45 DAYS TO GO

ARRIBA, ARRIBA: Adam and I are now officially authorized to enter the United States of America. We’ve purchased ludicrously cheap tickets from Miami to Colombia and filled out our ESTA forms, and now we’re in like Flynn, on our way, and oh how sweet it is. We’d talked ourselves in circles about that ESTA form, endlessly, frantically; freaked out about what it might need from us – proof of residence? income? return ticket? – without ever actually looking at the damn thing. We wasted hours at work running through all the dreaded possibilities; when we met each other for a beer Adam and I would scurry to a corner to discuss in furtive voices our latest theories as to how and why we would be turned away, the seeming inevitability of having to start all over again. In the end it was about as simple as filling in that little arrival card you get on the plane when arriving in a country – in fact it was exactly that simple, because that’s precisely what it was, except computerized. Goddammit. People like us should probably be sterilized for the good of the gene pool.

Adam continues his horrific enslavement at the hands of his merciless employers, working seven days a week now, fifteen and sixteen hours at a stretch – but that blessed end is in sight now, the Friday after next. He has found time, though, to toss his camera and pick up a new one, which he does with the same regularity a normal person changes underpants. He is now the proud owner of a Canon 550D, and if I had any clue what that meant, I’d tell you more. It certainly sounds impressive, and if Adam thinks it’s going to improve the quality of his already incredible photography (check it out here), then I’m guessing it’s one helluva good camera. It will probably be a prized item for whichever lucky El Salvadorean highway bandit steals it from us while we weep in a terrified manner.

Meanwhile, it’s now three days away from the middle of winter here, and Erin’s family decided to mark the occasion with a Christmas in July weekend at a house in Bundanoon, in the southern highlands south of Sydney. If we had any lingering pastoral fantasies of life in the countryside, here they were sated and then some. We spent the three days playing cards and boardgames by a roaring fire, wolfing down cheese platters that appeared seemingly from nowhere and disappeared into the ether just as rapidly, watching the sun peek over the pine trees wreathed in frost from our bedroom in the late morning, touring wineries and buying more than perhaps we should have, having long conversations over dinners of roast chicken and pork and soft, homegrown winter vegetables. It was pretty much exactly like a BBC period costume drama, except that we were slightly more drunk, far less articulate, and spent most of the day in our pyjamas.

It was also the last chance I’ll get to see most of Erin’s family, one of the warmest, most wonderful groups of people I’ve ever had the good fortune to fall in with, and whom I will miss. It was the kind of weekend that reinvigorates you, that gets your head back in the right space… At one point, in the nearby national park, we trekked a short but steep descent to find Erith Coal Mine, abandoned since 1915, two dark holes in a cliff face overlooking a waterfall with the classic train tracks disappearing into shafts that run 1.4km deep. Incredible.

And then, of all things, we came across a Thai Buddhist monastery set back off the main road, deep in the forest, a magnificent stone structure that could have come straight out of Ayutthaya, with an emptied swimming pool that had, for unknown reasons, been turned into a massive world map (complete with a toy figurine of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter, standing watch vigilantly over Australia). 

Walking around that temple contentedly, Erin’s baby nephew in my arms, brought back a lot of old feelings from our time in Asia. The joy of traveling, of feeling at peace and unhurried. The exhilaration of discovering something you never expected to find, in a place you’d thought you had all figured out. Mostly, though, it just reminded me how quickly I get sick and tired of seeing temples, and how I must remember not to go to more than, oh, one while we’re away, or I might scream. 

New update next week.