One thing I love about exploring new places is memorizing the layout of the city that I am in. I enjoyed ignoring my phone, picking a direction to walk, and walking across the city from memory. By the end of the trip, I could just about get anywhere in Dakar without Google Maps– at one point setting out on a two-hour hike to downtown just based on my memory and the direction of the sea. I think when you become overreliant on Google Maps, especially for mapping walking directions, your connection to your surroundings suffers. It’s handy to have Google in your back pocket just in case you need to check your location and heading, but any more than that and you will fail to build an imaginary map that you can visualize your way through. To this day, I still retain imaginary maps of the cities I’ve been to, and I’m confident I could still find my way around even years later.
