🆒I've been traveling recently

Happy Tuesday! It is now week 365 of March 2020 and I’ve been bit by the travel bug harder than I have been in a long time. All of last year I kind of just accepted that I wouldn’t be traveling at all and now with the end (hopefully, knock on wood) finally in sight I’ve been thinking about what my next trips are going to be. I doubt I’ll be doing anything this year, but it’s never too early to start planning.

In this issue

🏝 A book that I read over the weekend about isolated islands.

🗺 Look at all these beautiful maps!

🌎 The southernmost tip of the Americas.

Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession

This isn’t a review of this book, just a glowing recommendation. It’s called, you guessed it, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession by Gavin Francis. It’s a travel journal written by British doctor who has a love of exploring some of the most isolated islands in the world. Every island gets a dedicated blurb about it ranging from a chapter to a few pages, depending on what he’s talking about.

For most of the islands you get, at the very least, a brief history which is fascinating to read about. But most of them are just stories about his fleeting experiences in these isolated places. Mixed in with these stories is his own personal philosophy of the tension between wanting to be alone while maintaining social relationships and staying connected. I stan.

Maps, maps, maps

The book I just mentioned had a plethora of beautifully illustrated maps from back in the day and it was mind blowing. I’ve obviously seen old hand-drawn maps before, whether it was in museums or in textbooks from 5th grade world history. But I’ve never actually thought about how they were made.

Cartography was an entire field of work that people had to do without technology. This means these people lived their lives where science and exploration met art. This is why some maps have intricately drawn sea monsters and myths in them. After I realized that people needed to travel, take notes on a new location, do calculations, and turn all of that data into art that other sailors or explorers could reliably use, I have a newfound respect and awe for these people. If you want to get as lost as I did, just check out this collection of maps from the National Maritime Museum in London.

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is a famous archipelago in Chile at the southern tip of South America. What I’ve decided after all this wanderlusting over the last year is that I want to go to a place called Cape Horn. This is the most southern point you can go to before sailing across the water to Antarctica.

While I would love to step foot on Antarctica one day, that’s a journey I’m not sure that I’m ready for. In the meantime, I’m dying to take a trip down to Chile after watching this dope documentary which has the founder of the Patagonia clothing brand in it. I don’t know about climbing mountains, but I’m down for some beaches.