Reflections on time spent away

What did I expect from my time away? In truth - I don't really know. I knew that I would see some different places, meet new cultures, immerse my self in a Spanish speaking world. But I went with very little fixed agenda - and so I never knew what my near future would bring. And it brought some lovely surprises. I made some great last minute decisions - going to study on an organic farm in Ecuador, learning to paraglide in Colombia, to revisit Colombia on my way back to England, to go to the Bristol Swing Festival as soon as I returned to England - amongst many others.

Breakfasting on popaya and mango;

Dancing the blues, the swing and the tango.

Learning was a huge part of my travels, so here's a quick list of  my experiences: climbing; paragliding; dance; yoga; pilates; circus skills; Spanish; non verbal communication; poverty; pollution; permaculture. I even learned that turquoise quite suits me.

Pollution and poverty, spread so wide;

Joy, alegría, national pride.

Everywhere I went I was asked the same questions. What do you think to our food, our people and the beauty of our women?  Well, every single country I went to had a variety of foods - both good and bad. Every single country had some really great people that I am so glad that I met, and every single country had some nice ladies. In truth, I met lots of great people from all over the globe - and much as we try to stereotype people according to their culture, I find it's individual traits that overpower all others.

Outdoor swimming; Thermal spas;

Rocky mountains; Southern stars.

I have a life which is rich with experiences, and I am relatively happy and content with this life of mine. I learned so many great things this last year - about me and about the world. But, according to Eden Ahbez "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Did I learn this? I'm not completely sure, but I have definitely left a part of my heart in Latin America.

Suicide, happiness and economics

I started thinking about this blog a long time ago, shortly after playing a drinking game with a group of people. Out of the five of us, it turns out that three had seriously contemplated suicide. This shocked me.

I remember disbelieving my friend at school when he told me that his neighbour had committed suicide. Suicide's so incredibly rare - I thought - that what's the chance of him knowing someone who's actually committed it. Whilst I'm pondering, it occurs to me that 'committing' is a strange word to use - it's like suicide is a crime or a sin… but then to actually go through with it is a life-long commitment - so maybe it's not such a strange word to use after all.

More recently, a friend of mine updated her Facebook status, admitting to depression - an incredibly brave thing to do, even in today's fairly liberal world. She received a lot of support, and many other people also admitted to stages of depression.

So this got me thinking about depression. I used to think that depression was all internal - a state of mind that you just have to pull yourself together and get through. I used to think that people were weak if they weren't able to do this. My thinking has matured since then. Unfortunately, there are still many people out there who think that way.

Now I think of life as a rollercoaster (an old cliché, I know), and it doesn't matter how "strong" or how "weak" you are, you'll still have your highs and lows. I think that I wasn't really able to recognise my own highs and lows when I was younger, though in hindsight, they were definitely there. Everyone's rollercoaster is different: I'm quite a steady state person - I don't have high highs and I don't have low lows. (Thankfully, not everyone is like me, and we have some really colourful characters in our world.) Perversely, I think that this has driven me to seek my highs in adventure sports, some of which are inherently dangerous - so although I've never really contemplated suicide, I've very often put myself in life threatening situations in order to reach my highs.

Happiness...

I'm forever thinking about making the world a better place. This often comes across as environmentalism, but I actually believe that the world will chug along no matter what we do to it - so my concern is actually to life on the planet rather than the planet itself. And so my thoughts turn to the quality of the life on the planet, and rightly or wrongly I choose to measure this quality with happiness.

I spent an interesting(!) evening cogitating the ebbs and flows of my own life, writing a full analysis (including diagrams). I decided not to publish it here as it's rather too self indulgent and arguably not at all interesting for everyone other than me. So here's the summary:

In summary, my happiness revolves around learning, being with great people, being in love, earning enough money to keep me out of debt, and applying myself to help the world. (None of this is rocket science - Maslow wrote it all down long before I did.) Note that spending doesn't feature in there. It's not that I don't enjoy spending - I bought some new clothes the other day and it made me really happy - it's just the quantity that I spend and what I spend it on. Which leads me on to an important discovery that I made this year…

(Political economics...)

Despite my interest in politics, I was a little disillusioned about the power of the large corporations of the world - they seem to have so much more influence in politics than the voters themselves. But my discovery is this… every penny we spend is a vote that we cast. If we want to vote for the large corporations then we buy things from them. If we want to support certain ethics then we buy things from the people/companies who have those ethics. I always used to look for the greatest bargain when I shopped - but there's a flaw in this thinking. If something is cheap, it probably means that there is some kind of neglect at some point in the supply chain. Slave labour, pollution, corruption. So I've put my natural financial instincts to the side. Now when I shop I think about who is getting my money - who am I voting for. That's how I'm going to make the world a better place. I end up paying a little more for what I want - but I'm a lot happier with my choices.

Economics…

Given my interest in economics, it's only fair to think about happiness in monetary terms as well, given that many people equate money with happiness. Over the last year of travelling - a year of luxury - I've spent an average of £1200/month. When I lived and worked in the UK, I spent an average of £1200/month. The same! Two major differences though - the cost of living is cheaper in South America - so I've effectively been spending more, and I've not been working. So theoretically I should have been happier during the last year, right? Well, yeah it's been a good year, but I still hit some lows. Not working is mixed - I enjoy having more time to myself, but I also miss working - I enjoy working. I like to think that I add value to the world - and though it's perfectly possible to do that without working, I think it's nice to work as well.

Bariloche in the Andes

If I'm to use one word to describe Bariloche, I'm going to use "Colourful", and you will see why.

Bariloche is this quaint city in the Andes about half way down Argentina, in northern Patagonia. It models itself on a Swiss Alpine town - right down to the ski chalets and the high quality chocolate it produces. It is chockablock full of adventure sports - rafting, kitesurfing and paragliding, as well as a world class climbing area. So what did I do?

Nothing.

Well, that's not quite true - I did loads of chilling out. But I did no adventure sports. How strange for me.

 

I walked up the mountain to the climbing area, to see what I could have done. It looked amazing. But that was just an exploratory walk - I intended to come back another day to do some climbing. But I never did. I had a variety of excuses - my insurance had run out, I didn't have a helmet, I didn't have my own gear - though in truth, these wouldn't stop me climbing if I really wanted to climb. The truth is, that I enjoy climbing with people who I know. Climbing's not just about the climbing - it's about spending the day with someone in a nice environment. And it's the same with any adventure sport. Though many of them have moments of isolation - they're generally sociable activities.

So I spent my time in Bariloche being sociable. I stayed in this organic hostel outside of the city. There were six of us there - the same six for all of the time. And we just enjoyed being with each other - working in the house and garden, cooking, dancing, chatting. There was also a trapezium in the house. I've never played on one of these before - it's brilliant. It's almost impossible not to swing on it every time you walk past it.

We went out to fish at sunset one night. The lake and its surroundings are beautiful at the best of times. At sunset, you get such a tirade of colours that your mind almost melts in to the background. It was the night before full moon, and it started to rise as the sun was going down, making a beautiful shimmering reflection over lake. My fishing was as successful as always - nada. 

We decided to walk part way up a mountain behind the city to watch the rising of the full moon the next night. Pachamama had other plans. She hid the moon behind some clouds, forcing us to watch an incomprehensible display of light and colours created by sunset and lightning, not revealing the full power of the moon until a few hours later when the clouds parted for a while. I'm not exaggerating when I say that almost every house in South America has at least one dog. So in a city of 100,000 people, it wouldn't surprise me if there are also 100,000 dogs. And I swear that we could hear almost every one of them yapping away as we were sat upon this hillside watching the full moon rise.

One night, I was heading to a bar 7km out of town. As I got to the bus stop, it was such a beautiful evening that I decided to walk. Ten minutes after I started it began to rain. Then it began to rain heavily. I was in the mood to walk, so I walked on regardless. It was the first time I had walked this part of the lake. I had some great views of the lake, rippled by the rain yet still with glimmerings of sunshine in places. I also got a chance to look more closely at some of the chalets along the lakeside. Mostly made with wood and stone, with big windows overlooking the lake. That’s the way to build. Anyway, I got to the pub, and they were playing The Beatles all night long. Plus, they had great ales on tap so I kind of felt like I was back in England. Ay, the nostalgia. In all of my travels, I've only been to two places with good beer. Medellin in Colombia had a microbrewery; and here in Bariloche there are loads of microbreweries, all producing nice ales in a variety of shades. I don't want to leave the pub.

Say no to the megaminería

I find South America to be a mixture of extremes. There tends to be a lot of litter and general pollution - including of the water ways. Yet, at the same time, the people are very politically active and go to great lengths to protect their water in particular. We saw this in Peru when a Canadian company had just been given some mining rights. Locals all over the country closed down the main roads until the decision was overturned. They've learned from experience that mining destroys their water resources.

Bolivia had mass protests ten years ago when their water industry was privatised, until the privatisation was reversed.

Something similar is happening in Argentina right now. Every week anti mining marches are taking place all across the country. This stems from some recent controversy about the government wanting to open up a new large mine. For the government it makes sense - it will bring in money to the country. However, for the locals it will destroy their land and water. "Water is worth more than gold" the placards say. But it’s not just the locals of this one mine who are protesting - it's the whole country. Is there a plan for a mine in this area - I asked as I marched along with the protestors in Bariloche. No - they responded - and we want to make sure it stays that way, that's why we protest. 

Buenos Aires, the return

The whole point of returning to Buenos Aires was to learn tango whilst also being able to dance swing. In my two weeks here last February I'd had a taster of both and enjoyed it. The swing community here is thriving and the prospect of being in a place where I could quickly develop some friends appealed to me greatly.

Well it has and it hasn't turned out that way. To begin with, let's talk tango. I love this dance. Me encanta. But after 8 months away I had to go right back to basics. I went to a couple of milongas early on and felt like I thoroughly embarrassed myself on the dance floor, thus shaking my confidence terribly, so that I went back to watching a lot and dancing very little. This is hard on the ego. Nevertheless, I stuck with it. I tried various different tango schools and milongas before settling on my favourites, then I settled into a routine which involved a lot of tango in the afternoons and swing in the evenings.  Maybe with a bit of yoga inbetween.

The result of this hard work is that I am now much more comfortable at milongas, particularly at asking people I don't know for a dance. I stick to the basics, doing nothing fancy. I try to play with the rhythms of the music, although I'm not very familiar with tango music and so it makes it hard for me to predict what's coming. And I don't understand the lyrics, so I can only hope that what I am articulating on the dance floor somewhat corresponds to the tone of the song. It's still quite hit and miss - there are some people with whom I can't seem to click and the tanda of 3 or 4 songs that we dance together seems to be a struggle; then there are others with whom everything just seems to flow and we have great fun on the dance floor. Oh I love these dances.

Now let's think about Swing. Everyone is so friendly here and so I hoped to make some good friends quite quickly, but it's not really turned out that way. My best friends here are all foreigners, and I'm not really sure why. I thought maybe it was because I kept trying to speak in Spanish to start with, which greatly limited my ability to have conversations and so to strengthen relationships and so I went through a stage where I half gave up on the Spanish and started chatting more in English, but this didn't seem to make much difference. I don't know if this is because the tone of our relationships had already been set, or if it's some other reason. No sé!

My confidence of dancing swing has also been a bit of a roller coaster. It felt great when I first arrived and could dance again after so much time. But then I quickly felt like I was massively rusty and though I could dance the basics ok, I'd lost a lot of the extra things that made my dancing fun. It wasn't until the Swing Break camp about 6 weeks after I arrived that I felt like I was back to my old self.

Swing Break camp was awesome! It was outside of the city center which in itself was a welcome change from the heat and noise of the city.  Unashamedly I'm a fan of the film Dirty Dancing, and this reminded me so much of that, right down to the watermelons. We were camping in a leisure park, we had dance classes throughout the day (broken up by dips in the pool to cool off) and live music throughout the night. The whole leisure park just dedicated to swing dancers. It was heavenly. If only all weekends could be like this one was.

Another big event here was the Lindy Hop Argentina International Festival (LHAIF, pronounced "life"). This was in early January and brought in about 30 Brazilians plus many other dancers from all over the world. It was superb. I learned a lot, and it was so nice to be dancing with so many different people. On the final night we had a bit of a hip-hop after party which was also very cool, seeing some different dance styles coming out. It was at this festival however, that I had one of my worst dances in a long time. It was with a lovely girl and a great dancer, but all the time her eyes were darting around one corner of the room. "Are you looking for someone", I asked. "Sorry, I was distracted, but I 'm back again now" she replied. Less than 10 seconds later her eyes were off again - she didn't make me feel good about myself.

My Spanish conversation has gone through similar highs and lows as my dancing. There are times that I feel like I can hold a conversation with someone, and there are times when I can't understand two simple words strung together.

So all in all, although I'm living a complete life of luxury at this time, there have been some real head challenges for me. I'll be all the stronger for pulling through them.

When I've not been dancing, I've spent a lot of time thinking about two things. One is the business I'm going to start shortly - an online consultancy specialising in sustainability and finance. The other is politics. I'm currently writing a manifesto for a fictional party - the sort of manifesto that I think a party should be putting forward if it really wants to make a difference to the world. I won't go into the details here!

After three months in this city, I am struggling with it. Although I'm still enjoying the dancing and I do have some friends here the city itself is bothering me. The heat, the noise, the litter, the air quality, the lack of green space - all of these things so dear to me. So once again, I find myself in a place where my life doesn't have balance. Recently I've been out of the city a lot - a visit to the Tigre delta again, a weekend in Rosario which is a beautiful city on the Rio Paraná with much less traffic and some lovely parks by the river, and 10 days touring the beaches of Uruguay which are stunning to say the least. These breaks have made me realise how much I'm missing the outdoors, and so I've decided that it's time to move on again. Now for a month in the Swiss Alps of Argentina - Bariloche.