Monday 16 March 2015

Moments

There are times in your life when you catch a flash of something beautiful and you break out in a smile. You scramble for your camera, hoping you could capture it, but you often can't because those moments rush at you in a blur and then weave away just as quickly. Or maybe you're just too shy to take a photo of someone, not wanting to flash cameras in their faces like a tourist, ruining that moment with crassness. Looking back on some of the prettier photo's we've taken, I often feel no connection to them. It was often a moment of boredom, looking around for something to do. Seeing one sight to another. These photos imply things that may or may not have been real.

So here are my travel moments. Ones that only exist in my memory. I play them on repeat to remind me what life is about.

Riding on a bus in Buenos Aires, an elderly man sits on a bench, his golden retriever sits at his feet. The dog lifts up with his paw and waves it at the man. The man reaches out and they sit there, hand in paw. The bus moves on, they move out of vision.

Kevin and I are snorkeling in the Galapagos Islands. The rest of our group of 14 have gotten on the raft to head back to the ship. There's not that much left to see and we're keen to get dry. Then we spot a lone turtle. He's just floating there, with his flipper under a rock. No one else had seen him. We get close to him, watching him in his sleep. It's just the three of us. He wakes up, sees us and swims away.

We're snorkelling with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands. They're incredibly playful. Darting quickly this way and that. Then one hurtles full speed right at me. My heart skips when he gets so close there's barely a metre between us. Then he dives down at a  90 degree angle. He's just playing.

After a long night out with some amazing New Yorkers, I'm on a natural/alcohol fueled high. I spontaneously put on some running shoes and run from Brooklyn across the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan at sunrise. A garbage man waves and calls out good morning. I smile and greet him back. I must have greeted at least 5 people that morning. The morning sun throws a shining glow over the New York skyline. I've never loved a city nor it's people so much as in that moment.

We're sitting with some wonderful friends in a natural hot spring in Pucon, Chile. It's dark and raining. A terrible night to be outdoors normally. But our bodies are hot. Our faces cold. And somewhere in the middle it's just right. We're jovial, my friends chant 'shower, shower, shower!'. I make a mad dash to the freezing cold shower and take a quick frigid shower, squealing the whole time. Then I rush back into the welcoming warmth. Of the water and my friends.

There are so many more little moments. If you put them all together you'd make a pretty awesome reel of joy and sunshine and all things good in life. This really was just a selfish post, for me to read back on, to breathe and be grateful.

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