Names First of all, I'm going to drop the habit of referring to people by their city/country. I don't think anyone really cares if I use their first name - they're using mine in their blogs. Besides, it gets unwieldy to the writing and has been confusing some of my more reading-challenged friends. Awww Fran. So for the sake of the current context, allow me to introduce you to: Cornwall = Ross Poland = Anna The Barcelonas = Joan (Catalán form of John/Juan) and Marta The French = Samuel and Sonia Drive Standing next to the window, I pull the crimson-colored curtain aside a few inches and peer out into the desert. There is nothing else to hear out here, so the sound of the approaching vehicle is detectable from quite a distance. I can't make ... read more

I am used to cold showers. Having lived in Brazil - particularly the north - you have no choice but to get used to it. The Amazon region holds one fifth of the world's fresh water supply, and most households just pull it right up out of the ground with an electric pump and have a small storage tank above the roof. The water comes up relatively warm and so it is an unnecessary and often unaffordable cost to heat it. So I took tepid showers for eight months. No problem. But this isn't the equator. This is San Pedro de Atacama. It is cold at night and the water comes out icy cold. The problem this morning is that the hostel's gas heating setup isn't working. And all the training in Brazil isn't going to ... read more

San Pedro de Atacama is a tiny town in the Chilean Atacama Desert not far from the borders with Bolivia and Argentina. Its sole purpose is to provide a base of exploration for travelers to the surrounding area's geysers, canyons, lagoons, and other geological features. The town is inhabited by about five thousand people and is divided into two pieces - tourist and residential. The tourist section is a grid of dusty, unpaved wild west streets lined with old adobe style buildings serving as shops, lodging, and tourist services. Occasionally these are interrupted by nicer stonewall constructions which house cozy restaurants with large fireplaces inside. A small and pleasant central square with trees and benches is bordered on one side by a whitewashed church. Despite being the tourist "center", locals and their families can be seen ... read more

I'm standing outside a ramshackle building located on a salt flat in the middle of the Atacama desert. Somewhere around here at some point in the past, two officials stood facing each other. One of them used the toe of a well-polished shoe to swipe a short line between them in the ashen earth. The two looked down for a moment and silently contemplated. Finally, the other official rubbed his freshly shaven chin, gave a few short nods of his graying head, and said "Bueno. Ok." The officials have faded away along with the drawn line. And aside from this small shack of an outpost guarded by a few Argentine soldiers, the border between Argentina and Chile may as well not exist. This is the driest desert in the world - parts of which have never ... read more

Day Zero I woke up yesterday this morning. The days you leave a place for good always seem incredibly long. Rush. Goodbyes. Pack. Finalize. By early afternoon, events from that very morning already feel like they took place three days before. And by evening, the idea of compiling the whole day into one cohesive picture -- 'today' -- is an exercise in futility. But in this case, today really does involve multiple rotations of the planet. For some reason related to taxes, cheaper flights out of Belem leave in the middle of the night. In my case - 4am. So I woke up at 6:30am, August 21, spent the day in farewell trauma, and am now (August 22) sitting aboard Gol flight 1681 headed toward Brasilia, then Curitiba, then Foz do Igauçu. It's a big ... read more