Uruguay
I’d never thought much about Uruguay until this past week when I met a couple from its capital, Montevideo, at the hostel where I’m staying in New Zealand. From them, I learned that the majority of Uruguay’s 3.3 million people live in Montevideo and that the rest of the country is largely rolling hills and farmland. They told me the colonial architecture is exquisite and the beaches are some of the best in the world.
From Wikipedia (welcome back!) I learned that Uruguay is ranked 1st in the Human Development Index in Latin America, was the first South American country to legalise same-sex civil unions and gay adoption, and was named the ninth ‘most livable and greenest’ country in the world by Reader’s Digest. Uruguay was the first country in the world to provide every student a free laptop and internet and the majority of its military is deployed as UN peacekeepers.
From what I’ve heard and read, Uruguay sounds like a fascinating, beautiful, and completely unique place. For a country I’ve rarely thought about outside the Olympics or the World Cup, I cannot wait to visit.
Everest Base Camp
After reading Into Thin Air a few years ago, I had the sudden desire to climb Mt. Everest. Don’t ask why a book about the worst Everest disaster ever made me want to climb it… Anyway, I soon realised I’d rather keep my brain cells intact than fry them in such altitudes. I will be content with just seeing the mountain up close, and the South Everest Base Camp is about as close as you can get.
Sure, it’s super touristy. Thousands of hikers and climbers visit the Base Camp each year. And the camp itself is practically a city – complete with plenty of litter from years of expeditions. The trek itself can take nearly a week from Lukla or Kathmandu and passes through some pretty spectacular scenery: through Dingboche with Ana Dablam in the background, along the Dudh Kosi valley, and past Gorakshep, the original Everest Base Camp.
Rome, Italy
I’ve held a latent fascination with the city of Rome for a few years and for a few reasons. I suppose being born and raised in America, a country still considered a toddler in years compared to Italy’s capital, I’m in awe that a place so old can still stand – however well it continues to do so is still beyond my knowledge, and it is just one of the things I want to learn. And consider this: in my almost twenty-six years of existence, I’ve spent about 6 or 7 waking hours in Rome, enough time to feel the dirt under my shoes and gaze up at the monuments while the sun sets behind them.
After that all-too-brief visit, my fascination increased when I came back to America and watched the films of Fellini, Antonioni, and De Sica, who each portrayed and projected Rome in relation to themselves. For Fellini, Rome seemed the site of a collision between the ancient and the modern. Antonioni presented Rome not only as the capital of Italy but also the capital of tragic beauty and equally tragic romance. De Sica’s Rome was grounded in grit, its inhabitants struggling to make their own way out of Italy’s recent fascist history.
And so I thought it’d be a worthwhile experience to live there, long enough to be able to produce my own image of Rome, one to add to that ever-growing shelf that we built for it, because it seems that Rome is simply that type of city.
