And here I am… a few thousand kilometers away from home, from my comfort zone, and that first night I was just wondering… What the hell am I doing here?
I still remember how the idea arose, the embryo of this adventure, deciding to get my passport because I wanted, I wanted, I longed to see more, to see first hand all that, one of those people, it was you, told of the people across the seas, of fishermen who searched in nearby islands, the remedy for your burns of that sun that for them, only caresses them, or of you too, that in your tour of nearby lands, now ravaged by a war, you said, you told that they were an example of kindness to strangers.
I recognize a certain envy that invaded me, jealousy perhaps because they dared to realize what for me were dreams and fantasies.
So I decided not to leave that permanent doubt in the inkpot, and that’s when this adventure began.
I told myself why not, after all, the magazines, the photos, the comments of people who had approached these places, warned that it was another world, a kind of paradise, virgin to explore, with few tourists a year, something that is still true, but they did not warn me of the cost, of this overwhelming feeling that even now fills me.
You have to understand that, although I keep proclaiming how comfortable I am alone…here I really am, I go out to a street where I have to deal with a thousand and one motorcycles and a sense of traffic that could be summarized in a…every man for himself!!!! I am confronted with a series of intense smells, not at all unpleasant it must be said, but that hit my brain, with images that you had only seen on TV, or your grandparents had told you about in the post-war period, ship containers used as housing, as a business selling fuel, with certain looks of curiosity, with a continuous good day that they dedicate to you, with cabs that only leave to make their route when it is full of four, five or six people going to the same destination … just like in Barcelona.
And the language?
What am I going to fool you…it’s the most frustrating thing you can imagine, no English nothing at all with the Portuguese they speak here, that you can hardly get five words out of fifty and believing that they are telling you everything or saying to each other…what a guiri panoli…it doesn’t help to calm me down.
What about the weather?
It seems to me to be in another dimension, on another planet in which, the days do not have the 24 hours of ours, but rather 37, a full, intense activity during the day, and when the sun closes…because there is no, there is hardly any street lighting.
Yes, I know, I know what you are going to tell me, for a little more, for a better look, for any reason you could tell me, I could be in a situation not as overwhelming as the one I am describing, but as I said to my soul mate… there are those who live squeezing every moment, and those are the ones who can and have the right to say to themselves…I lived.
And that’s what I decided to do, accepting all this, which, by the way, I never thought I would feel.
I think that, by far, this is a trip that will mark me, having all these sensations…I know that when I get home, I will appreciate who I have close to me, I will have much more idea, when I am working with someone who is like me, lost, without perhaps knowing or understanding what are those sounds he hears, and with the aggravating factor of being sick.
No, I know that I will not be the same, it is impossible when you cross the border, the border of the countries that saw me fly in their skies to get here, the border of daring, of telling myself that why not!!!, the border of feeling, no longer helpless, but the one that you cross when you leave a certain comfort that, from a distance, we do not know how to appreciate.
As Paco said, it is not his name but he likes to be called that way, a Saomates that I met today…the world is very big, but nowhere like at home, a port of arrival longed for, even if you wish to be at the port of departure for another next adventure.
I cannot, nor do I wish, to forget to thank Sonia, from Kareba Travel, maybe you will think that just another travel agency, but it will be that not, because she is someone with an incredible work ethic and beautiful eyes, this last one is not an appreciation of mine, I only note a tremendous reality, in the management of how this adventure of mine is being carried out and to whom I owe a lot of advice and encouragement for this adventure of mine and of which without a doubt… I will repeat it.
*** Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
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