I’m going to just keep linking to Google Photos albums since uploading everything on here is a slow process. I’ll also keep a page that has all the albums in one place if you feel like checking them all out.

Ushuaia

Torres del Paine

Alright, I’m back and alive, for real this time. Sorry about the joke post mom… I had originally planned to do the O circuit but after a terrible night with stomach cramps (whether from the giant pork ribs I had for dinner or just from anxiety I don’t know) I decided I couldn’t head out to the park on 1 hour of sleep and skipped the morning bus. At breakfast that morning I got the idea from a couple of fellow hostelers to head out in the afternoon and start the Q instead, which is the O circuit with a little extra part (get it?) that adds one night of camping after only about a 2 hour hike on the first day. So that’s what I did. I kept a brief journal while I was hiking of what I did and how I was feeling, and I figure that, along with loads of pictures, is about as good a way to talk about the trip as any. As a quick preface, it’s worth noting that this trip hit a couple of firsts for me – it was the first time I had gone backpacking longer than 4 days, and my first time backpacking solo. “Solo” is relative in Torres del Paine given that you constantly cross people on the trail and there are hundreds of people in every campsite, but I still planned alone and walked mostly alone, so I’m counting it. As you’ll see I had some pretty serious apprehensions about the trip. In retrospect they were pretty silly, especially since thousands and thousands of people complete the circuit of the park each year, but hey, it says “an idiot abroad” right there in the subtitle…

On to the journal! Pretty much all the place names are campsites along the way. You can look up a map if you want or just use your imagination, I’m pretty much always just talking about the next campsite.

Day 1:  Feb 13

The bus had some nice views but was generally uneventful. Had to transfer, which was lame because we waited a while, I was hoping to camp early. Drizzling the whole time. 1.5 hour walk to Las Carretas with David, Franco-German, super nice, and Kyle, Seattle anthropologist/sociologist. It was nice to have company, I was feeling very discouraged walking into the wind and drizzle. Got to camp around 7:30, set up tent, got water, made pasta. Feeling quite discouraged – strongly aware of my inexperience, cold, wet, ugh. But managed to pack up before nightfall, wind seems to be gone (!), and drizzle is very light, so who knows. Bon courage!

Day 2: Feb 14

Started out riding high – nice weather, had breakfast and packed up ok. First 2.5 hours across open fields, very windy. Trying to move fast, near the end of 2.5 hours get light cramps in quads. Uh-oh. It really is beautiful though, seeing the park from far away. Setting off again it’s more mountain and forest. Cramps come back quite bad, after a while I’m stopping every 10 minutes. During first part I was thinking I was too worried last night, I can definitely do the whole thing – now I’m having serious doubts about the hiking and the camping. Lots of just being alone with my thoughts means mood changes are fairly dramatic and it’s easy to start worrying. Tried to remind myself to just enjoy but I do wonder a bit if camping just isn’t my thing. Got into camp ok (had to walk doing butt-kicks for a while because of cramps), set up in a nice spot, had lunch, dozed, it’s only 4:30. So that’s nice. — Tried walking an hour and 15 minutes to mirador, weather getting worse and I’m exhausted so didn’t make it. Think I’ll try tomorrow and then just go to Cuernos. Would try Chileno but am very scared after cramping…

Day 3: Feb 15 (written Feb 16)

Slept in late, woke up thinking I might have a cold but turned out to just be cold night air. Path even just to Mirador Frances was closed so headed out close to 11. Very careful about pace, eating, and drinking. But feeling good. Got to Cuernos early feeling good so push on, try for Chileno and if I can’t do the last climb there’s always Las Torres. Beautiful weather, hot, shorts and t-shirt. Meet Walker, from Georgia, and Morgan, from Indiana. Walk the last part with them. Up to Chileno it gets exposed, crazy wind all day but this is worse, pissing down rain. Everything is soaked, have to walk over hill and across river from checkin to camp, find mediocre spot. Feeling low. But cooking area is warm and lively, people blaring music and dancing, go to bed feeling ok, surprisingly dry.

Day 4: Feb 16

Get up, unsure what to do. Weather looks bad again, torres all cloudy. Breakfast and hang around, decide to go up later. Ran into Mel (Aussie nurse I met in Ushuaia) last night, again today, we decide to head up to torres a little later. Sandwiches look huge but are 8k. I look covetous, she (very nice) says 6k, deal. Beautiful, heavy, wholegrain bread. Head up to torres with Adar, tall Israeli, and Jakob, Dutch physicist writing a scientific calculating program. Torres completely fogged in and it snows the whole way, but sure glad I went, saw cute foxes. Down, beer, then book it to Las Torres. Moment of elation going down – weather beautiful, feeling empowered, been managing to camp ok and regaining confidence in my legs. 10 minutes from camp it starts raining medium hard. Everything is wet and this campsite doesn’t even have an indoor cooking area. Also turns out the rice Erica gave me needs to simmer 20 minutes. Fuck. Make pasta in occasional drizzle, wolf it down, chill, now bed. Feeling medium but no doubts that I want to continue. Hopefully find some nice weather. Excited about hiking.

Day 5: Feb 17

Beautiful sleep ’til 9:45, almost 12 hours. Woke up to gorgeous weather, warm and sunny. Slow morning: tons of oatmeal, clothes out to dry, repack bag, chillin. Left at noon. Bag does in fact feel lighter. Weather was beautiful all day aside from one 10 minute wind and drizzle stretch. Feeling very thankful. Back was hurting a little, tops of shoulders now very tired. Got to Seron around 3:30, set up tent, ate, feeling good and relaxed. Tomorrow I want to go all the way to Los Perros, about 8-9 hours, a little more than 25km I think. We’ll see how I feel at Dickson but I do really want to. It’s only 5:40 now, very happy. Gonna eat more, chill, then get to bed so I can get up early.

Day 6: Feb 18

What a beautiful day. Up early, set out from Seron around 8. Nice weather but looked ominous ahead, turned out to be beautiful and sunny all day. Met Javier, nice Chilean guy, a little outside of camp, and ended up walking together all day. Beautiful, huge views of the valley, and as you keep going one new mountain appears after another. Saw the torres from behind (I think) and an awesome glacier, first far away and then right up close just outside of Los Perros. Long day. 8:20, plus 1.5 hour break for lunch in the hot sun at Dickson, which really is a gorgeous campsite. Glad we kept going though, would be super short to go Dickson -> Los Perros, and fuck the mosquitoes. From Dickson -> Perros the walk is beautiful, through forest, greenest part of the park. I am tired, legs and back sore. Tomorrow is the pass. Up, breakfast, limber up, and then just fucking go for it. Shooting to skip Paso and go straight to Grey because apparently Paso sucks, also that way it’ll be easy to get the early catamaran the next day. So, fuck it. Nothing left to do but do it. I’m tired but excited.

Day 7: Feb 19

Up and at ’em with Javier. Climb to the pass was hard but honestly not that hard. Beautiful though. Out of forest into field of rocks, glaciers in every direction. Hit the pass and it’s big and open and suddenly you see the ice field – incredible. Goes forever, disappears into clouds. Really is windy, but we got super lucky with weather – mostly sunny, and full rainbow over the ice field. Keep walking down and get new angles, stays beautiful. Through woods and to Paso. Couscous and soup for lunch and we’re off after 40 minutes. Stomach hurting and eventually throw up everything. Right ankle been hurting on side and front. Feel better after vomit but starting to feel weaker, very tired after a while. Cross 2 suspension bridges high up which is cool, eventually get to Grey. Very weak. Tent and doze, then wake up to throw up bunch of water and crackers I tried eating. Doze more, just got a pill for vomit from Chilean guy so we’ll see how that goes. Very thirsty. Think I’ll go wait for a shower, maybe just pass out.

Day 8: Feb 20 (written Feb 22)

Woke up feeling normal, thank god. Oatmeal for breakfast and set off early, give myself plenty of time to make the boat out even if I walk slowly. Walk is… meh. Very windy and drizzling most of the time, pissed at Patagonian weather, “why couldn’t it just be nice for my last stroll out of the park?”. Some nice views though and remind myself to enjoy it. Get down in a little less than 3 hours, very tired but feeling accomplished. Have the coffee and Fanta I was daydreaming about but unfortunately no sandwich. Catch boat and bus with no problem.

So, yeah. The whole experience was deeply satisfying. The views really are spectacular, with glaciers, mountains, and forest galore, and some of the most expansive vistas I’ve ever seen. It was definitely a challenge, and I’m (probably too) proud of myself for having stuck it out and done the whole thing. The hiking was hard and I was pretty damn sore and tired by the end, but in a great way. I didn’t get particularly lucky with the weather since it rained 5 or 6 of the days that I was there, but I didn’t really get unlucky either, and I got great weather to cross the pass, the highest and windiest point on the circuit, so I’d have to say I came out ahead. Overall, I’d highly recommend doing it.

I’m alive!

 

…hopefully. I’m still out in the park, this post showed up automatically through the wonders of technology. I said I’d post weekly didn’t I?

I’m going to keep it short tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow. I’m currently in Puerto Natales, Chile, after a great 4 days in Ushuaia. I hiked to an emerald lake, walked around a national park, cruised the Beagle channel, and met some great people. Yesterday was 14 hours on the bus and today I spent all day walking around shopping for food and renting gear because tomorrow I’m heading off to Torres del Paine national park, which is supposed to have some truly breathtaking scenery. There are a few different backpacking trips that people do in the park but I’ll be going for the O, which is a loop around the park that typically takes 8 days. The hiking itself is not supposed to be that bad but the weather is famously difficult, and the forecast for the next week looks… difficult (not to worry, there are park rangers managing everything and tons of people in the park, I won’t die). So yeah. I’m preparing myself for a few days of misery and hoping for some luck in between. Either way the views are going to be grand and I’ll have plenty of time for quiet contemplation. Sorry to keep it so short but I’ll need at least a day or two of nothing when I get back so I’ll be sure to write a full update with pictures then.

Just a quick note for my family and any of you poor souls whose lives are that devoid of entertainment: if you’d like to get an email whenever I add a new post you can click the “Follow” button in the very bottom right of the page (at least that’s where I think it should be…?) and put in your email address to follow my blog and send me rocketing towards a book deal and a new, glamorous life of travel writing. Or, at least, to get notified when I post and to give me, when I’m feeling lonely, a list of people to look at and whisper “They love me. They really love me!”.

❤ Phil

What would this blog be without photos? Eventually the plan is to actually post the photos on here, but internet in Cuba is expensive and slow and I don’t feel like figuring out how to upload them right now, so in the meantime I’ll just post links to Google Photos albums that y’all should hopefully be able to see. Some of the photos may not make much sense without the witty captions I have planned for them but, you know, use your imagination.

Colombia

Mexico

Cuba

Greetings from Vinales, Cuba! I’m sitting on the patio of the casa particular I’m staying in here smoking a cigar I bought from a campesino in his tobacco field. Rough life. From Cancun I caught a flight to Havana, only about 45 minutes away, and had the pleasure of seeing my mom waiting for me when I cleared immigration. I’ve got no advice about getting into Cuba – my mom and I are both dual citizens so we used our French passports here. The Cuban adventure started with 4 days in Havana and I have to say that I was initially disappointed. I had very high expectations for Cuba – it was one of the places I was most excited to visit, seemed so different, special. I had heard about Cubans’ famed friendliness and been told that it would be nothing but beautiful music and dancing. Over the past 2.5 weeks Cuba has really grown on me but it was a rough start. Havana is a big, bustling city, and the main industry, as in most places in Cuba, is tourism. Tourism is big in a lot of places, obviously, but the discrepancy in earning potential here is pretty astounding. Teachers make around $25 per month, doctors maybe $30-35. A room in a casa particular (private houses that rent rooms – basically the entire hospitality industry in Cuba aside from very expensive hotels and all inclusive resorts), on the other hand, usually goes for between $20-30 per night, and some houses have multiple rooms that are filled every night. Even accounting for the taxes and registration fees they have to pay and the upkeep on the houses, the difference is gigantic. Similarly taxi drivers, tour guides (which are often required to enter national parks), and others involved with tourists get a much bigger slice of the pie. This results in lots of solicitation on the street and fake friendliness, though being approached on the street isn’t that common or obnoxious here and people are generally ok taking no for an answer. Walking around the old city of Havana was fun and the old cars and older buildings are as advertised. The food, unfortunately, started out bad – aggressively bland and overpriced. We quickly decided to stop eating at touristy restaurants and instead started going to the little windows that people run out of their living rooms, where you can get a cheese omelette or a ham and cheese sandwich for 10 national pesos, about 40 cents. Which brings me to one of the most perplexing aspects of Cuban life – their are two currencies. One is the CUC, the convertible money, which is worth about the same as a US dollar. The other is the national peso – it’s 25 national pesos per CUC if you’re buying CUC, 24 if you’re selling. Some places only take one currency or the other, some both. I think that in days gone by there was a fairly substantial separation between the two currencies and access to CUC was relatively restricted, but now with things opening up more domestically pretty much anyone can get, convert, and use either. Which really just means it makes it a lot more confusing for nothing.

Mom and I had a good time walking around Havana, checking out the gigantic Christopher Columbus cemetery, with its enormous marble mausoleums, and hunting orange carts by following orange peels in the gutter. 4 days were enough for us though, and we were glad to get to our next destination, a small town called Cienfuegos after the revolutionary general. It was very different from Havana – small, intimate, and lacking the habit of trying to rip off tourists. People gave us the same prices as Cubans and we enjoyed just strolling around and doing… not much. Which is a lot of what you do in Cuba. Waiting in line, for example, is practically a national pastime – whether you want to buy bread, put credit on your phone, change money, buy internet access, or almost anything else, you have to wait in line. With so much practice Cubans have developed a system which took some getting used to but which works well (if you have a Cuban memory – more on that later). Rather than having to actually stand in a single file line for what can be hours, Cubans come up and ask for “el ultimo”, “who’s last?”. You then remember the person in front of you and, once someone else comes, the person behind you, and you can stand around however you want. Before you know the system it’s perplexing – you come up to an establishment and there’s just a big disordered group of people standing around here and there, outside, because people have to wait outside and only 2-4 people get let inside by the ubiquitous doorman at a time. So picking up on that was something of an experience, but it feels pretty normal now.

After Cienfuegos we went to Trinidad, which is a prime tourist attraction and a UNESCO world heritage site for its architecture. My mom and I agreed we thought that was a little weird because the architecture, while beautiful, was pretty much the same as all the other places we’d been in Cuba. Lots of beautiful colonial buildings, some in shocking states of disrepair, others beautifully restored. We took a day and hiked to the Caburni waterfall in the nearby national park with a delightful French Canadian father-daughter pair and I got to take a dip in the pool at the bottom of the falls, which was completely brown from the storms the day before. The weather here changes incredibly fast – it’s sunny, then it starts to mist, 5 minutes later it is absolutely pouring down rain, then 10 minutes later it clears, and then the cycle starts all over again. Winter is normally the dry season here in Cuba but El Nino turns that on its head, and people tell me it’s rained more this winter than it did in the rainy season before. So it goes… From Trinidad we hopped on a bus for 12 hours to get to Santiago de Cuba, the second biggest city in the country, way on the east side of the island. I loved Santiago de Cuba. It’s huge and bustling just like Havana, but where in Havana I felt like a lot of things were set up specifically around attracting tourists with the mythical image of Cuba, Santiago really just has its own thing going on. There’s a giant pedestrian boulevard lined with shops in the center of town, but instead of being full of tourists buying knick knacks it’s just Cubans going about their lives. I had a great time strolling through there, up to the Parque Cespedes, down along the water, and running over to the Vista Alegre neighborhood to see the beautiful colonial houses. Santiago is surrounded by national parks and we had hoped to get out and check them out but day trips are expensive ($40-50 just to get out and walk around the park) and my mom got sick and had to lay low, so we skipped it. Somewhere around Trinidad or Santiago the food also got a lot better – the ham sandwiches came with a squirt of sauce, the chicken had a bit of seasoning, things generally started to taste like something. Most of the food here is simple – roast chicken or pork, seafood if you’re feeling a little spendier, with a small pile of lettuce or vegetables, and rice, always rice. One very common preparation of rice is arroz moros – rice cooked with black beans, which a couple times hardly tasted like anything but other times it was delicious, really stewed and flavorful. We had a good laugh when we eventually saw the full name of the dish on a menu – moros y cristianos. Moors and christians: white rice with black beans.

My mom was only here for two weeks and Santiago is about 16 hours away from Havana (where she flew out of) by bus, which is the only viable mode of transport if you don’t figure out a domestic flight in advance. We decided to break the trip up into two legs so as to minimize the suffering and picked Ciego de Avila as our stopover since it’s just about halfway in between. Ciego turned out to be adorable – a tiny town with, just like every other Cuban city, a nice main square surrounded by big pretty buildings. We took the overnight bus and got in around 8:30, so after an hour spent looking for a place to stay that night we had the day to just cruise around, get some ice cream, and relax. The next day was another 6 hours on the bus, finding a house in Havana, and then saying goodbye the day after that. My mom headed to the airport in the morning, which gave me time to stroll through the beautiful ivy-covered Parque Almendares before catching my bus here. Vinales is another of the most touristy destinations in Cuba, famous for its beautiful limestone mountains and tobacco plantations. I’ve been having a great time here. On my first day I went and walked around the national park, which is really just a series of fields of tobacco, yucca, pineapple, etc… and a couple of impressive caves. A guide is required and I was lucky to get hooked up with Gabriel, a 26 year old former English teacher who later became a tour guide. Gabriel was the first Cuban around my age that I had any prolonged interaction with and the 5 hours we spent meandering around plantations, checking out caves, and getting a lesson/demonstration in cigar making were a bonding experience. After the tour he lent me his bike to check out the other attractions around Vinales, and we agreed to meet up later. I’ve spent the past couple of days doing mostly nothing (it poured all day yesterday), hanging out with Gabriel and his friends at the knick knack table he runs in the market or drinking rum at one of the bars in town (you bring your own bottle of rum and leave it under the table, just ask for a couple of cups, and hang out). Saturday night he took me to the palenque, a cave a little ways outside of town where they’ve set up a nightclub, and yesterday he invited me to a delicious dinner of rice, beans, fried fish, and chicken in some kind of awesome gravy at his parents’ house. Hopefully whenever I have a home again I can invite him and return the favor.

So, yeah. Initial impressions here were really underwhelming but the place has grown on me tremendously. I’ve gotten used to waiting in line, to not being able to plan ahead, to just hanging out and soaking in what I can. Life here really is tremendously different, with internet as a prime example. Open internet access has apparently only been available for less than a year, and the process is… involved. You have to go to an ETECSA (the national telecommuncations company) office and wait in line to buy cards with internet access credentials, $2 an hour. Then you have to find a WiFi network – either in a fancy hotel or, interestingly enough, in the central square of pretty much every single town. This gives you the delightful contradiction of walking around a town looking at crumbling colonial houses, gigantic 50s Chevies and tiny Soviet Ladas rolling by, getting to the cute little square in the center of town by the side of a nice church or an imposing government building, and seeing everyone sitting around talking on Skype. It’s really a bit of an upside down experience. There are a couple of other Cuban particularities I’ve noticed and enjoyed. One is the common practice of calling people, even strangers, “mi amor” or “mi vida” (“my love” or “my life”, respectively). I did a bit of a double take the first time someone called me that in response to my polite order of a cheese omelet and a guava juice, but hey, it’s nice. The other thing I’ve noticed is Cubans’ memory. The story above about waiting in line is one example – more than once I’ve forgotten, in the melee, who was behind me in line, but I’ve never seen a Cuban forget. More impressive, though, are the people who run counters slinging sandwiches, coffee, juice, and omelets. You’ll have fifteen people at the window, not in any kind of line, and when someone new comes up they just head to the front and ask for what they want. The delay between ordering and getting your food can be 5-10 minutes if there are a lot of omelets being made, but the person running the show correctly matches food to person, without fail, and in the right order too. I just have no idea how they do it since when I ask someone for directions I start to forget where I’m going after the second turn. That’s life with limited access to technology I guess, the brain atrophy is delayed.

Today is going to be my last one in Vinales before I head off to what’s supposed to be a beautiful little town in the mountains called Las Terrazas. I’ll be spending two nights there and then heading to Havana on the 4th to spend the night and head out on the 5th. From Cuba I start an odyssey, 48 hours long in total, to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city on the planet, via Cancun, Lima, and Buenos Aires. The flights are all fairly short but the layovers are murder, and I’ll be sleeping in airports two nights in a row. So it goes… I’m really excited about Ushuaia – I’ve got a cruise of the Beagle channel lined up to see all kinds of sea birds, sea lions, and penguins. After that I’ll be working my way north overland through Patagonia, hoping to eat lots of beef and look at beautiful mountains, maybe even climb some. My friend Andy is coming down from Seattle to meet me in Santiago de Chile the third week of March and after that I was thinking of settling down, in Santiago or somewhere else, for a month or three to work, volunteer, program, or some combination of all three. That’s all a bit hazy at this point so we’ll see what happens, but I surely know that I’m excited. Hopefully the switch from tropical to arctic doesn’t kill me… I’ll be back with another update within a week! I swear.

When I decided to start a blog for this trip I told myself it was a good chance to practice what I was preaching about setting my mind to something and following through. I didn’t want to update it twice and then never touch it again so I told myself that I was going to have to update it at least weekly, no matter what, even with just a little blurb or photo. So that’s gone well so far… That’ll be the plan from here on out though – this post and the next to catch up on Colombia/Mexico and Cuba, respectively, and then weekly after that. Definitely. For sure.

So, Colombia and Mexico. I spent the first month of the trip traveling with Liv, with whom I traveled in Europe for a month and a half after graduating from college, and who graciously agreed to be my girlfriend about halfway through our month together in spite of my being a dirty vagrant. She’s busy finishing her Master’s in New York until May so we’ll be dating via carrier pigeon until then and planning to meet up again soon after. We started out the trip in Bogota, visiting our friend Silvana. Bogota is gigantic and lies right up against a beautiful mountain range. Silvana and her family gave us a warm welcome and showed us lots of famous Colombian hospitality, I felt part of the family the entire time we were there and even got checked up on a few times after we left. We visited their family house in Girardot for some oppressively hot sun and mosquitoes, drove around town with Camilo, her dad, and got drinks and advice from her brother Alejandro and her mom Pilar. One special experience was going to Camilo’s house for a novena. The novena is a Colombian Christmas tradition where, for each of the 9 nights before Christmas, people get together with different groups of friends and family to pray (depending…), eat, and generally be together. It’s a beautiful, joyous atmosphere and the typical food, tamales and hot chocolate, suits me just fine also. As great as the novena was the most beautiful moment of our ten days in Bogota was probably a last minute invitation to Camilo and Angie’s wedding. Camilo and Angie are good friends of Silvana’s whom I met when I spent a week in Bogota in June of last year. Then, by pure coincidence, Silvana and Camilo were separately visiting New York on the same weekend that I went to visit Liv there, so we all met up for a great day of Shake Shack and biking around Central Park. Camilo and Angie were getting married while we were in Bogota in a small, intimate ceremony at the beautiful Laguna de Cisga (sp?). A couple of friends of theirs ended up not being able to make it so when Silvana talked with Camilo before the wedding he told her to bring us along. The ceremony was perfect – right on the edge of a beautiful lake, administered by a close friend of theirs, Camilo and Angie trading touching vows with Marla the dog whimpering with excitement on the side. The reception was lots of fun (maybe even just a bit too much fun for me on the whiskey front…) and I’m overjoyed to have Camilo and Angie as friends. Next time it’ll be our turn to host.

After Bogota Liv and I went off to Cartagena. It’s a beautiful city right on the coast, baking in the Carribean sun. The old city is the main attraction, and with good reason. All beautiful colonial architecture and delicious restaurants surrounded by colonial fortifications, it’s delightful to just walk around and look. Ceviche is one of the most popular dishes in Cartagena and it’s easy to see why – the seafood is fresh and delicious, and having it raw and cold is perfect when you’ve been baking in the sun all day. We took a day for a boat tour around the Rosario Islands and to Baru, where we got our first taste of beach relaxation. The boat was a bit questionable and with choppy water on the way back there were serious tailbone concerns but luckily we made it without incident. From Cartagena we headed east a few hours, through Baranquilla, to a little town called Palomino which has good surfing beaches (too bad I can’t get up on a surfboard) and lies right next to beautiful forested mountains. One day we climbed up into the mountains and got a snapshot of beautiful, untouched jungle before spending a couple of hours lazily tubing down the river; another we just walked along the beach to see a different river; and a third we spent in Tayrona National Park, which was a real highlight. Once you get to the entrance the park is only accessible on foot or horseback so we chose the 3 hours walking through different forest scenes, giving on white sand beaches with beautiful rock formations and azure blue water (I know, I’ve been spending too much time reading tourist information leaflets). The pictures don’t do the place justice – it’s tremendous.

Some quick food highlights from Colombia: Ajiaco is a famous dish around Bogota, a soup made with 3 different types of potatoes and to which you can add chicken, avocado, cream, and other things. Piquete was incredible – it’s basically a giant grill where you choose what combination of things you want: all types of meat, potatoes, yucca, plantains, etc… They put everything in a giant basket for you and then you just eat with your hands. Liv and I had it in the mountains next to Bogota with Silvana’s dad Camilo, and, man. The pork rinds, chicken, pork, plantains, just… everything. It’s a good thing I don’t actually live in Colombia because Liv and I agreed we could eat that twice a week and I don’t think my heart would last very long. The ceviche in Cartagena was delicious, and we also took as much advantage as we could of fresh fruit juice.

From Colombia we went to Mexico city to meet up with Sofia, Liv’s current roommate in NY. We stayed with her at her parents’ beautiful new apartment (they still had boxes to unpack but gave us a fabulous welcome) and got extremely lucky with our timing – we were there the first week of January while everyone was away on vacation so the city was almost empty and we got to tour all around easily. First, though, we went and spent two nights in Valle de Bravo, about an hour and a half away from Mexico city, to do New Year’s with Pati, Sofia’s older sister. Pati is a professional paraglider (!!) and also works at a camp keeping a veritable menagerie (trained raven, boa constrictor, tarantula, scorpion, baby crocodile, among many others…) to teach kids about interacting with nature. She’s a complete badass. Valle is awesome – it’s a small, friendly town surrounded by mountains (hence paragliding) and has a big lake right in the center. We got to go up the mountain and watch a couple hundred hang- and paragliders take off (hang gliding is the big triangular sail where you’re horizontal and hold onto a bar, paragliding is with a parachute. These people are incredible – their flights can last 3-4 hours, spinning in circles in thermals to gain altitude before cruising off to a different spot and starting again), had a delicious late lunch on a rooftop terrace with a view of the lake, and met Brownie before ringing in the new year partying at his mezcaleria with the whole flying crew. The next day we went and saw the animals before heading back to Mexico city to explore. I loved Mexico city. It’s got a beautiful old center modeled after Paris, great museums, parks, everything. And obviously the food is stellar. We had delicious birria and pozole (different soups), quesadillas, alhambres, huaraches (I think that’s the name? or maybe that means flip flops…?), and of course tacos. Burritos turn out to be an American thing and aren’t really to be found in Mexico, but we didn’t miss them. After a week in Mexico city we caught a flight to Oaxaca, famous for its food and crafts, neither of which disappointed. We went and visited a famous alebrije (carved wooden figures with unbelievably intricate hand painted designs) workshop and stopped in San Bartolo to check out the famous black pottery. We also caught a bus up the mountains for some stunning views and to visit Monte Alban, a site with impressive ancient ruins (look, sorry, I’m not really a history buff). Food highlights were the mole (took a little getting used to but it grew on me), having breakfast at the cute little bakery next door, and corn on a stick with mayonnaise, cheese, chili powder, and lime in the square. So good. From Oaxaca we hopped a flight to Merida, the capital of the state of Yucatan. We didn’t find a ton to do in Merida but it was small and had a friendly feel. From there we rented a car and drove east, in the direction of Tulum. Renting the car turned out to be a great decision, we were thrilled with the freedom it gave us to explore instead of always being handcuffed to a tour group. We went to Chichen Itza (cool but again, I’m no history buff) and then stopped off at several cenotes before spending a night in Valladolid, halfway to Tulum. The cenotes were one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. They’re cave/well/underground pool things that you can swim in which generally have crystal clear water and some of which are astonishingly deep, 300 feet or more. They’re all similar but different – some are caves with a tiny opening at the top, some are open to the air, some have tree roots growing 50 feet down into the water, some are deep, some are wide, etc… We ended up going to 6 or so over two days and it didn’t get old for a second. After Valladolid we arrived in Tulum, on the east coast. Tulum has its own set of ancient ruins which are striking because they’re right up against the ocean. We visited those and also took a day to drive a few hours down to Bacalar, right next to the border with Belize, to check out the 7 color lake. The name comes from the fact that the water ends up being 7 different shades of blue in different parts of the lake because of depth, what’s on the bottom, etc… In the shallow parts it’s crystal clear and the whole thing was beautiful, a great day trip. We also stopped by a protected area for spider monkeys and got to see a group of them chowing down right where we parked. On our last day in Tulum we forked over the money to take a boat tour of the Sian Kaan nature reserve. After 30 bumpy minutes in a van we hopped on 6 person boats and cruised through 3 giant lakes with mangroves, islands, tons of birds, and apparently crocodiles and manatees, which we unfortunately didn’t see because the storm the day before had clouded up the water. After crossing the lagoons we grabbed a snack before heading out on the ocean to look for sea turtles and dolphins. Unfortunately the turtles didn’t cooperate but we were lucky with the dolphins, finding two big pods, one of which even included a playful little baby dolphin! Dawwwwwww. We also got to snorkel a bit at a coral reef before getting lunch and then heading home.

That pretty much wrapped it up for Mexico. The next day we just drove up to Cancun and relaxed, and then jetted off on our separate ways the day after that. This whole part of the trip was special since I was traveling with Liv, for a second time even! We’re lucky to form a great traveling duo – we both like to get out into nature, eat everything, meet people, and try new things. We’re different but I think we complement each other nicely, and we certainly keep each other entertained. I’m really grateful that we got to spend this month traveling together and I’m excited that we’re going to stay together intercontinentally, regardless of the challenges. It was an awfully hard goodbye in the airport in Cancun but I’m also excited for the rest of the trip, cruising around by myself, going with the flow, and seeing where I end up. I’m less sure now that I want to travel as long as possible, since a year or more of separation would be hard, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. We’ve been bandying around the idea of just picking somewhere abroad and moving there together, since we both want to live abroad, so that might end up being a perfect solution. We’ll see what happens…

Next up I’m meeting my mom in Cuba!