Those who know me best know that I'll sometimes go cross country to meet someone simply for the novelty of the task:
I few months ago, I was buying a hand cart on amazon, and there was a link that basically said "call this number and a rep will give you a promo code to discount the item." I talked to a guy at a call center with an accent I've never heard before. This lead to asking "where are you?" which subsequently resulted in a 45 minute conversation about travel. After I learned that he was in Uruguay I said, Oh! I'm going to Brazil to buy a motorcycle and then to Argentina. I said, "I'll devert down to Uruguay on my way to Brazil to meet you face to face and shake your hand."
A woman, A plan, Andes, Ushuaia!
Wendy, a Peruvian native that I met by happenstance in Southern Peru 3 years ago, then returned to live with for 2.5 months, and I have been trying to make plans to reunite since. She was unsuccessful in moving her scheduled month long vacation in February to another time of year to be able to come to California during favorable months when I'm also in the States. Although I plan on visiting her region on this trip, I will not be in her area (near the central west coast) until her vacation is over. As a result, she has decided to fly down to Buenos Aries, Argentina, along the southern east coast of the continent, to join me on the back of my bike for the month down to the Southern tip of the continent.
The mechanics behind planning and coordinating with her, with the language barrier, despite having a translator, have put me in a little disbelief that its actually coming to fruition. Noteably, we've reached a milestone: I'm able to sort of hold a conversation with her over the phone. This is a big deal, because having a live voice conversation means I can't stop to use a translator and previously we could only have a voice conversation if we could see each other, because we could rely on body language and hand gestures to "fill in the gaps."
The rough plan ahead:
