Whether you are fortunate enough to travel as far as Central America, or smart enough to be stuck somewhere else but interested in that region, there is a vast amount of information which you can access.
As well as guidebooks, understanding what you can learn will be valuable if you take the effort to search in unusual places. For instance, many places have local institutions you might not think of. The smallest communities have little museums, expert archivists and folk lore you will learn the real truth from. In many places everything was started by education boards, churches and medical services or an agricultural venture. Each held regular meetings, and the minutes of the business decided by a small may be sitting a hundred years later, word for word, in a neat little cupboard till YOU trace it.
Above all, pick up and read books by seasoned travellers, a book called “The Traveller’s Tree” will possibly get your mind tuned to all the Caribbean, even though it is now what people would call ‘out of date’.
The Traveller’s Tree
In this, his first book, Patrick Leigh Fermor recounts his tales of a personal odyssey to the lands of the Traveller’s Tree – a tall, straight-trunked tree whose sheath-like leaves collect copious amounts of water. He made his way through the long island chain of the West Indies by steamer, aeroplane and sailing ship, noting in his records of the voyage the minute details of daily life, of the natural surroundings and of the idiosyncratic and distinct civilisations he encountered amongst the Caribbean Islands.
From the ghostly Ciboneys and the dying Caribs to the religious eccentricities like the Kingston Pocomaniacs and the Poor Whites in the Islands of the Saints, Patrick Leigh Fermor recreates a vivid world, rich and vigorous with life.