this particular post may be a bit light on the details, as im writing about much of it from memory, and without the aid of my journal or written notes to refresh some of the happenstance.
i spent a bit more time on the east coast of mexico.
enjoyed the beaches of cancun, playa del carmen, tulum.
went for a scuba dive in the dos ojos cenote, which was amazing.
like the blue grotto in capri. not much life down there. a few small fish. but amazing light play in the water, stalactites, stalagmites. awesome!
got a tattoo of the hunab ku afterward.
and then plans may have changed a bit...
okay, a lot.
the initial idea was to head to belize, but somewhere along the way i decided to shift gears a bit.
venezuela is so close (look at a map; its like... 2 inches away).
alejandra and francisco are there.
and i wanted to go.
i figured i could rearrange my journey to visit some of my old camp friends down there. a couple in venezuela, a couple in paraguay, a lot in brasil. . .
caracas is another enormous city (many of you know how i feel about cities), full of people, buildings, and cars that never seem to stop with the horn honking.
it was amazing to me that literally everywhere i looked, there would be cars or people.
also amazing was the fact that every ATM everywhere had a constant line.
i wondered what kind of jobs some of these people had that would enable them to hang out in a long-ass line in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, waiting to get a bit of money out.
it was great to see ale and frankie again. they used to work with me at camp erdman in hawaii, and are now back home in venezuela. we cruised around the city for awhile, waited out a crazy rain, ate some delicious venezuelan foods, had some good conversation. frankie somehow got me to eat fish. for breakfast. (i dont eat seafood, and definitely not to start my day. it was. . . not terrible ;)
went from caracas to lima, peru to santiago, chile to asuncion, paraguay. somewhere along the line, in cancun i believe, i briefly researched whether or not i needed a visa to enter the countries i was visiting. somehow was led to believe that i did not need a visa to enter paraguay. mistake #1. arrived at the airport with only my passport, and was turned around. instructed to fly to buenos aires, argentina to get a visa from the paraguayan consulate. ok, really frustrating after spending so many hours on board planes and in airports, looking forward to hanging out with clara and joaquin in asuncion. not a big deal tho, right? just a detour. fly to buenos aires, spend $140US to enter the country, find a cheap and last-minute hotel to spend the night in, head to the consulate in the morning and shell out another $100US for my visa, return to the airport, fly back to asuncion, and enjoy paraguay. almost.
the plan was on track until i arrived back at the airport to discover that at some point shortly after my arrival in the country, all flights from buenos aires were cancelled due to the eruption of the puyehue volcano in chile. of course. awesome. ironically, "puyehue" means "place of small fish", and i was about to discover just how small of a fish i really was in the great big sea of people in buenos aires.
no flights for at least the next 48 hours. so. . . take a bus up to asuncion. only about $70US for an 18 hours bus ride. not too bad, right? mistake #2. walk down to the bus station. discovered that not only is it a 3-floor, city-block-long jumble of activity, but a lot of people had had their flights cancelled and wanted to go somewhere, the bus ticketing agents dont take US dollars (i didnt have any argentine pesos because being in argentina was never part of my 'plan'), there are no money changers in the terminal, and all the ATMs are offline because everyone had already drained them of cash.
finally found a spot that would take credit cards, and went to the locutorio to call clara to confirm times before final booking. despite having charged my phone all night (a phone that doesnt work for calls and is only used for its calculator, calendar, and alarm clock functions), the battery mysteriously died right as i opened the phone to find the number i needed. haha, of course. sooo. . . either pay to use a computer to look up the number in my email, or find a place to plug in and recharge long enough to extract the necessary info. opted for option b. grabbed my charger and adaptor and scanned the locutorio to find a place to plug in. mistake #3
at this point, i had been carrying my pack around all day, everywhere i went, and thought it would be okay to set it down for a second to charge the phone. uhh... still mistake #3 i guess. had my back turned for literally 60 seconds, and that was apparently all the time that was needed for someone to grab my fairly heavy pack. wow. literally everything i own - well, except the clothes i was wearing, my ipod shuffle (charger was in the pack, of course), sunglasses, phone, charger, adaptor, and (fortunately) my passport - gone in 60 seconds. and here i was, all this time thinking that nothing could be worse than the nicholas cage movie of the same name.
so now, with no possessions, no money, no bus, no flight, no place to sleep, i walked back to the airport (yes, feeling quite dejected and sorry for myself) to spend the night or two until i could take my flight to asuncion. fortunately claras uncle-in-law eduardo lives in buenos aires, and picked me up from the airport, paid for my hotel for the night, bought my bus ticket for the next day, and gave me a few pesos to get by. muchas gracias! bought a toothbrush and toothpaste, took a shower, and went to bed. ridiculous day.
after a long and very cold bus ride north (these bus drivers loooove their AC - everyone had blankets or coats on, but the cold kept coming), i finally made it back to asuncion.
got to see clara again, meet her baby and baby daddy, met her mom and sis. cruised around asuncion, ate some delicious food, got to visit itaipu - the worlds largest hydroelectric plant, and took a ride over to brasil to see iguazu falls...good times.
it took me a few days to get over my shock and anger at the robbery. the feeling that id been violated in some way. making first a mental, then a paper list of all of the things that id lost. the cursing of the person who stole it all. the wondering about what they would keep, what they would sell, and what they would throw away. are they teaching themselves to play the ukulele as i write this? will they be able to wear or sell the 2 years worth of contact lenses that i had? are they going to read my journals or discard them? delete all the pictures that i took or save them? eat the peanut m&ms that i had? use the copy of my passport or my immunization records? overdose on my malaria pills?
finally i accepted what happened. put things into perspective. it could have been worse in many ways, but i still have the clothes on my back, i have my passport, i have music (even if i cant listen to it because a shuffle battery lasts a day at most, and the charger is a ridiculous little thing that is uncommon in the world), i have my health, and i have love in my heart. i dont need to curse the person who stole my things, tho i hope that it was done out of a legitimate need for some or most of it. but the reality it that its not my stuff anymore. the plan is to go with the flow, and all of those things - replaceable or not - just flowed away from me.
its easy to be angry, play the victim, hold onto resentment. . . its really just easier to let it go. there wasnt anything in there that i really needed. well, except my deodorant. and i miss writing in my journal and playing the uke.
but now im on a new and different adventure. and i have a lot less shit to carry around and try to keep an eye on. im going to accept this as a sign that its time to change direction. at least for now.
so. . . im heading up to nyc again.
gonna work for sean and jacob for the summer. try to make some money in the next coupla months, then start over. maybe head up to nova scotia for jenna and jons wedding. head back to hawaii to find some work in my real home. before the cold comes to the northeast.
perhaps ill be seeing some of you soon.
aloha
