Just like that Bernie Sanders meme, "I am once again‥ taking a trip to South America". I think that is what he said.
But seriously. I am already in Santiago, Chile, and I have been here since January 19th, 2023. I feel the urge to do a bit of writing about the travel that I am doing and the things that I am seeing. Although I have a bit of a backlog to go through, seeing as I am going to start from the beginning.
Motivations
Let's talk motivation though. Why am I in love with this country of Chile and why do I keep going back? Let me remind you that this isn't my first whirlwind trip down south, nor my second even. I blogged about my second trip on a BlogSpot page titled A Remote Corner on Earth. You can still find those pages on that site. The writings from my first trip in 2010 are thankfully scrubbed from the blog. You know what they say, "If you can cringe at your younger self, you have grown as a person".
When I was in Grade 7 in 2010 I had the unique experience of living and going to school in Chile with my mother and sister for 3 months. I had a blast at that age. I got to see my grandfather, who had retired back to his home country of Chile by that point. I got to see unique landscapes, experience a culture and a language that I was not familiar with, and also make friends and get schooling in Spanish.
Looking back now I can see that I was changed by that trip. Early evidence can be found in my Camp YLCC [2] journals from 2011 onward. At YLCC we were taught goal setting, with daily, weekly, and yearly goals that we should set for ourselves and strive towards. But there was one goal that was above them all, the FLAG. Fearless, Life-Altering Goal. An interesting concept for a 13-year-old to confront. What was something that I really wanted to do that I probably couldn't accomplish in the next year, but that I would always be considering, thinking about, and striving towards? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was Chile. My goal verbatim was to "Live and travel in Chile for six months".
And honestly from 2010 onward I have been thinking about this FLAG ever since. This FLAG motivated me to save my part-time job money from high school and take a year off between high school and university. I worked for eight months to raise money and then I travelled to Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay for four months. Ah, but you see‥ four months isn't six months, so another trip was due. And while I do commend my parents for putting me in Ontario French Immersion schooling for all of grade school, I decided to throw a lot of that away and take a Spanish minor in university, driven of course by the FLAG.
This brings us to today, where I have completed a 5-year university degree and I have been working professionally as a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer since 2021. But I felt like this year was the right time to head back down.
Dispatches
Maybe the title of "dispatch" is too haughty. I for sure didn't go to writing school, so I'm not following anybody's definition of one, but that will be the internal code name for this blog series for me.
I intend to post blog articles covering days, weeks, and maybe whole months if nothing too interesting occurred. Note I am working with a bit of a backlog here, I need to get through January to June. I will be posting pictures on the blog as well and perhaps revitalizing my Instagram account for travel photos.
Cheers to a new series! Let's see how long I can keep it going this time.
| [1] | Created using imgflip.com (Source) |
| [2] | As I was writing this I just learned that Camp YLCC has permanently closed. What a bummer, a victim of the pandemic of course. I had lots of great memories of the 3 summers that I went there. Some information about the camp: https://www.ylcc.com/camp-programs |