Interlude

It’s been way too long since my last blog post. But time is a strange thing, flying by at a confusingly fast and intricate pace, impossible to grasp with our simple human brains. And if it wasn’t strange enough, travelling seems to warp time into an impossibly detailed movie being played in fast-forward. A perplexing array of experiences compressed into a tiny slice of life.

This blog post is a sort of interlude in which I try to make excuses for not writing more and take stock of what has been an incredible, enriching, challenging and surreal seven months. The last thing I wrote about was my experience on the pampas tour, which actually happened four months ago. It feels like it happened yesterday but it also feels like it was in a different lifetime. I’ve done and seen so much since, and yet I still remember it so vividly, that it’s hard to make sense of and probably isn’t worth trying.

I’m currently in a city called Pisco on the Southern coast of Peru. I’ve been here since early June volunteering for an absolutely extraordinary NGO called Pisco Sin Fronteras. I will most definitely write a blog dedicated to my time here so I won’t go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that PSF has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience which has strengthened my faith in gringos (and humanity in general) and allowed me to use power tools for the first time ever. It’s also given me some absolutely amazing new friends and experiences and made it very difficult to focus on such trivial and boring things as writing a blog. But I’ll leave all of that for a future post. If I ever get around to it.

A slightly bizarre turn of events in the past few months was my brief return to London. A few months into my travels came an unexpected offer from Kourtney to fly back to London and help out with another fantastic Guy Fox project. A lot of long-term travelers dream of going home during their travels, just for a week or two, just to catch up with everyone, just to take a break from the long bus rides, the 10-bed dorms, the slightly mundane conversations which always revolve around where you’ve been and where you’re going. So when the opportunity came to do just that I couldn’t possibly say no. I flew from Lima to London, back to the ‘real world’, and had an amazing, nostalgic, slightly weird, awesome couple of weeks. Plugging back into Guy Fox was brilliant and confirmed my suspicion that it’s an organization that will always be a part of my life in some shape or form. I also had a crazy couple of weeks with all my incredible friends. Meeting new people and making new friends while travelling is amazing, and one of the best things about travelling solo. I’ve certainly met some incredible people along the way including many amazing human beings in Pisco who already feel like old friends. But sometimes you just want to be with the people who know you well and who are a part of your life. People you can fart in front of and laugh. And that’s just what I got. (Not just the opportunity to fart and laugh, also the comfort of old friendships). It confirmed just what a special group of people my friends are and how lucky I am to have them. My timing couldn’t have been better. We went on a beautiful, relaxing camping trip to the New Forest. We also went to a slightly less beautiful and not-relaxing-at-all festival where I witnessed some of the most heavy-metal people on the planet. It was heavy in every sense of the word. I don’t think I’ve laughed or moshed that hard in way too long.

Going back to London also put my time in South America into perspective. After travelling for so long I was starting to forget where I was, how many incredible things I’d experienced, and how fortunate I am to be on this fantastically bizarre adventure. Taking a step back made me realise and appreciate where I am, where I’ve been, and where I’m going.

I can’t say how long it’ll be until the next blog post but I’m glad I’ve finally got it together to give all you amazing people a bit of an update. You are all most excellent and I’ll do my best to keep writing and sharing my journey.

All my love.

Check out the pics here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150272734851890.328374.514871889&l=cfbc324e52&type=1