Life from Scratch

It's been 4 years since I have lived in England. In fact, I am returning in the very same week that I left in the summer of '04. Even though of course I've been visiting sporadically in the meantime, returning now takes on a strange mixture of familiarity and feeling like a tourist all over again. 

I found myself standing dumbstruck before a bemused shop assistant at London Paddington station last week as I turned over the heavy and unfamiliar coins in my hand, eventually handing over what I thought was the right coin for the occasion, a huge £2 coin that hadn't crossed my hand in ages. More than once I have come close to being completely flattened due to looking the wrong way before crossing the road and now that we're in the north, it takes me an extra effort just to follow what people are saying. If you've never heard a Liverpudlian accent, its a special kind of adjustment :)

Its strange how we are suddenly having to build up life all over again from scratch. From the simplest things like crossing the road properly to finding jobs and apartments, it makes me understand how settled my life was in New York and it somewhat throws me off balance to understand that I have stopped traveling - that this isn't another stop on our journey, but rather the destination for now. We're staying with good friends in Liverpool while we get our act together which definitely softens the blow, but after well over 3 months of living out of a backpack, I'm more ready than ever for a place to call home.

Belated goodbye to South America

Our lives are moving and changing so fast that we've somewhat fallen behind with the blog. We're planning on continuing with it as we transition to life back in England. Needless to say, we have left South America and take with us a million pictures, amazing memories and a slightly swollen toe left over from the "fish incident" in the Amazon :)

During our South American adventures we covered:

3 countries, spent

101 hours on

14 long-distance buses,

1 boat,

1 bicycle,

2 rafts,

a 4 day jeep trip,

and numerous crammed colectivos.

We hiked up the ruins of Machu Picchu, boated in the Amazon basin, swam in fish-infested waterfall pools, biked along the world's highest navigable lake, crawled down working mines, drank delicious wine straight from the vineyards, hiked through cactus-studded canyons, were left slack jawed by the drama of a tango show and watched the sun rise over the surreal landscape of the world's largest salt flat.

Its hard to sum up feelings about our time in South America. While it quenched our thirst for adventure and created a much-needed pause between our lives on each side of the Atlantic, it was also a really great mental break where we could let our minds wander and reflect on the life we're leaving behind in New York. As always with travel in developing countries, it was also a challenge to the comfort of our situation and the assumptions and expectations we carry with us about our future.

While on our travels we read a quote, I believe by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, about South America. I've been unable to find it since so I'll do my best to remember it as it sums up our feelings well:

"When one spends long enough traveling in South America, he will learn that anything is possible, anything at all."

Sorry for the delay...

Deep apologies for the absence of any blog posting in the last week. We've been in New York for a couple of days on a stop over before heading back into the deep blue yonder of our new lives in the UK. We'll reflect on everything properly once we arrive back and have some time to write - and sleep!

We always swore that we'd never leave New York in the summer time because it'd just be too hard. After a few days in beautiful sunny 30 to 35 degree C weather it's gonna be hard but Manchester can't be grey and rainy ALL year, can it?

Lima and a cabbie conundrum

We´ve been chilling out in Lima for the past few days, about 4 blocks from the coast in Miraflores, waiting for a flight that will signal the end of our South American adventures (for now, anyway).

 

We´ll post more "leaving thoughts" later, but I wanted to note down what was possibly the most memorable taxi ride I have taken to date. Its a bit of a you-had-to-be-there thing, but apart from the usual white knuckle ride so common of cab rides here, the very chatty cabbie really had a curious streak which became gradually more and more awkward as the 30-minute trip went on. (Curse you, Lima traffic). He started on benign topics such as my job, age, marital status... but by the end of the trip he had moved on to asking if I would like to take over to drive the taxi, would I like to be his mistress and what kind of birth control do I use!!! I mean, really. Needless to say by the end of the trip I mysteriously ceased to be able to communicate with him in Spanish and repeated the mantra "no comprendo" until I could make a dash to my hostel. Never let it be said that Peruvians don´t make you feel welcomed :)

Bits n Bobs in BA

Yesterday we came to the end of our fun and indulgent week in the massive and lively Buenos Aires.

A snapshot of our week:

Much like New York, BA has many (48!) different neighbourhoods and we spent some time exploring some of them. We walked the cobbled streets of San Telmo, nosing around the numerous antique markets and visited the impressive graves of the rich dead at the Recoleta Cemetery, including the tomb of Evita Peron (though urban legend has it the body has been secretly moved). We spent a day soaking up classic and contemporary art, sipped espressos in the cafes of Palermo, admired the bright colours of the working-class La Boca neighbourhood (where we were greeted by a Maradona lookalike!) and watched the numerous ubiquitous protests and parades in the central Plaza de Mayo.

 

We watched a great jazz band over equally good wine and hung out at late night (for us, not them!) Milonga dances at one of the city's oldest Milonga institutions, the Confiteria Ideal. Its arched ceiling and columns give off the air of grandeur of days of old. A real highlight was going to see a Tango show in San Telmo; it was an incredibly impressive variety of tango, singing and live tango orchestra music in one of the oldest and most intimate tango venues, the Viejo Almacen.

 

After the meat-fest that Andy previously described, we detoxed with our gracious and gregarious host David at a superb vegetarian joint in our neighbourhood, after which David guided us through the intoxicating world of Persicco, one of the best ice cream parlous in BA. (They even had incredible sorbet for little old me). Thanks Dave!

 

We decided that a 5 hour flight, not a 5 day bus extravaganza would be in order to get to our final port of call: Lima. I think that decision has possibly been our best of the whole trip...

 

"I think I just ate it's brain" - Millay

One of the Argentine specialities is their traditional Parrilla or steakhouse. The meat here is incredible, widely believed to be because of the grass fed free range cattle that Argentina produces, on average apparently Argentinians consume about 60KG of beef a year each! The meat is usually cooked over a huge barbecue in the corner of the restaurant leading to amazing smells and what looks like an entire herd smoking and sizzling away. Strangely there are no vegetables served with the meat apart from a bowl of french fries, this is for the meat purists only!

 

The traditional dish is to have a little bit of everything off the menu in what's called a parrillanda, we went out last night to sample one and poor little semi-vegetarian Millay ordered us the house special for two, mainly because it mentioned 'sweetbreads' which she thought sounded like bread dipped in sugar. Sadly here 'a little bit of everything' means exactly that in a country that considers every part of the animal fair game when it comes to eating. 'Sweetbreads' here is basically a nice way of saying pig's thymus gland. Along with these we were served Vacio (flank steak), tira de asado (narrow strip of rib roast), chorizo (spicy sausage), pollo (chicken), chinchulines (pig's small intestine), rinones (kidneys) and morcilla (blood sausage). As nice as some bits were, needless to say that we are now both sworn vegetarians for the rest of the week and are looking forward to the time when a barbecue just means some burnt hamburgers underneath a British raincloud! 

Buenos Aires

A few first impressions of 'BsAs' this enormous, bustling, chic city. Its very big and immediately reminds me of New York, but with a European bent. Commuters in designer suits dash in and out of the subways, the cafe culture reigns and I have witnessed more than one dog-walker with upwards of 10 dogs on his leash being dragged through the streets and parks.

 

We are staying at my good friend Chloe's brother's apartment while he is on vacation, which is very cute and in a very "it" area of the city, Palermo. It is SUCH a huge favour he is doing us to give us a place to stay in Buenos Aires! Very like Soho in New York, its cobblestone streets and trendy bars ooze sophistication and class (and pricey products!). Last night we had the fortune to stumble upon the annual art expo "BA08", housed in an enormous hanger and filled with really top class art work. Today we rode the subway with commuters, ambled among the tranquil parks and sipped cortados in the cafes, passing spontaneous tango on the streets and feeling that familiar ache in our legs that reminds one of spending time in New York.

 

Having recovered from the night spent sleepless on the night bus to get here, we celebrated our 7 month anniversary (2 of them in South America!) a few days late with a home cooked meal and a bottle of wine purchased at a vineyard we visited in the north. We are turning more into our parents every day!

Cafayette-Argentina

On our way down to Cordoba we stopped at Cafayate for a couple of days, a pretty little town in the heart of the northern vineyards of Argentina. We ended up going wine tasting in the morning (very decadent before 12pm!) and then in the afternoon went trekking in the surrounding countryside where the rocks have incredible layers of color in them due to some quirk of nature that our guide explained in detail but our

Spanish really wasn´t up to. We've seen so many natural beautiful things in our travels so far, ranging from the huge crumpled mountainous Andes to the smallest details in the tones and hues of the rocks and plants surrounding us that it makes you wonder at the artist who created them; or at least appreciate the gift of being able to enjoy beauty. Without it, life would indeed be extraordinarily grey....