Afflicted with a severe form of nostalgia, we longingly looked at our pictures from the trip of our lifetimes, and noticed a lot of them which were worthy of publishing but did not have that luck. Here they are, in our third episode of Unpublished, spanning seven months of our life, from New Zealand to the USA to Central America.
There is something timeless, something grander than the human notion of time, something beyond reach of the comprehension of mere animals in the crushing silence and vast expanse of the desert.
The stillness of everything — rocks, salt, lakes, even grass unmoving in the immobile air — is contagious. It gets at you. It starts with a nudging feeling, poking inside your mind, telling you something is abnormal in the surrounding environment. There is no sound at all, no chirping birds, no rustling leaves, no scurrying rodents. You slow down, and then you stop cycling altogether, as if moving in such a fixed landscape were insulting it.
That moment is the one you begin realizing the immensity, the infinite age, of the place you find yourself in.
High up in the Andes, small Quichua village, freezing evening;
I don’t even have to cut wood to survive.
The first mouthful was a heaven-sent indulgence. After weeks of eating boiled carrots and tomatoes, we had eventually allowed ourselves chicken fillet to go with our cheap pasta. With bell peppers and marinated in cream cheese.
We were feeling like kings.
Across the water in front of us, we could see the faint lights of Carenero Island illuminating the bay. After a day of rain, the clouds had finally given us a respite and the full moon was brightly shining upon the Bocas del Toro archipelago.
“It actually could be quite pleasant here. If it were sunny.”
“I guess so,” answered Ladina.
A dive and surf center doubling as restaurant/bar, right above the water across the street, was giving a soundtrack to the moment. Smart electro with a summer mood and contagious beats. A group of Panamanian locals passed on their bicycles, loudly laughing and joking in their Spanish flavored with a Caribbean accent. The whole world seemed to tell us the rainy days were over.
Arrived in Playa el Coco, Nicaragua, one thing was clear to us: we had not seen a prettier beach for a long time. In particular, the cliffs gracing the northern side of the bay were a perfect immobile counterpoint to the vast array of moods the Pacific Ocean could take, and a perfect subject for a photography study.
After a week in Brooklyn, we were in for another move. We packed up and sat for two hours in the train, all the way to the northern end of the Bronx, to meet our new host: Kyle.
Although Kyle had never had any formal Couchsurfing guest — so this was more or less a new experience to him — he nevertheless was more qualified to be a host than many I have encountered. Opening up his door with a broad smile, he welcomed us in his apartment, made the presentations with his cats Luna and Yuuki, showed us how to get our airbed settled, and left in a hurry for his night-time work after giving us advice and recommendations — and keys to his place. He had in fact woken up early to see us, cutting on his sleep time to welcome us.
“I hadn’t even mentioned Airbnb because I thought you already knew, what with you two being globe-trotters and all!”
Liza had been unable to host us, but had looked into a number of alternatives to help us, although without success. Fortunately, Madleina, Ladina’s cousin whom we had visited two weeks earlier in the Silicon Valley, had told us about Airbnb, a community-based platform for subletting and subrenting everything from a bed to a villa. We had ended up finding the cheapest bed we could possibly hope for, given New York’s crazy accomodation prices.
Liza (Elisabeth by her real name, but it’s damn too long!) was another old friend of mine, who happened to be in New York at the same time as us. She was greatly enjoying her stay, and, as an art lover, loved the fact that she was able to go to all the museums of the city for her work. We took the opportunity to spend a fabulous evening and make a few cultural visits together.
“So now you’re staying in Brooklyn?”
We were, de facto, Brooklynites for a week.