So it would appear our rate of posting has taken a rather swift nose dive. This isn’t because we have given up, oh no (we are making notes as we go along to ensure we don’t forget the smaller details of what we have done). What we have encountered are a series of technical issues which have caused some stress, some annoyance and nearly had me in tears. So in no particular order:
WiFi in South America varies….a lot
Most places we have stayed in over the past few weeks have had very poor internet connections. This is a pretty first world problem to list, but it has nonetheless had an effect on our travelling. For one, it has meant the researching activities or where we want to go next has taken far longer than we expected. This has had the knock-on effect that we have not had the same amount of time to give to our blog writing.
WordPress application can decide to remove edits for no reason at all
This is a summation of our frustration with the WordPress app. We originally thought this would help us have a way to write posts while on the go, but it has proven to be more of a nuisance. From frequently failing to upload photos to our blogs to simply deleting whole drafts we had written, we have ended up going back to using traditional word processing applications for our offline scribbles.
USB Cables breaking
In the last few days, we have started to encounter USB cables breaking. Unpacking, plugging cables in. Unplugging cables and packing up before moving to a new place. This routine has taken its toll on our various USB cables, and it has resulted in a loss of the ability to charge some of our devices. It has also led to a super worrying incident involving our…
…Portable hard disk drive….
Grrrrrrrr. Of all the issues that have hit us in the last week this one was by far the most annoying. Why? Because as an Electronics Engineer who has worked extensively with computer systems and data storage, I should have planned better.
After being able to buy a new cable at a tech market in Lima, we have concluded the issue was cable damage. Thankfully it’s not a damaged hard drive (which would have more than likely meant everything would have been lost). However, this was a close call and would’ve been gutting to lose all of our photos from South America! (Not a complete fool in the backup department, I did send another hard drive home with the Walsh family from New Zealand).
Backups are now complete, so we reduced our risk of losing treasured photos!
Finally…..games
Most of our writing has taken place on public transport before (planes and trains for the most part). However, in Peru, we have been taking some extremely long bus rides, 2 of which have been over 12 hours. As a result, I have resorted to passing the time by playing games. This has led me to re-downloading Xcom: Enemy Within on my iPad. Anyone who knows this game will know that it can really slip time away from you!
Similarly, Katy has reinforced her love of minesweeper. Currently in search of a record time for completion, we have become pretty distracted lately.
However, now we are in Lima, and we have had some time to settle in one location again, and have been able to establish a good process for backing everything up, we can focus on blog writing again! Let’s go….