Sarah Suter

June 30th, 2005, 17:00 – Last minute spent at 277 Park Avenue…

17:05 – First celebratory drink

July 1, 02:00 – Stumble back to apartment, finish packing for Girls weekend to San Diego, flight leaving in 6 hours…

My life as an investment banker is officially over, and in the words of my brother, my life as a ‘voluntary nomadic hobo’ has begun!

It starts…

Elaine, Emma and Sarah descend upon the unsuspecting locals in San Diego – Pacific Beach…

Hello Banana Bungalow, possibly the dodgiest hostel around (don’t be fooled by the flashy website), but it was right on the beach…

Interesting facts about San Diego:

• You can drink on the beach!! Yes! – but only till 8, and the cops still card you…


• They call it Man Diego – so many more boys here than girls… (let this not be an indicator of quality)


• The ‘men’ all think they’re still 17, living the surf dream…

Top 6 moments from the weekend:

1. Discovering Denny’s – and their CHOCOLATE BROWNIES, oh, and their apple pie, and their grilled cheese, and their Moons-over-my-hammy sandwich! Yumm!
2. Dorothy and Siobhan pole-dancing with the traffic beacon outside Drew’s apartment
3. Elaine professing that the boys in New York ‘are only looking for your phone number’ – (We know thats not what you REALLY meant, Lainey)
4. Watching Penny’s sisters wedding DVDs (yes, all three of them) with running commentary…
5. July 3rd craziness – I leave it at that…
6. The hungover breakfast at Siobhan’s restaurant on the 4th…

Honourable mentions:

1. Sophie and Siobhan for saving me from the dodgy hostel on the last night in SD
2. Tim and ?? – the random Kiwis for doing the haka for us at Banana Bungalow
3. The guy at the hostel who spent the ENTIRE day walking around with a Budweiser box on his head…????
4. The undercover cops in their Hawaii print shirts…

Not so honourable mentions:

1. The Aussie who looked like Buzz Lightyear from the hostel. Ughhhhh… well, at least he’s ‘found himself’ in his year of travelling…

My first ever solo road trip!!

I’d totally imagined doing this trip in a flashy red convertible… Unfortunately (see ‘so, I quit my job’ post), I ended up going for the budget option, and got stuck with possibly the unsexiest car on the planet: a ford sedan in BEIGE… ughhh… nevertheless, still a fabulous trip…

For those of you who don’t know…

The Pacific Coast Highway:

“Stretching from sunny “So Cal” to the shady forests of the north, this coastal highway winds along some of the most spectacular ocean views in the U.S. The highway contains countless examples of the many intrinsic qualities that make a highway a National Scenic Byway—qualities like perfect views of ocean waves breaking on rocky shorelines and cliffs, dozens of historical landmarks like Spanish Missions and Spanish settlements, and limitless opportunities to participate in every kind of outdoor recreation imaginable. A traveler would have to travel numerous other byways spread across the nation to witness all the qualities contained on just this one byway. This should be no surprise considering the highway runs through some of America’s most influential cities and most scenic landscape, including San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.”

My route:

San Diego – Los Angeles – Santa Barbara – Cambria – San Francisco

Highlights:

1. Hiking up Runter’s Canyon in LA, to see the Hollywood sign at sunset
2. Going out crazy partying in Santa Barbara with the British guys from Doncaster and the 3 crazy Swedes (who nearly had me convinced to ditch my trip to San Francisco, and to go to Vegas with them for 5 days)
3. Staying at a motel in Cambria – my very first motel!!
4. The coastline between Cambria and San Francisco – possibly the most awesome drive ever – really similar to Chapman’s Peak in Cape Town, but goes on for about 200kms! Awesome!
5. Cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito for lunch in San Francisco

But most of all…

What to do in your last few weeks living in the most awesome city in the world?

• Make big plans to get all cultural and go to museums every day, as well as re-initiating the big ‘get fit’ programme… then end up sleeping till 12 or 1… and going for lunch, then coffee, then dinner, then drinks…
• Throw your watch into the East River off the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise (Top Gun style like when Maverick throws Goose’s dog tags into the sea)
• Go to a top-secret underground restaurant in a top-secret location with your best friends
• Go listen to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra play some tunes in the park at sunset
• Go to PS1 religously every saturday… dance crazy, look crazy, drink beer, drink Orla’s smuggled whiskey/vodka/fill-in-the-blank, people-watch, art-watch, freak-watch, play with beach-balls, smiley-faced foam creatures, surf on boogie-boards, break-dance, nude beach…
• Plan a mysterious night out for your friends
• Spend a disproportionate amount of time in Bua and Lucky Jack’s
• Drink jugs of sangria on a random wednesday evening at Bua
• Take impromptu drum lessons at Libation
• Spend money like you’re still getting a paycheck…
• Spend WAY too much of this money on Jaegerbombs!!

Reykjavik – Iceland (3-9 August)

Things you probably didn’t know about Iceland

1. The population of Iceland is only 290,000, with about 180,000 living in and around Reykjavik (the capital)... the next largest town has 15,000 residents
2. In late-June, the sun sets and rises an hour apart – midnight golf is a popular activity. Even when I was there in early-August, it never really got too dark. The days get 6 – 7 minutes shorter every day – so Iceland loses 3 hours of sunlight per day in a month!
3. Children out of wedlock are common and Icelanders do not look on single mothers with contempt or disgrace
4. Some icelanders believe in ‘hidden people’ – gnomes, dwarfs, elves etc – roads, freeways, and towns are planned around this to avoid disturbing their homes…
5. Icelandic is a difficult language to learn. It is unchanged since the time of the Vikings in the 10th century. The Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters. English words like Computer or telephone are not adapted, Icelandic words are invented by a linguistic committee if necessary ( for example: Tölva =Computer)
6. Icelandic surnames are composed from the first name of their father (rarely from the mother) plus the Icelandic word for son “son” or daughter “dóttir”. Eriksson means Son of Erik and Sigurddóttir is daughter of Sigurd. Icelanders are listed by their first name in the telephone directory.

Awesome people I met in Reykjavik

• The 70-year-old Reykjavik local poet in the ‘Mokka’ coffee shop – who sat and talked to me for an hour and a half about life in Iceland… even singing some of the Icelandic rhymes and telling me about the sagas. Awesome…
• Frankie – the bartender at the Dubliner – who took me to some random icelanders house party
• Inga, Ingibjörg, Ditti, Tinna, and all the other Icelandic girls – for crazy dancing and tequila shots
• Ingunn – the Icelandic lady – for hours of conversation about nothing at the Dubliner
• Mike and Mike – the American guys from Colorado, and Vermont

Iceland was awesome… Wish I’d had more time to go around the ring road (Route 1), and see some of the glaciers, the iceberg fields, and the fishing villages… next time. In winter, Iceland is also a great place to go to see the Northern Lights…

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out

For example:

Shelly, London, August: “Paul’s feeling really sick, but he’s got the FOMO so he’s coming out anyway”

POC - Plan Of Crazy

For example:

Emma, New York, any weekend or week night: “Guys, whats the POC for this weekend?!?”

PUI - Planning Under the Influence

For example:

Mark, New York, usually around 4am: “We’re having a HUGE brunch at my place tomorrow, on the balcony, around 1” (brunch yet to actually happen)

Saturday night fever – the overwhelming desire to ask a taxi driver to blast his radio, as if the cab could magically transform into a disco

For example:

Usually me, New York, in a cab going out - “Excuse me, do you have a radio? Would you mind putting on 100.3?”

Five weeks in France with my parents…

Highlights

• Relaxing at my parents’ house in Rueil Malmaison – a suburb of Paris to the west of the city i.e. sleeping in, having lunch and dinner in the garden, lying in the hammock, watching mindless television – the simple things!
• Shopping for fresh produce at the bi-weekly market that comes to the little town square here – buying chickens with their heads still on, sampling fresh farm cheeses, yummy pates, fresh butter…
• Meeting up with a friend of a friend – Sophia – a South African girl living in Paris, and her crazy french friends for a night out in Paris… Missing the last metro home at 1am, so staying out till the 1st train at 5:30 – The awesome blues bar with their home-made flavoured rum – magnifique – La Pomme d’ Eve – the South African bar
• Meeting up with Chris and Emily (SA friends from Mexico trip) for a night at the Moulin Rouge! Yay!
• Spur-of-the-moment trip to London for Paul and Shelly’s birthdays – crazy nights out in Clapham with them; drunken luncheon with Heather, JT, Phil and Warren; braai with La and Scott; Spur dinner with my Craig
• Family night out in Paris – frantic little French restaurant (Chez Fernand) in St-Germaine-des-Pres, and then somemore cabaret at the Lido
• Picnique in the gardens of Versailles
• Wandering aimlessly around the streets of Paris

Great trips

• The Champagne region – about an hour and a half from Paris. Visiting a champagne producer consists of a cellar tour and a tasting. The cellars are 15 to 20 metres underground and are at a constant-temperature. Producers will have kilometres and killometres of underground caves for aging and storing their champagne. We visited Taittinger as well as Moet & Chandon. Both very good champagne, but preferred Taitt!
• The Loire Valley – my parents and I visited this region over a long weekend, staying at the most beautiful farmhouse B&B (Le Cedre de Monnaie - highly recommended), with our hosts Margot and Bernard. We had a four-course home-cooked meal with them at their table along with the other guests every night. Amazing how they would keep the conversation flowing in both French and English! Lovely! We also did a fair amount of wne tasting and visited the most amazing Chateau (castle) – at Chenonceau… highly recommended – a real fairytale castle built over a river with amazing manicured gardens… The chateau was designed by women through the centuries.

Been in Buenos Aires for 3 weeks now, and having a fantastic time! Really loving the porteña lifestyle!!

I´m staying in a homestay in Palermo, one of the barrios of Buenos Aires, with a retired couple in their late 60s or 70s… with 3 other students from the school: Lucy (UK), Kelly (Canada), and Derek (USA)... really great group of people!

Spanish school going well… go to class for 4 hours a day… very strange and cool to feel like I am learning something again… somedays go really well, and feel like you could actually hold a semi-decent (but very slow) conversation in Spanish (albeit on a very limited set of topics… , and other days, feel like you can´t even communicate in English…

Nevertheless, I have managed to accomplish (amongst a limited list of other things) the following things in Spanish:

1. Book a table for 5 at a restaurant for 9:30
2. Organise a SIM card for my cellphone, and worked out how to recharge my credit, and listen to voicemail! Oooh!
3. Attend 2 yoga classes (first time yoga as well)
4. Attempt an explanation of south african politics (after a few cocktails and glasses of wine) to an Argentinean couple… ya

Spanish failures (amongst a large list of others):

1. Getting medicine for my current cold from the pharmacy (the stuff kept me awake for hours)
2. Ordering something dodgy at some restaurant on my first Friday in Buenos Aires, and ending up in bed with food poisoning and not seeing the light of day for 48 hours… loving life

Everything is so fantastically cheap… we had a mad night out on Friday for Kelly´s farewell, and spent USD35, for dinner, wine, and cover charge at a club and drinks all night till 7am!

Which brings me to the frenetic and crazy nightlife! Most clubs only open their doors at 2am (which usually means crawling out of a place as the sun rises – got to love it)... have been to some really cool places… a club designed to look like the Sydney opera house (Opera Bay); a beautiful club called Asia de Cuba with rope trapeze artists performing from the roof; a Brazilian salsa bar with the most sensual amazing beautiful dancing I have ever seen (could NOT stop watching…!)

Some things, however, will never change – we´ve ended up spending a few late-nights-early-mornings drinking in various Irish bars in Buenos Aires…

Lucy (my English housemate), and I have begun to feel like big blonde giants here in Argentina! We´re so much taller and paler than the typical Argentinean girls… we feel a bit like drag queens some nights

Restaurants are fantastic, people are fantastic, the city itself is beautiful and so interesting, and I am really excited about what the rest of this trip holds!! At the moment, trying to decide when to head to Bariloche (in the Andes) to meet up with Kelly (the Canadian girl I met here)... We´re thinking of hanging out in Bariloche for while, seeing some nature, and then going across to Chile, Peru and Bolivia… who knows…

Been eating more than my fair share of empanadas (yummy meat or cheese pies), medialunas (croissants), meat (fantastic fantastic meat here), and alfajores (DON´T miss these if you some here – awesome cakey-biscuity things with chocolate and dulce de leche (condensed milk))... yummmmm!

For those of you that will be watching the SA v Argentina rugby match on TV on November 5th, keep a look out for me and some friends – we´ll be there at the stadium here in Buenos Aires! Yay!

Chau amigos! Hasta luego!!

After 4 and a half weeks in Buenos Aires, I´ve decided, in the interest of my own sanity, and back muscles, to leave behind some of my very most favourite things in Buenos Aires:

• My little pink iPod


• My hot red cowboy boots


• My fancy New York jeans


• My little black dress


• My fancy camera

and have exchanged them for a much more useful set of items, including, but not limited to:

• Sexy zip-off trekking pants (very sexy)


• My very own stylish green and yellow certified to negative 7 degrees sleeping bag


• Brown hiking boots


• Chunky hiking socks


• 5 stitches in my chin (see footnote 1)


• 4 newly-repaired teeth (see footnote 1)

So, I left Buenos Aires on Thursday afternoon at 1pm , and arrived in Bariloche, after a 21 hour bus journey, in possibly the most comfortable and luxurious bus I have ever been in… (the busses here are like 1st class cabins)

Spent a few days mostly chilling and eating chocolate in Bariloche with Anne Marie (my Irish friend from NYC), Kelly (my Canadian friend from BAs), and Chris (another random Aussie traveller we picked up in a coffee shop – yes, eating apple strudel once again)... Stayed at 2 awesome hostels, that (for various reasons) we suspect were run by a moonie cult?¿

Kelly, Amo and I have now rented a car, and are on a 3 day roadtrip to see a horse´s grave 300km south of Bariloche, in the tiny Welsh settlement of Trevelin! We´re the only 3 travellers staying at the most gorgeous chilled out hostel - Casa Verde! Highly recommended!

Footnote 1: I fainted after a fairly crazy night out, and the saltiest most revolting batch of 4am pasta (compliments of Jonothan and Umberto!!)... ended up in the most Pulp-Fiction-esque scene at 7am crawling from the front door of their apartment covered in blood into a taxi, and to the hospital – madness… Couldn´t have left BAs any other way!

I left chilly-drizzling middle-of-a-taxi-strike Bariloche on November 21st, and made my way up to Mendoza, then to San Juan, then some National Parks, and am now in North-West Argentina…

Some bus stats:

• Cumulative long-distance bus time so far: 61 hours


• Amount of chocolates and general travel junk food rubbish consumed on busses: lots


• Games of bus bingo played (I kid you not): 2


• Bad dubbed American movies shown: Arachnophobia, The First Daughter, Anaconda…etc…

Highlights of the last few weeks

• Chocolate in Bariloche


• Rafting for the 1st time – the Rio Manso (grade III and IV) right up to the Chilean border!


• Chilling up at La Morada hostel on a rainy day, colouring-in journals and playing cards with the 2 mohawks from Ireland and UK, and Andrea from Aus


• Wine tasting and stuffing our faces in Mendoza


• Visiting the thermal pools for a full day of pampering up in the mountains surrounding Mendoza with Vera (Neth), and Kyle (USA)


• The costume party with 100 bottles of cheap champagne at our hostel in Mendoza…


• Booking myself into a NICE hotel after said costume party to de-hostel-ize myself


• Trip to Ischigulasto national park 4 hours from San Juan! “Moon Valley” – Beautiful!


• The 2 day road trip south of Salta with Guy (SA), Jess and Louisa (UK) – hired a car and headed to Cachi – unbelievably gorgeous diverse vistas, horseriding, eating yummy ice-cream – then heading the next day on an equally awesome drive to Cafayate – another wine-region – and a gorgeous town – rented bikes and went wine-tasting – disastrous combination – lotsa fun – This trip is definitely one of my favourites so far!


• Getting my stitches out!!

From here, I´m heading North to Bolivia over the next few days…

Bolivia holds its elections on December 18th, and they´re expecting some issues around that – so may not stick around in Bolivia too long…

Hasta luego!!