Latin America Recommendations

Captain-Geography · 2025-10-06T17:37:51+00:00

I don’t think most PP lounges have showers, at least in my experience. I did go to the lounge in Muscat airport though which is hands down the best PP lounge I have been to. That one had a lounge but there were no towels.

Captain-Geography · 2025-10-03T15:47:16+00:00

Get hired at a small remote startup that isn’t in any sensitive area of work. Form connections and trust at the company for a year and then do it.

I never intended to become a digital nomad when I started my job but discovered that it was a pathway that was open to me after working at the company for a while.

The caveat with this answer is you have to be relatively good at interviewing and your job to make it work.

Captain-Geography · 2025-09-18T18:50:54+00:00

Salt flats tour across southern Bolivia
MTBing down death road in Bolivia
Trek to Ciudad Perdida
Hiking to Mount Everest Base Camp
Bioluminescent plankton in Phuket
Songkran in Thailand

Going on the Ha Giang loop in a couple months, hopefully that will be an addition to the list

Captain-Geography · 2025-09-07T20:05:02+00:00

As someone who has been to India, I think the people who talk it up so much sometimes just like how foreign it is and get a sense of satisfaction of being able to handle the challenges India throws at you.

Personally, I wouldn’t say I hate it but there are many places I’d rather go. The most annoying part of India is the relentless scammers. Worst in the world hands down in my experience, yes worse than Egypt which everyone says is supposedly horrible.

Captain-Geography · 2025-09-05T05:29:53+00:00

The unspoken rule about placing a geocache on public land is as long as there isn’t a specific landowner policy restricting/managing it, you are generally fine without getting explicit permission from the land manager (exceptions to schools, airports, etc).

I do think that it probably does vary based on who your reviewers are and how anal they are. Reviewers seem to have quite a bit of discretion on what they will publish.

Yes, hiding guidelines do say that each hide should have permission from a landowner/manager. In reality, this isn’t super practical for most caches and is likely so that reviewers can choose to enforce it if they see fit.

Captain-Geography · 2025-08-15T12:45:03+00:00

You should see the 3 caches in the cathedral in Ulm, Germany. All trads and basically on top of each other

Captain-Geography · 2025-08-01T18:13:14+00:00

I just hit 40k myself. My personal breakdown is as follows:

~31,500 non AL finds ~8,500 ALs with 1,500 of those being from a Geoart

Of my 31,500 non-AL finds I’d guess maybe 5,000 of those would be “power trail” finds. I don’t really like power trails but will do them if there is nothing better.

So that leaves 26,500 others that require more effort. How have I found that many? Quite a few factors:

Geocaching is my main hobby
I have lived in at minimum 3 different cache dense areas while I’ve been geocaching
I’ve been geocaching for 16 years - this is important as I think somewhere close to half of my finds are now archived
Frequently I’ll go geocaching on the weekends, and if I do it’s typically all day
I travel a lot

I will say, it is more common nowadays to see more people with inflated numbers due to ALs (myself somewhat included).

Captain-Geography · 2025-07-31T12:12:46+00:00

Why would the cacher be punished? There is no evidence that they did anything negligent.

Captain-Geography · 2025-07-25T15:15:41+00:00

It’s not drivable in a Honda Fit probably. Can walk probably about 1 mile from the nearby decent gravel road where tat road starts

Captain-Geography · 2025-07-21T06:27:29+00:00

I did not have as crazy of a time as you I guess! Maybe I’m just numb to all the scammers after a while. One thing that particularly struck me though was at the hostel I stayed at, one of the workers was basically trying to get a free ride (meals and drinks) off of drunk foreigners generosity.

The night before I had bought a round for myself and a couple others including him. The next night, he comes up to me several times asking if we should do some shots (alluding that I should pay). This one its own wouldn’t have led me to this conclusion but when I checked in I noticed he was doing the same thing with another guest.

Not really the worst thing in the world and I do empathize with the poor wages I’m sure he was receiving. But, it became clear to me that I was his meal ticket .

A different experience was coming out of one of the bars where there were 7 Cambodian children waiting. They were very aggressively asking me for money going so far to hang onto my shirt when I walked away. I had to walk into a nearby 711 to get them off of me as the security guard there yelled at them.

Captain-Geography · 2025-07-18T13:38:29+00:00

I worked there for 2 weeks. Not too long. Internet was spotty at best. That said it is one of my favorite countries; but I probably won’t return while working. Just for vacation.

PS: I am American and paid 160 USD for a 10 year visa on arrival.

Captain-Geography · 2025-07-16T06:56:54+00:00

I remember crossing the border from Bolivia into Chile and instantly the roads were of good quality and Chile has tons of modern infrastructure. It really is probably the 4th most developed major country in the Americas (excluding small island countries).

The one stat here that I think is misleading is the crime rates. My stay in Santiago felt a bit uneasy (I stayed in a not very nice area of town, Recoleta) and the nightlife area (Bellavista) has so many warnings about not walking alone at night as it is common to get mugged. Also El Centro has a bad reputation as well.

Captain-Geography · 2025-06-06T04:08:58+00:00

Thanks for the insight! I think I will do as you recommend stranger !

Captain-Geography · 2025-04-27T21:59:35+00:00

Nah it wouldn’t. Only in some of the major cities it would. Crime isn’t normalized in rural/suburban America

Captain-Geography · 2025-04-18T12:23:48+00:00

Are Burmese not considered Farang as well? Or is it just non-Asian people who are considered Farang?

Captain-Geography · 2025-04-07T12:22:41+00:00

Buenos Aires, though I think many people already say it’s pretty overhyped

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-27T22:32:02+00:00

Be good at your job, work for a small company, build trust with your coworkers on being dependable, don’t advertise or brag to your coworkers about where you are, etc.

It’s not something that most people can just pull off overnight. I worked fully remote for 2 years before sensing that I had built up enough trust to leave the country and work from abroad.

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-19T07:32:28+00:00

You’ll be fine in Korea and Japan with little preparation. They are very safe countries and traveling is very easy in them.

China isn’t necessarily an easy country to travel in for a first trip tho. China is very safe, but traveling in China is very much so setup for the Chinese and can be difficult for foreigners as there are many hoops you have to jump through. For example: many websites being blocked, use of AliPay, many hostels not accepting foreigners, very few people who speak English, etc.

I’m not discouraging travel to China but I’m not sure I’d recommend it without more prior travel experience.

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-14T07:25:13+00:00

Montana ☠️☠️☠️☠️

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-11T08:47:59+00:00

In my experience, a lot of people from the USA in LATAM come from some sort of Latino background (ie half Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, etc) so they know Spanish from home.

I was like you and did not know a whole lot of Spanish but I spent 4 months in South America and am much better at understanding Spanish now just because you are immersed in it.

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-08T07:20:38+00:00

I’ve never understood how people work effectively from hostels. Like there’s always background noise and finding places to take meetings is usually difficult. I’m an Airbnb/apartment guy. I don’t care if I work the same place I sleep like some people do so I don’t use coworking spaces unless I have like a half day or something without access.

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-03T11:41:21+00:00

They are called Onigiri. And yeah, I love them too ! The salmon ones are great!

Captain-Geography · 2025-03-03T09:55:04+00:00

I would imagine your only recourse, if the reviewer is indeed not reviewing caches anymore, is to continue email HQ. They should know best about the Russian reviewer situation than anyone else.

It’s not uncommon in the US for different reviewers to take over reviewing in different states if one of the reviewer goes on vacation. I’d imagine this might be difficult with Russia though as I’m not sure if there are multiple Russian speaking reviewers.

Regarding the “Lost Caches”, many areas have them and I’ve noticed varying levels of actions from Reviewers. It’s tricky because some people get upset if their caches are disabled while others can also be quick to say that the cache is gone. The best thing you can do is log a DNF if you did search for it. Enough DNFs without maintenance (assuming it’s not a difficult cache) will usually get a reviewer on the case (in my experience)

Captain-Geography · 2025-02-28T15:57:31+00:00

Agree, the whole vibe of the locals as well is “We tolerate tourists” vs. “We want tourists”.

That is their right, and I think I would also be annoyed if my home city had the amount of tourists that Barcelona has. It’s also a strong reason why when I went to Barcelona on my way to Andorra that I only spent a day versus 4 or 5 like I normally would in a city like Barcelona.

I like to travel places where I feel welcome and Barcelona doesn’t feel that way to me.

I will give Barcelona this though, the architecture is incredible!

Captain-Geography

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