Cheap Travel Made Easy and Safe- Mexico for Pennies a Day

Greetings Fellow Travelers

I'm rolling through La Pesca now, a quaint village in Mexico. Earlier I was touring a remote area along a long, straight and sparsely populated road that seemed too narrow for two of even the smallest cars to pass each other without going into the wet caliche ditch.

I slowed to take in a tiny, open but closed-looking motel, of sorts. The sign said something about "Delfines," and the color of the main building was a dirt covered canary yellow. Every window was open and the place looked deserted, yet occupied, you know what I mean? Stay there and you may or may not wake up in the morning.

A little further up the road there was a small parochial school. Standing along the street next to the church bus, that was obviously hand painted, were about 8 or 10 students, looking sharp in their crisp school uniforms, bright blue skirts with white blouses, so bright that it almost hurt the eye to look at them. Their gaze followed me as I passed by. I am certain they have never seen anything like this before.

Leaving the children puzzled and entertained, (I'm sure they'll tell everybody they know!), I moved on to the beach. The miles and miles of uninterrupted sand was brilliant and inviting. I was hoping to see a Kemp's Ridley sea turtle but no luck.

La Pesca looks like a movie set. The street is barely visible through the heavy layer of sand or dirt that covers it. The pavement ends about 5 or 6 feet shorter than it did when new. The space between where the asphalt stops and the, uh, sidewalk, for lack of a better term, begins, is all sand- or dirt. Whatever the stuff is exactly I'm not sure, but everything around is covered with it.

Still, the place has a great appeal to me. I can hardly understand any of the street signs or advertisements that I see, but that's OK. It is quite an adventure and I LOVE adventure!

However, it's time to go. I can't keep driving around here all day. I need to figure out where I'll go next. Nigeria? Kenya? Back to Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio?

Last week I tooled around London, thought about going to Egypt- didn't. Yesterday I went from park to park at Disney World in Florida. Man, I love that place! I have been there physically 3 times, and am looking forward to going back; without using, you guessed it, Google Earth.

Have you tried it? I actually used it to plot my trip to Disney World, studying routes and printing directions.

I especially like the Street View option. You can zoom in and click on a camera icon anywhere along the path you are interested in. It will pop up a picture of the street view of that particular spot. You then have the option of going "Full Screen," which will provide a 360 view, again, of that particular spot.

As you zoom in you'll find that instead of having a street view every mile or ten miles, there's one every 20 to 100 feet or so. That's how I was able to tell that these kiddos watched the camera car intently as it moved down the street. Even with the faces of the children blurred, I suppose because of licensing issues, I could tell that they were puzzled and delighted by the odd looking machine rolling by their school.

I knew that the vehicle used by Google must have looked different from most cars but it wasn't until I got to La Pesca that I knew how much. The car's shadow told me there was a ball-like lens on top of a 5 or 6 foot pole, mounted on top of a small car. That would get my attention too.

Many locations, such as Las Vegas and Disney parks, have their buildings in 3D. With the controls provided you can zoom to ground level and even go through buildings, some of which will show you their interiors. I walked through Cinderella Castle in virtual mode, reliving the times I walked through there in person.

As many of you know I am writing my autobiography. What does that have to do with Google Earth? Well, my memory has not been easily tapped for information for this book. So, I "fly" to my childhood home and stroll around, using my cyber abilities to jog my memory. Believe it or not, it works.

I was nearly brought to tears checking out my old school, John Glenn Elementary. I almost broke down looking at the rural intersection where my oldest brother was killed in 1973. I shuddered when I used a measuring tool to gauge how far the intersection was from our old house. You could see the spot where he died from the second story.

He was going back to Eagle Lake after visiting us for a few days. He had not been out of the Navy for very long so we all had thoroughly enjoyed seeing him. Had I or one of my family members thought about it we would have gone up there just to see his awesome Maverick roll through. It was a loud and powerful car that I loved. A speeding El Camino SS blew through a stop sign, crashing into the right side of my brothers car. I can't help but wonder, how would that have felt to have seen that happen?

Some day I'll go there and symbolically finish the trip for him. 37 years and I still miss him.

How powerful is the human mind, storing images and feelings and even smells that can be retrieved from the deep freeze of blocked memory stores to be felt and relived. I wonder if Google really knows what it has with Google Earth.

With me, it's a lot like the room in the Spaceship Enterprise, where one can bring to life any environment with any scenario imaginable. That's just one of the benefits of a vibrant and sometimes overactive imagination.

If you have a few minutes, and if you haven't already got it, download Google Earth and take it for a test drive. Go to Mexico and say hello to the kiddos, fly to Vegas or London and look around, maybe even go to Hawaii and see the Battleship Arizona as it sits under water.

It will never replace traveling for real, but, as a temporary substitute, and as a source of information and inspiration, it just might be impossible to beat.

Visit www.EspyPublishing today and order "Aahd & Aahder- Tales from the Aahd Side," the new book by Ken McCreless!