A few months ago I made the decision to travel overland from Argentina to Columbia, the end point being Medellin.
So that's what I did.
I left Buenos Aires and visited wineries in Mendoza.
I spent time in the hills of Valparaiso, amidst the brightly colored homes, where I saw Pablo Neruda's house and drank at communist-themed bars.
I stayed in a notorious neighborhood in Santiago where Senor Pinochet liked to conduct his torture sessions -- and I made out with a girl there.
I travelled across the highland desert from northern Chile to Bolivia in a jeep. At 10,000 feet the stars are so close that you can make out entire galaxies. At least that's what it looks like, but I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I do know there isn't anything quite like a Bolivian sunrise over an expansive salt flat -- or being chased around a salt flat by an ostrich.
I made friends with British people, made friends with Australian people, made friends with Swedish people, made friends with Italian people and made friends with locals.
I spent time in La Paz, spending my days holed up in pubs chatting with British expats and even danced with a trannie at a night club. One evening there was even the inevitable visit to the most famous speakeasy in all of Bolivia, possibly the world.
I spent a couple days at Lake Titicaca (ha!) where I hiked across an island the Incas believed to be the birthplace of the sun. As it turns out it is not the birthplace of the sun, it's just an island.
I got drunk on a bus from Bolivia to Peru and ate carved lamb served up by girls on the side of the road.
I lived in Cusco where I spent time at more pubs and made friends with a 73-year-old ex cocaine smuggler and author who was learning to take life a little easier ("I stopped doing coke two years ago!"). I missed Connecticut senator Chris Dodd one evening at the bar, but assume he did what any white tourist does with a free evening in Cusco: get fucked up on pisco sours and try and fuck any of the myriad locals that hunt gringos with money in nightclubs.
I threw up on a van ride to Machu Picchu and then actually visited Machu Picchu. I even almost died of exhaustion climbing Machu Picchu's little -- and far higher -- brother, Huayna Picchu.
I saw almost every Inca Ruin in Peru and am still baffled that, with all their feats of engineering, those little bastards never figured out the wheel.
I ate ceviche in Lima and had my brain fried by oppressive heat in a northern Peruvian town called Iquitos.
I travelled up the Amazon in a speed boat and spent a couple days on the tri-borders of Brazil, Peru and Columbia.
I revisited my favorite bars in the La Candalaria district of Bogota. I spent time with a girl who works as a nurse in the cancer ward of a hospital, making about 600 dollars a month to watch children and old people die every single week; experiences that definitely color her outlook on life.
And I ended up here in Medellin, the city of the eternal spring and old stomping ground of one Mr. Pablo Escobar. I was only supposed to be here for two weeks but it's now been almost two months. I stay in a cheap hotel in filthy downtown and deal with the days here because the nights are a ceaseless parade of booze, drugs, women and debauchery. The nights in downtown Medellin are dangerous and it's only by sheer luck that I escape some of the more precarious situations I occasionally find myself in. But they are experiences I won't be able to have when I go back the U.S. so I will continue to happily gobble them up until I travel to the Colombian coast in a week or two.
I said this city would be my end point on a transcontinental journey but I don't really feel like ending anything. I feel like another country so I'll be heading off to Panama before returning to L.A. for a few months.
But I'm sure it won't be long before I head off again. Maybe to Brazil or Asia. It depends on how I feel at that particular moment.
But I know I won't be in L.A. long because the last time I was there I lost three years of my life. I'm not interested in losing another three.
Los Angeles doesn't offer anything I want anymore.
And in closing this miscalculation others refer to as a blog, I should say that I am done with the whole thing. I only wrote this post because I didn't want to leave it with that awful last post about dogs.
I have never read a travel blog in my entire life that wasn't complete garbage. I'm certainly not doing anything to change that reality so I may as well at least try to rise above the self-importance and mediocrity that seems to be a hallmark of anyone that thinks they have something "important" to say about the act of travel ("I've learned so much about myself...", "I caught the travel bug early...").
Words from people don't do it justice. So it's best left alone.
And even if there was something important to say, why would I want to hear about it from a moron fuckhead like you?
Or me.
