for what I shall call my research.

I'm hoping to travel to Cuba this fall; the allure of an island stuck in time is just too strong and I'm determined to visit. Ideally, I'd go to Cuba this year but a number of roadblocks have already popped up... besides US restrictions that add the need for a visiting license, one of my cousins is getting married right in the middle of my ideal time to travel. And I've read that Cuba's baseball season starts in late November; if I go this October, I won't be able to go to a game.

Last fall I bought a groupon deal from Intrepid Travel... for $475 I got a $1000 voucher good for any itinerary in Latin America, excluding the Galápagos Islands and "short breaks," trips shorter than one week. The $1000 value is valid so long as travel with Intrepid is completed by October 31, 2012; after that it's only worth $475.

So since I used up all of my vacation time in Peru and I accrue two weeks (10 days) of vacation each year, I need to travel as late as possible to have enough vacation time for a happy trip. And that's why I want to travel in October.

Anyways, back to Cuba... picked up a couple of travel diaries to get acquainted with everything Cuban.

L: The Handsomest Man in Cuba by Lynette Chiang
R: Enduring Cuba by Zoë Brân

Knowing that any number of obstacles could delay my dream trip to Cuba, I also picked up a few books for my backup plans this fall. I'm not going to let that voucher go to waste!

Plan B: Colombia. It's time to give coffee another try! Travel information is widely available online, so I opted to go with some award-winning literature that paints a picture of Colombia's history.

L: Love in the Time of Cholera
R: One Hundred Years of Solitude
both by Gabriel García Márquez

Plan C: Bolivia. I'm guessing it'll be similar to southern Peru but smaller and with more extreme weather. There wasn't a lot in the way of novels about Bolivia so I opted for a treatise on the political culture of the land.

Bolivia's Radical Tradition - Permanent Revolution in the Andes by S. Sándor John

October's destination is still up in the air but at least I won't be short on bedtime reading for a while.