No Place Like Here – Cris and Felipe Round the World

Alto Paraíso, Brasil, 07.2005.

Today is the last day of my “twenties” and yesterday I watched a movie called “7 things to do before I’m 30″. The character made a list of these 7 things while she was still a teenager and 1 month before her 30th birthday she finds the list and realizes she hasn’t done anything of that, so she starts running after those things.
It’s a crap movie, don’t waste your time watching it, but it was inevitable for me to wonder what I’d have put on my own list, if I had done one, and if I’d have been able to do everything I wanted to do until.. uhm.. today.

I tried but could not remember of anything that I would have done but I did not. Instead, when I think how my twenties were, I see a decade much richer in events than I would imagine back then.
It was a decade full of experiments, I would say. Experiments of all sorts, with the body, with the mind, with the heart, with life.

It was during my 20 years that I graduated in Design, after putting Uni on “stand by mode” 3 times and almost quitting, my dad insisting and after some fights with him I finally finished it. Fathers are always right!
It was also during my twenties that I had my first real boyfriend, and was still in the twenties, 9 years later, that I married him. Myself, that never thought would ever get married…

I bought my first car, opened two businesses, my life and work became the same thing, employees, big clients, and when the professional side began to show good results, it was the personal side that spoke louder. I sold everything I had, I left home and moved from Brazil to New Zealand. That island in the corner of the world map, where they speak a language different than mine, where it’s cheaper to buy another car but much more expensive to buy food. Where I discovered how it feels to miss the ones I love without necessarily being sad and to walk on the streets without fear.

This was also the decade that someone threatened me with a gun pointed to my head, only to steal my bag, and that I spent one day in jail, arrested.
That I jumped, only the parachute and I, in the center of Curitiba – something that is prohibited for students nowadays. This after spending the whole night at a rave party. And talking about parties, this was the decade that I also spent a week camping in an electronic music festival at Chapada dos Veadeiros, centre of Brazil, and in another one at a tiny island in Rio de Janeiro – the best party I’ve ever been.

It was on my twenty and something that for the first time in my life I could sit cross-legged as an Indian, after taking another decision that would change my life: a surgery to put a hip prosthesis.

And it was during the last of these twenty years, closing them with a golden key, that a dream that didn’t even know I had came true and I spent half a year traveling the world. Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, knowing, trying to understand, experiencing.

Surely this post forgot many other important things (or just didn’t want to tell hehe), things that some people will read and remember. Ah, these people that I learned to recognize as the most important thing in life!

No, definitely I don’t have a list of things I missed doing before I’m 30. I’ve even thought of creating a list of things to do before I’m 40… another trip around the world, what else… but thinking again, this is nonsense!
Living is the best way to make things happen, and I hope the next decade will be just like the last one, full of delightful surprises.

I don’t want to know how tomorrow will be, only when it comes I’ll be able to tell what is like to be a woman in her thirties.

When we left Bali we were happy, lighter and more tan than when we arrived, with the peace of the certainty that we are coming back to this magical place someday.

Felipe with his collection of injuries: the bike accident that yielded an infection, the board that cut his head and a “Bali kiss” – common burning on the bike’s exhaust pipe. People say he probably had a “karma” with the island, I think that after all the debt must be paid! Another theory is that he’s already used his whole “quota of bad luck” of the trip during this single month, so from now on it will be all about joy! I like this second one… and I hope that my “quota of bad luck” doesn’t exist. hehe

I leave with my new passion, which later, in Brazil, my friend Carlos explained that there is nothing new about it, this love story is old, and that makes me even more delighted.

During the last week we spent in the Bukit we realized that the majority of surfers who come to Bali leave the airport direct to Ulu Watu or Padang Padang, they spend one, two months surfing here and return home without knowing Bali. We saw and heard many Brazilians and Australians, speaking different languages but wearing the same brands and behaving in similar ways.

I am happy we’ve had a different experience though, I’m happy to have by my side a surfer that came to Indonesia dreaming about it’s waves but also loved spending an entire week in the incredible Ubud, far from the sea.
And crazy about the beach that I am, I was surprised to see that despite the heat and the turquoise blue sea, the beach is not the best of Bali. I’ve learned two things that I didn’t even know that existed before: the language and a kind of energy that makes you wake up at  6am smiling every day.

It was an incredible month. We thank Aline and Luiz for receiving us in Sanur and for all their help and tips! The company of Pasqual and Ale was more than special all the time, without them it wouldn’t have been the same. If I already knew I loved these two before, now I love them even more.

We left Bali with the feeling that one month was the ideal time. We are willing to get the plane toward the next destination.
The trip to Singapore was not part of the “Round the World” package, and the cheapest fare we found was with Jetstar Asia – US$ 130 each – a 2hs only flight, the plane was old, with leather seats that were everything but comfortable and no snacks, but it was 10pm and I was so tired that I slept all the time anyway.

**Tip: you must pay a departure tax of 150k rupees at the airport. We had already passed through the  police x-ray and everything when we found out and Felipe had to leave the airport to get the money from an ATM.

Oriental Bay – Wellington

Before going on with the stories of our round the world trip I’m going to quickly update where we are now and what we have been doing.

We’ve been back in Wellington (NZ) for two and a half months but we are so settled that it feels like we’ve been here for longer!

During the first week, still on holidays, we could enjoy a little bit of what had remained from Summer and went to the beach.  But just after that Winter rushed and passed over Fall.  That Fall, which generally is great in Wellington, dry, sunny and not so windy simply did not exist this year… the Winter came with everything, strong freezing winds and rain, a lot of rain.  I confess that this has been a bit depressing lately.

We’ve already rented a house (which I love!), I am back to the my old job and Felipe’s started at a new job… with that we’ve fallen in the routine home-work-home… what sometimes can be quite boring, specially after living 7 months without any routine.

We still haven’t got a car, but whenever it’s possible we rent one and flee somewhere around for a little change of landscape, mostly we go to Wairarapa, where Fê and Otávio go surfing.

Ah, Otávio is Felipe’s brother (and oficially my brother-in-law now.. hehe), he’s been living with us for one and a half month, what’s being really nice.
He arrived during Easter holidays, we went to Auckland to pick him up and drove in a “road-tour” across the North Island which I am going to tell and publish some photos over here afterwards.

He’s and oceanographer and next month he’ll leave us for a six months internship on construction of artificial reefs in other New Zealand cities.

We’ve already been able to see everything we were missing in NZ, to see our friends that live here and to start itching again for planning the next trip.
But wait, before that I’m going to finish telling what happened in the last one. 

In the surfing world the search for the perfect wave is like a pilgrimage that every year makes surfers from all around the world travel hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from their place. Bukit (the region where are the main Bali breaks) is probably the most famous surfing destination in Asia and of course the region’s economy revolves around it, you see surf shops, photographers, surf camps, workshops, boat trips, restaurants, music and of course surfers from all corners of the world, North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific, all searching the dream of the perfect wave.

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Yes, we are already in Chile, and we have only four more days to finish our journey. In the past 5 months we passed by Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, India, England, France, Spain, Morocco, Brazil and Peru.. Meanwhile, NPLH is standing in Lombok. But why did we stop writing? Here are some reasons:

• We were writing with one month delay when we stoped
• We have too many photos (actually tons of it), and selecting the best photos to our posts is not an easy task
• We usually take on average 4 hours to write, translate, correct, diagram and select images for each post and ,believe me, stopping for 4 hours was not on our agenda, which was always full at each location
• We went through many faraway places as South of Lombok, the Rajasthan Desert, the Himalayan Mountains, the Sahara Desert, etc.. and in those places where there was internet (which was very rare!), it was expensive, slow and hard to access
• Writing in a rush we end up producing something that does not fully satisfy us
• There is no much sense to be traveling in the desert of India and writing on the paradise beaches of Thailand

After much thought we decided that it would be better to forget the internet, take our journey, taking many pictures and recording important data on our notebook. After the trip when we’ve finished we could review all the information, and devote more time to write something at the same time relevant and useful for us to read it

So yes, we are super outdated.. but we are alive and very happy.. and we’ll tell our stories in detail. From the infernal heat of Singapore, the trains in Malaysia and Thailand, entitled to fried grasshoppers and armed soldiers on the streets.. through the beaches of Ko Phagnan and the madness of Bangkok, the 3 days in Hong Kong and the best month of all in India, it would not be the same without the company of Duda (Cris’ brother) and Drica who are living there and led us to the most incredible country that seems to be another planet.. the visits to friends living in Europe, the two intense weeks in Morocco, without knowing either French or Arabic languages. The arrival in Brazil after 2 years away.. Rio de Janeiro, which is more beautiful than ever… the two months at home, Curitiba and Parana’s coast, with our families and friends.. Christmas, New Year, our wedding.. And finally the spectacular mountains of the Andes in Peru, where we’ve just left.. we are in Chile and weeks to come back to Wellington, our home in New Zealand, where we finally will organize all the photos and information.. there is nothing more favorable than New Zealand winter to sit in front of the computer and tell stories!