As always, my first sentence is apologetic as yet again, I failed to keep our followers updated on all that happened on our voyage. I was pretty good with e-mail, though, just not with the website and I promise that when I finally stabilize a little (or at least get a more stable internet connection), I will update all media and post random memories of our travels. Fortunately I kept a daily journal so I don’t forget what happened along the way.

Anyways, back to the purpose of this post: the end of Pathforchange, at least for now (you never know what may come…a journey the other way around perhaps? one through Asia?…hmmm) is at hand. It has been an undescribably fulfilling journey and as I sit here in Buenos Aires, Argentina, just a few hours from my going away party, I can´t even begin to count the amazing experiences, people met, and cultures absorbed through our more than 60,000 kilometers on Chuleta and eight humanitarian projects (I missed the one in Peru so Pablo will have to fill you in on the details there) that gave the journey a true meaning beyond the travel aspect (that in itself has been obviously amazing as well). I will update all projects as soon as I organize myself a bit, but for now, I wanted to let everyone know that all is well on our end (Pablo and I are currently an ocean apart as he is continuing his travels in Europe as of a couple of weeks ago) and thank all of you who supported us whether through e-mails, phone calls, or even through your good thoughts and best wishes.

What’s next is the obvious question now. The answer, however, will have to be the topic of a later post. The future, nonetheless, is an exciting one and though the end of this journey is nowhere near being easy, I greatly look forward to taking the next few steps in a life now greatly impacted by the past 15 months in this beautiful continent.

And given that the most beautiful things on this Earth are not its landscapes, foods, music or other cultural expressions, but its people (by the way, to see a very small sample of the people in Latin America as seen through my camera’s lens, please go to http://picasaweb.google.com/giraldos/LatinoamericaYSuGente#), I hope to see you all sooner rather than later so don’t lose touch and always take care (so that I can actually see you!).

All the best!!
Santi

PS: Below you’ll find some of the final pictures of our Chuleta that never failed us. She’s in Montevideo, Uruguay, resting…for now.

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Como siempre, mi primera frase es para disculparme pues una vez mas falle en mantener a nuestros seguidores al tanto de nuestro viaje. Siempre fui bueno con el e-mail, sinembargo, solo que no con el website y prometo cuando finalmente me estabilice un poco (o por lo menos consiga internet mas estable), pondre al dia los elementos del website y escribire recuerditos aleatorios de nuestro viaje. Por fortuna mantuve un buen diario de lo que hicimos asi que no olvidare facilmente los detalles.

En todo caso, volviendo a la razon de este mensaje: el final de Pathforchange, por lo menos por ahora (nunca se sabe que ocurrira en el futuro…un viaje de sur a norte capaz? uno por Asia? hmmm….), ha llegado. Ha sido un camino indescriptiblemente llenador y al estar aca sentado en Buenos Aires, Argentina a unas pocas horas de mi fiesta de despedida, no puedo ni empezar a contar las increibles experiencias, gente conocida y culturas absorbidas durante los mas de 60,000 kilometros en Chuleta y ocho proyectos humanitarios (yo tuve que faltar al de Peru asi que Pablo les tendra que contar los detalles) que le dieron un sentido mas alla del “pasear” (que en si fue increible obviamente). Obviamente tendre que poner al dia la informacion de los proyectos apenas me organise un poco pero por ahora queria que supieran que todo va bien de nuestro lado (Pablo y yo estamos separados por un oceano desde que siguio sus viajes en Europa hace un par de semanas) y agradecerles a todos por su apoyo durante el camino con sus e-mails, llamadas o simplemente sus buenos pensamientos y deseos.

¿Que sigue? es la pregunta obvia ahora. Sinembargo, su respuesta tendra que ser el tema de otro mensaje. El futuro, no obstante, es bastante emocionante y aun si el final de este viaje esta lejos de ser facil, tengo muchas expectativas y ganas de tomar los proximos pasos en mi vida, hoy fuertemente impactadas por los ultimos 15 meses en este hermoso continente.

Y como lo mas lindo en esta tierra no son los paisajes, comidas, musica y demas expresiones culturales sino su gente (por cierto, si quieren ver una pequeña muestra de la gente de latinoamerica vista a travez del lente de mi camara, vayan a http://picasaweb.google.com/giraldos/LatinoamericaYSuGente#), espero verlos un dia no muy lejano asi que no se pierdan demasiado y se me cuidan siempre (asi los puedo ver! ja!).

Suerte muchachones!
Santi

PD: Abajo encontraran algunas fotos de Chuleta que nunca nos falló. Esta en Montevideo, Uruguay, descansando…por ahora.

Admittedly it has been a challenge to keep this blog up to date. My time has been divided between the projects, driving the continent, experiencing the places we travel to and absorbing their people’s culture as much as possible, taking pictures to record it all, tending to my professional responsibilities with ERAU, communicating with friends and family, and sleeping (sometimes). However, the past few days have given me the opportunity to have a bit of free time in airports, hotels, and other environments that I took advantage of to update the entire website, photo albums, our path, etc. I keep telling myself that now I’ll be more consistent with keeping in touch through blog postings (the photo albums were always there and updated somewhat regularly), but given my past, I can’t promise much in the future: I will say this: I’ll try harder than before.

For now, however, please feel free to explore the updates that were made and to make things easy for you – and being true to my engineering pragmatism(yes, even in these sometimes random times and unpredictable nature of our adventure, some order to the chaos still exists) – I’ll make a quick list of what exactly is new:

- All pages including the home page, all pages humanitarian projects we have completed, the transportation page, and contact page have been re-done; they all now include not only more information on their respective topic, but media including both pictures and video
- The path we have driven has been updated with every single important location we have visited during our trip along with links to corresponding photo albums, videos, etc. The driving paths taken in every single major road trip have been highlighted and all placemarks have descriptions. Don’t miss the volcanoes, parks, border crossings, and major project locations. I personally recommend that you view the map on Google Maps instead of our blog so that you can see the entire list of locations in the order we visited them.

- Want to see our car, Chuleta, in action? The transportation section has that and a link to pictures of the different means of transportation we have taken so far (not all-inclusive, unfortunately; some are likely missing)

-  A uTube channel has been created to host all videos made during the trip

- A media section has been added with links to the Picasa Photo Albums, uTube channel, and more

With that I’ll finish this post in the hopes that future ones will come on a more regular basis. I guess that’s up to me, right? Well, again, I’ll try. In the meantime, thank you so much to all who have been following our adventure one way or another. I have absolutely no clue how many e-mails I have written to how many of you since the start of this journey – all of which have helped immensely to keep me going along the way. Needless to say, keep them coming.

Ok everyone, from Lima, Peru and on our way to see the Nazca lines and Cusco by the weekend, I’ll say goodbye for now wishing everyone always nothing but the best. Keep your e-mails, comments, and other communications coming! Oh and if you have suggestions for travelling through Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and/or Brazil as well as for projects in Argentina or Brazil, they will be greatly welcome.

We are a little over half-way into our adventure – we’ll see what the second half has in store for us…

The simple yet profoundly powerful words of Joan Manuel Serrat have circled in my head the past few days after hearing them for the 100th time (at least) although this time from the spoken words of an incredibly talented musician at La Nueva Babel during Poetry Tuesdays where we are now regulars here in Oaxaca. It is not only fitting given what we are doing – the path we are leaving behind – but strikes a very deep chord in the sense that we are doing just that: leaving behind a path and not following one.

At the beginning of this trip this wasn’t very clear to me and I suspect to any of us. A bit over one month later much has changed; much more has happened; even more has been lived, felt, explored, and experienced. We’ll get to that eventually – one way or another – although for now, in company of the four candles at my side on a barren wooden table with a laptop that screams “out of place!”, it would seem fitting that I start at the beginning. To do so I should really take you back – way back – to how this all started. We may get to that as well one day, but for now, let’s just go to the weekend right before our departure and work our way from there…

Point of "technical" departure (for me at least)

After fortunately a heck of a lot less good-byes than I was afraid to have to say on my last day at work, I headed South to see my family for the last time in a good while. As it happens, we were invited to a somewhat long-lost friend’s wedding in Key West (as if I had planned it, I ended up starting my adventure at the Southernmost tip of the US that provided the perfect opportunity to share with my family before the adventure that would separate me from them. The weekend had in store for me a few surprises – one in particular – that I was not anticipating, which turned things around and shook them for better or worse (likely the former) and which I’ll surely write more about eventually. In the blink of an eye, as is usually the case, it was over. It was 4:30 AM on Monday, February 2nd when I finally made it back to Daytona – just a couple of hours before we were scheduled to depart.

The three of us plus Juan

Needless to say, it wasn’t until a few hours after that we finally departed  along with undoubtedly one of the most special friends we were lucky to have met (Juan Quiros) under a cloudy and soon to be rainy sky (Uyi came to the rescue a few hours later assuring us in a good-bye text message that in his country, Nigeria, leaving on a rainy day is a sign of good luck). [C:\Documents and Settings\eagle\My Documents\My Pictures\Viajes y Paseos\Latinoamerica 2009\Prep & Departure\IMG_9747.JPG] Behind we left more than any of us could at that point imagine – and I am most definitely NOT referring to anything material – and before we knew it we reached the highway, the city limit, the state limit, and soon enough we were arriving at our first stop: New Orleans.

New Orleans

Rooster y los chicos

The Big Easy greeted us dark, windy, cold, and quiet. That is, until we finally made our way to Bourbon Street where the soul of this interestingly decadent city comes to life at night with its tones of red, green, and blue and hustlers trying to get you in their door as if their life depended on it. We walked up and down in search of food (and drink) and soon enough we found both. The drink came within one of the loneliest bars on the street (yes, a hustler convinced us to go inside) but after hearing the blues performance Rooster and his gang put on for us and the 5 or so tables that made up the audience, we were certain (in our heads at least) it was probably the only place that night that could have given us the authentic experience we sought. [C:\Documents and Settings\eagle\My Documents\My Pictures\Viajes y Paseos\Latinoamerica 2009\Prep & Departure\MVI_9759.AVI].

Happy to have at least gotten a glimpse of this certainly amazing city’s night scene, we trudged back home a bit tired but anxious to rest enough to take on what would surely be a very long day. The US-Mexican border was, after all, waiting for us several hundred miles away.

The next morning I woke up earlier to move the car from the otherwise private parking lot that the guard let us stay in for free after seeing my “Colombia Te Quiero” bag – he was, of course, Colombian and trust me, that was not the first or last time the bag has come in handy. Soon the sun came up, all awoke with it, and we headed to take a stroll through the French Quarter before starting the long drive ahead of us.

Canon in New Orleans

Caballito al Sol de New Orleans

On peut pas tout avoir...

Oleo de mascara tipica

McAllen and Crossing the Border

When Uyi said that departing on a rainy day was good luck, we was 100% right if by good luck he meant we would get sunny skies soon after. Actually since then we have had nothing but blue skies to this day! In any case, the drive was uneventful for the most part; lots of mate, music, talking (debating), and reading. Our arrival to McAllen was bittersweet for me, however. My first contact with life in the US was in that city back when I was almost 7. The city that saw me change drastically changed itself perhaps even more so, and all I had to appreciate it were a few highways I didn’t recognize as we carefully made our way to my uncles’ Lili’s and Diego’s house. Several hours later than our original estimated arrival time, they were still waiting for us with our first introduction to Mexican cuisine – and what an incredibly delicious dinner (chocolate-and-God-knows-what-else-based Mole with chicken) it was!

Unfortunately the night was well upon us, the day had been tiring (particularly for Juan that drove most of the way), and the beds looked all too inviting so after putting some clothes to wash, checking the road to be followed in Mexico in the morning online, and making a quick post on the website, I was the last to turn in for the day – a good 5 hours before we were planning on leaving once again.

Sooner than any of us would have liked, dusk became dawn and after a quick breakfast and quicker good-byes to Lili and Diego who treated us like royalty during our short stay, we made our way to Chuleta (our car, by the way) and amidst the foggy morning we headed towards the border almost nervously. It was, after all, a point of no return. However, no sooner did we arrive did we realize just how ridiculously easy it is to cross South. The other way around, as we all know, is a completely different story. In any case, the drive over the Rio Grande took literally 20 seconds and soon we were doing the import papers for Chuleta and ourselves, after which we were free to roam in Mexico.

With little time to waste (our friends from Daytona beach were due to start arriving in Mexico City on Thursday – the day after) we drove straight through the mountains towards our first stop: San Miguel de Allende.

Iglesia SM de Allende en la noche

San Miguel de Allende – Mexico

We arrived a bit late to San Miguel, but early enough to find a good hostel, some of the best “Gringas” (soft flower tortilla tacos) we have had up to now, walk around the town at night, and end up at a karaoke bar. Yes, our introduction to Mexican nightlife was through the all not-mexican Karaoke that actually, come to think of it, I hadn’t done in YEARS. Of all places. It was, admittedly, a great time (if not culturally enriching), however, and I actually sang two songs of which one was a duet with Pablo (who sucks at singing Karaoke by the way…heh heh).

Karaoke disaster

The next morning we toured the town and photographed away. San Miguel de Allende is a truly beautiful city where we soon found out a heck of a lot of foreigners have gone to live permanently. Unfortunately we had to make it to Mexico City that evening and so the time was very short giving us just a few short hours before we were once again on Chuleta making our way to our final destination for the day marking the end of this first chapter in our journey. With a group of 20+ friends soon to group up in one of the World’s biggest cities, the next few days would without a doubt be unforgettable. Preview: they were.

Parejita en el parque

Lamparas en San Miguel

Chico solitario

The streets of our new hometown: Oaxaca

Hello everyone! Yes, I know, updates have been long overdue. After almost four weeks since our departure, I really haven’t had much time to update anyone on our progress. And yet, so much has happened that now my fear is making one large post that may be too long to keep your attention. To keep things interesting (or at least more so) I’ll try to split things up a bit just as it would have been if I’d been able to keep this thing up to date on a regular basis. Sorry, there’s just so much that has been going on combined with such limited internet access and a bit of instability (until we finally got an appartment last week – more on that soon) that it’s been tough to move on to updating the website.

So, be on the lookout for some postings, pictures, etc. soon. By the way, I have posted a good deal of pictures already to my Picasa web albums in case you’re interested. I’ll add the stories soon enough! For now, know that we are in Oaxaca, our first project has started great with Puente, and we are loving this city – even better than we could have imagined.

Hope everyone is doing well wherever they may be and we’ll keep in touch soon!

Our planning going in could be better but as expected, people along the way help shape these kinds of voyages and sure enough, our path towards Mexico City has taken form within the past hour or so. After an introductory mexican dish of chicken with Mole (as authentic as they get with chocolate, three types of chilies, and who knows what else) at my uncles’ (Lilly and Diego) home, it is now 1:30 AM. Our last load of laundry in the US is almost done, and in four hours or so we will once again put our bags in the trunk of Chuleta (our trusty ’92 Honda) to now head into less familiar territory. More excited than ever, all of us four (Juan Quiros came along for the initial drive) can hardly wait…

This weekend 16 friends from Daytona fly in to Mexico City to be there with us during our first weekend in Latin America. Along with those already waiting for us there, it’s bound to be an interesting few days. Surely more will follow…

Until then, suerte la gente, faites des beaux reves, et ci sentiamo dopo!