Heading Home

Day: 424

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Two days ago we returned home, beat up and weary from the last three months on the road. The next morning after arriving home in the middle of the night I was sitting on the couch, when my step dad, Mike, asked me; “This seemed to be your hardest trip yet, huh?”.

I sat there and thought about it for a moment and the memories of constant illness (between Felicia and I, one of us was in such bad shape we couldn’t leave our room for about a third of the trip), The horrible weather and constant rains we had in Ecuador, The bus ride with me vomiting out the window for 16 hours, the constant looking over our shoulder for someone who might be following us or waiting to “bump” into us and relieve us of our things, the stress of knowing that every meal you eat might ruin your day, and the constant pressures of trying to build a healthy and loving relationship in the midst of all this. The stress throughout this last trip was heavy and Mike might have been right when he called it my “hardest trip yet”…

Then I sat there for a moment longer, and let all the good experiences wash over me; seeing the sunrise over Colca Canyon with the girl I love beside me and condors flying over me, the local Chinese immigrant we found in a Chinese food restaurant in Rurrenbaque who sat and spoke with Felicia in Chinese for an hour about how he sees the local culture, riding horses through the sunscorched deserts of Tupiza with a 15-year old guide, climbing around the inside of the old Bolivar theater with a excited local telling about his efforts to have it restored after a fire swept through it, and hundreds of other perfect moment Felicia and I would never have experienced if we hadn’t put ourselves out there in the midst of all this strife to try and find tidbits of life and excitement.

I am happy to be at home right now, its relaxing and comforting to sleep in my own bed and have clean food in the fridge… but I don’t think it will be long before I start planning and scheming on how to get away again and put myself through untold misery, to find the passion that I live my life for.

Tomorrow I turn 29. I glance back and see that a year ago I celebrated in Tibet with a bottle of vodka and had know Felicia a week. A year later as I write this and she is peacefully sleeping in my bed 5 feet away, 8829 miles from her home and, although I can tell at times she is horribly homesick for Singaporean street food, I want to thank her here for putting up with me for the last year and coming to be with me. We are unsure what the future holds for us (we are both near broke at the moment), but we are holding each other as we plunge into life.