Wanderlust

Well, I havent gone next, nigh, or near my TP blog during the last 6 months in South America, but today I find myself with some time on my hands as I wait for my impressively slow computer to download some music.

It´s coming to the end of my time here, I am sad to say. In about 6 weeks time, I am flying from Rio de Janeiro to Auckland, NZ to start a new chapter in the great journey. By then, I will have been here for 7 months, and those months have absolutely flown by! During that time, there have been mostly ups with a few episodes of bad luck, some fleeting periods of homesickness, and a BAD OLE DOSE of Typhoid to contend with, but I wouldn´t trade any of it "for the world". Boom boom.

January saw me arriving me in Peru, nervous and excited, having no clue what lay ahead of me. It is impossible to encapsulate in a few sentences what this country meant to me. Peru has gotten under my skin, and I feel that I will never be satisfied until I go back there. The Peruvians I met led me to look inwardly and examine many aspects of my own life, and since then I have been on a continual learning curve. My time in the Peruvian Andes will always be with me. This part of Peru is an ancient, mystical place, and you dont quite feel that you are on the same planet. (No, I didnt take any drugs!)

After two months in Peru (almost 3 of those weeks being spent in bed, smote down by Salmonella typhi, otherwise known as TYPHOID ) I ventured tentatively into Bolivia. If pushed to pick a favourite country from the continent, I think Bolivia may have to be it. Bolivia was an eye-opener about the kind of poverty and injustice that exists in the world, and fear coupled with excitement and wonder led to feelings of being really alive in this place.

Chile ended up being my home for almost 3 months, and I really fell in love with this country that has it all (from the desert of the Atacaman north to the serene lake district and the dramatic peaks of Patagonia). Patagonia and Isla de Pascua (Easter Island) were the absolute highlights of my time in Chile, and in visiting these I managed to realise some lifelong dreams. At the same time, my lowest times on this trip have happened to be in Chile. I have been robbed in an internet cafe (losing all my photos of Patagonia ) mugged twice in the same night by the same guy! (long story ) and had my MP3 player (with over 2000 songs) lifted from my lap while I slept on a bus (oh wait..that was in Argentina...hee hee). So, how did I end up spending so long in Chile? Not sure really...I think I hit it at a time when there was a great bunch of people around and stayed longer than planned. That resulted in my making some Chilean friends whom I grew quite fond of, which led to me getting a job teaching English. Also, I was surprised to find that I actually liked Santiago, having not expected to at first.

During the months spent in Chile, I crossed into Argentina a few times and, on one such trip, travelled all the way to Ushuaia in the south of the country. Now, I find myself back in this crazy country on my way to Brazil. However, it wasnt an easy crossing this time around! My friend, Ringo, on the bus to Mendoza realised that he didnt have his tourist visa slip. Of course, without this, one cannot leave Chile! And so, we had to bribe the Chilean border officials! I ended up being an accomplice as Ringo hadnt a word of Spanish! The Argentinians are great, very friendly and completely laid back. Nothing seems to get them in a twist, except...of coure....FOOTBALL!!! Right now, the country is in th grip of world cup fever and everyone is behaving slightly nuts, but ít´s good to be part of it, even if Ireland aren´t in it.

South America has been my biggest challenge yet, and it has been fantastic in so many ways. Im sure that when I leave I will pine for it for quite a while. But, its onwards to NZ, and in many ways it will be a relief to get to an English-speaking country once again and relax again. 7 months of constantly wathcing your own back does get tiring, and I´m looking forward to a new continent and some new experiences!

Ow! Got my vaccinations - ow.

12 more weeks of this insufferable grind. 12 more weeks and I am free!

I'm trying to get my head around what that's actually going to feel like. Have I ever really been "free" before? I think not.

In the beginning, there were play-pin boundaries and childlocks. Then came primary school (a welcome relief, its true, but a form of captivity nonetheless). Following this, began 6 long years of concentration camp-like internment, otherwise known as SECONDARY SCHOOL. Many people look back on this period of their young life with a certain degree of rose-tinted fondness. Not me, oh no! I remember....nuns..lots of nuns...and rules. I was told who I could or couldnt associate with, what career path I should choose, how I should look, and how I should speak. I've committed those times to the darkest recesses of my memory, where they remain smouldering, only to be stoked every now and then by a brief encounter with one of the aforementioned tyrants or school bullies.

The start of univeristy life heralded a period of feckless abandon, the illusion of having thrown off the shackles of secondary education, and the beginning of MY life. Ha! What a green little freshman was I! In the short space of a year, not only the bank but also the university owned my ass. Exams, resits, deadlines, account balances, overdrafts, contracts, duels at dawn.....no I was certainly not free, but I did love college.

I emerged from university as a butterfly from a cocoon, shaped, moulded, employable (snort), and up to my neck in DEBT! After a brief and ill-advised spell working in a doctor's surgery (because despite what my college tutor told me, no-one actually really wants an ARTS student. ), I was successful in applying for a position as a Technical Writer.
Now I shall certainly experience true freedom, I thought. Where do I sign? Let my star-studded career commence!

Almost a year later, I have become not even an important cog in an important machine. I'm just some crap old cog, buried away in the back of the machine, trundling along, breaking down unnoticed every so often, but yet just necessary enough to have around in case one of the TOP cogs craps out. No, this is freedom neither.

So, what am I do when I am suddenly launched out into the big wide world with little or no deadlines, a healthy enough looking bank balance and no one to tell me what to do? Will I be overcome? Will I go nuts altogether? Will I realise I'm just meant to be an old cog after all and turn around and come back? What will be the outcome?
What does it feel like to be free?

I had a episode of writer's block while in Spain. I brought along my journal fully intending to document all the sights and sounds at the end of each day...but when I sat down to write anything, I found that I was a bit...well....stuck. During one particularly acute episode in Madrid , all I could muster were banal notes like "Went to the Reina Sofia today, really enjoyed it". After a half page or so, I read back over it and realised I hadn't captured anything even remotely close to what I was experiencing. In the end, I gave up, resolving to get down to it properly when I got home to Ireland.

The conclusion I came to was that when you are travelling with other people, you really just don't have the time to write, because you're too busy chatting and planning what to do next, and even when you do find yourself with an hour or two of your own to spare, it's difficult to really settle down to the task at hand because you're wondering what they are doing and looking fwd to hearing about what they've been up to in your absence. Travelling solo affords the sort of time that is more conducive to stimulating the creative process.

Since I've returned home, I still haven't managed to actually write anything much about my time in Spain, due to being back at work and evenings being taken up with giving piano lessons. At least, that's my excuse. Maybe I still have writer's block

To make matter's worse, I arrived back to work to discover that my boss sneakily moved me from my advantageous back-to-the-wall, birds eye view of the room position to a new desk right beside him. Fan-bloody-tastic! My blog entries will be few and far between from now on, it seems. My dossing days are over!

Anyway, back to the trip itself. We never actually made it south to Ronda or Seville as we'd initially hoped, but it was a pretty ambitious plan to begin with anyway. We ended up doing a city tour of Spain with one or two stops in smaller places along the way.

I fell in love with Madrid and, if I wasnt committed to my round the world trip now, I might even consider moving there immediately! It's supplanted Rome as my favourite European city. The city is absolutely alive, and what was even better about that was that it was not thronged with tourists.

One of the best nights we had there was meeting Steff. We arranged to meet her outside on of the main Metro stations near where we were staying. Had no idea what she looked like, and there was one or two almost funny/embarrassing moments where I nearly walked up to random people and asked them if they were Steff.

You always feel a little weird when you meet people for the first time, but after 5 mins with Steff you felt like you'd known her all your life. We had a great night, spent most of the night in stitches laughing. First, she took us to a little bar (I forget the name..) where they served this yummy white Basque wine.

Later on, we went to another bar in La Latina which played flamenco music and we had a few beers and some tapas. We got a fit of giggling at the barman because he had red-hair - he looked more like an IRishman than a Spaniard.

More bar-hopping ensued, and we eventually met up with Steff's Spanish friend Eva who was great fun! Steff ended up as an interpreter for the rest of the evening, but it didnt matter. We all managed to make ourselves understood, and most of the time the conversation just descended into riotous laughter.

One of our better nights out in Spain, it has to be said.

Anyway, I'd be here all day if I tried to tell you everything that was great about Spain, and none of us really want that. And what with the bad dose of writer's block, and the boss looking over my shoulder, and the laziness, it'll just have to wait. Lol!

It's official - I hate my boss!!!! and my job. I wonder if he can feel the thousands of daggers I'm shooting in his Armani-clad back. I cant stand his annoying motivational phrases like

"Come now guys, not enough WOW factor there. We can do better than that...hmmm?"

I fantasise about hiding his palm-top (which seems to be permanently glued to his hand!) and strategically placing a blob of jam (or maybe glue, if I'm feeling really wicked) on his seat so he's walking around with a suspicious looking stain on his Tommy Hilfigers for the rest of the day!

Okay, so thats childish, I know, but I wont allow myself to indulge the more sinister leanings I might have towards him!

I dream about spewing a bilous diatribe on him and telling him to stuff his job, then storming out of the place with enough WOW factor to blow his pea-sized brain completely!

Aghhhhhhhhhhh

I feel slighly better now. Thanks for listening.

6 months to go.....depression sets in....