Our first GoPro video. My boyfriend surfing!

Marmalade sky.

Playa Redondo, Lima, Peru.

Nikon D90

My moon, my man.

Playa Redondo, Lima, Peru.

Nikon D90

In one month almost to the date I will be setting sail from the beautiful adventure back home. 

Life flies. 

6 weeks to go.

 I took a quick trip to the Jungle a few weeks ago, and thus ended my nomadic adventures in South America. A brief update: I have been traveling South America since mid January, and I have been fortunate enough to explore Chile, Argentina, and Peru. I’ve been living in Lima for some time, studying, and making a new home for myself. Sadly, I will be returning to my original home in Vancouver, B.C. in six weeks, and all of my adventures are slowly starting to conclude themselves.

However, living in this country and settling into a to routine lifestyle has been the most gratifying and humbling experience. I have been able to connect with family, meet one of the greatest loves I will probably ever find, and drink in a culture that I never want to depart from. Culturally speaking, this experience has made me grow up in so many ways that I can’t put into one simple blog post. One thing is to support yourself in your own country, and your own language, but when you step away from your comforts, and bring those contexts to the other side of the world, everything in life gets a lot trickier, and maturity comes vital. I learned very quickly, that learning another language is no joke. And even though I am studying nine hours a week, to grasp it, I still find myself everyday, becoming humbled by language. Imagine being in a social situation, with all of course great people, but everyone in that circle, is speaking a language that is not your own, and even though you may understand 70% of the conversation, when you open your mouth to participate, nothing comes out. This is both the struggle, and beauty, of moving to the other side of the world to become culturally immersed. You find yourself in a lot of awful, amazing, embarrassing, humbling, situations, that make you want to crawl under a rock but also work that much harder because nothing is more motivating than humility. And I have learned a lot about that word in the last four and a half months. So right now I am sitting in my travel mid life crisis, because when you make a home somewhere else, going back to your old life is never appealing. Everyday I am more insistent that the social culture in this country, and in this content, could teach a lot to North Americans.

There is rarely a sense of selfishness here. The “what’s mine is yours” concept here is everywhere. It doesn’t matter that I am foreign, and I am too shy to speak Spanish and half the time don’t understand, I have never once felt excluded from any kind of social situation. This all relates to the post I uploaded when I was in Argentina, about the concept of Matte and sharing. Things are shared, passed around, given to everyone. This way of life I feel makes people happier. More excited to be alive, more appreciative of your friends, more appreciative of your family and the money you do or do not have. In North America, I feel that love is not near as celebrated as it should be. A public display of affection is almost always looked down upon. Couples who spend a lot of time together are accused of leaving their social life behind, and single life is more rewarded than commitment. Maybe the people here wouldn’t understand what I am saying because it is so normal, but the way love is celebrated here is one of the biggest cultural differences I have witnessed. You will see couples everywhere, kissing, hugging, and publically displaying their affection. And maybe to some it’s a bit over the top, but to me it’s so incredibly refreshing. To be able to kiss my boyfriend in public, wherever and no one is judging, or thinking bitterly about my action. People are as they are. And I haven’t seen that in my lifetime, ever.

South America is not perfect. I have also witnessed some aspects of life here that I obviously didn’t enjoy or wish to embody, but I am not choosing to dwell on the negative. My time here has been about growing up and finding myself, and learning about what it’s like to find out where half of me is from and take all those things with me home, and use them in the best way I can.

As my time here is now measured in weeks instead of months, I am feeling both uneasy, and terrified to let go. And then I remind myself I don’t have to.

-b

lack of movement

I have taken a leave of absence from this blog for the past few weeks, due my lack of travel updates and photos. But I promise to get writing, and upload some cultural and personal experiences I have been stewing on the last little while. 

In the mean time, here is a photo of me: 

Lost/Found in Buenos Aires. Drinking La Boca wine with my favorite person.

Photo by my talented friend and eternal travel partner Christina Lukeman. 

Do her website justice, this girl is going places: http://christinalukemanphotography.blogspot.com/

-b

The Jungle Book:

Last weekend I took off on what I think will be my last vacation outside of my current life in Lima. Flying to Puerto Maldonado was an experience in itself-I have been itching to go somewhere new for the last while and the anticipation of a weekend without telephone or Internet communication was both nerve wracking and needed.

It was a beautiful experience to cleanse myself in the remote setting, and bathe in the Jungle beauty without outside interruptions. I stayed at the Hacienda conception lodge in Madre De Dios-it was a pricey choice, but the lodge included all meals, tours, and transfers, which made the transition from city to isolation run smoother.

The few Madre de Dios photos here are taken with my Nikon D90 and have a few colour correction edits. 

-b

Electric sunset in Madre de Dios, Peru.

Taken with an iPhone 4, uploaded to Instagram but without edits.

Mid way mark reflection

I have been gone from my Vancouver nest 3 months today, and in two days I will be halfway home. This mid way mark, has brought on so much reflection on what was, and the tornado of weeks waking up in different cities and what each of those cities brought to my soul. I am feeling so full of gratitude for each experience I have been able to digest, in each country, and in each culture. There have been moments of awe that I can't even delve into with words, without tearing a part the simplicity of the moment into an extravagance defeating the purpose. To be in Chile, sitting with a French couple so in love, and so crazy, driving across South America in a VW bus, full filling each of their travel desires through each others lenses. To be in Buenos Aires, feeling electrocuted by the sound radiating from the drum ensemble La Bomba del Tiempo, sharing a no holds barred dance with a cultural center scattered with every nationality of travelers. To be in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, playing guitar and singing with strangers who become your best friends in 24 hours, forgetting about your nightclub plans and instead, drink in the comfort of the most simple social pleasures. To find a connection without the fluidity of language, but with the heart, in both Argentinean people, the passing of a matte cup, and beautiful surfing woman that is so lost, but helps me become even more found. The moment when you say goodbye to the girl who became one of your most treasured friends in only 3 weeks, in the streets where you met, after sitting at the cafe that you loved, and crying because you are so happy to have embraced and shared time with such a beautiful igniting, soul, but also to be separated from it. And when your final moment is her words echoing across the San Telmo cobblestone: "I'll see you in Vancouver." Or to be arriving in Lima, where you will be living for the next 5 months, and so riddled with goosebumps because essentially you are alone, but after one month of traveling you have learned you are never really alone, and the curiosity of what awaits is amplified by the silence of your new surroundings. The moment you find a connection to your far away family, that is now so close, and fall in love with the cousin that is now your closest friend here. To be sinking into the typhoon of lust, that is laced with all the love that you always gave, and never received, in the half way mark of a journey that started off about you, and but has become about what others have taught, shown, and given. To practice a new language everyday, and walk into a new building, filled with new education in all different ways, and find yourself tongue tied with all the new words pouring from your lips. To be humbled, by language; put it in your place. To know that just because you are proficient in one, you still must start all over in another. To know that you aren't changed, but altered, you aren't found, but you're no longer lost, and you're only half way there. 

I am heading to Madre de Dios/Puetro Maldonado in exactly 2 weeks. Can anyone suggest any lodges/tours?

tying up the nomadic ends

Well, the spontaneity of this blog is coming to a gentle close-my nomadic days are coming to an end. I started school at the Universidad del Pacifico here in Lima, Peru two weeks ago. It is strange and exhilerating to be wandering the halls of a foreign school, in a foreign language, riddled with that freshman feeling. I am finding my nose in text books, and Spanish verb conjugations more than travel books and maps. Although, it doesn't mean I still don't have that itch to pick up and go. I am planning a cleansing, isolated, terrifying jungle trip for the end of the month, and hopefully I can get my feet on Arequipa soil sometime soon after. 

Finding a home far away from home is so peaceful. You discover your favorite coffee shop, favorite nail place, favorite park to go for a run. The streets grow into familiar paths, and the used-to-be-scary-sounds outside your window at night become omitted. As I am studying Spanish here, all that I have learned through listening to others talking in three different countries, is becoming tied together and surfacing into proper sentences, conversational phrases, still packed with nerves and laced with that "I'm so ESL," anxiety. 

Nestling a new lifestyle into the center of my heart, and exhaling something new everyday. "Its the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."

-b

Post secret relevance. 

Avery having dunes nap.

Huacachina, Peru. 

Nikon D90.

I spent the last weekend with my brother in Huacachina, Peru. In my opinion, this is the most underrated and one of the beautiful spots to visit while in this country. 

It's an hour out of Paracas, 10 minutes from Ica, and two hours away from Nazca. Arriving into the small area of Huacachina is like stepping into the pocket of an oasis. The tiny town is in the shell of epic sand dunes that cradle a small lagoon, and a few hostels and restaurants. If you have the chance to go, I would not hesitate. Get on a five hour Cruz Del Sur bus from Lima, and ride some dune buggies!

All photos shot with a Nikon D90. 

-b

Me. Night creeping in Cuzco, Peru. 

Shot with a Nikon D90, a few colour correcting edits. 

My brother Avery and I, hanging out in Machu Picchu.

Shot with a Nikon D90. No edits. 

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must take mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." - Eat Pray Love.

Eat Pray Love

Elizabeth Gilbert