Saturday, March 6, 2010

Welcome to Our Dream

Welcome, family, friends, enemies, and strangers, to the Viaje del Sueño blog.  As this is the inaugural entry, I suppose we should explain ourselves, and the purpose of our writing here.

(Sipping my coffee and collecting my thoughts...)

My wife, the poet Karla Mancero, and myself, for some time now (ever since we first met, really, in the spring of 2004), have been planning a trip to South America.  Karla was born in Guyaquil, Ecuador, but left before any clear recollection of the place could stick itself into her mind.  For her, the idea of traveling back there has been a homecoming of sorts - an exploration of the country and also the continent where she herself was entered as new life into this world.  I'll let her explain her own motives in more detail on this blog, if and when she chooses.

Myself, I have always loved traveling - blame that on my parents, who always took us on road trips along the West Coast of the United States.  Hitherto as an adult, I have wandered many parts of the United States, a few limited areas of Canada, and many European countries.  While all those places are beautiful and rugged and interesting and complicated and industrial and/or pristine and/or desolate and/or many other words in their own right, they have all shared in a few key attributes that have made such travels comfortable, namely, key Western cultural values, first-world standards, and a majority of people who know at least some smattering of English to help out a foreigner.

Going to South America seemed like an exciting and novel idea for both of us, straying very far outside of our comfort zones.  Developing nations, the Amazon rain forest, the looming Andes, ruins, gold, lost cities, promise, excitement, beauty, a continent still teaming with vibrancy, growth, and combination of the ancient and the modern.  (At least, in my own deluded romantic dreams of it.)

As the years progressed and our relationship grew stronger and deeper, Karla and I paid off our debts, stockpiled a bit of money, and got married.  All the while, the idea blossomed into something more grand, an adventure, a journey of the classic sort: wander South America, learn something of the languages, absorb the cultures and customs, experience the cuisine, embrace the history... for five months.  One months short of half a year.  The span of two seasons.  And then, one day, we committed to the idea.

Now, our departure date looms: we leave our comfortable, established lives in Baltimore, Maryland, the United States of America, the morning of April 2nd, and fly to Quito, Ecuador.  From there, we have plans to visit the cloud forest, wander down the spine of the Andes, visit Guayaquil, and find our way into Peru and down to Lima via the Pacific Coast.  From Lima, we'll fly to Cuzco, hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and then travel on to Lake Titicaca and the floating islands.  Then we'll head down to Santiago de Chile.  If our loose definition of a "plan" manifests as we've outlined it - always an iffy thing when traveling - that will be in the first weeks of June.  At that point, we'll fly across the Andes to the Atlantic Coast, landing in Montevideo, Uruguay, and, after a few days, cross over into Buenos Aires, Argentina, where we plan to stay for a solid month in a short-term studio apartment rental (a base for exploring the city and the countryside).  Finally, we'll fly back to Ecuador for the last month, arrange a tour of the Galapagos, and explore the coast in the off-season.  We'll return to Baltimore on August 30th.

That, at least, is the one-hundred-thousand foot view.  It's a fluid plan, subject to many changes as we learn about new and exciting things to do and places to visit, find out that we like or dislike certain cities or regions, and generally adjust.  It is an awesome idea to me (as in, awe-inspiring), and a bit overwhelming when not broken out in parts.  I'll be honest, I'm a little bit scared, and a part of me still can't believe I'm actually doing this.  Then another part of me chimes in and asks me what else I thought I would ever be doing with my life.  (After all, didn't I have a secret plan to keep moving east, always east, so that one day I'd be living in Thailand, perhaps, or Japan, or New Zealand, and even after that, once I'd finally circum-lived the globe, find myself returning to my native California?)

But I digress.

I've never done anything of this magnitude before (unless moving to Baltimore in 2004 with only three duffel bags, no job, and only me ex-girlfriend's studio to crash at counts).  So many questions swirl in my mind.  Will my Spanish come back to me, and will be I be able to fill in with all of the new words I'll be learning along the way?  Will Karla and I be okay at some of the heights we plan to ascend to in Ecuador and in Peru, or will we suffer from altitude sickness?  Did we really save enough money or are we going end up pan handling on the streets of Buenos Aires?  Will the anti-malaria drugs work or will I have larva floating around in my bloodstream?  Will I have ready access to coffee or will I have to learn to enjoy mate as Karla does?  How am I going to survive for days or even weeks without access to the Internet (I'm taking a sabbatical from an Internet marketing agency and there's no WiFi in Machu Picchu!)?

Ah, but if we didn't have questions, fears, if we were too confident, what would be the point?  What would we learn?  How would we learn?  A little fear is good, as long as one is confident in their own ability to learn, adapt, and overcome.  This is, after all, an adventure, an exploration, a journey, a dream trip, both physically and metaphorically.  We will traverse the outer geographies of South America, but also the inner topography of our own minds, hearts, and souls.

And so, if it isn't clear yet, the purpose of this blog is to chronicle our journey, as poets, as writers, as foodies, as explorers, as lovers' of life, culture, history, adversity, and diversity.  We invite you to join us on our journey, in body if you can swing it, but, if not, at least through Viaje del Sueño, the writings and pictures and videos we post here, and your responses to them.

When most people are settling into their mid-thirties, establishing careers, building relationships, buying houses, raising families, and generally committing to a traditional, conventional life (don't get us wrong, these are all noble pursuits), Karla and I are going against the grain, putting our comfortable American lives on hold, packing up our house into boxes and placing those boxes into storage, resigning from our jobs (Karla) or taking long sabbaticals (Brian), and embarking on what we hope will be a great adventure.  To mash-up Robert Frost with my own words, we are taking the road less traveled, and when the road dead ends, we're going to carve one ourselves into the mountains and into the jungle.  I can already hear the cries of the howler monkeys, on the other side of the equator, beckoning for us to finally arrive.

1 comment:

  1. We are so excited to be a part of your adventure! In fact, so inspired that a blog post was born: http://ontheadventure.blogspot.com/2010/03/viaje-del-sueno-dream-trip.html

    Feel free to follow our adventure! :) We'll be following yours! :)

    ReplyDelete