A Long Drive

Winding River

In wine country – A fine Torrontes – Overlooking the vineyards – Great stories

While we were living in San Francisco we usually went to the wine country to celebrate birthdays, so how lucky to find ourselves in the Cafayate wine country during Neena’s birthday! A birthday calls for celebration and how better to celebrate than with fine wine and food, so I arranged for a private lunch for two at the San Pedro de Yacochuya winery.

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Valle de Luna

Neena’s reflections

Anniversary – Why? – Time to reconsider – Learning – Crisis

The 1st year anniversary of our trip was on Oct 20th, 2007. Last year, at 10pm this day, we left our apartment of 11 years to head North toward the Arctic circle, before turning around for the long drive south to the tip of the Americas. A year later, we are making an assessment, what did we expect from this trip and what have we learnt?

On the road

Shreesh’s reflections

A year gone by – Change – Big changes – Overcoming Fear

I would like to say that “Gee, I can hardly believe a year has gone by!” but I cannot. It definitely feels like a year, if not more. Does time fly by when you are having fun? Yes, if it is an abandon mindless kind of fun I do think it does.

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In the rubble

Not so interesting – Diamond in the rough – Welcoming people – Herd instinct – Shades of gray

There is usually a reason why certain spots are off the beaten path. Most of the time this is because there is not much of interest to be gained at that site or the trouble involved in getting there does not merit the payback in entertainment value. On the other hand, going to sites mobbed with tourists can be quite off-putting and most places cannot handle the large volumes of people wanting to see them. Rare is the site like Machu Picchu that can handle hordes of visitors and still feel uncrowded and spacious.

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Humberstone, Chile

Nitrate crisis – Crumbling buildings – Magnificent ruins

I have found ghost towns fascinating but until now I have never had the opportunity to visit one. The closest I ever got was old abandoned warehouses, which are species of mini ghost town unto themselves. The northern part of Chile has quite a distribution of ghost towns, mostly related to the nitrate industry that operated in the Atacama desert from the latter part of the 19th century to the early part of the 20th. The development of the Haber process in the 1910’s provided for a more economical way to make fertilizer and the nitrate industry went into decline and eventual extinction.

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“You know you are in a first world nation when juices come out of a can” – Shreesh Taskar, on encountering our first jiuce made from concentrate in Chile

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