Smartphones have made traveling immeasurably easier. And I don’t think that was entirely free.
Almost 25 years ago I was in a city that wasn’t my own. I’d never been there before. I was there along with my best friend, who lived in a different city, opposite ways from mine. We traveled there by bus to meet with a web design client.
When we arrived we met at the bus station and took a cab to the hotel restaurant where we were meeting with the client. The meeting went well. After lunch, we had plenty of daylight left and we were in a good mood, so we decided to walk back to the bus station and to use the time to catch up on each other’s life.
Except we were in an unknown town, and we didn’t have smartphones (there were a good five or six years left for them to be invented) or internet access. So of course we got lost.
We walked for two or three hours, and had to stop a couple of times for a snack before biting the bullet, swallowing our pride and taking a cab to the bus station. On the way there, we passed the hotel restaurant shortly before arriving at the station.
We turned a fifteen-minute walk into a three-hour trek through an unfamiliar and not very pleasant city.
And of course, we laughed our asses off.
It was an adventure. I'm still smiling about it two and a half decades later.
We caught the bus.
2 Comments
Resistencia Carpincha • Jul 28, 2026, 6:31 PM
Qué conectados estamos con los posts. Este último fin de semana fuimos con mis hijos a dos eventos diferentes a unos 2 km de casa. Fuimos caminando. Pero esta vez, en vez de ir solo charlando y que fueran sin prestar atención a nada, imprimí el mapa de Google Maps indicando cómo ir caminando. Y yo iba de acompañante. Creo que como responsables que vivimos en los 80s nuestras infancias, tenemos la obligación de enseñarles a nuestros hijos que los smartphones son herramientas pero las habilidades, son nuestras. Y que tenemos que aprenderlas (y nosotros, enseñarlas). Tardamos como 20 minutos más en llegar pero llegamos, jajaja.
Axel • Jul 29, 2026, 9:03 AM
Esos veinte minutos extra son un costo bastante bajo por la experiencia de hacer algo así con los hijos <3. Qué bonito.
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