After my friend Emma’s departure, I spent a few days with my favorite Italian friends in Brazil, whom it was really awesome to meet again after so many years! I lived for six months in the same apartment as Irene, not far from the famous Duomo of Florence, during my Erasmus. Then I saw her again, and her boyfriend of the time (now husband), Lorenzo, at their wedding, three years later! They were off right away to Saõ Paulo, where he was starting a post-doc, and I jokingly told them (but half-serious) that less time would have passed until our next encounter than since the last one, because I was planning to go to South America and I would HAVE to visit them!

NB: almost all pictures in this article are from Buenos Aires, because I couldn’t not show it to you properly, although most of the article talks about something else

Well, what was said was done, and two years later we met at their apartment in Saõ Paulo! In the meantime, my friends had learnt Portuguese and met tons of new friends there, had discovered the Brazilian lifestyle. I spent a few evenings with them and their friends, all in Portuguese, where I understood almost everything and answered in Spanish, which was really fun. One night, I saw Cristiane again, a Paulista met, as well, on a Colombian island a few months back (like my Chilean friends from a previous article). Great evenings, really! And the days were calm, dedicated to my friends and eating ice creams, observing capivaras (largest rodents on earth!) and resting a bit. After so many months on the roads, I didn’t really feel the same craving for continuous discovery that was pulling me forward at the beginning.

My very last week was spent in Buenos Aires, on a crazy (and a little expensive) decision that took me back to that city I so appreciated. I really wanted to be in Argentina a little more, and in a Spanish-speaking environment, for the end of my travel. Feeling like a traveler again, and a little less of a tourist, for my last days before going home. Great choice: aside from the fact that, in effect, I didn’t have the energy nor the desire to discover and visit any more, I did enjoy the Argentinian atmosphere a lot during that last week.

I thought I’d go to all museums and see all monuments I had missed, I actually mostly ate asados with the Argentinians in my hostel and drunk mates! But I also walked around San Telmo, visited an art museum and, importantly, finally saw the beautiful Recoleta cemetery. It’s an old cemetery for rich families, rather classy hence quite full with superb and imposing  tombstones – by the way, the dearly loved wife of the former president, Evita Perón, is buried there.

I read, wrote, went back to many places visited with Emma, listened to a lot of music – among which a jam session in some bar – and enjoyed the very musical atmosphere of the city. I met Gisela, too, Argentinian friend of my friend Abi, from Zurich, and I went dancing to a great concert with her: tons of musician girls with many different instruments and doing covers of old songs with a funky touch, followed by Colombian cumba. Perfect to complete my South American travel! I really love Buenos Aires, I love the air you breath there, the visible relationship of the city and its people with art and tango – which are ubiquitous -, I love how they speak there, I love its history, its architecture, and how green it is. Of all cities I’ve visited during that travel, if I had to stop somewhere to spend a few years, I believe it’d be Buenos Aires!

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And there I was, I had to greet BA goodbye, then Irene and Lorenzo as well. My flight back was from SP, after a few cachaça and tapioca flour purchases, and after a fun groovy afternoon dancing with Brazilian retirees. I took one of those transcontinental flight, which last so long that time stops going by and only what exists in the aircraft matters, where such different lives are mixed without mingling, each in their own mind, sleep, or movie.

I love these moments of transition, that help us parting from one reality to welcome another. What a shock would the end of such a long travel be if we could simply teleport! In general, I felt very calm, at peace with the idea of going home. I had always known the date of my flight back, thus I had been psychologically ready for a while. And I did do and see a bit of everything that I wanted for my travel, the circle was completed, as I told many people since I’ve come back. Of course I missed a lot of things, and to be fair I’d need to do the very same travel, all over again, but over more than a year, to really spend enough time everywhere and discover the places I was sad to miss. But we all know that’s not how life goes.

Still, this travel was very fulfilling and brought me exactly what I was seeking: the accomplishment of a dream and a total freedom (to choose what to do when, without compulsory domestic tasks, etc), which corresponds to my personality. And I was lucky enough to come back to Europe on a 17 March, so there was a musician playing live Irish music for Saint Patrick’s Day during my connection in London, I was so happy about that surprise-gift for my return that I teared up.

I had written down some notes before the end of the trip, to remind myself what I wanted to tell you about in this article, and I wrote, among others, “the beginning feels very far away”. It’s fun to read this around three months after coming back, because now even Buenos Aires seems far and it was weird to talk about Carnival (last February) in May (in my last article), so imagine how it must be for Colombia! And still, I spent about two months over there, it’s insane that it seems to have have happened in another life! But so goes my memory, and time that goes by.

The travel already seems so far away that I almost feel like it never took place! But of course, tons of pictures prove it to me, I know I did go and it was really me, over there, and not just somebody’s story that I read. I thus left from Colombia, where I saw Punta Gallinas, the most Northern point of the whole continent, and I went down along the Western coast and the Cordillera de los Andes, to the very end at the Land of Fire (Tierra del Fuego) in Argentina, it’s really crazy to think about it! I discovered that the exact same transportation vehicle can be called micro, bus, colectivo, or taxi, depending on the country. I traveled through countries, but also through street art, music, history, tattoos, politics, a bit through literature (but work’s only just starting! I have a full list of South American authors to discover!), food, people’s faces, accents in Spanish, and the tremendous cultural variety contained in the term “Latin America”…

I didn’t “find myself” while traveling, because I wasn’t looking for this. I reckon that I do know myself quite well already, at 26 y.o, and I know that the road to self-accomplishment is long. But life did offer me a beautiful present, allowing me to realise this travel such as I had imagined it. Since my return, I was often asked “which country did you prefer?”, but it’s actually a bad question. I don’t blame those who ask it, because it’s very hard to ask good questions to somebody who travels for so long. That’s why it’s hard to answer such a question, as well: I saw so many beautiful and different things that I can’t really choose.

How to know whether I preferred a Caribbean beach or a hike at more than 4000m altitude? Whether I preferred seeing penguins, discovering Andine traditional clothing, admiring moon-like landscapes with my boyfriend or dancing with a magical friend? I could name a few things that really marked me in each country, that would be more realistic already. I already answered the question of what the travel brought to me, and I believe that if you’ve read the several articles on my blog, you’ve understood it a bit yourself, as well.

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What are my 10 highlights of the travel? I’ll try and list you that… (not in order of preference!)

1. dancing in Colombia, and music there in general
2. tropical fruits (mostly in Colombia, in Brazil as well) and how you can eat maracuya and avocados anywhere, or tasty fruit juices
3. the Perito Moreno glacier (Argentina)
4. the jungle, everywhere I saw it, among others around Santa Marta (Colombia)
5. the friends you meet on the way and see again sometimes, the bonds that are created
6. the Iguazu waterfalls (Argentina)
7. turquoise lakes at the foot of glaciers in the mountain at El Chaltén (Argentina) and during the Salkantay trek (Peru)
8. how nice, open and warm people are sort of everywhere
9. the heaven-like beaches of San Andrés (Colombia)
10. seeing tons of amazing animals a bit everywhere: flamingos in Colombia and Bolivia, penguins in Chile, turtles in the North of Peru and in the Caribbeans, lamas/alpagas/guanacos/vicuñas a little everywhere and depending on the region, sloths in Bolivia and in the Amazonia, ostriches on the Bolivian altiplano, monkeys in the jungle, capivaras (largest rodent in the world) in Brazil, toucans, parrots and everything that the Amazonian forest is replete with…

As my blog’s homepage states, I went out there “looking for beauty”. And gosh did I find some! Beauty in all shapes and colors, among others that of landscapes, but also human beauty. I won’t start an emotional and quite paternalistic speech on how people live with little and are still happy and warm, I don’t really like those speeches that mostly aim at giving yourself a good light rather than really understanding local realities. I prefer listening to people rather than observing and coming back home with fancy conclusions.

What I did find though, which really transmits what I saw, felt, and started understanding, is this beautiful song by Calle 13 (“Street 13”, Puerto Ricans), called Latinoamérica. It makes me tear up everytime I watch it… Here it is, with lyrics in the subtitles below. Do read the text, observe the images, because it’s a wonderfully realised videoclip, which is beautiful and faithful, with a song that skillfully describes the continent’s realities and contrasts, its beauties and sufferings. See for yourself:

And, as you’ll have understood over time, I do enjoy a few stats from time to time! Therefore, I went as far a assessing the figures of a few things relative to my travel, based on Google maps, my memories, a map I had with me all along, and what internet could provide me with. Here you go:

• 7 countries, 3 time zones, 2 languages (Spanish, Brazilian)
• 5,5 months of which 2×2 weeks with visits (Emanuele, then Emma)
• About 7’500 photos
• 13 articles on this blog, hours and hours of work if I think about it
• Very hard to assess, but about 285 people met, that I got to know or with which I had a meaningful contact, among which 20 people met again during the travel, and among those are 2 I saw in Europe as well (Adnan and Isabel)!
• About 34’000 km by sea, ground and air
• About 610h of journey by bus (from the wifi and power plug one to one that stinks and leaks), jeep, minibus, mototaxi, boat, canoe, ferry, airplane and hitchhiking
• Of those 610h of journey there are about 55h hitchhiking, about 30ish hours of boat and 14h flight, minus the intercontinental flight one way and the other (about 12h and 9000km each flight)
• 158 days  in total, or 3,792h of travel, meaning that for about 1/6 or 16% of the travel I was on a transport (minus the intercontinental flights)

Quite impressive huh? Sort of makes me dizzy to see these figures like that… I must add that my bus rides, without being able to avoid poor tasted movie selections, have allowed me to give the award of the worst movie I’ve ever seen: Sand Sharks is really just as bad as its name makes it sound.

Well, and another thing that I love are maps! In fact, I went around during all these months with a huge folding map of South America, so big it barely fits a table. I faithfully indicated each place I was going to in order to trace back the journey realised and remember the names of all the places I visited. It’s not really possible to take a picture of the whole map that would be readable, you need to have it in your hands and open it to observe it closeup, but there was a “summary” version of the map  on the back and there I also traced the general lines of my moves. That should give you a good idea:

How cool is that? I find it awesome, holala! Not showing off though, I’m just super happy and grateful I could create and store all those memories. And then I came home, found my Emanuele again, with whom I live in Geneva. I saw my family and friends, so essential. I took the time to recover from the return and get used to normal life again, caught up with the news (what, TRUMP was elected?!?) and brought my bike to Geneva to move around more freely. And then, serious stuff began, I updated my CV and before I knew it I had internship offers. I accepted one and start working about three weeks ago, on a 6-month contract (for now). I’m fixed up! It took less than two months, way quicker than I was expecting, lucky me. Now I’m looking forward to what’s ahead, new challenges, new rhythms, new city and this cool new life. Thank you for following me around till here, and hasta la proxima for new adventures. Keep your mind and heart open.

Yours, sincerely. Your Audette

Those who travel are never alone.

For more photos of my last week, in Buenos Aires, click here

And for those who wish to take a virtual stroll through South America, here are all the photo albums I’ve published during my travel. Warning, the photos aren’t sorted out, there are tons of them!