What a city!!! just got back from a swim in the sea, looking back at the beach from the water you can see all the art deco hotels rising out of the land.
South beach hasn't changed much since I was last here in 1994. The Latin beat is everywhere, in the faces, the bodies, the language, food, mojitas, margaritas, buildings and balcony's. The beautiful people strut their stuff on the streets believing them to be catwalks, mindful that modelling agencies are on the lookout for new talent.
The humidity is high and it rains most days, though it's gone very quickly. This is the off season here, winter is really the time to be here. There's food from all over the world, last night we went to a Greek place and had keftades and baked feta with retsina. Bizarrely, they had a belly dancer, but more conventionally, a few plates were thrown on the floor. Frozen margaritas at wet willies on ocean drive, finished off the evening very nicely.
We are staying at the clay hotel and youth hostel, the same place David and I stayed at in 94. It's a little rough around the edges but a great place, fantastically located, right in the Spanish village on Espanola way and 2 blocks from the beach.
David - it really hasn't changed much since we were there, however I've failed to see any transvestites running down the middle of Washington avenue waving at all the Cubans, nor have I seen the guy with a suit and briefcase intoning "if you go to hell, don't blame me"
Tomorrow we're off to Venice, Florida on the gulf coast.I'm a little nervous about negotiating my way out of Miami in a hired car. Back on the 27th and then it's count down to Quito. I can't wait to get to SA and start our journey down to David's in Argentina. I'm looking forward to a reduction in the budget as well, we've got to keep a tight control on our spending now.
a travelogue in the time of the information superhighway
1994
My story starts in drizzly, dreary, grey England. I worked as a nurse in a specialist cancer hospital in Manchester. One day, I suddenly entered her world, there she was. At once beautiful, but decaying visibly. Eyes that melt you, fumbled for reasons. High on morphine, she slumped on the chair. Her legs, previously long and graceful, were now fat and full of fluid. She was loosing her hair, something that upset her most. We all witnessed her struggling with the remains of her dignity and modesty, but she carried on fighting. Her mother applied facial cream like a corner man at ringside, her father just looked lost. She was a twenty seven year old woman, right before us, dying in her prime. She seemed to hold up a mirror to the thoughts sailing across my mind, a metaphor for what we've all become and what will become of us. So much potential, so much waste. It is at moments like this that we can take the looking glass to our own fragile existence, and ask questions of it. Cancer had infiltrated her womb, the very giver of life. I became aware of a feeling that her death had released something else, a thirst for living itself. She haunted me. Four months later, I set out on an adventure to view the world that she would no longer see.
Posted by don quixote
Tuesday 24 July 2007
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1 comment:
Very interesting! - but I would say that wouldn't I! I do suffer from the "That's my boy" syndrome, you know!
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