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Careening toward self-doubt, which was swiftly followed by a silent bug-eyed panic, I endeavored to stuff the big wad of Spanish pesetas back into the ATM. It was 1996. I was in Barajas Airport in Madrid, Spain. Having just returned from celebrating Thanksgiving in Rome, Italy, with a fellow American study abroad student, I was tired. All I could think was – “Holy-holy. Why is this ATM spitting out so many bills?” To dash ahead, I didn’t end up stuffing the colorful foreign money back into the mysterious “wall of wealth,” as I quickly realized that the ATM had, in fact, given me the correct requested amount. Thankfully I hadn’t requested an insanely exorbitant amount of money, either – like the equivalent of $2,000 American dollars instead of $200. Phew. It just goes to show you that calculating the exchange rate of American dollars to Spanish pesetas to Italian lire,…
It was midnight at the Teatro dell’Opera. Mother and I had endured a production of Tristan und Isolde so lengthy and grueling that even the most diehard Wagnerians were praying for the doomed couple to expire. When the hour-long death scene finally terminated, we staggered out of the auditorium in a lugubrious stupor. “Tristan,” moaned Mother, mimicking the heroine’s last gasps. “Tristan.” “Isolde,” I wailed. “Isolde!” Our fellow spectators—lavishly outfitted Romans all—exited in a similarly stricken state. I’d never known a crowd of Italians to be so silent and introspective. “Why don’t they just die already,” said Mother. “Who? These poor Romans? They’re as innocent as we.” “Not them. Tristan and Isolde. Why do Germans have to drag everything out?” “I thought you’d like it. You’re half German, after all.” “Not that kind of German. It reminded me of something Hitler would put on to impress Mussolini.” Tristan und Isolde…
I am going to die. The thought sears my brain as I dangle from the hole in the mountain trail I’ve just fallen through. Nothing but a vast expanse of air separates me from certain death. My heart quickens as time slows. Terror twists my body and my grip loosens on the root I’m grasping as my hands grow moist. My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. Nothing does. Everything is a blur. The blurred faces of the other hikers. The blurred smirk of the head guide I call Tarzan. The blurred leaves of trees overhead. Even as the hands of Tarzan and another guide pull me to safety, I can feel the weight of gravity still pulling me down, down, down. I slip a little and their fingers bite harder into my flesh. Finally my feet hit solid, and hopefully unbreakable, earth. My body sways and the forest slowly…
Before we went to get the milk, my finance Katya and her mother, Elena, decided that it was best for me to wait outside as they entered the small, village grocery shop outside of Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine. We were in search of edible meat and cheese. While I waited, I noticed a goat chained to a fence. I decided that I had to take its picture. As I began snapping, an elderly man with a long, white beard came waddling up, angrily waving his finger at me, shouting something in Russian. “Nyet, Russkiy,” I said, pleading my case, but the man continued shouting at me. Moments later, Katya came running out of the shop, coming to my defense, while Elena finished up the grocery purchase. “Is this your foreigner?” the man asked Katya in Russian. “Da,” Katya admitted nervously. “Did he do something wrong?” “Get him the hell out…
There were hundreds of monkeys, all climbing, playing, and guarding the steps that led to the top of Mt. Popa. I had been surprised not to have seen monkeys anywhere in Myanmar. And now I knew why: they were all at Mount Popa, atop which sits one of the most sacred temples in Myanmar. Bare feet, a long and narrow staircase, and gangs of aggressive monkeys. I thought back to my travel nurse – “You have 24 hours” she had said again and again. 24 hours from contact, even a scratch, before rabies became incurable. It was high-season for baby monkeys, and I’m pretty certain they were part of a larger Mount Popa matrix of maliciousness. Like street peddlers who send their children to distract you while they snatch your wallet, the six-inch toddler monkeys were sent in all their fearlessness to the front. Afraid to step on them or…
There is a society of women that gathers weekly outside a rather unsavory, yet highly favored fish and chips shop in the busiest district of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The purpose of these meetings is to stand in line to purchase the abundant pre-used cooking oil that is regularly made available by the proprietor of this fish and chips shop to interested consumers. This proprietor, a jovial Indian gentleman, operates this sale of his used oil on a first-come-first-served basis, so you will understand the commotion as the women queue and watch while their counterparts at the front of the line buy the oil in bulk. At first glance this oil resembles something that should be placed in a vehicle engine; however these ladies are undeterred by the oil’s appearance as they appreciate its affordability. Reusing cooking oil is a common practise in most parts of Port Elizabeth; or The…
What you expect of a Mexican vacation: great food, lazy days at the beach, haggling over jewelry and clothes, a full head of braids, and lounging by the pool. At least that is what I expected, and that expectation was the itinerary of my first trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. But as I, and my family, would learn, you really cannot have the same vacation twice. When we first got there everything went as planned, we haggled, bodysurfed, and rode horses. But on day two things started to take a turn for the worse. Day 2: What Happened: I had noticed a burning pain on my upper back/shoulders, which I attributed to an ordinary sunburn (nothing novel about that for me, I ALWAYS burn on vacations). Mexico has the power to make you believe no time has passed and while it is charring your skin, you still think you’ve only…
When I saw the bag on the seat opposite me moving on its own accord, I did a double take. When I looked again, it was perfectly still. I rubbed my face and presumed that it was sleep deprivation, making me delusional. I was at the bus station in Savannakhet (Laos) sitting on the dilapidated coach, bound to Hue (Vietnam) and just relieved that I had two seats to stretch out my ungainly, almost two-meter frame, to sleep away the next seven hours of travel time. A bag moving on its own accord wasn’t going to occupy my thoughts and prevent me from getting the rest I needed. I chose this bus because after a few weeks in Thailand and Laos, spent traveling in taxis or on air-conditioned tourist buses with fellow backpackers; speaking English, acting English and doing nothing more parochial than drinking the local beer, I craved something…
“You can’t order Guinness in Cork!” My second faux pas, and we’d been there for less than an hour. On arrival, my partner Isacco and I bundled ourselves into a taxi, having loaded up our bags and asked to be taken to the Glen Ross Guest House. “Oh, you won’t be wanting to go there,” the taxi driver chortled. “Why on earth not?” I asked, visions of flea-ridden mattress, rancid stains and the aftermath of drunken debauchery racing through my mind. “It’s over there,” he pointed smugly. Certainly in need of a pint, we wandered into The Cork Arms after establishing ourselves in our thankfully clean, respectable lodgings. After rectifying my mistake by ordering Cork’s finest, a pint of Murphy’s, Lawrence the landlord began to twinkle. I nodded and gestured earnestly; failing to confess I was having real trouble understanding a word he was saying since he was swallowing vowels…
In the absence of anything else we were done. Time to leave. I turned and made the universal cheque, bill, l’addition, conto sign; I wrote on my hand in thin air with an imaginary pen in the direction of the young girl standing attentively nearby. Immediately she scurried away and I returned to savour the view for what remained of my time in the exquisite Chinese teahouse. Our day to that point had taken us on a local taxi ride from our hotel in downtown Xi’an central China to the Lintong District of the city. We were deposited close to, but not exactly at, the entrance of the world Heritage site containing 8,000 life-sized terracotta warriors built to protect the first emperor of China. The close to drop off point was by design. A barely disguised local conspiracy to funnel the thousands of tourists heading to the famous site through…
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“I can do this,” I tell myself firmly as I squint at the Basel street map. Husband Tom is usually with me on my travels, the map in his hand, while I trail several steps behind, like the Duke of Edinburgh in the wake of her majesty – or in my case, his majesty. But this time I’m traveling tout seul. I gaze around anxiously, searching out a street name; then turn my map upside down. “Got it.” Leaving the railway station, I follow Elizabethenstrasse into the heart of the city. I shiver and pull my coat closer to me. Basel is bracing itself for winter. The summer sun has thrown a final kiss of warming rays. Autumn has nipped in and he is setting the city’s foliage alight. Gold, russet and burnt-orange is spreading across town like wildfire. Manuela, long-time Swiss friend, texts me: Stuck @ work. Go 2…
“Little gringo,” says Aurelio, “You’re marking the Big Chief”. The Big Chief is Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous President. I’m the little gringo, a scruffy backpacker who’s been kicking around the Sun Island for a few days. Aurelio, the captain, is pencilling me in to mark him because, at five foot ten, I’m the tallest member of the scratch football team being assembled for a match to promote tourism on Lake Titicaca’s prettiest island. We’re representing the Sun Islanders against members of the Bolivian congress. “The game is being screened on national TV,” Aurelio adds. Climbing up a flight of stairs at 12,500 feet is difficult enough, let alone playing football against a man who, in his younger days, represented a Bolivian second division team. “Not long ago,” Aurelio continues, “Morales poleaxed an opponent with a knee to the crotch during a charity match.” “Really?” I reply anxiously. “Yep. He…
I’ll be the first to admit that my 12 years of living in the Middle East has overly sensitized me to skin issues. There are numerous elements to consider when dressing to go out and about. There is, of course, the Sun-Safety Factor: living in a desert inspires certain cancer prevention precautions. The Comfort Factor is an important one: through trial and error I’ve learned that covering up is actually cooler than baring it all. And then there’s the Eyeball Factor: how much of a reaction do you wish to garner over the course of the day? Egypt is one of the more liberal Middle Eastern countries, but for the male population low cut necklines are the equivalent of a birdfeeder to a squirrel. So when I arrived in Albania’s capital city, Tirana, in the middle of a sweltering July, I was a bit taken aback by the quantity of…
I sat rigid, still and upright aboard a behemoth 747 United Airlines jetliner, which had just landed at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport. Awaiting a chance to flee the beast’s innards, I nonchalantly turned on my iPhone. Messages filtered through with fury, the phone rumbling like a city besieged by aftershocks.“I think you took my passport mate,” one of the text messages read. “In fact, I know you did.”Profusely sweating, I peeled my moistened carcass from the worn seat to gain access to my carry-on luggage, which rested securely in the overhead bin. Believing it was a blunder too bizarre to commit, I frantically reached into the navy blue Swiss Army bag for any clue to the missing passport’s whereabouts. Two days beforehand – factoring in time zones – I awoke from a comatose state at the break of dawn, still having to pack for the prospective journey back to Brisbane,…
Broken down, engine sizzling, black smoke billowing, I wearily repeated the name of the town and confirmed, not for the first time, we were definitely in France and yes, the town definitely existed! As luck would have it, we had broken down 500m from the road sign bearing the town’s name and road number. My patience was stretched to the breaking point when my English based breakdown company informed me once again that neither the road nor town was listed on their database. At this point, and not for the first time in the trip, I realized that although a road trip through rural France in a vintage camper van may be romantic in theory; the reality was somewhat more frustrating. Our decision to go on a road trip came about quickly. At number two on my “ten things to do before I’m thirty” list was to buy a classic…
Monday, 23 April 2012
‘I’m Walking on Sunshine!’: A Moron’s Guide to Climbing Kilimanjaro
Written by Georgia Lord
Freshers fair in the first year of university is always a dangerous outing. My own visit resulted in me signing up for the RAG Kilimanjaro climb, something completely out of character for someone who upon completing the Duke of Edinburgh Gold swore never to hike again. That being said, the week spent on the highest free standing mountain in Africa was the most incredible of my entire life and I couldn’t encourage people more to climb it given the chance. However, for those of you as clueless as me, some simple guidelines may be of use to know beforehand rather than hit you in the middle of the climb (like they did me!):1. However many sweets and snacks you think you will need, triple it. I managed to stuff myself on nearly the entirety of my stash on Day 1 and had to ‘ration’ the rest, (i.e bury them in…
There is nothing than can prepare you for the experience of a Ukrainian circus. . My first and only performance was a matinee in Dnepropetrovsk. Unlike traveling circuses back home, the circus in Dnepropetrovsk runs from early spring through early fall. Ukraine, and to a larger extent, Russia, is a hot bed of circus talent. In fact, a great deal of circus performers in the U.S. hail from the former Soviet Union. After purchasing the tickets, Olya, my Ukrainian fiancé and I headed to a nearby market to purchase snacks and beer.. We entered the Soviet-era lobby, which included a pet store for some odd reason. Various souvenirs were sold in the lobby, but the vendors were dressed as clowns. The fact that they spoke Russian somehow made them even more horrifying. As somebody who has a complete and utter fear towards these sinister spawns of…
In my top bunk of dorm number four, at Laban Rata guesthouse, half way in Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, I actually prayed, “Dear Lord, please make this rain stop!” I am not a religious person by any means, but listening to the rain hammer on the roof and the wind howl and whip round the hostel like a pack of possessed wolves, I felt I had no choice. It was Ten thirty at night , and we had to get up at two in the morning to prepare for the night summit and the strenuous hike ahead through darkness. I was feeling increasingly discouraged about even being able to attempt the summit trail as I listened to the rain get progressively heavier. I had been in this position before, on Mt Kilimanjaro, at the rest stop 5000m above sea level; alone in my bunk with only the comfort of Enigma…
"Moshi moshi". I step off the plane and clear the refreshingly friendly Japanese immigration control, amongst Japanese donning clinical face masks, and sharply attired businessmen spilling into the Starbucks equipped arrivals hall of Narita airport. I watch them answer their unfamiliar brands of mobile phone with "moshi moshi"; it's evident that Tokyo is going to be different, but yet familiar. The unmistakably welcoming hospitality of Japan is perhaps the main principle of this country that feeds my adoration for Tokyo. I have yet to purchase so much as a chocolate bar that wasn't delivered with a bow, and a very sincere looking smile. This is true of pretty much every transaction, even when I ask where to find the toilet in the labyrinthine Tokyo metro. This custom doesn't seem to be particularly bonded to either the older or younger generation. It sticks throughout. After a lengthy but very comfortable transfer from Narita…
I wouldn’t exactly call myself clumsy and I would like to think I’ve got pretty good judgment when it comes to unknown territory, but during a six month backpacking trip with my partner Tim, I began wondering if I’d been cursed with some kind of ‘travel blunder’ syndrome. We were about a third of the way through the trip and I’d already endured my fair share of humiliation. In fact, at this point I had already fallen off the back of a moped due to the weight of my own rucksack, driven a moped straight into the side of a parked truck, fallen down a set of stairs in a bar, in my bikini, and forgotten to lock a door in a hole-in-the-ground style toilet. I’m not sure who was more humiliated this time mind you. Of course I knew that going to a new country for the first time…
I’ve always hated technology, at least I used to. During my adult life, my adaptation to technological changes goes something like this: I hate it. I hate most of it. I hate it except for these particular instances. I think it has its good and bad points. I like it some of the time. I like it. I really like it. You should like it. You must get one of these. But the journey through these various stages is always a painful one. And as smart as I am about a number of things, I have no insight that allows me to apply my experiences with prior technologies to current ones. That is, as each new technology bobs to the surface, I hate it, and am convinced that I will hate it forever. So I am surprised to be referring to myself as a techno-voyageuse, albeit an initially reluctant one,…
Basically, if you were not aware of it, the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in the US has installed huge HD body scanners throughout major airports, which allow the viewer to see you practically naked. I am certainly a fan of being naked. There is nothing better about living in Europe than nudist beaches in which you can spend lazy summer afternoons feeling how the sun literally kisses your ass. Not to mention the beauty of full-body tans without having to pay for the orange Jersey-shore glow of a salon, and, if you’re looking for a date, there is no better place to “check out” the goods before buying them. If you ever decide to indulge in nudism, a good tip is to bring your sun block so you can make sure that your not-so-often revealed parts don’t end up turning the color of a baboon’s ass (potential nudist beach dates …
Rio de Janeiro was the city where I ended my seven month trip, and perhaps that is why I feel I have unfinished business with the place: I didn’t feel like it was really time to leave. Or, maybe it was any of these reasons: 1. When booking our ticket we thought “Great! August! Summer!”.... This was in the Southern Hemisphere; it was winter when we got there. Yes, we didn’t really think about that whole tricky hemisphere thing. I mean, you’d just assume Brazil would be warm, wouldn’t you? Well, it’s not. We had two days of sun during which we sat on the beach sipping coconuts and praying we’d get tans (we didn’t) so that we wouldn’t have the embarrassment of returning home after our epic journey with the same pasty skin we left with (we did). Also most of the major sights in Rio (going up Sugarloaf…
Monday, 03 May 2010
A Lesson in Culture Shock: Getting Used to the Wildlife in and Around the House
Written by Mateo Amaral
“There are no words to describe that paradise.” This is what my friend Jeff (who lives in San Jose, Costa Rica) told me when I asked him about Playa Samara. It is a beach town five hours west of San Jose on the Pacific Coast. It is one of the last and best pure beach towns left whose coastline hasn’t become an advertisement for hotel chains. “You’re going to love it.”
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Learning a Language: The Foreign Family Vacation, aka Trial by Fire
Written by Brendan van Son
Learning a language is never easy. One’s head gets filled with foreign words and sounds, some of which are correct and others which are just nonsensical noise. The challenge of language acquisition is even more exacerbated in times of stress. I just spent the past four days in San Andres, Colombia putting myself through the most difficult of tests--a vacation with my Peruvian girlfriend’s family.
I have the gracefulness of a two-legged donkey. I blame this on the fact that I was born two months early and cross-eyed. They correlate. I was born with the primordial hand-eye coordination of a baby having missed essential belly time– thus, my cross-eyed ungainly self. As I am now 5´8¨ (praise my mother’s sagacity in gorging me with whole milk for the eighteen years I resided in her house) and an elephantine beast in 96% of countries worldwide, I consider myself a fairly impervious force.
When moving to Central America for nine months, you need to make certain sacrifices. It begins when you pack – forced to squint into that humid future while sucking on a Jamba Juice is a difficult task. Then, once you arrive, you are forced into even tougher decisions. You know, the ones that may or may not haunt you for your entire trip, and even affect your life afterward. Knowing this to be the case, I did some soul searching our first week in Costa Rica and finally decided what had to be done. I approached my wife hesitantly, unsure about how to drop such a bomb on her.
The five basic rules for bus travel in South East Asia There are many ways to get underneath the skin of the country you're traveling in, but one of the most effective ways is to spend your time using local public transportation. My motivation for traveling as the locals may have been economic, but the result is a crash course in local culture.
You arrive in the surprisingly bustling city of Tena, Ecuador after an incredible week spent in the Galapagos Islands. Tena is the last major outpost before a hundred or so miles of jungle and then Peru. Bisected by rivers, the town hosts five different Adventure Travel Operators offering tours that all seem to be interesting and perfectly fun. You: A) Sign up for one of these tours. B) Decide to go a different direction by renting a bike and trying to find a lagoon along the Rio Anzu (recommended by a local), using a map drawn on a napkin.
Charlotte Halligan gets to grips with the blood-sucking fiends in the world's oldest rainforest. I have learned something new: leeches move like ‘Slinkys.’ And when they sense you approaching they stand to attention and wave backwards and forwards like a finger beckoning you toward them.
There are only slight differences in driving techniques employed by the average Mexican driver and those by the professional auto racing circuit. The similarities far outweigh the differences. Everyone is driving as fast as possible in an attempt to gain the pole position. It is only a relative pole position, because there is still always someone in front of you, but you get internal points for every car you pass.
The Peace Corps experience I had, although difficult, was one I wouldn’t trade for the world. I learned a different language, experienced a new culture, made lasting friendships, and, I’d like to think, helped a little in the process. I was posted in the West African nation of Niger, a country known for little more than its Uranium deposits, millet production and overwhelming poverty. I was stationed in a small village that hovered along the Nigerian border. The transition was rough, but I loved every minute of it. But that’s not to say that everything I gained didn’t come at a price. Living in a foreign country, especially a third world country, requires one to adjust both mentally and physically. I felt I was prepared for this, but like a soldier who brashly assumes he’s prepared for war, and cracks under the line of fire, I wasn’t ready for the…
My birthday found me mid-jungle at the border of Burma and Thailand. I had a bit of a party, with native monkeys and various vermin celebrating with me. I was just a girl and a backpack, trying to forget about things like passing birthdays. Gning and Gnung, my two Thai tour guides warned me about the "tiny buffalo" or what the hill tribes termed the “tiny beasts” one must grapple with in order to get from place to place; the masses of slimy black jungle leeches.
Learning a new language can open you to a new world. In Portuguese, when you ask if someone if they have been to a place before, the direct translation is, “Do you know…?” After living in Brazil for two years, I feel confidant in saying, “Yes, I know Brazil.” For me one of the best parts of learning a new language are the slip-ups. Here are some of my favorites: Pay Day
If my first three weeks in the Thai jungle taught me one thing, it was this: I was not prepared, mentally or emotionally, to be a guide. There was nothing I could really do about that, and while it’s never stopped me from doing anything before (and it certainly wasn’t going to stop me now), I figured the least I could do was be better equipped.
It all started to go wrong when a moment of sheer impulse led me to jump into the murky lake. Together with two girlfriends, I had been travelling around Nepal for a month or so, and, finally back in Pokhara after a grueling Annapurna trek, plus a suicidal bout of amoebic dysentery, I decided it was time to give my miserable body a break.
Tuesday, 04 March 2008
Interpreter, Please! Learning Zulu in South Africa
Written by Kelly N. Patterson
“Where are you going this time?” Family and friends asked. “Well, I can’t exactly pronounce it,” I confessed. “But I can spell it: H-L-A-B-I-S-A.” “Where?” they chorused. “It’s a rural area in north-western Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.” Blank looks followed by further questioning: “But where in South Africa? I mean which country? Zimbabwe? Zambia?”
While traveling, you end up doing many things that are exciting and fun only in recollection. After the wounds have been licked shut and the pain in your lungs does not feel like a knife through the chest anymore - only then can you say with a straight face that you would do it all over again.
As with all trips in my experience, the journey is just as eventful as the trip itself. I believe this is because I have a tendency of just going with the flow. However, the “flow” is never just a forward-flowing river in my case—it’s more like several little winding streams that always take me in unexpected directions.
Ahmed Namazi. That's the name that nearly ended my first trip to Israel before it could get off the ground. Ahmed—“Excuse me sir, please come this way, yes right over here, and please take of your sandals…”—Namazi.
Some things don’t require planning: life’s surprises, in fact, often trump schedules. Or at least that is the philosophy that has pervaded my existence thus far. I inherited impulsiveness from my family: we arranged vacations two days before we took them, and bought our Christmas trees on December 24th.
The bus was delayed because there was a man trying to squeeze a bag of live cobras into the luggage compartment. The commotion went on for about twenty minutes until my throbbing head could take no more and I decided to get off and stay another night. I sat down in the café of the Chinese guesthouse and ordered a beer. Mr Ra was at the bar. “I told you you’d never leave” he smirked from his position across the room.
I need to clarify something up front. I suffer from the affliction of Attention Deficit Disorder. That means at times my mind flies from one activity to another with a reckless abandon akin to a wrecking ball being swung to and fro by an intoxicated construction worker dabbling at the helm. It’s not that I can’t concentrate at all. When there’s something important happening, about 4% of the time I act quite normal and get things done in a reasonable way. The other – slightly higher percentage of the time – I flail wildly upon the task at hand. So when I heard Marrakech was an exotic, bustling, fast-paced city with much to explore my mind began to rev its engines, craving the fuel of multiple simultaneous endless distractions. This was right down my alley.
The taxi pulls away from the crowd of cars and pedestrians at Noi Bai International Airport, wiggles and worms its way through the congestion, and zips toward the road that leads to Ha Noi. I roll down the window and the humid July air, tempered by a light rain, shoves its way inside. On the main road, we are joined by a fleet of mopeds, or ‘motos,’ as they are called in Viet Nam. They appear suddenly on all sides of us, unrestricted, it seems, by the concept of lanes.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
Europe By Chance: Crossing the continent despite myself
Written by Gary Boas
I have a fairly haphazard approach to traveling: I like to drop myself in the middle of some locale with no plan as to what I'm going to do – and occasionally no viable way of getting out – just to see what happens. I tell myself that this is a good way to test my mettle. If I can make it out of some of these scrapes alive, the argument goes, then I must be a tough one indeed. The truth is, I’m probably just a bit lazy and can’t be bothered with stuff like arranging accommodations before I arrive in a place, or finding transport more than a day or two in advance.
Kaikoura, New Zealand is an eco-tourist’s wet dream. Whales, dolphins, and seals all hang out in the calm waters of Kaikoura just waiting for us to plop down some cash and go out in a boat to visit them. In fact, the town’s name is Maori for “meal of crayfish”, so you can guess what the local specialty is!
Six months ago my girlfriend and I went to South America. Her convincing me to go was quite a feat considering my fear of flying was no match for a trip that involved eleven plane rides. But after successive journeys from Boston, New York, Miami, and Buenos Aires, my screaming mechanism malfunctioned and for the first time in my life I was speechless. For her, this made for quite a relaxing trip to our first destination: Mendoza, Argentina. A small city close to the Chilean border, Mendoza’s outskirts consist mainly of wine country, boasting some of the best Malbec grapes in the region.
Just before a big trip happens I always get very nervous, as though my family and friends, house, cats, and job cannot survive without me. Pre-flight, I’m like a man slowly marching to his execution --- and he doesn’t get to say goodbye. Dramatic and silly but nonetheless true, when it’s time to go, all I want to do is stay. Until I actually leave. And then reality slaps me into remembering I don’t have to deal with my mother if I’m far away.
The problem was, I had written down the address, but I didn’t have it on me. I thought I did. I was sure I knew where I was going. That’s the strange thing about all of this. One can feel so confidently on target, yet one is lost. Maybe it’s hard for you to believe that on my first trip to Europe I lost my destination.
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