As the final blog of my Big Adventure I write this after an evening out with Daniela, the lovely Porteña I met in Mendoza during the first month of my trip. We spent the evening conversing mostly in English, with bits of Spanish thrown in: her efforts to communicate in a second language much better than mine, despite my five months of trying.
Tomorrow morning I must catch a cab to Pistarini airport by 10am to be in plenty of time for my 12.30 BA flight back to Heathrow.
All things considered, I´m feeling a bit peculiar.
Now that it´s so close I can´t deny that I´m really quite excited about being back in England and seeing my wonderful sister, my lovely parents and my fantastic friends who I now realise that I have actually missed rather a lot. I´m looking forward to not having to rummage for the same pair of trousers at the bottom of my backpack again or having to haul said backpack around while I wait for yet another 18-hour bus or trudge around trying to find a place to stay. I´m looking forward to a decent cup of tea, being able to communicate properly with people in shops and being able to use a hair dryer. I´m looking forward to my birthday and to enjoying a large glass of chilled Chablis in the garden in Somerset and, of course, to meeting the two new members of my family who have arrived in this world while I´ve been off exploring the other side of it.
But there is a rather large part of me that simply refuses to believe that the Big Adventure is finally over. Five whole months, which always seems like such a long time until you are at the end of it, which I know I´ll never forget and I´m fairly certain that at some point I will try to recapture.
The verdict about whether I am a completely different person will have to wait a while until I have settled back in to Blighty. I don´t feel that different from the girl who stepped off at the very same airport in February, mostly just incredibly fortunate to be one of the few people in the world who has had the opportunity to be so self-indulgent as to actually go travelling. There really aren´t that many of us, however it may seem when you´re enjoying a pint at the Hostel Inn and I hope I always remember that.
miércoles, 11 de julio de 2007
domingo, 8 de julio de 2007
Hot In The City
Safely back in Buenos Aires as I prepare to return home, I am suddenly feeling as though I don´t have enough clothes as it´s winter here and freezing! It´s even more noticeable as I´ve just arrived here from the Caribbean coast of Colombia and the beautiful city of Cartagena.
After a mind-numbing 23 hour bus journey with Jon and Richard, we stepped off into a dramatic temperature shift from Bogotá. Although Bogotá is close to the equator it is at an altitude of over 2,000 metres so the average temperature all year round is somewhere in the late teens. Cartagena de Indias couldn´t have been more different. A sweltering 3o something degrees and bearing all the signs of a tropical city, we suddenly realised where we were in the world and how far we had come from southern Patagonia.
The city retains a lot of colonial charm with an old town inside the city walls with cobbled roads and brightly painted houses with balconies leaning into the narrow streets. But it´s just not enough to go to the Caribbean unless you go to a Caribbean beach, right? So, after a weekend of partying we hopped on a boat from the harbour market for the one hour ride to La Playa Blanca, an isolated beach along the coast.
Isolated is right. There has so far been almost no development on La Playa Blanca and you can find nothing but a few wooden shacks on the beach, only a few with electricity generators and the kind of restaurants that are just someone´s kitchen and that fry up whatever that day´s catch was for dinner.
We spent a sweaty few days lying on the beach, swimming in the warm turquoise Caribbean sea and lying in our hammocks reading or saying things of such profound intellectual significance as, "Bloody hell, it´s hot, innit?"
The best parts for me were the sunsets (I took this picture myself, for once!) as we sat on the beach sipping rum and being feasted upon by mosquitos. Although I now have 75 itchy scratchy bites to contend with I do feel that it was the perfect way to round off my trip.
I have now said goodbye to Caroline and Felipe, Jon and Richard and have a few days by myself for a trip to Iguazú waterfall and a little bit of shopping before embarking on my final South American journey. This one to bring me home.
After a mind-numbing 23 hour bus journey with Jon and Richard, we stepped off into a dramatic temperature shift from Bogotá. Although Bogotá is close to the equator it is at an altitude of over 2,000 metres so the average temperature all year round is somewhere in the late teens. Cartagena de Indias couldn´t have been more different. A sweltering 3o something degrees and bearing all the signs of a tropical city, we suddenly realised where we were in the world and how far we had come from southern Patagonia.
The city retains a lot of colonial charm with an old town inside the city walls with cobbled roads and brightly painted houses with balconies leaning into the narrow streets. But it´s just not enough to go to the Caribbean unless you go to a Caribbean beach, right? So, after a weekend of partying we hopped on a boat from the harbour market for the one hour ride to La Playa Blanca, an isolated beach along the coast.
Isolated is right. There has so far been almost no development on La Playa Blanca and you can find nothing but a few wooden shacks on the beach, only a few with electricity generators and the kind of restaurants that are just someone´s kitchen and that fry up whatever that day´s catch was for dinner.
We spent a sweaty few days lying on the beach, swimming in the warm turquoise Caribbean sea and lying in our hammocks reading or saying things of such profound intellectual significance as, "Bloody hell, it´s hot, innit?"
The best parts for me were the sunsets (I took this picture myself, for once!) as we sat on the beach sipping rum and being feasted upon by mosquitos. Although I now have 75 itchy scratchy bites to contend with I do feel that it was the perfect way to round off my trip.
I have now said goodbye to Caroline and Felipe, Jon and Richard and have a few days by myself for a trip to Iguazú waterfall and a little bit of shopping before embarking on my final South American journey. This one to bring me home.
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