Today is our last full day in San Jose. Our experience of this city is mixed and it probably wouldn’t make it to the list of places that we want to return to in the future. My personal feelings towards this country is complicated by political reasons. Usually I try to put that aside wherever we travel to. But somehow this trip, in this country, it hits me hard and forces me to face the reality. This is the world we are living in, and there’s no point of fighting it.
Today was a bad day for my companion. It wasn’t the afternoon rain, which may have caused more pain in his legs. He couldn’t walk 30 feet without feeling the need to rest and ease the pain. It further worried him that the painkiller he took didn’t seem to work.
“I feel bad for you. It’s no fun traveling like this with me not being able to go anywhere.” he said to me while he was resting on one of the benches in the Multiplaza Escazú.
“Don’t overthink it now.” I replied, not knowing what to say exactly.
Now we’re back in the hotel room. His legs no longer bother him that much. Perhaps it took more than three hours for his painkiller to kick in?
I lie on the bed next to him, looking at the outside through the French window. The clouds are getting darker and there are flashes of lightning, as if predicting that it’s going to get worse..
The volcán Irazú is definitely there, although we couldn’t see it.
Due to the weather and the passing fog, we barely could see anything when we were at the site this morning. Up high at about 11,000 feet, the Irazú Volcano is the highest active volcano in Costa Rica. Too bad the weather didn’t cooperate. The chances of us visiting Costa Rica again are slim. Oh well..
Our flight to Costa Rica today was actually pretty smooth. But the journey got off to a bumpy start right at the Sunport Airport. I admit that I was in a grumpy mood to begin with. (For reasons I’d rather not to tell..) During the flight for who-knows-what reason my pre-ordered meal was incorrect and ended up having something I didn’t care to eat. Then when we arrived at the Juan Santamaría International Airport, the driver for our prepaid car service to the hotel was nowhere to be found. After waiting for almost an hour, we had no choice but to take a taxi..
It’s almost 11pm here now and all I want to do is sleep. It will all be better tomorrow. I hope..
Captured on our flight approaching Albuquerque this morning. There’s so much on my mind this trip going back home. It’s hard to explain how I felt while this landscape that I’m getting so familiar with moving underneath us, taking us closer and closer to home..
It was by chance we were inside that dimly lit building, as we had no business being in there. I captured two images and this one was “speaking” to me. “Viajar as Vivir.” To travel is to live. At this moment, I couldn’t agree more..
We are back in Buenos Aires for a few days. Our hotel room window is facing an old hotel and we can see their used-to-be rooftop swimming pool. Even though it looks small, but it must have been a luxury to have a pool on top of the building at the time.
Not sure for what reasons, I didn’t have a good night sleep. Woke up before sunrise, I watched the window brightening up gradually. The Sun rose at 7:05 this morning. By 7:20 I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. I got up and looked out the window. The letters of Montevideo were glowing in the warm early morning sunlight.
“I go downstairs and take some pictures. I’d be right back.” I whispered to my companion who was still half asleep..
Today we randomly decided to explore Ciudad Vieja neighborhood. The taxi dropped us off at Plaza de la Constitución and we felt immediately at home. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration. What I meant to say was that we felt comfortable there.) Because of my refusal to go to a Starbucks, my companion found a small local coffee shop not far from the plaza. We ordered a latte, a cortado, one croissant and a Russian honey cake that the dueño fervently recommended. According to him it takes two days to make this specific cake, and as he claimed, it was absolutely delicious with delicate, subtle flavors.
When we were about to conclude our coffee break, the dueño came to our table and chatted with us. He started by asking us where we were from and what our professions were. When I told him that I used to be a photographer, he brought out his tablet and showed us images of buildings that he has captured within Montevideo. He shared with us his proudest documentations of various magnificent structures and unique features and details of important buildings in the city, including a few videos which I assume were captured with a drone camera. He then shared with us pieces of his experiences in life, which clearly indicated that he basically had been traveling most of his life, for reasons that he did not reveal, until he landed in Montevideo almost two decades ago.
After we paid the bill, he told us that he wanted to show us something. While walking, he pointed at a mural on top of a building and explained briefly about the incredible Montevideo born artist and the museum near by which is named after him. I took a mental note to look him up later.
The building he wanted to show us turned out to be a bookstore that we mentioned to him earlier that we wanted to go. He explained in great detail the significance of it and fun facts that few people would notice. The moment he wanted to bid farewell, my companion asked if he could take a picture of him. He politely declined. I can’t recall exactly what he said. It was something along the lines of “no pictures carry my presence.”
Our coffee break today became an incredibly informative and educational one about Montevideo and the world. We met a person, by coincidence, who was highly knowledgeable about various topics including art. He has such a zeal for life and the world, and he’s somewhat mysterious. Only on the taxi ride back to our hotel, we suddenly realized we don’t even know his name.
PS: the mural on the building is a reproduction of an iconic work by artist Joaquín Torres García, titled Pax In Lucem, which was lost in the fire at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro in 1978.
It’s been cloudy or even drizzling the whole day ever since we arrived in Buenos Aires almost a week ago. This morning we finally woke up with the sun shining through the window. But today was also the day that we’d be leaving for Montevideo, on the only sunny morning we ever had.
At the airport after we checked in, there was barely any announcements in English. We were playing guessing games the whole time at the gate since our Spanish was rather poor. At one point we got nervous because it had passed the scheduled boarding time and there was no explanation from the airline. We weren’t overly concerned since there were plenty other passengers seemed to be waiting for the same flight.
Long story short, eventually we boarded the plane and arrived in Montevideo without much delay. With the blue sky and the sun shining, our second part of the journey has just begun.