If You Decide to Go Missing in Latin America, Please Tell Your Family

Thinking about going missing in Latin America?  Please read these tips first.

If one young couple in Peru had followed them, they would've spared their family the pain of thinking they had been abducted or murdered.

Jamie and Garret - Adventurous (but inconsiderate) Young Couple

The Story of Two Young Adventurers
As the story goes, which fortunately has a happy ending, Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal of California were on a biking trip in Peru when their family suspected something horrible had happened to them.  Why?

They had been:

• updated their trip regularly on Facebook
• withdrawing money from a U.S. bank account
• making phone calls home

Suddenly, out of the blue, without forewarning or explanation, all of this stopped.  They had taken a several-week-long boat ride on the Amazon, where there was no internet, phone or bank machine, and not told anyone.  Their family and friends, for obvious reasons, noticed and were concerned.

Tip #1 We Live on the Internet
If you are the kind of person who uses FB every day, or withdraws money from your mom's bank account a couple of times a week (from foreign ATMs) please remember that the way we use technology now, in the minds of most people has a direct correspondence to how they perceive reality:

If you stop using your technological forms of rapid international communication, people will assume that something (bad) has happened to you.

And this is with good reason; people who live in and breath the web and such items don't stop using them unless something drastic happens.

Of course, there's always the chance that something good happened to you (such as discovering that there are real trees outside and that they are more beautiful than the pictures on FB or even this blog,) but people don't consider that a normal possibility.

This is not a modern phenomenon.  In the days before the wide-spread use of the internet (let's say when I was a child, back in the 80's) if you went to a bar for a beer every day, or called your sister every Thursday, people would've been just as worried if suddenly those habits broke off without warning.

Humans are concerned drastic and sudden change of other people's behaviour - again, usually with good reason.

Tip #2 Do Disconnect.
I sympathize entirely with this young couple.  I love to disconnect and - better yet - go places where you can't connect.  If it serves no other purpose, it at least gives you a fresh perspective to share when you re-connect.  But most of all it's a simple reminder that the online world is a part of (and imitation of) the real world, and not the other way around.  (More and more people are forgetting this.)

So, yes take a boat down an isolated part of the Amazon River (as this couple did) or go hiking in mountain villages where electricity is still state-of-the-art technology.  It's good for you.

Tip #3 But, for Goodness' Sake, Tell People
(I would say "For God's Sake" but God knows where  you are, so I wouldn't worry much about that side of it.  It's more for the sake of being good to people who love you.)

Tell people, post a message on FB, call your mother (big #1) and say - "Look, I'm going out on the river" (or into the mountains, etc.) "and I may not be in touch for a few weeks.  I should re-appear in [place name] in [x] to [x+1] weeks." Give a range of weeks so they're not scared when you fail to call home after 9:34 AM on day 16.

"Pay Phones" - an ancient form of communication, operated by coins

Yes, it's more adventurous just to get on the boat and go - it's leaving in 5 minutes, so you don't time to connect to the internet; but, really, you're taking years off your mother's life in worry.  There's another boat. Even if it's 2 days later, you can wait.  After all, isn't that the point of getting lost in rural Latin America? Time doesn't matter any more?

Tip #4 Do What You Promised
If the end the time limit you told people was 5 weeks, make sure you make contact within 5 weeks.

Yes, I know you just met the jungle tribeswoman that you're going to leave your girlfriend for and get married in an ancient ritual, but still ... first go to the nearest town with a phone and call your mother.  That way she can cry about it (joy of hearing from you, sadness of loosing her baby to a unknown woman from strange and foreign land, who will probably treat him cruelly) and pass the phone to your dad who can say mean things to you to bring back to your senses.

Trust me.  It's helpful.

Tip #5 Practice Disconnecting Ahead of Time
If you're going to isolated places where it's likely you'll be disconnected, practice doing it before it's necessary.  Try only posting FB updates once a week for a while.

I know the social media age demands daily updates, and even that is considered limited.  But again - why are you going to rural Latin America?

Sometimes it's nice to put it up as a whole story.  Sometimes it's  nice if reality trumps social media; you write only part of the story, because you just have so many other wonderful things to do.

This also helps people feel less shock when you disconnect for 4 weeks.  (But you still need to tell them ...)

Conclusion
Well, I guess that's everything.  Who knows if Garrett and Jamie will read this, and it might not be any use if they do.  Maybe they've learned their lesson, or maybe they've already decided not to go missing anymore.

But for the rest of you young, adventurous travellers who live on the internet at all other points of your life, please be sensitive to that fact when you escape for a short time.

(Oh, and I might ad tip #6: if you are passed puberty, try to convince your mother not to see you as her "baby" any more.  Besides the fact that it's not terribly manly, it will save her a bit of worrying if she sees you as a man instead of as a little boy.  It's a tough one.  For the record, I'm not saying this was the case with Garret or Jamie, but I just know so many examples.)

(And a final note, don't take anything in this blog post to be actual facts about Garret and Jamie. Besides the fact that I just quickly skimmed through two articles about them, I also wrote a good deal of the top of my head.  If you want to know about their story, please read the linked news story, or Google search their names.)