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Travel blog of a year-long round the world trip.
Currently in London, UK.
(the first leg of my trip in a nutshell -- route as originally planned).

South America in my Nutshell: A Different Picture [Bogota, Colombia, 19/04/04] 

Life is still. Full stop, period, the end. Caracas - Bogota: a mere 634 miles separate the two yet for some reason it took me more than 7000 and through eight countries along the way. What did all this mean? 7000 miles or so ago I didn't quite know what it would all mean and hoped for revelations on the way. But life ain't that simple and finding meaning in a meaningless world may forever be doomed to failure; the only ones who ever feel they come close may be lovers, poets and the blindly religious. Yet all that is still so terribly far away from what we truly crave in our lives.
So, I lie here on my bed in my cheap hotel in Bogota trying to piece it all together from memory, all the while acutely aware of my impending failure and of a clock ticking mechanically somewhere in the silence.

The story started 24 weeks ago in Caracas. I felt like a naked new-born and I was on my own, truly alone, for the first time in my life. It was frightening. I was afraid of being found robbed and murdered in an alley-way - I was afraid of never being found - before my life had barely begun. So I started beginning my life; maybe I felt that luck was on my side.
The tiniest events - finding a bed, keeping myself from starving, walking a few blocks, posting a blog entry, meeting the first other traveller, booking a bus - they all set off hormonal fireworks inside of me. My body and brain were working hard to adjust to the freedom and the burden of being responsible to no-one but myself.
Churning up the miles on my first long-distance bus ride I was surprised by people wanting to be your friend and helping you just because you're a lonely foreigner in their country. My Spanish at any rate was still close to useless and our contact could have only been superficial at best but they didn't seem to mind. What a good world I was in.
In Ciudad Bolivar I found a safe place where I could gather myself and try to understand what it was I was looking for. Endless numbers of travellers passed through the hostel there, many staying only one night, swapping stories of places and adventures. I was envious of them yet I listened and the stories gave me confidence. I started coming to terms with what it was I had. Waking up every day in a hammock, blinking my eyes at the sun and feeling the warm morning air drifting through the roof terrace. It was freedom; the freedom to use my life to do whatever it wanted to be used for.
My life chose to take its time to savour that feeling. But then, one morning, I heard a ticking sound. It was my newly bought, chunky alarm clock and it reminded me of the far-away crocodile that threatens Neverland, the place without time. Time can bring all to an end, even freedom and always life.
With the realisation of limited time came the realisation of the necessity of choices and the subconscious, almost arbitrary manner in which these are usually made. But when travelling, any choice made has an effect far greater that most choices faced in life in its 'normal' stationary state.
Somehow I thus chose the almost remote jungle, a waterfall in the middle of nowhere, a place thick with the dust of a frontiertown on its roads, and an isolated community of Indios and societal 'dropouts'. Then I chose Brasil and did not choose Angel Falls, Mount Roraima, and hundreds of other natural and cultural marvels that could fill several lifetimes - if chosen.
I left Venezuela feeling I had seen a lot yet knowing I had seen nothing.
I entered the North of Brasil with nothing but confusion and the longing for more cheap adventure and quick adrenaline thrills. But on a mere 30-day visa from the unsympathetic Brasilian officials at the Venezuelan border I instead felt irritation at the arrogant pride of Brasilians in their supposedly magnificent country. Up in Manaus this magnificence seemed little more than a stinking, urban mess long beyond its prime in the middle of the wild jungle that was giving way to humans and their filthy needs. Most people were unfriendly, uneducated and spoke a messed up type of Portuguese, making no effort to be intelligible to the few foreigners who'd made it to this isolated part of the world. I had never felt as lonely and as lost as I felt back in Manaus and I decided to show the crocodile and the Brasilians how fast I could move through this huge country. Argentina promised bigger and better things to me at the time.
Even with these best of intentions in mind I couldn't help but starting to warm to Brasil, little by little. But I didn't know this yet in Manaus nor when I was still drifting down the Amazon on its disgusting boats. I don't think I knew it when I stopped in Santarem either, nor when I finally reached Belem after 5 days on the water, in sickness and in health. The mortality and fragility of my own body hit me and I considered not eating and drinking any crap off the street or the boats anymore. But after recovery you always feel invincible again.
The strange thing is that I don't anymore remember what made me decide to go to Sao Luis instead of rushing ahead to Fortaleza as I had originally planned. But I do remember that it was a choice weirdly made within split seconds at Belem's bus station. Probably I didn't really know why I did it back then either. With the benefit of hindsight maybe it was that gradual warmth that I was feeling for the country or a suspicion of just how diverse Brasil is and how many surprises could lie forever hidden to me along the coast between Belem and Fortaleza. Indeed, I would later consciously realise that calling Brasil one country is like calling Europe one country in a cultural sense.
In Sao Luis I then finally got the first hint of the Brasil that is the stuff of legends: the mix of Africa, Europe, South America and Indigenous hit me through the music, the people and the vibrations in the air.
I was charged, excited to see more and when I stretched out on the fishing boat full of stoned fishermen, drifting lazily but purposefully through the Parnaibo delta, I told myself that this was it. It had to be, it was the stuff of my dreams - no, it was reality surpassing them by miles and I tried to listen inside of myself for an appropriate feeling: freedom? The feeling was good but it wasn't the clear, shining tone I had expected. Maybe the lack of meaning dilutes such tones but I don't really know.
On arrival in Jericoacoara I found out how some others were beating time, or at least giving them the illusion of victory, amongst palm trees, sand dunes and beaches. A perfect place for urbanites sick of the rat-race.
And then, suddenly, time stopped for me too. The second-worst event I had imagined had occurred; it was just slightly better than being found dead in an alley. I had lost my diary. Somehow it felt like all the memories I had made until then seeped from me - memories I had wanted to save for those rainy days in the London rat-race. It was as though the crocodile had taken a huge bite out of my brain.
Thus lobotomised I began my therapy sessions to get over this trauma, pen and paper in hand. In retrospect this was probably the single most significant moment on my trip - it was all at once full of grief, reflection, reparation and finally contemplation of meaning and the 'why' of my travels, for the first time consciously. And it was - ultimately - ridiculous but it liberated me. Hell, the second-worst thing imaginable had occurred and I was surviving, moving on and learning (wiser but still paranoid, photocopyable loose pages have been my diary since).
But still the 'why' remained unanswered. I had two enemies now: an unanswered question and the crocodile, but at least I could see them both although I may have known that they were both uncrackable.
Somehow it became easier to travel that way - eyes open - and the mostly unremarkable but pleasant Fortaleza was followed by a giant leap to Salvador in the state of Bahia, whose 'motto' 'tranquilo' translates to something like 'chill out'. So I chilled out in Arembepe, the time-less mental institution and hippie commune, and celebrated something like Christmas in Lencois. It was probably in Bahia that I first started truly loving Brasil, its people, culture, attitude and diversity, and I dare anyone to go there and not to feel it.
Rio was where this love matured and then and there I gave my vows, till death do us part but I noticed a bitter taste on my tongue.
Knowing that you'll have to leave a lover is hard, especially if you've just started getting to know each other and there is still so much more to find out. It was as though I had only a blurry, incomplete photograph in my wallet, near my heart and in my mind. It seemed like everywhere I could go I would discover more and more facets of her character.
But bigamy can't work for long. I already had a wife and I learned that cheating on someone as omnipresent as time herself is impossible. I knew then than I would be her slave forever and her minion, the crocodile, chased me through Sao Paulo and Foz de Iguacu out of Brasil and into the arms of Argentina.
Once you've given your heart away and it's been broken it is hard to do so again. And Buenos Aires sure tries hard. Everything about her is eminently lovable but I knew I could find more of her type back in Europe. Still, we had our fun and I wasn't expecting anything deep again so soon after the last affair.
Cordoba too had oodles of charm but again it left me a little bored, just like that 'German' village which was wearing make-up from yester-year.
But the further I was moving North towards Bolivia the more interesting the characters of the places became. Salta was exciting - I hadn't yet seen a town like it or something I could compare it to. It was surprising and unpredictable, just like my little adventure on horseback in its countryside; the restless eel inside of me was being fed.
On I pushed northwards through Tilcara and its carnival and into Bolivia that was exuding its strange unknown influence across Argentine borders, calling to me.
In Bolivia I found a place that seemed unique to me. It was magical and unexplainable; I knew I had found a friend but also immediately knew that our relationship would remain strictly platonic. Bolivia is perhaps not a place you can love romantically and with such intensity as the pure distillation of life and hedonism that is Brasil, but love it I did and it touched me deep inside. Bolivia is no distillation but a crude, unfiltered mixture of good-hearted fun, ancient Indio traditions, stoic misery, chaos, tranquility, the overwhelming and so much more I did not get to see. And through it all seems to shine a genuine, stable happiness and calm inner peace of its people, almost no matter what their circumstance.
Bolivia will always be a wise and humbling friend to me and it taught me how to deal with one of my enemies; time was still, as ever, on my heels snapping at my ankles and driving me away and on. But as one learns to talk to an unruly child I learned a few magic words that would calm the beast and send it into momentary lapses of aggression. These words I would henceforth keep uttering like a prayer when I would feel a panic inside of me triggered by travellers or locals telling me of places. The words were: 'I'll be back'. Bolivia taught me these words and they gave me speed. Something inside of me began to feel that South America had already given me more than I had ever expected, maybe because I never knew what to expect in the first place.
So I pulled myself together for one last climactic high, which this time was laden with expectation; I raced through Chile, Cusco and straight up and down the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. It didn't disappoint and in retrospect I doubt I could have been disappointed considering my state of mind at the time.
After this self-induced and -prophecied high the travel-weariness kicked in. I don't know if it's a cliché that travelling is not living but running from life (and ultimately that statement confuses me once I start thinking about it too much) but for whatever reason I felt that I was ready to live again. A 'normal' life, wherever.
And that's what I've tried doing since then, in both Lima and Bogota. And it feels good. The urge to experience these places as a tourist has almost disappeared (or been suppressed - I haven't yet found out). I am taking it easy, enjoying myself and the company of others, I dream, I sleep, I eat. In short: life. But then again no one really knows what that means.

And that's it, all of it, the wheel has turned full circle and I have barely moved.
My alarm clock, bought 24 weeks ago in Venezuela, is still ticking loudly in my hotel room in the early morning. But I guess it doesn't really bother me much anymore.
What should bother me is that I still don't really have an answer to 'why' and I haven't really found any meaning in this whole mess behind me. The only things I thought to have found after all this are precious only to myself and lack a universal - hence they sound banale. As ultimately sounds life, mocked by time that will always be the final victor.
But maybe travelling is good. Maybe it is good because it is real. It is good because we choose it and it is good because luck does not matter. It is good because it happened. It is good because it is always unique and it will never happen again in the same way. And in the end it is good because we are not yet dead.
And if you want to look at it in this way then maybe life too is good, in spite of time.
Time can never change anything that lies in our past and present and maybe time's forward pointing arrow is the only thing that makes anything good; it continually locks away every bit of our pasts with the certainty of never being undone. Every moment in life is thus real but fleeting and urgently longs to be valuable and always unique.
But with time eternally and unstoppably moving in one direction the only valuable freedom that is left in life to make it unique is our ability to carefully and deliberately choose our place, in the x, y and z dimensions. Without that choice there may be none left at all.

And still I hear my alarm clock ticking neutrally and steadily. It looks at me in what appears to me to be a slightly Japanese way, with its neon-blue plastic housing. My eyes close and I start dreaming of a place where all the houses and roads will be of that colour; a soft, blue, glowing hum in all the streets, pulsating in silence like clockwork. The place draws me in and suddenly I find myself floating one foot above the still pulsating road. I look around and notice that I understand nothing that I see or hear. And then suddenly - a clock still ticking in a hotel room - it all means nothing again.

[I'll think about whether or not to get a digital alarm clock. While I ponder this and while I will try to go to the Gold Museum before I leave you can find pictures of, no sorry, from Bogota in Album Colombia - Bogota.]

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