Even a year later this man’s look strips my facade to its frame. Can you feel it too? His worker, a young man, made room in the shop for our flat-tired motorbike, and he went to work silently.
I wanted a picture of the old guy, I had to have a picture of those nails, but I made myself a rule to only take pictures of people I talk to. Damn principle. He didn’t speak English, so with my (very) limited Indonesian, I attempted to have a heart-to-heart with the old man, to get to know him, to have a meaningful, cross-cultural exchange.
“You work here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How many years?”
“27.”
Ah, the clumsy conversational dance where all you can reliably understand is “yes,” “no,” whole numbers and “chicken.”
“How old boy?”
“16″
“Your son?”
“No.”
“How many years you Bali?”
“[Unintelligible, but he didn't say chicken].”
Someone else paid and he used his nails to flip though a wad of cash. I salivated for a photo. Enough chit-chat, time to go for the kill, but subtly of course.
“How many years?” I pointed to his hand.
“One.”
Hold up, only a one year commitment for those things? This is doable! We can do this!
“I photo you?”
“Yes.”
I love travel, don’t you? You can never predict what you’ll come across when you leave the beaten path. There are interesting old dudes out there, around the world, willing to take a second to chit chat with a foreigner.
To accompany this photo I searched my journal for a piece of writing that might radiate a sense of place in Bogota, but in the two weeks we spent there I only filled ten pages and little of it describes the texture of the city. Some say, “Put away the camera and enjoy the place!” but the two acts aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if measuring by regret (which is the only way to measure anything ever), I rarely regret taking the time to capture something but more often regret losing the first-person insight during a unique experience. With this in mind, sometimes I’ll simply list everything I’m noticing at a particular moment – sounds, smells, physical feelings, words, etc.
At the beginning of my first trip in 2001 I had to ask (our friend) Amy, “So, why does a person keep a journal?” I was on my way to Europe for the summer and had gotten a gorgeous hand-made journal from my then-girlfriend (I still count it as one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve received). Amy thought it was hilarious that I was asking for advice on what to write about in my own personal journal, but she ended up giving a pretty good rule of thumb: Write about stuff you don’t want to forget. It’s amazing, ten years later, to read back and say, “Oh yeah! I’d completely forgotten about that!” It makes me wonder what else I’ve experienced that might interest me, but I guess that can’t be easily mined.
Anyway, this picture is from a scenic little neighborhood in Bogota called The Candelaria. I think the photo captures the sense of place, even if my writing didn’t.
In the train station’s high yellow light a young American, new to India, looked at his book but thought about suffocation; each breath filled his mouth like tea.
He smelled food prepared by an Indian family camped in a circle on the station’s floor. An old woman ate there, resting in anticipation. She would have to shove through crowds to secure a seat for the night-long ride where she, herself, was more likely to suffocate than this fit young man. She would sleep against a stranger on the aisle floor. She would be carried to another part of India, another humid part of India, where the traveler might see orange glowing light he could not now imagine if only he were brave enough to step down from the car and breathe deeply through his nose.
In the station he rose and followed a man to a ticket counter where others stood. He waited for them to finish. Hand prints smeared the window. A customer walked away and two more slid in and another man pressed against the counter. Mike waited patiently behind, above them. A dark man with fresh-smelling hair shouldered Mike’s ribs and nudged him farther back, so he was now separated from the counter by a crowd. Victoria station would not suffocate the young traveler, he was determined. Mike grew into his frame, his wide shoulders and thick chest. He was much larger than the Indian men. He leaned into each shift of the crowd and carved a path to the front.
Later, on the ground again, Mike stared beyond his book at a child’s dirty toes wiggling at him from bare feet. She held out an open hand. He ignored the beggar and he ignored the metallic ache that arrived in his ribs and coiled there. She stood for a minute, hand out, looking at a strand of brown hair curled over Mike’s pink ear.
Bombay is fine during the day, but I haven’t gotten used to the night. I feel so vulnerable then. Really, at night, I wonder whether I’ll make it three months, and at dusk I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I pine to see Westerners; I understand why blacks in the US say there’s a race problem – when you’re the minority it’s so apparent and jarring. Each day feels like a week, that, honestly, I just want to be over. The poverty here is relentless and my wealth is relentless and I can’t close my eyes on either. What am I supposed to do with this? What good is relative fortune? I can pose all the theories I want about giving to beggars but when I shut the hotel door I’d better have it sorted out because I’m tested before I reach the street. Were I brave enough to be vulnerable I’d talk with locals and justify this travel, but I only talk to beggars. I tell them, “No,” because I don’t know what else to say.
The dirty toes turned away and she walked like a ghost with her hands down. What haunts that girl’s body is the want for little and the expectation of nothing. If only she’d be at peace, he thought. The ache smoldered.
He looked past his book now into the eyes of an Indian man suddenly seated on the ground in front of him. The beggar didn’t extend his hand; he examined Mike’s blue eyes. The man’s black hair curled over his dark ears and he looked strong in his frame with wide shoulders and thick chest, though his legs had been cut off below the knees. Crutches lay beside him. Mike knew the man was 25-years-old, and they studied each other.
This, to me, is what Yangon felt like – wide and quiet streets, air illuminated by the warm sun while people take their time at curbside teashops.
It was illegal to take pictures of government buildings. Sometimes they were marked, but sometimes they weren’t, so Azure slyly took pictures of these behemoths, most likely forbiddenly.
Typical scene on the backstreets.
We were surprised that the TV in our rooms showed international news (BBC) including stories on how the Myanmar government was illegally detaining Nobel Prize winner and opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi. I wonder how many people inside Myanmar understand English well enough to grasp the newscast.
Downtown mosque.
Hindu shrine with serious guard.
The side of a Hindu temple.
A very recognizable tea shop.
Many restaurants and food stalls cooked at outdoor kitchens like this one. I’m glad we got a shot of this because sometimes, when traveling, something novel might be so ubiquitous that you never take the time to get a shot of it.
Can I be honest with you? (Who am I kidding, we’re all the imagination of ourselves, we hardly exist enough that you can object. So I’ll be honest.) We didn’t like Shwedegon Paya very much. It’s the top tourist draw in all of Myanmar, and apparently the pinnacle of Myanmar pride. The LP guidebook writer appeared to have had an orgasmic experience that lead to them devoting more pages to the temple than to any other attraction I’ve seen in their books. There are probably more pages on the Shwedegon Paya than there are on non-Bali Indonesia.
But you know what? It was just a big temple, from the outsiders’ perspective. Another misguided human attempt to honor the supernatural with material goods. Eh.
Oh, 100% of our entry fee was turned into gold leaf, which they reapply every year, while their people beg and starve. I suppose they mine vanity from the same source as Americans who buy luxury cars here at home, but none of this excuses our five-dollar contribution to it, so let me say this: If you’re going to Myanmar and you don’t have any connection to Buddhism or architecture, maybe skip this place. Give your five dollars to someone selling their own food on the street. Pictures!
Anyway, the whole time I was taking pictures here I felt like I was trying to draw blood from a stone. I mean, I know this place is beautiful, but opulence is ugly. It’s enough to make a monk take to the forest.
The Structure
I do have to admit, though, that the entrance was pretty exciting. It made you feel like maybe you were about to walk out onto the court for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the only thing missing was the roar of the crowd.
People
Pagodas seem to be spirituality-centered gathering places. Locals were just hanging out, chatting, some even had food with them. Many were deep in meditation or prayer, and nobody seemed to mind having their picture taken. I wonder if this was due to the general, “I’m OK, You’re OK”ness of Buddhism.
I was on the fence about including this picture because it’s not gorgeous or well-executed or anything, and the kid is an idiot, but I was so moved by this woman, apparently exhausted by her devotion, that I could never bring myself to cut it during the editing process.
This man is pulling a rope that rings a bell. Note that there’s a Buddha statue in front of him.
This was our trusty guide. He just started talking to us and we didn’t have the heart to tell him to leave us alone (I think that’s how it’s done here, anyway), but he was a nice guy. He spoke good English and had been a professor his whole life, but the government forced him to retire because he could remember the time before their regime. That made him dangerous, of course, because he had a broad perspective of the government’s lies. He told us not to talk about it, though, and also not to trust just any monk – some of them, apparently, are government spies. The government’s main resistance comes from within the monasteries.
TRAITOR!!
This little girl is wearing the traditional face paint, tanakh, I think. Most children and many women wore it. Men didn’t tend to wear it, for whatever reason. Apparently it works as sunscreen, though I think it’s primarily appreciated as make-up. It’s incredibly endearing.
Us.
Azure pouring water on the Tuesday Buddha.
Me pouring water on the Saturday dragon. If anyone knows what this symbolizes maybe you can leave the info in a comment.
My favorite of this whole set – Azure back at Tuesday with the guide
Anyway, I’m glad to finally have the pictures up and done with, they’d been blocking up my system for over six months! (Ew!) We’re going through our Myanmar pictures right now, so expect more in the days to come.
While Azure and I sat at a tea shop in Yangon we were approached by a young monk with his collection bucket. He held it out to us. I was happy to offer some food, so we held up a pastry, “Do you want this?” He shook his head no. I held up another pastry and he shook his head again, “No.” Click to Read More
Of course the monk isn’t going to ask straight out for anything, because he shouldn’t want in the first place (he should just present himself without expectations)… but the kid wanted money. We were uneasy giving him money because the practice isn’t supposed to be about that, we thought. That’s more like begging.
Wasn’t it the point that Buddhist monks be happy with whatever they’re offered? Wasn’t it the point that they not be choosy about food, that they only accept alms to keep their body going so it can house the life-force?
We were getting a little upset about the apparent corruption of what we thought were pretty straight-forward Buddhist values – and the fact that we’d met some unimpressive, certainly unenlightened monks a few nights earlier. One was possessive of us, which is again out of sync with what we understand to be Buddhism.
Azure and I spent the morning trying to figure out if we had misunderstood the practice or if we were seeing it misapplied somehow.
Sitting at another tea shop, an English teacher – I don’t remember his name, but it starts with Oo Oo – noticed I was wearing the traditional Myanmar longhi, and he commented on it. He sat down to talk with us. His long white hair was in a top knot and there were long, white wisps coming off, as I imagine a schoolteacher from the 1820s old west might look. He had a whiskery mustache and no beard. His white shirt was buttoned up to the collarless top, and he wore the same traditional longhi, of course. I asked him why he dressed like this while few others did. He said that he wanted to keep the traditions alive. Yes! Why are there so few who understand this?
We took advantage of his English-speaking to ask him about the Buddhists. He said he was a Buddhist, though he only lasted as a monk for 10 days. He said that we should give money to nuns – they need it. They’re not well-taken care of by the monasteries, monetarily. They only receive raw rice then have to cook everything themselves.
On the other hand – and we sensed this – monks don’t need the money at all. They get donations and eat very well, everything is prepared for them, so they don’t even take food when it’s offered. He said there are a lot of "fake" monks who only put the robes on then don’t change anything. They have a plan to start a business or something, so they throw the robes on, collect money while taking English classes and internet classes, then when they have enough they quit and start some computer store or whatever.
People (and all the monks) can tell the difference between genuine monks and fake monks. Some genuine monks – as I suspected – become forest monks. It’s just in their nature, he said, to go and be alone and meditate in a cave or under a tree. Some genuine monks will stay in the temples as teachers. Monks are not respected here unless they deserve respect, it seems, and people know the difference.
Nice tiger picture, right? Well, the picture that goes with the quote below was supposed to lead this post, but I just couldn’t bare to put it in plain sight. It’s hidden behind the Not Safe For Work cut.
The following is a quote from Steppenwolf (1929) by Hermann Hesse. There’s this ongoing (semantics-heavy) debate in travel circles about the difference between a “traveler” and a “tourist.” Here’s what I think: nobody with a cell phone is traveling. That’s all I’ll contribute to the debate at this point. Here’s Hesse:
We talked, too, of her nephew and she showed me in a neighboring room his latest hobby, a wireless set. There the industrious young man spent his evenings, fitting together the apparatus, a victim to the charms of wireless, and kneeling on pious knees before the god of applied science whose might had made it possible to discover after thousands of years a fact which every thinker has always known and put to better use than in this recent and very imperfect development. We spoke about this, for the aunt had a slight leaning to piety, and religious topics were not unwelcome to her. I told her that the omnipresence of all forces and facts was well known to ancient India, and that science had merely brought a small fraction of this fact into general use by devising for it, that is, for sound waves, a receiver and transmitter which were still in their first stages and miserably defective. The principal fact known to that ancient knowledge was, I said, the unreality of time. This science had not yet observed. Finally, it would, of course, make this “discovery,” also, and then the inventors would get busy over it. The discovery would be made – and perhaps very soon – that there were floating round us not only the pictures and events of the transient present in the same way that music from Paris or Berlin was now heard in Frankfurt or Zurich, but that all that had ever happened in the past could be registered and brought back likewise. We might well look for the day when, with wires or without, with or without the disturbance of other sounds, we should hear King Solomon speaking, or Walter von der Vogelweide. And all this, I said, just as today was the case with the beginnings of wireless, would be of no more service to man than as an escape from himself and his true aims, and a means of surrounding himself with an ever closer mesh of distractions and useless activities. But instead of embarking on these familiar topics with my customary bitterness and scorn for the times and for science, I made a joke of them; and the aunt smiled, and we sat together for an hour or so and drank our tea with much content.
There is a mysterious person in traditional Corsican towns, a man or woman kept at the periphery of society because they play a supernatural role in death. At night, this Mazzeri is compelled to sneak into the maquis, the low shrubbery that blankets wild parts of the island, and to hunt down whatever animal comes across their path. The boar or dog meets a violent death – the Mazzeri bludgeons it with a club or a rock, it might strangle the animal or tear its flesh with their teeth. (Read More)
When the animal is dead, the Mazzeri rolls it over and looks into its face. They recognize a person they know in the face of the animal, and the next morning, they announce to the town that the person they saw will die within a year. Even if it’s a family member, they are compelled – by Quellu Quassu, the Corsican “Some Thing” more vague than the Christian God – to hunt it and kill it, against their own will. The Mazzeri do not choose the person, they’re simply death’s messengers.
The hunt takes place in dreams, but Corsicans consider dreams to be a parallel and relevant world: the prophesied deaths occur within the year.{1}
Of course, this tradition died out half a century ago.
I arrived on Corsica among the skeptical majority, the rational liberal who doesn’t necessarily believe in something he can’t see, like God or dream-hunters. To each his own, of course, but if I can’t see it, I don’t believe in it.
Then, in mountains that had been presented as ogre- and Mazzeri-filled, where dreams had been dangerous, we saw kids in Yankee baseball caps and Nike tennis shoes listening to 50 Cent.
We have lost something, I could see.
The world is poorer for the loss. Much poorer. What richness is steam-rolled by skeptical media, employment-focused education, the medical establishment and our science-centered faith? What creative force was extinguished by the Church or ignored by tv-addicted posterity? And how did MY money encourage it?
I wondered, “Really, what does it hurt to open myself to believing in dreams and magic? Am I skeptical only because I have so much pride that I think it matters that I be right or wrong?”
I chose to open myself to the possibility probability that there’s much more going on than what I can see. At the very least, it will make my world richer.
But science and money, the twin pillars of Modern religion, crush cultural niches, the pockets in which creative wealth can accumulate. The Corsican mountains are flat. The Snoqualmie run casinos. Modernism has its cellular talons in Africa.
Then we rolled into the valley of the Christian Back-to-the-Landers, and everything lit up. Nowhere else had I seen a cultural cauldron like this: the kids were singing songs to entertain themselves, they talked about natural phenomena, they believed in the supernatural, the Christian God, they believed that Mary was there and helping them. They had stories. They had a world that was immediate and rich, and legends of their own creation were growing in its garden.
I could see how this might be the kernel for a culture. It wouldn’t take many more generations, or like-minded families, for this to develop into a web of myths and practices that the world has never before seen.
So, what does this have to do with food?
Rugged independence persists in modern Corsica.
There are groups of people among us that are making an effort to live in this fashion. They don’t have TVs and don’t read the newspaper. They’re trying to live in a way that allows them and their kids to sharpen the impression of their characters{2}, that the force of their creativity be unrestrained and untarnished by mass-commercialism, that they can channel their unblemished centers and create with its texture. And for their efforts our world will be richer.
These are the people we need to support with our money. Whether they’re making clothes or constructing homes with local materials or growing food, our money needs to go to those who are creating culture, not steamrolling it.
If we’re going to buy food, let’s buy it from these people, the farmers, the independents who are making this place richer. Let’s buy from the small stands at the farmers’ markets, to help the fragile ones nurse quiet lives.
And we need to stop supporting the steamrollers, the brand names – Coke, Safeway, Costco, Monsanto, Dole, and all the others. There is no spirit in money-centrism, and I’m tired of hearing their voices in humans’ mouths.
Money is the agent of the modern world’s evolution. Spend wisely.
— {1} Dorothy Carrington in Granite Island, describing the Corsican fishing community:
“A week he was missing with his boat and crew…. I heard only a single comment on the situation: ‘His wife came down to ask for news. You should have seen that woman! Her face was black; she has drunk the blood of his heart.’ Blessed are the illiterate, who can spontaneously express themselves in such apt and opulent imagery! But perhaps this was general in the days before universal education began mass-producing minds. I have often wondered how far the Elizabethan writers were indebted to the virile, vivid speech of an illiterate majority.”
She wrote about the Mazzeri and other Corsican folklore in The Dream Hunters of Corsica, in which she reinforces her point:
All this, one might say, belongs to the past. Rational French state education and materialistic values have discredited the evil spirits and reduced the legends to curiosities of folklore. The ogres have vanished; the Devil no longer roams among the rocks. Nor, indeed, does Saint Martin…
{2} “The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character… Under all these screens {brands to which a person subscribes} I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.”
Bali’s climate is so f-ing perfect that on any day of the year you can see all phases of rice cultivation: sowing, growing, harvesting. We came across this little corner when we were lost and trying to find our way back to Ubud. We knew we wanted to come back, so we made a backwards map as we drove home – Azure took a picture of each corner we turned, then the next day we traced it in reverse.
While I’d always understood presence to mean a sharp focus on – say – your breath as it hits your nose, here it meant paying attention to the area within earshot, which I consider Place. When we look back at photos sometimes I remember, “At that time I was dealing with a window washing issue back home.” or something like that. How strange is it that I’m looking at photos and thinking of a far-away adventure, but at the time of the photo I was thinking about home? It’s one of the struggles of modern travel: leaving home at home, not just in words, but in thoughts and attention as well.
The back-to-the-land family sings a prayer before eating cassoulet on a Sunday afternoon. The guy with the shaved head is Johann, the son who had just fallen from the rafters. This is near Carcassonne, France.
by Mike
Before every meal they would sing these prayers – two in French with a Latin prayer in between. One of the prayers is the Lord’s prayer and I believe another is for Mary. They prayed after the meal as well. When we left the farm and started eating without prayer the moment felt a little emptier, a little more mindless. The same was true after we left the meditation retreat in Chiang Mai – we had chanted a prayer before eating there as well. It’s just another instance in which the practices overlap.
The family prayed before and after eating, when waking up and before going to sleep at night. In addition to these five routine prayers, there were also moments throughout the day when they would, essentially, check in with God. They saw it as giving thanks to God; I recognized it as an act of staying present. Similarly, Didier described how at the beginning of each day he would dedicate his physical pain to God – he knew there would be pain. God (as Jesus) went through so much pain for him that it was the least he could do to give some back. In this I recognized Buddhism’s distinction between pain and suffering.
We took a horse-drawn cart to tour old temples in the arid Bagan surrounds. The driver took us to a little village – smaller than a village, even, maybe just a collection of homes – where we finally found a bite of something to eat. Rice, veggies, an egg. Pretty much all you can expect there.
Anyway, without asking, this young lady started to take us on a tour of her village. She showed us the loom, their cotton products and so on. At the end of it she asked us for some money and we refused out of principle: she hadn’t asked us if we wanted a tour, she just started towing us around. In retrospect I can’t believe we didn’t just give her a dollar or something, it would have been a lot for her, but it goes to show how money can warp your mind in a place like this. I think we sometimes treat beggars like they’re pets to be trained, and we forget that – hey – how about sharing something we have enough of?
Yeah, so I nailed this picture. Won’t it be ironic when I profit off of it?
Thought I’d do another little breakdown of the details. After the clicky clicky
Many of the people in Myanmar wore this face paint, which doubled as sunscreen. Some wore it in very exact patterns, some wore it messily (as this girl is), others would just put a line, and some people didn’t wear it at all. All the little kids wore it, but of the adults only the women wore it, for the most part. The people on TV didn’t wear it, and I wonder why that is. I’m sure there’s all sorts of codes and implications having to do with the design people make out of the stuff. I forget what it’s called. The paste is made by rubbing a piece of pigmented wood against a stone and adding some water to the powder. It’s hella charming.
As Azure said, “SHE doesn’t have to worry about GMO seeds!” In fact, in Thailand they found a field “contaminated” with GMO plants. That’s the word they use, contamination. Anyway, I like the touch of the girl having tied her flower stems together with a little palm frond or something.
Wrapped in some big leaf for easy carrying. Notice the plastic bag hanging from her finger? There was plastic everywhere, and at one point we watched a cow eat a plastic bag. It was quite a scene – A cow innocently eating, which elicited an alarmed response from us three big white people, which elicited a confused response (“why do they care so much about that cow?”) from the dozen kids who were following us around the village. Good times.
I’m not one to toot my own horn*, (*that’s a lie) but this here’s an incredible photo of river life in Bagan, Myanmar.
In the details isolated below you can see what makes this place special. (click here)
There were a few kids splashing around just out of frame. This kid just made it into the picture, warped by the corner of the lens. I think, in the larger picture, you can see he’s checking out the lady on the rock, and she’s looking back.
Isn’t it beautiful how kids can turn anything into a toy? This little girl was playing with the bucket. I love how you can see her trail through the water.
There was a community that lived on the other side of the river and they took boats to get home. I WISH we had visited, but we didn’t. It appears that this guy is heading back home. There was a group of kids who ran a little ferry across the river (one of these same small canoes). Az and I paid them to take us up to the pagoda and back.
A lady washing in the river.
This girl is about to step into the river to bathe. I don’t know which they do first – bathe or launder their clothes. On the left you can see the clothes with a bucket and bar soap. I love that the pattern on her longhi (the sarong around her waist) matches the reflection in the water.
You would think this was a spectacular site right? Well, it is, but this is just one of 4,000 pagodas in this small area, and you kinda get used to it.
A little structure on the other side of the river, probably for waiting for the ferry or fishing or something. There are also two people on the shore to the left.
The stone walls aren’t ancient in my mind – that word reminds me of some movement of people, some civilization like Rome or Greece. I felt that these fences were the work of individuals who were living in the area and put them up for themselves. But I also doubt they’re prehistoric.
The sense I gather from them is that they’re expressions of people from a timeless era, of a pre-modern, non-progress-based time. They felt unconscious to me. Nietzsche wrote about how the ability to forget is the key to living in the present – you’re filled with wonder at the smallest things if they’re new to your consciousness. I don’t know if a circle-based time meant remembering everything or forgetting everything. Living in a circle, though, is definitely a more animalistic way of experiencing time, and that’s where these walls come from.
I spent four days on my scooter wandering this little region to the north of Tours, France, blown away by the access the scooter was giving me. When I pulled off the main highway onto this tiny road that might as well have been private, these two horses (and a third one erased) were just posing for me. I was realizing the dream of riding a scooter in the countryside with a nice camera and all the time in the world.
Nobody at home knows where I am; nobody here knows who I am.
2001
The night I returned home from three months in Paris I had a dream: I was arriving back in Paris and I said, “I’m back, I’m finally back.”
That winter I woke up in the evening, my roommates were gone for the break and I kept one room warm in the top of the house. Mine was the only light in the neighborhood. I would be awake the whole night, depressed, and during the day I’d sleep and I’d dream, “I’m back, I’m finally back.” I didn’t see daylight for a week.
But things got better, as they do, and I met a girl (read more)
We got into Punta del Diablo so late that we couldn’t really tell what the town was like, or even how close to the ocean we were. The next morning I woke up at 6am with the sun and when I stepped outside this man was walking up with his thermos, cigarette and the ubiquitous yerba mate.
To drink it, the Uruguayans fill a gourd with the tea leaves, then pour in hot water. They drink it through a special straw that has a filtered end so it can draw in the tea without taking the leaves. When the tea is gone they pour in more water.
When I saw him I asked if I could take a picture and only really snapped this one shot, the first shot I took in Diablo, and the best.
If anyone from Punta del Diablo is reading this and knows this man, I’d love if you would contact me.
We love to travel and learn. We like eating and sleeping and going on the internet and we can do all of those things from anywhere in the world. We are originally from Seattle, but no longer stay for the winters. We must leave and see new places and great ways to live. We enjoy living well and seeing how others live well.
This winter we traveled in Indonesia, Thailand Myanmar, France, Germany, Spain. We are currently home in Seattle, but Mike likes to think about things and blog about them.
You are encouraged to share your thoughts and suggestions. We hope you enjoy reading our blog!
