Half-Time

Yesterday was the day I had been dreading.

I started anticipating its approach about a month ago, bracing myself against its onslaught. I expected the realization of its significance to hit me like a ton of bricks, forcing me with its arrival to acknowledge my deepest feelings and doubts.

Well, none of that came to pass. Like a minor birthday or anniversary, this seemingly-important day came and went with an anti-climactic "wah waaaaah".

Yesterday, you see, was the half-way point of our trip. In exactly six months, we will have taken the last flight of our round the world ticket. In six months we’ll be back in Europe. Back home.

In six months, it will all be over.

So you can imagine that we expected to feel some profound emotion about the passing of that milestone: pride, dread, relief, I don’t know, something.

But really, the only thing we felt was acceptance.  We realize that we have as much time ahead of us as we do behind us; that there is as much opportunity to experience the world as we have already experienced in the last six months.

And we can accept that.

We have no regrets, no bad feelings about the passing of time, no real desire to slow down or speed up the clock. Looking back, we have done a lot since the start of the trip. On one hand, it feels like the time has flown by, but on the other hand, we feel like the start of our trip was years ago.

For example, I was thinking about our jungle tour the other day and what we were wearing during certain parts of it. It was an unexpected shock to realize that the clothes in our backpacks back then are the exact same clothes that are still in our backpacks almost six months later. The jungle feels like another trip completely, something far off in our pasts. It’s as if traveling has become our normal, everyday life, and each new place we go is a separate mini-vacation that has nothing to do with the previous destination.

People keep asking us how we are feeling now that we are half way through our trip: Are we still liking it? Are we sick of travelling? Have we started thinking about what we will do when it’s over? The short answer is yes, no and kinda.

The long answer is that we are (still) loving this trip. Seriously, I don’t know how better to express it. This has been the best decision of our lives and we are having an absolute blast. Every new place we go and new experience we have teaches us more about the world, about each other and about ourselves.

And it’s fun. Whether we are visiting a chaotic market in Bolivia with dead sheep opened up on the sidewalk, having a heated political discussion with one of our volunteering hosts or road-tripping around New Zealand in a giant camper van singing George Michael songs, we are having a fantastic time and making memories that we will never forget. I don’t know how better to explain it without sounding like a Hallmark card.

And no, we are not sick of travelling. For that, I thank our decision to volunteer along the way. Staying in one place to work for a few weeks every three months or so gives us a much-needed break from the little stresses and discomforts of backpacking that can wear on you after a while. Volunteering gives us a break from hostels and bus rides, from spending money and constantly being on the move. By the time we are finished with a volunteering assignment, we are ready, excited even, to get back on the road. This little respite, in addition to the invaluable learning opportunity working abroad provides us, makes volunteering one of the best parts of the trip.

Before we started this year-long adventure, we were worried about the things that we would have to live without, the comforts of “normal” life that we would miss along the way. Highest on that list was our own space: our own glorious, comfortable, solitary place that we could call our own. Surprisingly though, we haven’t really had a problem finding that, even on the road. We had it in our tiny cabin on the farm when we were volunteering in Argentina, when we rented an apartment in Chile, when we had our camper van in New Zealand. Sure, it’s not our own couch in our cozy apartment in Switzerland, but we quickly adapted and realized that it is possible to find our own little space in the world, no matter where we are.

There are a few things, however, that we do miss. Before I get into them, let me preface it by saying that these are tiny, insignificant little holes in our comfort. They are puny nothings and do not hinder our enjoyment of the trip in the least. I always feel like the biggest a-hole complaining or talking about what I don’t have when I am in the middle, literally, of an incredible life experience that few people are lucky enough to have. So, please, take this with a grain of salt and forgive me for being an insolent, unappreciative brat, especially after you hear what I'm about to say.

I miss looking good. There, I said it. It’s lame, I know, but it’s true. I miss dressing up and wearing heels.  I miss picking out an outfit, doing my make-up and then looking in the mirror and loving what I see (and yes, I said that too: loving it). It’s been over six months since I have used a hair dryer, since I’ve worn heels or perfume or lipstick. It’s been six months since I’ve worn jeans for god’s sake. And I actually miss all of that. I find myself looking at pictures Vincent took of me to test his camera before the trip with a kind of nostalgic longing that one normally reserves for a someone who has passed away. I mean, look at the “before” pictures:

RIP, hot stuff.

And now look at what I’ve been reduced to after six months of zip-off pants and sports bras.

Oh, the androgyny!

At first, having a minimalist beauty routine and wardrobe was liberating. It felt good not to care. But, damnit, I do care. And I’m not the only one.

Vincent has admitted as well that he’s fed up wearing the same convertible pants every day. He’s sick of having only one option when he wants to dress up, which happens to be exactly what he wears when he dresses down. He too longs for his old wardrobe of nice clothes and something other than hiking shoes to put on when we go out.

And it’s not just us. Other long-term travelers we talk to say the same thing. I remember one Swiss guy we met who had been traveling for five months and said that he couldn’t wait to get back to work simply because he wanted to wear a suit again. I wouldn’t go that far, but I do understand the sentiment.

Beyond our wardrobes- and this too will induce serious eye rolls- we also miss working out and having a routine for staying in shape. Yep, we are those assholes, the kind who actually miss exercising. True, we do quite a bit of walking and hiking, but I miss running so bad it hurts and Vincent yearns for his daily (well, every other day) hour at the gym. Yes, we can do make-shift exercises in our hostel room or I could run in my hiking shoes, but it’s not the same. Neither of us miss having any other routine- our jobs can suck it, for example- but not working out, really working out, has been much more difficult than we expected.

And it shows. As Vincent says, we are both a little “soft” these days…

But other than those two tiny complaints, we really don’t miss anything else. Sorry, that sounded douchey: of course we miss our friends and families too, but we expected that.  And honestly, with our friends and family spread out all over the world, we often go six months without seeing many of our loved ones anyway.  

The last question we get- do you know what you are going to do after the trip?- is one that I can’t even begin to answer in any way that isn’t flaky and noncommittal and confusing. But of course I’ll try anyway, mostly because I love the sound of my own voice.

We have had a lot to consider between the different places we have been and the kinds of volunteer work we have been doing. I personally have driven Vincent crazy with my repetitive assertion nearly every place we go that “I could live here.” It drives him insane, but it’s true! Buenos Aires, Auckland, Sydney, the countryside inland from Byron Bay; I could totally live in any of those places. Or I could happily go back to Switzerland.

See why this makes Vincent want to throw things?

Really, we are still so open that the only tentative plan we have for when the trip is over is that we are going to look for jobs in any of the places mentioned above (and any other we love in the coming six months) and see what comes up. If that's not flaky and non-committal, I don't know what is.

So that is our half-way checkup: what’s good (pretty much everything), what’s bad (lookin’ like a dude all the time) and what’s to come (most likely more places I’ll want to live in).

To wrap this up, I’ll tell you a little story to illustrate my previously expressed woes. I was looking through the “cute” pictures of me from before the trip when Vincent asked me what I was doing.

“Oh, I’m looking at pictures of myself before the trip.”

“Back when you were skinny and tan?” Vincent asked.

With a look that I hoped would turn my husband into a smoldering pile of ash, I responded, “Back when I was skinny?!”

As if correcting me, Vincent added, “And tan." 

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Do You Come from the Land Down Under?

Oh yeah, that's a "Men at Work" reference.

I do have a good excuse for it though: we are currently in the Land Down Under. (“Where women glow and men plunder”-  seriously, what does that even mean?)

Bad 80’s music aside, our first week(ish) in Oz has been a great introduction to the country. We started our stay with a weekend in Sydney, where we stayed at our friend and generous host Maura’s apartment. The great thing about staying with friends is that you have a fun, comfortable welcome in a new place and someone to explain Aussie Rules Football to you. The downside is that you spend most of the weekend eating and drinking and hanging out with friends instead of being tourists and actually seeing the city.

We did manage to tear ourselves away from the cozy, wine-filled apartment long enough to walk along Sydney Harbor one afternoon, take a few pictures of the world's most recognized opera house and eat a famous meat pie from Harry’s Café de Wheels, one of Sydney’s oldest culinary institutions. 

The Phantom of the Opera House

Harry's Famous Tiger Pie: a steak and gravy-filled pie topped with mashed potatoes and peas. Delicious.

We were also lucky enough to be invited by Maura to an Aussie Rules Football (AFL) match, where we struggled to follow the chaos that was happening on the field. 36 players, eight referees, two message runners, and a massive round field with four goal posts at each end. Even without all of the wine from the night before, I still would have had difficulty understanding what was going on.

As a last hurrah in Sydney before taking our plane out, we visited the Sydney Vivid Festival, which is a celebration of art through the colorful lighting up of Sydney monuments at night. It was spectacular and original: the perfect temporary good-bye to a city that we can't wait to explore more in a few weeks.

Sydney by Night, as seen from Maura's balcony

Vivid light show on the Opera House

Light show on the Modern Art Museum

From Sydney, we took a plane up the East Coast to Brisbane in order to catch a bus to Byron Bay, where we are spending two weeks working in the countryside on a pecan farm. It’s a similar deal to the farm we were working on in Argentina: five hours of work a day in exchange for room and board. We are living with a lovely Aussie couple who run the farm along with a pecan factory and a little country café. (A side note- they also have a hilarious teenage daughter who runs to her room and blares the opening guitar riff of “Smoke on the Water” whenever she’s mad at her parents. It’s awesome.) The area is beautiful and our hosts are great fun, which makes five hours a day of picking and sorting pecans a little more tolerable.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against a pecan or two, but after a full week of dedicating my life to the nut, I’m a little pecaned-out. The actual work tasks aren’t mind-blowingly exciting, however it has been really interesting to learn about the operation and understand all of the work that goes into growing, harvesting and processing the nuts. We’ve worked at nearly every stage of the supply chain, from shaking the trees and collecting the nuts, to working in the factory to separate, crack, sort, grind and package them. 

Another up-side is that we've had endless opportunities to giggle over juvenile "nuts" jokes, i.e. "Your nuts are huge!", "These nuts are old and wrinkly," "Stop playing with your nuts," or my personal favorite: "Can you hold my nut sack?"

Fondling my nuts

And I have to admit, I feel kind of badass working the line in a factory, like I’m some tough worker from the Industrial Revolution or something, enduring grueling conditions just to make a wage.  

Workin' the line...

Aaaand then I remember that I’m a middle class, college-educated white girl who’s choosing to volunteer in Australia for fun. Not exactly Rosie the Riveter, ya know?

When we aren’t working, we have been have a great time hanging out with our hosts: watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (it doesn’t get more Aussie than that!), going to the pub for Thursday Trivia Night and attending yet another AFL match. After seeing a second match and having the rules re-explained by die-hard fans, we’re finally starting to understand the game. Kind of. 

On a totally unrelated note, today is Vincent's and my fifth wedding anniversary. It's also our day off, so we are celebrating our special milestone by spending a rainy day lazing around on someone else's couch. I know, the romance is overwhelming.

So that's the summary of us volunteering in Australia: spending our days off being immobile sub-humans and spending our work days playing with our nuts.

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Rosie's House

I have been meaning to write this post for several days now, but I just couldn't seem to get it done.

It may be because I haven't had the time. When we weren't working, we were usually at the table having leisurely meals full of excellent food, wine and conversation with Rosie, our host. It may also be simply because I didn't know what to say. How do I explain this experience in a way that does it justice?

Someone recently asked me what has been the highlight of this trip so far, which got me thinking: what do I consider a "highlight" among a collection of experiences, sights, people and moments that are all memorable, whether they are good or bad? Trekking to Machu Picchu was certainly unforgettable, but so was the night in Sucre when we sat around our hostel courtyard with new friends and drank a case of wine, laughing and sharing stories until early morning.

Our most recent highlight falls into the latter category, that is, the experiences we have that are memorable because they are so human.We spent the last two weeks volunteering in the same region of Patagonia where we worked previously, but this time, at the home of Rosie, a middle-aged British woman who has been living in Argentina for over 30 years. Rosie lives by herself in a small wooden house on four remote acres of land and takes in a few backpackers a year to help her with gardening, fruit picking and landscaping. As "payment" for the work, she provides room and board.

But that exchange, manual labor for basic hospitality, isn't the point. Far from it.

Yes, we worked, but that part of the experience was largely forgettable. What made this place, and this person, a highlight of our trip was the exchange that went far deeper than work or meals. The true exchange took place when we would all cook together, Vincent and I clumsily learning to fold the dough to close our homemade empanadas, or watching as Rosie took yet another of her fresh fruit crumbles out of the oven. The exchange happened at the end of the meal, as one of us would serve the others another glass of wine, the conversation flowing easily. It happened when the three of us went out in town to watch a Spanish guitar concert at the small venue run by one of Rosie's acquaintances and then discussed the musical styles we like on the drive home. At those times, no one was counting work hours or making sure everything was perfectly equal. It wasn't a work exchange; it was a friendship.

And it was an opportunity for us to learn. We learned about a lifestyle that is far removed from our own- one of simplicity, little waste, sustainability and community. Rosie lives in a house smaller than our old apartment; a house heated by a fireplace enclosed in brick so as to radiate heat throughout the little area. She cooks on a wood-burning stove, which also acts as a heater, as well as an oven. She line-dries her clothes and doesn't own a TV, a dishwasher or a microwave. Her car is old enough to vote.

Rosie produces only one small plastic grocery bag of non-recyclable trash a week. Organic waste is composted, paper is burnt, glass and aluminum re-used or recycled. Her sink and bathwater are drained directly back to the land for irrigation. She and the neighbors in her small, rural community swap and share the various goods they produce: homemade jams, chutneys, juices and beers.

Rosie eats almost exclusively whole foods, often organic and mostly local, but not because it is a current trend. She doesn't buy these products to feel self-righteous about being a responsible consumer. She buys them because it's economical and ecological, and in doing so, she is supporting local producers, like herself, who are trying, often in vain, to live off the land. Her lifestyle is not easy, and part of its simplicity is a result of necessity, not ideology. Yet despite its perceived discomfort or inconvenience, there is something deeply appealing about the idea of only having what you need.

Witnessing Rosie's lifestyle and the simple comfort of her home has made us re-evaluate what we need in order to have a good quality of living. Do we really need a microwave? A dryer? Do any of us really need two or three guest rooms in our house? More than one car per adult, or a new car instead of a used one? It's so easy to confuse what we want, or what other people have, with what we actually need, and often, the more we have, the more unsatisfied we are.

While traveling, we have witnessed whole populations living with much, much less than what we consider necessary in our own countries. We have had a taste of living more simply just by backpacking with the bare essentials. But living with Rosie has been our first opportunity to experience the reality of it. It's the first time we have been able to ask about the benefits and drawbacks, to really understand what it means to simplify. And it has given us a lot to think about.

That's not to say we are going to go all Thoreau on you and go live an isolated life in the woods. It's not even to say that we will change the way we live or consume when the trip is over. It is certainly not to say that you should change your habits. I don't have the answers for myself, so I won't even begin to pretend that I have the answers for anyone else. But it has made us reconsider the way we live and the way we want to live.

Our time with Rosie taught us countless other things too. We have learned about Argentine and British culture, as well as how this particular region has changed over the last few decades. We have learned about the effects of tourism and immigration on a place, the tensions that run deep among a diverse population. We have learned a new style of cooking, which, I have to say again, is amazing. Rosie is truly a superior cook and after two weeks of eating her masterpieces, I have the thighs to prove it. We have learned the art of conversation from a host who is intelligent, funny, engaging and thoughtful.

But above all, above the endless conversations about politics, religion, environmental awareness, wine, Facebook, cooking and every other topic imaginable; above the cultural exchange and the appeal of the simple life; above everything else, we have learned that true hospitality, in its purest, most generous form, is possible.

Rosie welcomed us into her home in the fullest sense, making us feel comfortable immediately. Within a day, we felt like we were visiting an aunt or a family friend, someone whom we had known for years. Some days, when we would come in from work to find tea and cake sitting out for us or when Rosie would rub clay on my wasp stings to draw out the poison and soothe the pain, we felt like little kids at Grandma's house. It was comfortable, and comforting, and was the most "at home" we have felt since we started traveling.

To realize that this complete stranger opened her house and herself to us so readily was to witness a kind of humanity that one rarely, if ever, experiences. It is humbling and inspiring, and it makes us realize just how much potential there is by simply opening oneself to other people.

We could all stand to learn a lesson or two from someone like Rosie. I only hope that we have been able to share with her even a portion of what she has taught us.

Although if we haven't, I know she isn't keeping score.

Hard at work bunching lavender

One of our daily lunches in the garden (homemade vegetable tart and salad)

Purple Peruvian Potatoes (say that three times fast...)

The empanadas we helped make

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Frambuesas! y Nueces!

Picking raspberries beneath soaring granite mountains. Laughing with a local family over home-cooked meals. Grabbing ripe apples directly off the branch when we want a snack. And all of this before we retire to our cozy log cabin in a corner of the farm and make a fire in our wood-burning stove.

Did I mention that all of this is free?

Well I guess not entirely free. For six hours a day (five days a week) of our time and labor, we have our cabin, breakfast and lunch provided, and weekends free in an area of Argentina where there are more hikes than we could do in a year.

That's the deal for two weeks of volunteering on an organic farm in El Bolson, Argentina, in northern Patagonia. And I have to say: we are loving it.

A typical day starts at 8:00am for breakfast with the other three volunteers before working from 9:00-12:00. Lunch is prepared either by a volunteer or by the hosts and is eaten with the group around 12:30 or 1:00pm. We then clean up the kitchen and have a break until 3:00pm, when we start working again until 6:00pm. It goes pretty fast and the work isn't too physically demanding.

Where the actual work is concerned, I will admit that we were a bit naive in our expectations. When we decided to make volunteering a part of our trip, we saw it as an opportunity to learn important skills that we could use later for a possible career change. So far, we have learned the useful, resume-building competencies of collecting walnuts, digging up weeds and separating raspberries based on their ripeness. Heavy stuff.

I actually really love picking raspberries. Dead serious.

Miss March of the "Lesbian Farmers of Patagonia" Calendar 2012

Despite the rudimentary work, we are absolutely loving working outside and being active all day long. The farm itself is gorgeous and set in a stunning location, and it's nice to be in one place for more than a week.

My dog Mia. She loves me almost as much as I love her (but apparently not enough to open her eyes for our family portrait...)

Sunset on the mountains that overlook the farm

An aperitif on our makeshift patio

 This place is over-run by adorable fluffy things.

I have no witty caption, I just like this picture.

The best thing about the place, though, is our accommodation. While our cabin is extremely rustic, it is cozy, has a kitchen and a bathroom with hot water, and above all, it is private. For the last three months, we've been constantly sharing a living space with other people. We have gotten used to working around other backpackers in the kitchen when we are cooking, passing people in the hallway on our way to the bathroom and being forced to make small talk in the breakfast area before we've even had our first coffee. For the first time since we left Switzerland, we have our own space (albeit an extremely small and basic one) and it is wonderful.

Home Sweet Home

Keeping the romance alive with bunk beds

Our kitchen/dining room/entry/office

We also lucked out with our hosts, Roly and Analia, who are extremely sweet. That is, we think they are sweet, but since they only speak extremely fast, incomprehensibly-accented Spanish that sounds like a turkey's gobble, we usually only have a vague idea what they are saying and basically just try to interpret facial expressions and hand gestures. In fact, for all we know they could be insulting us during every conversation, but as long as they do it with a smile, we'll just nod with dopey grins on our faces and say, "Si, gracias!"

Just to make things even easier on us, Roly is a very kind but very excitable man who Punctuatates! Every! Sentence! With! An! Exclamation Point! He's so excited about things like walnuts (Nueces!) and raspberries (Frambuesas!) that he talks even faster than usual while giving us instructions, making it all but impossible to understand him. Below is a typical conversation between Roly and us:

Roly: Gobble gobble Nueces! Gobble this morning gobble!

Us: Si!

Roly: Gobble gobble behind the house gobble!

Us: Si...

Roly: Si, si, si! Nueces! Afterwards gobble gobble gobble! Bueno!

Us: Si, gracias!

Lunches are even more awkward, when we sit around the table with Roly and Analia and try to keep up our end of the conversation for an hour. Our Spanish is slowly improving enough that we can make basic small talk, and when Roly isn't talking about walnuts, he calms down a little and we can actually understand him. But it's still pretty painful and we sure as hell aren't having any philosophical discussions around that lunch table.
Overall, our time here is both relaxing and enriching. We are enjoying the place, the work and the people, and are managing to improve our Spanish as well.

But I think by the time we leave this weekend, I'll be glad to say goodbye to nueces.

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