White sands, tired eyes

Mexico is deliciously warm. "It´s 82 degrees in Cancun," said the flight assistant as we landed in our very Mexican (read: slightly dodgy) aeroplane. It´s also humid. I´m in Tulum, south of Cancun on the Yucatan, and tomorrow I go to Belize. Bug spray! I forgot to put on my bug spray! Damn.

I think I will go to bed at eight o´clock again. Oh, sleeping ridiculously early. Tulum is filled with hostels, and my hostel is filled with very skinny very brown backpackers. I wonder if I will be that skinny and brown by the time I´m back in the States. I don´t know if it would suit me.

My Spanish is really poor. After some initial successes, I feel weighed down with my inability to say a thing. Tulum is an interesting place. So many white people. In an interesting way. Not a full out touristy way, just a lot of backpackers, which has got me thinking about backpackering, and how it relates to tourism.

I spent today lying on the most picture perfect beach. White sand, palm trees, warm, warm water. Then at 4pm a storm rolled in. You could see it coming and it was amazing, a literal wall of cloud eating up the blue sky. I ran for the bus stop, putting my head down as the wind started up. Riverlets of sand ran across the beach between my feet. It got too windy to look up at all, and then it started to rain. I huddled under the eave of a palm frond covered restaurant with two backpackers and an middle-aged American alcoholic, who complained that his taxi had been stolen by two young mothers.

Goodnight America

Austin, Texas, isn't trying hard to woo me in my last few days in its arms. The weather has been grey and rainy and generally unTexas like. There's been no impetus to get up before eleven. The girls in the house I'm staying are all systems go, getting back into a new semester, reading, learning, homeworking. It's so odd to observe it and not be involved. It feels kind of wrong.

Instead, I'm reading my Central America Lonely Planet, children's books about the Maya, and my Spanish textbook. I'm making lists, trying not to be worried about descriptions of tropical diseases, and getting excited. On Thursday morning, early, I fly out to Cancun, Mexico. It'll take me a few days to get from there to Belize, where I'm going to be volunteering at Barton Creek Outpost, somewhere in the jungle. Mmmm, jungle. I feel like there will be lots of jungle in the next couple of months, mixed with volcanoes and Mayan ruins and white sand beaches.

This is the trip that will turn me into a veteran backpacker. All my traveling before has been in lots of about three weeks before returning to somewhere familiar. This time, it'll be two or three months before I'm back in the States. Finally, I will earn my stripes.

Head above ground

Santa Barbara doesn't seem to have changed much since I've been gone. But times are strange here, as these are my last few days before I pack up and leave. To where? I literally don't know. I'm fighting off the depression that is crawling around my ankles every day now. I know that as soon as I'm in the next place, I'll feel fine. But extracting myself from an unfinished thing still feels kind of wrong.

I've given the reasons for cutting my exchange short so many times they start to sound false. But as trivial as they sound when I hear them with my own voice, I know that exchange rates and costs of living and really big loans are solid things. It's just kind of sad. And maybe I could have fought harder to stay here. At the end of last quarter, when I had the chance, two more ten-week terms and another trimester at Victoria sounded like hell. And although I don't know what the alternative is yet, I'm excited to find out. I just have to keep my head above ground a little longer. 

From Canada onwards to...

Sitting back here in sunny Santa Barbara makes Canada seem like another world. Or another country. Hmmm. Anyhow. The second half of winter vac (oh, tell me someone else wants to shorten that word! 'Vacation' is far too long) was as eventful as the first.

I visited these distant relatives on Salt Spring Island, right next to Vancouver Island. I really feel ashamed calling them relatives. It's so manipulative. Anyhow, there was a wooden house and really good mashed potatoes, and I decided to stay for trifle. I played poker with a younger cousin. There was a dog. Times were good. Getting from there to Vancouver is kind of a blur, of early morning and ferry terminal and sleeping on a very uncomfortable seat, and taking a taxi with some people I didn't know. But eventually in this big city I found one Miriam Clark, and we went and ate $3 potatoes in a very awesome diner. Vancouver was full of slush and wet. The Sky Train track overhead turned into a waterfall. It was dark. 

In Vancouver I... spent most of my money on public transport. Caught up on Wellington gossip. Saw a lot of homeless people. Saw some hipsters. Went to an unimpressive gig at a hipster bar. Slept on Miriam's couch, and barely made the bus in the morning.

Bus back to... Olympia, from which I departed on Tuesday morning in a light grey Honda Civic with the aim of making it to Chicago by 4pm Friday so I could fly back to California. It sounds insane in retrospect, and to be honest it sounded insane at the time but I did it because I wanted to. And what a country we saw! Gosh the States is so big. And empty. So far most of my time has been on the populated parts of the west coast, but there's a lot of land out there.

So we drove, and drove, and drove. Along the Columbus River in northern Oregon, tall cliffs and trees and winding.  Down eastern Oregon, starting flat then rising to a high emptiness touched with white snow. The kind of world where wolves and witches live in abandoned wooden houses. Crossing through Idaho at night, and into Utah, where the factories outside Salt Lake looked like miniature cities, all lit up. Falling asleep to find the world outside icy and white, and finally stopping in a motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere at 3am. We drove seventeen hours that first day.

The next day, New Years Eve, we made it to Colorado through the Utah I've always wanted to see. Big red mountains and stunning vistas and no people, not even Mormons. Colorado was also gorgeous, and we drove through the mountains until sundown at a condo at Copper Mountain. Then up the side of a mountain via a dirt road to a windy windy spot, a house in a dark lonely place. We stood on the balcony and drank champagne, and made New Years wishes that were whisked away by the wind. We counted down to the New Year in the hippest bar in Denver, then next morning groaned our way to the suburbs to meet some real Americans. My carmate's family have an open house brunch on New Years Day, and there was food and many friendly people who clucked at the travelers.

So the last leg. Flat flat flatness all the way to Nebraska, which was flat and filled with cattle lots that smelled terrible. Then Omaha further did us wrong, by being seemingly empty of any good places to eat at 10pm. We slept in another motel near Iowa City. The next day I remember being oddly beautiful, with classic Mid-Western barns set back from the road and feathery trees. And the Mississippi River. And Chicago, just long enough to get a stuffed pizza before my plane, like the most beautifully classic city with skyscrapers in a shade of burnt brown.

What a journey, and back to California.