Well, I’ve done a year – 364 days and 23 hours ago a big Iberia plane landed from Madrid at Ezieza Airport containing a slightly shellshocked & drunk me. I often end up drunk on long distance flights. It helps to pass the time, and its very social. On the flight out here I was squished between 2 impossibly posh English boys who were coming to Argentina to hone their polo skills and a Spanish guy coming to work in their embassy for two years. The Spanish guy was very skilled at getting bottles of wine from the normally miserable as sin Iberia stewardesses, which he merrily shared with us. I lost count at about 7. I least I slept after that. I did the same thing coming from back from the States, and ended up having a very amusing good-natured argument about US Healthcare with some guy who claimed to a Libertarian, who was ridiculously easy to out-argue. I remember shouting at one point, “and yes, I do want to kill your Grandmother!”. Made sense at the time. Again, I lost count after about 7 bottles of wine, and did finally get some sleep.
Anyway, a year ago I spent the night in a hotel that I cannot for the life of me remember the name. It was near the Obelisco, but that’s it. I wandered a bit a little stunned by it all, trying to take it all in. Had a couple of empanadas and some Quilmes to get me in the mood, and that was that – I was here.
I could go into a long “have I changed’ thing here. The short answer is yes. Absolutely. But it’s impossible to write down how and why. Just like the kids at the Club who, when asked ‘Porque?”, reply “Porque si”, I just have. Take my word for it.
But one little snippet of imformation I’ve wanted to share with you, and now seems as good a time as any, is how much travelling I’ve done. I’m a numbers nerd, and not ashamed of it. One of the first things I started jotting down was the journeys I’ve taken (mostly on buses) and the rough distance with the idea of one day adding them all up. And that day has arrived, the results are in:
- South American Overland: 31200km
- USA Overland: 9700km
- Overland total: 40900km
- Flying total (not counting Europe to here): 27900km
- Grand total: 689000km / 43050 miles
The earth’s circumference is 40075km. Do with this information as you will!