Once Upon a Time in Mexico

I found him in a bar in Mexico City.   He was hunched over a book with a creased spine.  The pages swallowed him and he refused to look away as he reached for his beer, piercing through bottle and froth to the words below.  He had the habit of folding his upper lip beneath the…

The End of the World in a Hyundai Accent

We saw the universe connected from the inside out. From the heart of a capital to the edge of a continent.  From within the stone and steel and smog, piercing the sun, slashing across dusty hills. Dust turns to dirt, cactus to trees, hills flatten and lay calm.  Maps pass between hands, wind pulls at  corners,…

In the heat of Cartagena de Indias

The sun hung lazily, suspended in the Caribbean sky, the balconies cast intricate shadows along the narrow streets below, and they walked through water.  The air was a thick hot wetness, churned into a jelly by proximity to the waistline of the world. From the centre of the old city, streets of cobbled stone and…

I’m in trouble.

Well not really, but moving to Mexico isn’t going to be easy. It’s not moving to a new place that’s the problem, on the contrary, I couldn’t be more excited to step off that plane into the Mexican sun, no place to stay, with my entire life stuffed into a bag on my back.  It’s…

An infinity of sunsets

He had loved her.  That he knew.  Fiercely at first, and humbly for the rest of his life.  They had collided in a world that was brand new.  They ricocheted off of one another so intensely and with such speed that the strands of their lives became intertwined immediately, so intertwined that no thread was…

Tomorow I stop.. but tomorrow

mañana me chanto, pero mañana In my recent post, Gringos can’t dance salsa, I wrote about my inability to dance and referred to some superficial, cheesy, but incredibly catchy tunes that were popular in Chile during my year abroad.  I am writing this post to speak about some real Spanish music.  Specifically, about an awesome band and…

Viña y Valpo

From out of the breakwater, erupted colour in all directions.  In the midst of the harbour, brightly hued boxes separated and surrounded the cold grey, they outlined the men and machines working among them, and contrasted the squawking sea birds  that circled high above.  Carried by the foam and salt of the seabreeze, colour moved…

Gringos can’t dance salsa

This is an apology to the woman of Mexico, and the rest of the general population for that matter. I can’t dance. Lo siento mucho. To be fair, I have been known to bust out a killer ‘crank that soulja boy’ after too many cervezas, but let’s get real, no one wants to see that.…

I ate a guinea pig

Usually I begin my posts with some italicized words thrown together to create a visceral account of my South American adventures, I hope to give the reader a vantage point into the thoughts and feelings that coursed through my body with every experience.  I try to explain my experiences in an abstract but an emotionally…

The Birthplace of the Inca

He could not breathe. Whether it was the immense altitude that choked his heart, the beauty of the horizon that stunned his senses, or a combination of the two materialized into solid air that struck his midsection, driving the breath from his body, humbling his soul, he could not breathe. He stood at a high…