It’s amazing what you can accomplish in 37 hours. Thanks to modern day travel mechanisms and the Wright Brothers, I was able to skip across oceans and continents in a matter of hours, jetting from Argentina, to London, and finally to Cairo. But the actual process of completing such a journey, whose implications run much deeper than a simple transcontinental flight or two, is much more complicated. My flight to Egypt meant my departure from Latin America, and as I moved closer and closer to my family, I moved farther and farther from the girl who had in just 6 months become my sister. Even the best airplane blockbusters could not distract me from this mind-blowing reality.
The perfect end to an era commenced as Aer and I cracked into, yes, our 25th bottle of Malbec over the long feared, last supper. We let our absolute favorite hotel concierge Dana guide us to a nearby Argentinean restaurant that guaranteed us our favorite South American dish, salmon. Not just any salmon, a specially prepared foil dish where the salmon is slow roasted with Argentinean spices, fresh vegetables soaked in red wine, and lemon juice so citrusy it penetrates to the core of the juicy masterpiece. We had the quaint restaurant to ourselves and a window seat to the small cobblestone street of estados unidos. Having learned, that epic expectations make for disaster and disappointment, we silently surrendered the evening’s events to the universe. We had our dinner plans followed by a nearby bar date with two of our favorite Argentineans and had high hopes of seeing some other friends as well, but beyond that, the night was up in the air and could go any which way.
The universe, however, wanted to give us a proper Buenos Aires send off, complete with multiple bars and bottles, every friend we wanted to see and then some, and dawn, who’s grace greeted us as we stumbled out of one of BA’s most infamous night clubs at sunrise. It was perfection, and the endless dancing successfully distracted us from the fact that it was indeed our last night together, a thought that in any type of sobriety would have driven us to tears immediately.
But, try as we did, there are only so many hours between sunset and sunrise, and a few hours after we stumbled in, Bech was putting me in a taxi to the airport. Like a typical teen movie, we cried. Aer’s eyes were red and wet as we hugged goodbye, and as soon as I pulled away, my emotions exploded with such force that the cab driver pulled over to make sure I wasn’t dyeing on his cabbie watch.
As mi hermana so eloquently wrote in her own blog, "All good things must come to an end. But when that good thing has been an entire way of life, a state of mind, and a friendship that has evolved to an intense kinship, how do you cope with the finish line?"
I don’t know the answer to this, but when you’re faced with a 37 hour journey to your next adventure, the only thing left to do is open a new chapter. I flew, a sleepless flight over the Atlantic. I attempted the most mindless forms of entertainment in an attempt to A. distract me from my sadness, or B. put me to sleep. The guaranteed page turner trash by Steig Larson only reminded me of the fact that Aer had read it before me, and finished nearly the whole thing on our night bus to Mendoza. I switched to the happiest movie I could find (god damn harry potter), but managed to instantly draw up memories from our jungle trek through Ecuador, when Nixon, our tour guide, had fashioned us Harry Potter-esq glasses from some Quechua root. Fail Fail double fail. So I gave in, and started writing, lulling myself into a state of descriptive nostalgia until I touched down in London Town.
London…hung over, zero sleep, and a 7 hour layover. The idea of being left alone with my thoughts in an airport for seven more hours was almost worse than leaving Latin American in the first place. So I hopped the Heathrow express, despite everyone’s warnings that I wouldn’t have enough time to make it there and back for my connection flight to Cairo. If they knew what was going on in my head they would know that I didn’t care and I was going to get out of that airport regardless. One hour later, I was successfully tooling around parliament, posing under Big Ben, laughing at the fools that were lined up for hours in front of West Minster Abbey, and feeling refreshed at the sight of a new city. My biggest struggle here was speaking English. I could not for the life of me stop “donde esta”-ing, or “puedes sacar un foto” ing. Culture shock part I…they speak my language, would only later be outdone by culture shock II… NOBODY speaks my language and Spanish is only a useful battle tool to ward off annoying Egyptian men.Before I knew it, I was taking off from London and landing in Cairo with a new Egyptian friend named Muhammad (of course). He was the first to start teaching my Arabic, and I can proudly say that the three words I learned from him have since grown to a whopping 15-20 Arabic must-knows. Soon I was being lifted off the ground by my brother’s loving hug, and being tucked into my new 5 star lifestyle in a posh hotel in Geeza, Egypt. I thought I’d be asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow (entering day three without sleep) but I was wrong.
The grand room filled with it’s all encompassing silence was too much for me to handle. For the first time in over 6 months I was attempting to sleep and Aer was not within a 5 foot radius. There was no talk of what we would do the following day, no alarm setting for a morning run together, no life chats, or existential rants. The bed was large with crisp white sheets and a down comforter. There was a stocked mini-fridge and a shining platinum flat screen TV. There was electricity and hot water. Dear God there was a balcony. I should have been in heaven, but all I wanted was a sketchy hostel bed, a 10 peso bottle of wine, and my friend. I again thought of her words, "...how do you cope with the finish line?"
I still didn’t know, so I went to the balcony and stared West until my eyes grew heavy and red.
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