Wow, so I’ve always been wanting to start doing some mapping, but never really known where to start. Now being on vacation it is the perfect time. I downloaded the Mexico map with osmAnd which is great for offline maps for travelling on android phones.

At home I was always looking for unmapped roads to map and finding none, now as a traveler here I suddenly see that mapping points of interest is wildly useful. So, while my trips to Mazatlan seem to be about 10 years apart I’m finding it fun to map the hotels and restaurants that we visit. And hopefully this will make things a little easier for other travelers (or at least my next visit in …2023!)

My process has been:

1. Start osmand in offline mode on my phone and create points of interest at any hotel or restaurant that I don’t see on the map. I don’t fiddle with the node type or anything, just type in the name and move on, I’m usually walking with my family so there’s no time for fiddling around
2. Upload the points of interest to openstreetmap.org when I return home and have wifi
3. Log into openstreetmap.org on my laptop and find the change set by viewing the history
4. Start editing the changeset using the potlatch editor and use the Bing tiles to add nodes at a better/more accurate location, make the nodes the appropriate type (hotel, restaurant, etc), transfer the name from my uploaded poorly located phone node to the new node and add any other details I can then,
5. Delete my original phone created nodes.
6. Save the changeset and close it

Not sure if there is a better way, but if there is, I’d be pleased if someone let me know.