Soaring at however many thousand feet up in the sky I may be, I am surprised at how sort of flat I feel. The final stretch of my homeward bound journey was something that I imagined would be filled with excitement, and highly charged emotion - especially as I have found myself yearning for home with increased frequency and longing these past few weeks. Now that it’s really happening, the truth is I feel a bit dull and depressed. I’m sure that it will be wonderful when I actually walk through the gates at Gatwick, seeing my family’s faces, and running up to hug them tightly. Then I have no doubt that, later in the week when I return to London, it will be lovely to turn the key in the door of my flat, and to throw my arms around many of the old friends I’ve missed so much. Plop, though – the reality is that when this flight lands I’m going to plummet back into a life that I left a bit open-ended, and that will require some rapid attention in order to be reshaped into a state of survivability. There will be a lot of uncertainty (in terms of finding a new job, and finding my footing again - both economically and emotionally). However, this kind of uncertainty will be different, and without the excitement and novelty that tended to accompany the unpredictability of life on the road in Latin America.
Hmm, as I look out of the window and see the little shamrock on the wing of the Aer Lingus plane (I’m travelling via Dublin – shame I won’t get the chance to hop off and see my brother there, but it’s just a short lay-over…), I think about how, although I always knew I was going to take this flight, there was always a secret fantasy in my mind that perhaps I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d meet a man, I thought to myself, get some lucky break with a job, or just get tangled up in something on my travels, something that would keep me from ever touching down again... Here I am, sat on flight EI 146, though. The turbulence of the plane after take-off, as we jerked up and down in the sky, felt a little bit like elastic-y ropes pulling me back towards the Americas, pinging in time to the voices of so many of the people I’ve met during my travels there – all the lovely people who said, “stay as long as you like”, “come back someday”, “we’ll miss you”. Ah, I will miss them too. Hopefully I will see some of them again but, if not, I suppose I have fixed my memories of the good times spent with them here in my journals. Without wanting to get too grandiose, or to make this sound like an Oscar acceptance speech (!), I really would like to thank everyone who has made an appearance on these pages – from the main characters who have cropped up time and time again in several entries, down to the one-off bit-part players who helped me out or made me laugh even though they might not have known it (the Mexican schoolgirl who hugged me after I got mugged, the funny hotel owners in Baja, the blind masseur in Peru - the list could go on and on…). Even the robbers, rip-off merchants and Patchouli Grandpa Pedants (who I didn’t feel particularly grateful towards at the time) deserve a mention, for the impact they have had on my journey has no doubt influenced how I have emerged from it. Up until now, my life has had its share of stories and distinct phases, but perhaps this has been one of the most significant. Exactly how I will have changed and developed on account of it is hard for me to gauge (perhaps everyone who knew me before I left will be the best judges of that). However, I think I’ve moved in a direction that I’m pleased with. The next quest will just be translating those changes and developments into the jazzy and efficient sounding buzzwords and slogans that prospective employers love to read on CVs and application packs – ‘resilience’, ‘aptitude for forward-thinking’, ‘ability to assimilate the unfamiliar’ (capacity to endure unending bouncy bus journeys and hostels from hell – wonder how that would have me fare against other applicants when I get back onto the job market?!)!
So, to balance out my retrospection, and before I get too concerned about the future, I’ll write a little bit about my last days in San Fransisco – a final report on my final destination, if you like (unless any of you want to read about Gosport, or Well Street in Hackney – not exactly markers on the world map, but I won’t be too dismissive of them as they are both kind of ‘home’ for me…).
The rain continued yesterday, although, in spite of it, I did go out on a good endorphin rousing run around the grey misty bay in the morning, working my glutes to get up and down all those hills (the pastel clapboard houses in San Fransisco may be so pretty, but the city is a higgledy-piggledy hotch-potch of steep slopes and rolling rises – making even traversing a few blocks a challenge, unless you give in gracefully and get a rackety old cable-car). The run really did feel great, as an untapped siphon of energy somehow seemed to have been released in me, and it made me happy to think I’ll be spending a week or so by the sea with my parents before heading to London. There I’ll be able to run along the shore to my heart’s content, breathing in the fresh sea air, and looking out onto the unmistakably English Isle of Wight…
After a promising start with the run, though, the rest of yesterday turned out to be a bit of a washout. The snooty clothes swap stores didn’t want my old gear, and I couldn’t really find what I wanted in the San Fransisco shops (shopping in big stores as opposed to street markets is something I’ve surprisingly, but perhaps fortuitously given the ‘credit crunch’, lost the knack for – all that bustle, and those bright-light-display-units kind of dazzle and overwhelm me now). Therefore, I did find myself ambling around aimlessly a bit. San Fransisco, like many large U.S. cities, is a place where you can escape into little ethnic ‘enclaves’, though, especially when it comes to seeking out somewhere to eat. Before heading back to the UK I decided to get myself a final fix of Mexican cuisine in a justifiably popular local ‘taqueria’. There, as I tucked into a plateful of steak tacos, wrapping up the spicy meat in the soft flour tortillas (the ‘authentic’ ones that smell and taste faintly of granny-ish floral perfume – sounds strange but it’s true, and it works!), I realised how much I had missed that kind of food, and how much I would continue to miss it when I got home. As any self-respecting guidebook will tell you, once you get to Mexico, any assumptions you have about the country’s cuisine will be thankfully blasted away if they were based on the nasty deep-fried, cheese laden, chimichanga Tex-Mex fare that abounds in places like Chiquitos on Leicester Square (pretty much Britain’s sole salutary nod towards Mexican dining – unless I’m mistaken). Mmm, I just couldn’t get enough of piling all those delicious homemade chile and coriander salsas, and all that chunky guacamole, onto the tacos before I rolled them up and polished them off, with dribbles of sauce happily sploshing on my place and down my sleeves. It was a good call, that meal, and I savoured every mouthful – thinking a little bit of Socorro while I ate, wondering who was staying in her house now, and enjoying her hearty home cooking.
My afternoon continued on a Latin American theme as, sick of the rain, I ended up going to the cinema for a late afternoon showing of an excellent, but essentially rather grim film called ‘Sin Nombre’. Set partly in Chiapas, Mexico (down near the Guatemalan border), and also in Honduras, the film told the intertwined stories of a Honduran family trying to live the dream and break north for the U.S. border, and of a couple of kids caught up in the grisly gang warfare that dominates the streets of the south Mexican town where they live. I won’t say too much more in case anyone reading wants to go and see the film, but I can tell you it packs a punch, and it felt like quite an appropriate thing for me to see at the end of my journey. It reminded me of the beauty of many of the places I travelled, but it also showed how, during my journeying, I had traversed some proper ‘badlands’ with ugly and violent underbellies not often seen by tourists. Some of the scenes had me averting my eyes and sharply drawing my breath, feeling thankful that I avoided getting caught up in the unremitting brutality that the gangs of Mexico and Central American ‘barrios’ unleash. Also, unpleasant as I thought some of my journeys throughout the continent were, thank goodness I never had (and probably never will have) to travel under tarpaulin on the top of a train, at the mercy of bandits and the elements, desperately risking it all to head ‘por el norte’. Very gritty stuff…
After that, I decided I needed a dose of humour, so, in the evening, I went to the hostel recommended local comedy night and, for 5 bucks (a real bargain for Saturday night entertainment), balanced things out by watching a couple of local stand-ups going through their fast and funny routines. This being San Fransisco, the comics included an overweight gay Iranian (who sent himself up in all sorts of amusing ways), and a transsexual (lots of jokes about her rather non-plussed Dad sending her Christmas and birthday cards with ‘to a very special ‘person’’ inside). There was also a former kindergarten teacher who did a particularly hilarious skit about what Morrissey’s answerphone message would sound like if he had one. If ever it has seemed like I’ve been joking North Americans in my journals, it’s all been in jest and, believe me, they can take the mick out of us pretty well too, so fair’s fair! Anyway, it ended my trip on quite an amusing note…
So I’m not sure if this will be my absolute final entry. I’ve enjoyed writing this journal so much that it will be hard to give it up, and, perhaps, in a few weeks time I’ll do some kind of epilogue to report on what happened next (just as, reading back, I wrote a sort of prologue before setting off, when I was still imagining and speculating about how everything would be once I set off). Thanks so much to everyone who has read my ramblings and, in particular, thank-you to those of you who have sent me messages and comments in the ‘guestbook’. It’s been fantastic and very morale-boosting reading those, and I’m glad I’ve kept at least some of you entertained!
Anyway, my little airline dinner will soon be landing on my lap in its plastic tray so I’d better say farewell (or ‘adios’!) now. Much love, and if I hit the travel circuit again, I’ll let you know and share some more of my stories…
P.S. Remember how I predicted a while back that my i-Pod was probably going to die and go to i-Pod heaven at some point during this trip? Well, miraculously it lasted the best part of the journey and only ‘slipped away peacefully in its owner's backpack’ a couple of days ago as I was travelling onwards from Lima. It’s a pain to have to endure this flight without music (and, as well as my camera, that will be another thing to replace when I get back home – grumble…). However, on shuffle-mode, in its dying gasps and shudders, the last song the wee thing spluttered out was ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks, which certainly made me pause. Serendipity - perhaps something really is drawing me back to the London I love, and where I belong. Perhaps it will all be O.K…
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