Cold weather and cell phone batteries: the adventures of two backpackers

A paper map (that we weren’t sure we could understand) and some basic notions of Geography. It was all we had in a country that wasn’t ours, in a city we were visiting for the first time, and to top it all, our cell phones were dead and we didn’t have a watch.

Only after spending a good time trying to take pictures with an old digital camera (that has been saving our lives since the cold has been shutting our cell phones off randomly), that we realized the only thing we knew about how to go back to Niagara Falls after visiting Buffalo was that we had to walk West toward the bus stop.

And you know what? Even against all the odds, we felt in our guts we were going to find our way.

Of course, we could always count on a plan B: we could ask for information on the streets, borrow a phone, or even enter a taxi and just tell our address. During a crisis, speaking the local language and having a credit card is always life-saving.

Today, though, we practiced something we had experienced on other trips before, but that with ’30 on the road’ has been escalating: getting lost. Walking on a street without having the slightest idea of our bearings and, even though, enjoy the road.

With the little travel experience we already gathered, we understood that the best strategy when something goes beyond control is a good and free laugh. We joked about our situation, tried to learn from it for the next time, and, mostly, we stopped to calmly and humored think about a plan B.
Whatever is your truth, a trip to a different country or a road trip to a neighbor city, if you ever get yourself into a situation like ours, the best advice is to remain calm. Being nervous, afraid, tense, and especially, start a fight, will never lead to a good outcome.

As the famous saying: ‘keep calm and carry on’. If everything goes wrong, at least, we make sure to have a good story to tell.