Time Travels When I was 19 I decided to try to make a vague dream a reality and received a chance of a lifetime... I could spend three months with Academia Tahuichi, in Bolivia... I would train with the team that was preparing for an international tournament, the Dallas Cup. My investment was to quit my job, pay for my flight, my food, my lodging and sweat like I had never sweat before. I paid gladly. After the first few days of training, I was sure I was in hell...everything hurt...even my eyelashes! I had run up and down steep sand [View Full Entry]

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Voices from the past... I wrote my mother after the last entry, asking where she and my father had parted ways... ... it was in a small town on lake Atitlán called Panajachel, near the river... I know that this borders on the ridiculous... I wrote that blog from Panajachel! Either my subconscious knew this and pushed me this way, or, it was just serendipity, or simple coincidence, quien sabe? The funny thing is that, I had no intention at all of going to Pana. My plan (in as much as I plan...) was to go down to Rio Dulce, [View Full Entry]

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GUATEMALA Somehow, she has been calling since childhood, when I first visited in 1973, still in cloth diapers, where my parents decided to travel different ways... Guatemala has been beckoning since I was one. Perhaps, by returning, I can be One, again... Since the beginning of this voyage, there has been a sense of awakening, of dreams not yet dreamt becoming real, of finding myself while shedding bits of a past being, a being carrying energetic loads of karma that were unknowingly gathered and treasured as my own. With every day, the Wow [View Full Entry]

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Lovely Planet, not Lonely at all! As I have already mentioned, I am an extremely lucky person. Lucky to have met so many marvellous people, been to so many places, even to have seen it rain in paradise. Paradise in the rain remains... Paradise! People have made the world my oyster! My non-clusion (avoiding any conclusions...) is that paradise is any place where you connect with the people and vice-versa The weather does help! If any place is paradise when the people are connecting with you, then... Welcome to [View Full Entry]

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Wandering the World, Wondering Wistfully Why We Wander, Wonder.... Ok, ok! I guess it could just go on forever! Whatever. Am in Queenstown, South Island, New Zealand, the other side of the earth from Europe, waiting to see if the weather clears so that Alberto and I can jump out of a plane from 12000 feet or four kilometers, see the bottom of the earth from above, at 200 kilometers per hour... then hope that the parachute opens... ... ... ... Don't ask why we want to do this... must be some sort of life challenge that I have down [View Full Entry]

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How do you make decisions? How do you know what to choose? I haven't got a clue what to write about as I sit at a sidewalk cafe' in Bondi Beach, sipping a deliciously aromatic black coffee and nibble at a brownie, savouring the decadent chocolate taste...almost too sweet, yet, the perfect accompaniment to the bitter liquid... bitter yet tasty, ever since a decision to stop adding sugar to anything I drink over six years ago, I notice tastes a lot more. A decision, made on the basis of information gleaned from a book on the virtues of sugar (none) and [View Full Entry]

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Cambodia, what's it like anyway? Two weeks in two days... a bit of delicious decadence included Angkor Wat was on my list of places to go when I was planning this round-the-world trip, then, Felix casually mentioned that he was running the Cambodian Children's Painting Project, so, I pledged to visit him. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Of course, Felix said that I would never get all the way to Sihanoukville and that it was all just Summer-at-the-beach-on-Ibiza talk. He couldn't believe his ears when I called him up and invited him to dinner, on the [View Full Entry]

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Rest and Recreation After a few days rest in Goa, to let Alberto get a bit acclimatised to the sun, fun and surf, we went on our mini-missions. Alberto, intrepid travel newcomer, managed to get on a train halfway across India to adopt a girl in Andhra Pradesh at the Vicente Ferrer NGO, with train changes and confusing information, he made it without a hitch, had a great time, even finding time to play football with some of the children and drinking litres of coconut water daily, whilst carrying kilos of flowers around his neck, garlands of thanks! On the way [View Full Entry]

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After the Sun... Mumbai! Where everybody is zooming along trying to pay for one of the most expensive living areas of the world, not shy about asking for tips or of saying that they consider what you have given to be radically less than what is warranted, expected or even correct! After a day-long tour of all the typical sights, our driver was very disgusted at our 200 rupee tip. Strange, because, when I asked him how much the fine was for not wearing a seat-belt, he said that it was really expensive, which when further pressed, turned out to [View Full Entry]

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Connections and Print-outs Back to some of my roots! My fifth time to India, marked by adventure, as usual! From Cape Town to Johannesburg to Mumbai to Goa, with three different airline companies, and three different tickets... which meant that, were any flights to be delayed, I would be in logistic trouble! The flight out of Cape Town was delayed... by ten minutes, but, you know that feeling of cold sweat and resignation/hope until the next announcement... to board! Whew! In Jo'burg, change from domestic to International and queue to check in, under the stipulated [View Full Entry]

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