Until the Future Comes

Here are a couple of pictures from the past year:

(We will be working through time in reverse)

This is cheese that Nora and I made from scratch. Nora marinated it and then fried it with onions. It was the best cheese you've never had.

Here is our Christmas tree with my suitably southern gifts, boots and a banjo.  I can wear the boots better than I can play the banjo.

If cigarettes were this expensive everywhere, we'd either save lives or re-establish the tobacco industry.

Here's Nora, very much on the edge of a very high cliff. I took her to North Carolina for her birthday. Less dangerous activities included eating too much and soaking in a natural hot spring.

Last but not least, which is the place graffiti usually occupies in art, here is this thought for you:

Hello from the Long Silence

We are still alive.

We just booked our tickets to Iceland. We will be gone for 37 days this summer. There will be pictures and descriptions, but not until after we actually get there.

We are also going camping on the beach in Florida in a week and a half. Pictures and descriptions might appear sooner than the Iceland ones.

Tennessee

A long time since our last update.

Just checking in to say we are back in TN.

Our journey took us up the east coast of Uruguay, then west to Rosario, Argentina. From there were went up to Iguazu Falls, back down the narrow strip of Argentina, and then west to Tucuman. We spent some time in northern Argentina, got engaged in Tafi del Valle, and then headed west into north Chile.  We had to cut out Bolivia, as we didn't have enough time, and didn't want to pay the $135 visa fee.  So instead we got to see some incredible places in north Chile, and spend more time in Peru.  If you want to trace the route from Chile, we crossed from Arica into Tacna, Peru; went into the mountains to Puno; then to Cusco; from there we toured the Sacred Valley, stopping in Pisaq, Ollantaytambo, and Chinchero; then back to Cusco for a night bus down to Nasca; from Nasca to the oasis of Huacachina, and finally north to Lima, where we flew home from.

All in all, we were gone 4 months and 6 days, saw much of 4 countries, revisited a couple beloved places (Cusco and Ollantaytambo), spent around $11,000, and had the best time of our lives. I lost 1/3 of my clothes, nearly broke my thumb and tore all the ligaments in it, and chipped my tooth.  We also picked up a little Spanish along the way. I highly recommend it to anyone willing to try.

Highlights of the trip: the Lakes District of Chile; Bariloche and El Bolson in Argentina; Punto del Diablo, Uruguay; Iguazu Falls; Tafi del Valle and Cafayate, Argentina; San Pedro de Atacama in north Chile; Pisaq and Ollantaytambo in the Sacred Valley, Peru.  Definitely see these places if you ever have the opportunity.

Now it's time to look for an apartment, look for more work, and figure out what to do with ourselves until the next grand adventure.  Until then,

Be safe, do good work, and Happy Travels.

Good Airs

We leave Buenos Aires on Monday morning aboard a ferry to the Uruguayan town of Colonia.

We haven't updated anything in a long while, which implies a certain amount of business on our part--we're on vacation, after all.  This is partly true.  There have been periods of travel with little time to gather our thoughts.  There was an amazing bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus trek from Puerto Montt, Chile up through Patagonia and to Bariloche, Argentina. It was a truly spellbinding journey.  There was our time in Bariloche, which we loved, and then a couple days in El Bolson, which is now on our shortlist of favorite places on the planet. Then there was the 22 hour bus ride to BA--which, surprisingly, was very nice.  There were several meal services, the chairs folded into completely flat beds, and there was tons of room.  The best bus ride, ever.

 - Our cabin in El Bolson, Argentina

We have had the past 4 weeks in Buenos Aires, some of the time which we have spent taking in the sights and walking the streets and eating the food.  A lot of it we spent working, or writing, or cooking, or sleeping, or any of the other things we do when there is time to spare in a foreign city.  We got to know BA a little bit; we had high expectations, which were met and exceeded, and were pleasantly surprised in addition.  BA is a great city, and has much to admire, and much to return to.

 - A public tango show we stumbled upon one Saturday

We've done a lot of walking across BA, and we've had some excellent food.  Here's one example of that food, from an amazing pizza place just around the corner from us in the San Telmo neighborhood:

 - a Galician pie, which includes such things as onions, tuna, olives, and delicious spices.

There were also some really great sights, such as Palermo where we found a rose garden, a duck pond, and a Japonese garden.  Then there is the other side of town, the poor part of town, where can be found such things as this:

 - La Boca.  It's a little touristy, but once you get away from the sweating American and European tourists, you get to see another remarkable part of this great city.

There's history here in BA, as well.  For example, I had a coffee con leche and sweet croissants (medialunas) at the oldest cafe in Argentina, Cafe Tortoni:

We're sad to be leaving this great city, and our wonderful apartment.  But there's Uruguay, Bolivia, and Peru to come; there's many new wonders and experiences, and hopefully a few well-known and fondly remembered ones to re-visit as well.

It's difficult to say when we'll be able to update again, but know that our journey is incomplete, our travels continue, and we're following the whiff of experience and the call of wonder wherever it leads us.

I hope this finds you healthy and hale, wherever you are.

Happy travels.

Why Travel?

i recently remarked that in Chile i am working, reading, writing, eating, drinking, walking, and doing other things that i customarily do in america; my sister asked me a question about why i even travel, with the implication being why bother if you do pretty much the same things you do in america, and i answered her fairly glibly as is my custom.  but i realized that sarcasm wasn't a straight answer, and it certainly didn't explain why i love this so much.

so this is partly an apology in the customary sense to my sister for brushing her off, and partly an apologia in the classical sense for why i like to travel.

this actually takes some thought to put into words, because it seems so obvious or at least intuitive to those who love to travel why they love it.  it's like asking why one likes warm, sunny days or movies with happy endings.  you ask someone familiar with wanderlust why they like to travel and you'll get the same blank, uncomprehending stare as if you ask someone why puppies are cute.  

which brings me around to the disconnect between americans who like to travel and the vast majority of americans who don't: i think it has to do with the american psyche and our cultural expectations.  as a young, extremely diverse country built upon big ideas we have a certain youthful optimism about the world and our place in it: namely, that america is the greatest country in the world, and we understand why people would want to come here.  implicit in that is a certain level of arrogance as well: namely, that america is the greatest country in the world, and why would we want to go elsewhere.  we're raised to believe this, so it can hardly be helped; and while in some ways that foundational belief about being the greatest country may be true, in many ways it's not.  there is greatness to be found in every country, big or small, young or old, if you just know where to look.  and even if that american assumption were true, that doesn't mean there aren't things to learn or experience or take part in elsewhere.

if you read travel literature, much has been said about the wonderful strangeness of being in foreign lands, being forced outside of your comfort zone and really having to interact with people.  this is part of the appeal, it's true; i've met so many great people travelling, quite a few that i'm still friends with, despite being a rather anti-social person who has never gone out of his way to meet anyone.  so there's that aspect.  but it's also much more than that.

i'm in chile at the moment, so i'll use it as an example.  you can probably find  books published in chile back in america, or chilean spices at some markets, and you can certainly find chilean wines.  you can watch shows about the andes and the long coastline and the people.  you can watch documentaries about the history, other shows about the art and architecture, and if you're really persistent you can find chilean cinema in some places. in other words, you could try to fabricate a chilean experience without leaving america, but that's all it would be: a fabrication.  the food would have been shipped thousands of miles and would be radiated and sterilized and could never taste the same. you can't truly appreciate the art and architecture until you are surrounded by it, removed from it not by thousands of miles and a television screen but by only a few feet of sidewalk.  you will certainly not be able to pick up on the feel for the place or the mood of the people.  you'll never have the awkward yet gratifying feeling of trying to negotiate with a farmer over the price of potatoes when neither of you speaks the other's language.  you won't be able to reproduce the recipes exactly, with the same ingredients in the same atmosphere as you would walking into a shadowy doorway into a building that's been used for generations, if not centuries, to cook the same foods.

think of all the things that you love about your home country.  now think that in every country, people have very similar opinions about what they love about their own country.  in short, wrap up every single memory you can think of from your life in america: the food, the streets, the people, the movies, the scent of the air, the games kids play outdoors (or don't), walking in parks, shopping, drinking, riding the bus, sleeping... on and on and on -- and all of it is familiarly strange and strangely familiar, yet wholly new in every country you go to.  it is it's own milieu, not to be recreated, reproduced, or experienced anywhere else.  it is not possible to do so.

i don't want to romanticize travel too much, but there is a certain joy that comes from breathing new air, seeing new faces, eating new food, walking new streets.  it's easy to become complacent, even content, with a stationary life; but not everything can be learned in books or experienced through a television screen.  some things can only be known by being immersed into them, and these are the things that are most worth knowing.  there are trade offs, to be sure, and inconveniences to spare; but once you admit that you feel inconvenienced because your expectations aren't being met, and realize that other people have different expectations, it's a simple step towards changing your expectations, changing your attitude, and understanding these strange and beautiful people that you're amongst just a little bit better.

and what's the purpose of all of this?  well that's another question that'll earn you a blank faced stare, and one i haven't had as much time to think about.  for now let me end by saying that experiencing the way other people live, walking amongst them and their history, eating and drinking and living as one of them--all of this makes you that much wiser, that much more understanding, that much more human.