It's a beautiful day in Salida. I'm sitting in Salida Café (where I've been for most of the day) researching places to live in Buenos Aires, where I'll be for November and December. I'm about three weeks away from embarking on another adventure, this time to Perú, Argentina, and Chile. I don't have concrete plans for most of this yet, but I'm okay with that. Flexibility is something I'm glad to have come by, though it may sometimes drive my mom a little crazy. Despite my tendency to plan every hour of my day, I'm attempting to take a more easy-peasy approach to my upcoming travels, relishing in my newfound ability to do whatever I'm moved to do. As of this moment, this is what I know: Perú is waiting to welcome me for 3 whole weeks, where I'll travel around, spending a good several days in each place I go, really getting to know them all. I did the whole one-city-a-day thing last summer in Europe, and I've definitely decided that isn't my style. Yes, I'll miss seeing some things because I didn't allow the time to go through a whole laundry list of tourist spots, but on the other hand, I'll be able to say that I got well acquainted with the places I did visit.
After Perú comes Argentina, Buenos Aires more specifically. I'll get there a couple days before my birthday and about a week before I start my CELTA (English teaching certificate) class. I'm not sure that I'm really looking forward to hours and hours of school again (think the block plan, but on mild steroids), but it will be good for me to meet some new people and put myself through a training course that should prove to be useful for my future plans, whatever they turn out to be. Though I'm not much of a city person, a part of me is looking forward to a month in a metropolis with 13 million other people. It will be a sharp contrast to my time in Chile, which begins just after we ring in the new year.
From the beginning of January until the end of April, I'll be interning with Conservacion Patagonica as a host at the small lodge in the future Patagonia National Park. Park headquarters are right in the middle of the Patagonian wilderness, and I can't even begin to convey how much I'm looking forward to being in such an isolated and positively beautiful spot. In addition to being the lodge's host/bartender/assistant cook (hopefully), I'm hoping to help out with trail building, teaching English, giving tours...basically, whatever I can get my hands into. I absolutely love what CP is trying to do, and so I want to learn about and be involved in as much of it as I can. This is really the humongous cherry on top of my South American cake.
This will be the longest consecutive amount of time that I've spent away from home and traveling around, but I'm not nervous...just super excited. I've gotten such support and encouragement from the people who know what I'm planning to do for the next 7 months, and that just feeds the fire. I'm hoping to keep this blog relatively up to date, as much for my sake as for everyone else's.
But enough computer time for now. Time to go get outside and enjoy the beautiful Colorado day.
