Lately You’ve Been Tanned – Suspicious for the Winter

Ah cherubs, il tempo passo as my dad will no doubt be saying very soon (if he isn’t already saying every day along with ah, il vento di odgi and other misspelt (by me) words of Italian wisdom) and indeed the time has passed and I have become overfond of the italic key but you know what? Patience. For I have recently cheated death and you should all be happy that I’ve got the laptop to tell the tale, never mind the fingers to do it with.

So let’s not get bogged down in details about Brazil and its impossibly hot and happy inhabitants. Let’s talk no more about the surliness of porteños in spring and the strange, grey light that fills BsAs as summer edges closer. Let us never mention argentine taxi drivers who, on seeing a fare shed a tear at the departure of a boyfriend, offer strange and potentially stalkerish services that inspire a whole new vocabulary of previously unknown Spanish from the fare in question. Let us, in particular, not dwell upon New York. There is nothing that can be said about New York that hasn’t been said by someone else. I refuse to be drawn further.

Let us instead think about the amazing adventure of Aruba and the fact that although I have no real love for the letter A (apart from how it pertains to A*) I have luckily found myself here instead of, oh, say, I don’t know…the Dominican Republic. Where 45 people died recently as a result of an unexpected hurricane. 45 people (at least) died in the city that I was planning on staying in.

So the situation was like this – I had a few days to get the hell out of the states. I had been planning on a red-leaf filled train ride up to see my kanuk friends but suddenly at the last minute the whole thing was thrown into doubt. And as I lounged against the till for my last ever shift as a waitress my friend wandered in and said “why not go somewhere warm? Fuck Canada!”

Indeed. Why the fuck not go somewhere warm? I have never been as cold, as hairy or as depressed as I was in New York from the end of November on. Nor did it help that every time I tottered out into the snow lined outdoors and gasped and coughed at the cold any local near me would turn around and mutter (through the three layers of wool and the scarf wrapped around their face) “its only going to get worse you know”. You know what I know? You can all get fucked, all you crazy northerners. It’s not normal to live like this. It isn’t. Don’t look at me like that; it is simply not natural to be this cold.

So visa time came and although part of me regretted not being able to book a ticket back to Oz another part of me was astounded at how far I could go for so cheap and how…warm I could be. Waking up on a hungover Sunday I asked my friend C where Aruba was. She didn’t know either but assured me it was somewhere warm. Wtf I thought, it has to be better than Montreal (although...can anywhere be better than Montreal? The jury is still out). After booking my ticket I discovered that Aruba was worse, even, than Fiji. There is nowhere “cheap” to stay in Aruba. It is a resort island from start to finish. It is never really not tourist season. The beach is ringed by enormous, castle-like high rise resort hotels to such an extent that taxi fares are divided up between “low rise hotels” and “high rise hotels” (high rise hotels are further away from the main shopping strip). It has its own currency but you can pay for everything in American dollars because so many Americans come here every week. Because it was technically a part of the Dutch colonies for years all the local speak English as well as Dutch, Spanish and the local patois which is a mix of Dutch, English, Spanish and Portuguese. The development of the island is such that no American tourist need ever be too far from a fast-food franchise, an enormous hotel chain or, failing the first two, a massive restaurant designed to make one feel as if one were right back in the suburbs one had just left. Aruba has everything.

It also has some of the most beautiful beaches (although…not as good as the ones near Cartagena) and the most amazing weather of anywhere I’ve been in a long long time. Today I tried to walk to the lighthouse (deeply unsuccessful. No one walks here. There are no footpaths, to begin with, and even if you can find a flat path to walk on everyone has to beep at you as they pass) and then I had a swim. In the afternoon. After 5pm, in fact, although it was still light (two things that it would be impossible to say in New York). I watched a swim school of little kids try to learn how to dive off some structure a couple of meters from the shore that I had already swum out to, lounged on and then swam back to shore from. I stared at the sky and thought about how warm I was and how beautiful everything was and vowed that I would never, ever, live in the north when I grew up.

Unfortunately airfares wait for no malingerer and so I must bid adieu to my friendly band of lizards and tree dwelling iguanas that greet me every morning when I sit outside my room drinking coffee. I must say goodbye to the roosters and chickens that occupy the same trees in the afternoons and cluck and squawk through the lazy daylight hours. I have to go back to the land of ice and snow but only for a few more weeks and then its back to my travelling ways.

Catch you in Italy, suckers

I've Been To Bali! Er, Ecuador

So when last I wrote, I was grumpy and waterlogged in Quito. Quito will never be invited to any parties of mine, I've decided, since it lacks direction and a clear centre and its buildings are always in the completely opposite direction to that indicated in the tiny little Lonely Planet Map. The only thing in Quito's favour is its plethora of second hand book shops and its well educated checkout boys at its supermarkets who can attempt to flirt in two (2) languages whilst simultaneously scanning items. Not good enough though, Quito, I'm afraid. You and your high altitudes and dreary weather can get stuffed.

Deciding to condemn any and all of Ecuador's remaining Mountain Charms to the bin, I set off for the coast for a week of doing nothing at all except working on my tan and eating fish. I accomplished these lofty ambitions admirably and although I suspect that great weather and cheap food may make one a less intelligent introspective and morose person, being able to ponder which cheesy mills and boones-esque adjective for "tanned" I would choose to describe myself each day (would it be caramel? toffee? honey? and if honey, which type? blue gum? So many questions) certainly made the time pass pleasantly. As did unexpectedly meeting a fellow Melbourne girl named Carly who understood the need to dress well even while backpacking and has been a total convert to the Vigilant Society Against Forbidden Knitwear. So Pacific coast of Ecuador with your sleepy seaside towns and persistantly chatty locals (how many times can a girl say "no se!" before one gives up? Approximately 30minutes), I salute you!

Currently I am in Peru, home of all the most forbidden of Forbidden Knitwear and a country that seems determined to make sure I do not sleep whilst I am here. Since homicide seems frowned upon I will attempt to leave after not contracting malaria on the edge of The Jungle and not buying anything with an alpaca on it.

Wish me luck