I’ve Dodged All The Bullets - But Am Feeling Mushy-Minded At The Moment
April 30, 2009 by rtwsenior · 1 Comment
I’ve been home about forty hours now, having arrived on my doorstep around noon on Tuesday, April 28th. Considering the fact that I’d been awake for forty-eight hours before that, I guess I’m doing pretty well, but am conscious of the fact that my brain feels slow to process things and motions are still a little bit on automatic pilot. Even so, I’m unpacked; the laundry is done (but not sorted); and the first re-stocking shopping trip has been accomplished.
And….in half an hour I’ll leave the house for a long, long exercise walk with my dear friend, Fawn Germer, (www.hardwonwisdom.com), who swears she hasn’t deeply processed her life’s activities and philosophies since I left four months ago. She’s just published her fifth book, “Finding The UP In The Downturn,” so I’d say she processes pretty well; but we both need the exercise, and we talk the whole time, so I love the fact that she seems to feel that those conversations are a necessary part of her life. She has given me an edict: I’m not allowed to die! Not till after she does… Given the fact that she’s more than twenty years younger than I, that could be a challenge, but I’ll do the best I can.
Fawn has just bought a pontoon boat and she’s talking camping out on an island in Clearwater Bay. That will feel just like Girl Scouts. She and my other best friend, Renee, 84, were at the airport to meet me and was it ever good to see them! Renee water-skied (on one foot) until she was my age, but has just had cataract surgery, so won’t be doing any camping with us….though she can see the little uninhabited island from her backyard, so maybe we can send flashlight signals.
Anyway, it’s really good to be home and, as always, there’s so much to do. Accumulated mail fills my coffee table, the yard needs raking up, the patio needs sweeping, blogs need writing…and so does my next book….eventually. I’ve never even peeked at the hundreds of photos I took and I must re-learn Power Point so I can organize them into speechable chunks. Much awaits my attention.
And there’s this mushy mind. The whole trip has squashed down into a puddle, impossible to evaluate at this moment. A few regrets that will probably grow over time: Not actually doing the Inca Trail…missing out entirely on Chile. Can’t remember any more but I’m already regretting those two. Well, I was lazy. That’s the long and the short of the Inca Trail situation. I don’t really know if I COULD have gotten in on a group because the trail had been closed for cleaning all of February, the month I arrived in Cusco, but I was also there in March after it re-opened and never tried to get in on a group.
It would have been expensive for my budget of the time and I kept hearing stories from hostelers who had done it, about spending four solid cold and wet days in the rain, sleeping on the hard ground soaking wet and then walking all the days in a downpour. I was having trouble sleeping in a bed in my hostel and hotel private rooms in chilly, damp Cusco and tent sleeping wasn’t all that attractive. Plus, every time I walked uphill, or climbed that volcano, or even took on a long stairway at that high elevation and wound up huffing and puffing, I was deciding against doing the Trail. “Uh uh, not me!” said my mind to myself, “This is my Inca Trail!”
But, when it’s all over and done and you are home in your easy chair, you wish that you had done it simply for bragging rights. Oh well….someday. Maybe.
The Chile thing is because a chunk of my spinal analogy purpose is now missing. I went down the Andean Cordillera as far as the waistline and then bounced over to Buenos Aires on the opposite coast because I couldn’t find housing right before Easter in the vacationland of Salta and the western coastline. Spring Break. So, it feels a little unfinished, though I did get down to the tip end in Ushuaia. Just not the way I had originally planned.
I lost a few items - prescription sunglasses, my calendar, a necklace; gave away a lot of things to lighten my load and make room for new stuff; broke my good glasses - so that now the stems don’t match but they do stay on my head.
But, I didn’t get Dengue Fever which became an outbreak in Bolivia and northern Argentina just after I left; and I didn’t get Swine Flu, which was already affecting the airport psychology in both Buenos Aires and Houston as I flew through, very glad I hadn’t ended my trip in Mexico this year. And I didn’t get Malaria though I took those darn pills daily for months. I have more mosquitoes in my living room than I saw in all of South America. The patio door has been open because the weather is so great. Gotta set off some foggers, in and out, sometime soon.
So, I did dodge all the bullets. And as soon as I stop waking up at 4 a.m. with a need to blog, I think my mind will unmush and I can feel intelligent again.
Now, I must get my shorts and shoes on to get ready for this dawn walk. Back to normal and it feels really good to be home!
Squeezing In One More Country
April 26, 2009 by rtwsenior · Leave a Comment
My four months in South America will end tomorrow night when I take off from Buenos Aires for Houston, Texas; change planes early in the morning, and fly on to Tampa, Florida. Dear friends will meet me for the ride across the bay and I´ll be home by mid-day on Tuesday. I´ll soon be surrounded by my familiar life, my son, my neighbors and friends whom I have genuinely missed during this third of a year on the road.
After returning from my quick trip down to Tierra del Fuego at the tail end of the South American continent, I realized that Uruguay is just across the river from Buenos Aires and can be accessed by various ferries that run about four times a day. So, Friday morning, I zipped over on the fast boat to my last new country. The Buquebus ferry only takes one hour to make the gentle crossing of the River Plata. This is a big, fancy, car-carrying ship with airline-type seats and a cafeteria and duty-free shop aboard. A delightful ride.
I stayed in the small town of Colonia because that´s where the ferry lands and Montevideo was an extra few hours on the bus and I could only sample the new land over the weekend. It´s a delightful place and feels nothing like the rest of South America. It was almost as if I had stepped back in time to small town America…though that´s not to say that Colonia isn´t modern.
Actually, the town encouraged that impression by planting old 1920´s and 1930´s antique cars all about. Many of them obviously don´t run and have become decorative foliage planters or even a special seating area for a restaurant. Some simply seem to be parked outside of a residence or business as if the driver will be back in a minute. I did see a 1929 taxi tooling down the road though with passengers.
So, this is a cute little one-story town with a tree-lined main street and a yacht harbor and a lighthouse. They encourage tourism but don´t go crazy pandering to it. We are welcome to wander about and be absorbed into local life. There´s no big souvenir emphasis, but there are good restaurants with good food.
People live in beautiful houses with lovely, grassy yards. It´s clean. They live a good life in their small town and they absorb us without any fuss, muss, or bother. Naturally, there´s a tiny downside.
It feels expensive. One dollar buys twenty-five Uruguayan pesos, but things are priced in the hundreds and thousands and nothing is cheap. For instance, I blew through $250 in a flash. My lovely hotel room cost $50 per night (2 nights = $100) and one fabulous grilled salmon meal cost $38, and another meal $10, plus fruit for supper in my room. My round-trip ferry was $80. Maybe that doesn´t sound like much to other travelers, but my money usually goes much further down here.
But, I´m glad I went because I really like the country and would like to get to know it better. I can recommend it as a tourist destination and I believe it´s usually overlooked on the travel rosters. So, go to laid-back Uruguay for comfort and a familiar setting. Just take a little money.
