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Published: August 2nd 2008
Background
Hi.
For reference on everything that comes after, here is a brief summary of everything that came before:
• Big Bang, etc.
• 1978: I was born into an average middle class family in the Midwestern United States.
• First 23 years: Social and spiritual psychosis of suburban boredom ensues. Computer programming skills are somehow acquired along the way.
• 2001 - 2007: A successful and rewarding career in IT is sculpted, culminating in 2.5 years living and working in Madrid, Spain. The Spanish language is learned and reasonably mastered.
• 2008: Said career is summarily flushed down the toilet (European low-flow model) in order to do some traveling.
And so I came here, Northeastern Brazil, where I've spent the past 8 months or so learning Portuguese and doing a little freelance work. And although my Portuguese is not nearly as fluent and polished as my Spanish, I feel it has reached the 'Good Enough' mark on the meter stick. I can more or less communicate with any given person around here, which is great because it means my knowledge was tempered in the molten hot furnace of the Northern Brazilian dialect - a sound so difficult to understand (for me) that speaking to someone from Brasilia, São Paulo, Rio, or even Portugal is now a welcome and soothing relief.
So what next? No idea! I will probably look for a job somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. So back to the US to update the CV and see what's going on (not much, given the latest unemployment figures).
Which is where this blog comes in. I'm going to take the long way home. The idea is to catch a quick flight down south to the border with Argentina and cross over. From there, I'll take buses through Northwest Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, and Mexico.
It's kind of like Che Guevara in
The Motorcycle Diaries. Except replace the motorcycle with a dingy 1970's bus running at 135%!c(MISSING)apacity. Oh and replace the occasional severe asthma attack with the occasional crippling hangover. And instead of it all resulting in an inspired pile of Marxist rhetoric, I'll just have this blog and some hopefully stunning photos to show for it. My apologies to the International Proletariat.
There will, however, be an Alberto Granado to keep me company. Dozens and dozens of them, actually. The great thing about backpacking across a continent is the array of people you meet along the way making their own journey. Someone should write a book on the sociology of backpackers. I can think of no other situation in which complete strangers meet, become the best of friends for 2 or 3 days, then part; usually never to speak again. Some of them are crazy. Some of them are intelligent. Some of them butcher foreign languages. Some of them will save your ass. Some of them snore. But they are almost never boring. I look forward to meeting them all. Well, most of them.
Why?
Why am I doing this? The blog, that is, not the trip.
Mostly to give myself something to do during downtime. There will be a lot of time to kill while hitchhiking in the back of trucks or bumming rides on Amazon cargo boats. And since my
FREAKING USELESS MP3 player died, I'll need something to keep my mind on. This'll do.
Also, I've been helped so much over the years by fellow travelers online, this is my chance to give back a bit. I will try to include logistical information in the blog that can help others plan out a trip. But please know that I am more than happy to give any info that is missing from the blog. If you have questions about a bus route or a word in Spanish, or hostels or whatever, don't hesitate to PM me.
Why?!!??
Why am I doing this? The trip, that is, not the blog.
A lot of basic reasons. I want to eat obscene quantities of Peruvian food. I want to see the Atacama Desert. I want to see if Colombian women are as hot as everyone keeps claiming. I want to visit some good friends in Mexico...at least that's what I tell them, I really just want to eat obscene quantities of Mexican food.
But there are deeper motivations. Look: We walk around most of our lives on fairly even terrain. Along the way, there are deep dark holes down which you can fall. Some are good, some are bad. They are all traumatic. The bad ones are sometimes clearly labeled, and we do a good enough job avoiding them. Sometimes they are not, or we are not paying attention, and we fall down one. Car wreck, job loss, divorce, lymphatic cancer. These are all bad holes down which some people fall. Going away to college, marriage, career choice, having kids. These are the generally good ones that most of us consciously throw ourselves into.
Whether you fall down a bad pit or jump down a good one, the end result is very similar. Freefall, in any event, is terrifying. You plummet through the dark unknown, unsure of what lies ahead. Once it's over, you open your eyes, look around, and there you are. Still on Earth, same place, same land, same holes. The only thing that has changed is you. You went into a deep dark chasm and came out a completely different person.
What makes all this so interesting is that, very often, you fall into a 'bad' pit and realize that you came out of it better off than before. After all the copious blood loss and shattered bones subside, the permanent changes become invaluable. Maybe that car wreck forced you to face mortality in a way you never had. Maybe losing that job jolted you into revisiting an earlier dream that you end up enjoying more. It is the challenge and difficulty found at the bottom of these holes that force us to examine ourselves and our sense of Truth.
Now I've had a very good life, and I can't complain. But I've fallen down a few ridiculously bad holes. And I wouldn't change a thing. In fact they have given me such a mindset that sometimes, ignoring whether it's a good one or a bad one, I stand on the edge of a hole, looking down into the abyss. I wonder what's down there. Would it break me? Who would I be on the other side? Is he better than me?
Every once in a while the curiosity is too much, and I jump. Now I'm not quite inclined to throw myself down a gaping gorge marked 'Lymphatic Cancer', mostly because I'm too lazy to look up the risk factors on Wikipedia and alter my life style accordingly. So I've picked up a shovel and am going to dig my own hole. We'll call it Life Engineering. Custom made pitfalls with a good mix of Good and Bad to gnash up your soul and spit out a more perfect human being on the other side. Order now!
Let's not get carried away. I'm going backpacking, not becoming a silent monk or joining a radical terrorist group. Still, I'm not going the easy route. There will be a lot of jungle where tourists don't often go. There will be nights where I'm not quite sure where I will hang my hammock -- Amazon villages with no running water or electricity. This is part of it. I want to get to know people, talk to them. We'll discuss what they're missing by living how they are. We'll discuss what I'm missing by not. There will be cities full of thieves, pimps, and desperate vagrants. There will be corrupt police at border crossings who will want to plant a Ziploc bag of horribly polluted crank on my luggage and blackmail me. There will be bitterly cold hostels with no heating 4 kilometers up in the air.
There will be waterfalls, sunsets, feasts, ancient ruins, and hundreds of the friendliest people I've ever met.
And by the time I land on solid ground battered, bruised and grinning, the unemployment rate will be up to 6%!a(MISSING)nd I won't be able to find a job as easily as I could before.
That's ok.
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Bione Dudley
non-member comment
I am so jealous of you for doing the things I never could. I can't wait to hear all about your adventures. You are an amazing person who teaches me something about myself at least once a month. I'm ready to read!