“I woke up in Denver this morning after my very uncomfortable $15 red-eye flight from Miami… with the conclusion that my Frontier AirPass sucks and in the future, the only other visit to Florida for me will be to KeyWest to visit Hemingway’s house to kick over his writing desk…”

“…Tomorrow I go to the cloud forests of Mindo and take one million billion pictures and swim under a water fall. And the location of where you live… is the place you are at this very moment. So live.”

It was more like a soft landing in Quito. It’s a brand new airport and immigration is easy and quick. I hit up a solo American traveler, a Revenue Consultant from Raleigh, NC in the immigration line to split a cab to Centro Histórico.

I had sorted my gear and Indiana Jones Junior here forgot his lil’ Orphan Annie Decoder Ring (amongst other things) in Taos and you’re not getting far in travels without it. Try finding one of those in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Not happening!

“…I was supposed to take a right turn at Eugene, OR and found myself driving North on the I-5 to spend a couple of nights in one of my fav places… The Seattle. Wildlife photographer, resin artist extraordinaire, mapper of cool coffee places, MsCoffeeSandy… was kind enough to take a day off from the J-O-B to do a 15,000 step birding tour of North Lake Washington.”

…I’ve never seen whales in person. I made all kinds of noises of approval and wanted to swim out to them with pleasant greetings from the bipedal beings of the landlocked places of planet earth... “hey dudes! High five!!”

… I saw the ’Vigilante’ gal wayyyyyy down the street… I got to my car, put down the windshield wiper and figured I’d be out of there quick like. Fk no, I literally turned around and she standing there with that “look” 🤨

I fumble much with the Spanish language but I’ve been in Latin America for a month and half, quickly approaching 2 months and the language is in the brain. So… the other day in some correspondence, I translated my Spanish to English using Google translator, and then ‘copy and pasted’ my English into a message… I was like “what the hell am I doing?!? I’ve been here too long…” and… so you know… I speak the very good English ☺️

This was a layover in Peru that I extended a couple days just to check it out. Lima proper was a complete hornet’s nest and was glad that I set up camp South in the bohemian surf town of Barranco.

“you'll never untangle the circumstances that brought you to this moment…” -Cohen

…but this moment I can.

I could not get oriented in this place. I thought I knew what direction I was going and was perpetually confused looking at google maps convinced that it was changing ordinal directions daily… something to do with being all upside down in the Southern Hemisphere is my scientific conclusion.

So… the lovely bus women of Buenos Aires ushered me off the bus and in the right direction in an endearing way… like a baby bird… like a little lost California baby bird.

They have something close to a croissant that is called a “medialuna” and it rocks. It has a high butter content and is rich and dense, and I believe they put an addictive powder from the Amazon jungle in it to make you want to never stop eating them.

#medialuna

I have never been anywhere with so many human beings crammed in one spot. I mean… I have officially entered the local gene pool simply by osmosis because I we were pressed so tight…

So… now… I wake up this morning in the very cool Coyoacán CDMX… surrounded by 21 million people, not far from the Frida Kahlo house… in the largest metropolitan city in the western hemisphere…

I saw lots here but far from all… because I do plan to return to the region and do have the intention of leaving something for the next time.

“I landed here purely out of circumstance. The last day of my apartment lease in Berkeley would be the end of February and couple of months ago I had set a specific date to be in San Miguel de Allende which was March 6th… and a boy needs to be somewhere in between.”