06 August 2010

On Holiday

Well, sort of. A bit of work here and there, but otherwise a determination not to think, not to observe, not to measure, not to record, to go exactly where I please and not where I don't, and to have no plans at all. For me, this more or less defines what a holiday is, and even before I took up travelling professionally my view was that a holiday was not going through a check list of other people's ideas of 'must sees'. I am in charge of my holiday, and not the other way round. Whatever I feel like doing is the right thing to do, and if I happen to feel more like relaxing in the hotel than some World Heritage-listed site, then that's what I'll do.

Right now I'm in the middle of six weeks in South America, with a flight into Santiago de Chile, and a flight out of Sao Paolo, and a large gap in between with nothing planned except a side trip to Easter Island. Santiago was work; I'll probably write something about Easter Island; I liked Valparaíso enough to want to write about that; on the other hand I wasn't particularly impressed by the bus journey over the Andes, nor by Mendoza, so nothing there; Iguazu/Iguaçu was far better than I'd expected and I'll certainly write about that; a side trip to Paraguay's Ciudad del Este reminded me more of China than anywhere outside China I've ever been, but no thanks.

The only commitments are Santiago and Rio de Janeiro (I write this on board a dawn flight across Brazil) and the rest will get written simply because I find I want to, and will be sold on return. Even Rio, in which I'm planning to spend about ten days, out of which I only need about three for work, will be something of a holiday, as will some side trips to smaller towns.

I'm actually looking forward to travel for once.
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