Sunday, May 4, 2014

Lost in the mind, still in Punta Arenas.



It's funny how life goes on when you are somewhere you don't know, with some ideas that you would like to carry on but with not a clue on where to look for. It's funny how there is to learn to be patient and calmed and look around in the search of opportunities and just wait and hear what your guts, instinct, heart has to tell you to decide what to do. It's funny how easily I forget all these things and collapse in a world of decision making and start getting stressed out of nowhere because I need to know what's ahead. It's crazy to think that I know I shouldn't really get stressed by these things and how I know I have to hear what my guts tell me but still I forget all of it and fall into weird-ful thinking. It's funny how anxiousness ends up hitting me and guides me through the wrong paths. It was funny how I had to start talking to people to seek for some advice when I know I have to hear what my insides tell me instead of asking to others to tell me what my insides are telling them. I guess I still need more road time to tune my instinct and keep on with the learning on how to hear what the inner I has to say. Being surrounded by too many people disbalances me. Probably I have to learn how to live among people again.

I am about to start my third week here in Punta Arenas and I was about to leave this town for good as there was “nothing” to do. Still every morning I would wake up with the feeling of not leaving the city at all. Till today, I don't know why. It's quite weird considering Punta Arenas is just another city in the south of Chile and quite big for the Patagonia with no real attractive to a person like me. There is a mall, a huge tax free zone where you can buy lots of things, lots of shops in downtown, lots of people going and coming, lots of tourists in summer and winter, and still now, that winter is almost arriving, tourists coming and going. Still every time I take a walk next to the sea, or look up across the Magellan strait, or when I look up at the mountains, there is something that catches my eye. This city has something. Maybe it's the weather.

Still, not hearing at all this feeling I had decided I would go back north to Valparaiso and take a diving course there for the winter, then I would continue the pedaling north towards Perú and maybe to the Jungle across Brazil. Everytime I thought about buying the plane ticket and going through the process of organizing things to fly I would just feel lazy about it and would delay it mentally for the next day. Then in the evening I would feel anxious about leaving and with a weird do not leave sensation. Next day I would repeat the same. The idea of diving is damn amazing but once I picture myself going to Santiago and then to Valparaiso everything changes and procrastination hits.

I took the decision of going back because I got the answer from the ski center. They told me they didn't have money to hire me now so they could hire me in mid June. In the meantime a CEO of a big hotel wanted to talk to me and offer me some job. I went to him to talk about it and the offered me a position as a bellboy, but, I had to shave and cut my hair in exchange for minimum wage. The answer was simple, no fucking way. So after some fast thinking and being pressured by the starting date of the diving course in Valparaiso I decided I would leave. Still, 3 days later, I had no idea which day I would do it, and didn't feel at all like organizing things to leave.

Yesterday night, for some chances that life throw at us I met Kanaan again thanks to Alexandra and Bartosz. They are a couple of Polish bicycle tourers who are staying at the same hostal I am staying at. They invited me for a beer and to meet another bicycle tourer from Alaska who was on his way to Ushuaia. Knowing some of those bicycle tourers I asked what his name was, they told me it was something with K, like Kan, Kev, or something like that, I asked Kanaan? And they said YES!. What a surprise! Definetely I had to go and meet this man with who we had an awesome time at el Chalten.

Kanaan got quite surprised too and it was nice to meet again. He told me about his plan and his desire to maybe come back to Punta Arenas after reaching Ushuaia because for some unknown reason he liked the city a lot (sounds familiar). I told him what I was thinking but I wasn't feeling that sure about leaving the city for some reason and that as I didn't have much to do here I would probably leave, I mentioned him the diving course and this is when the shit hit the fan. He spent his stayance here in Punta Arenas with a diver who told him there is a course starting in the following weeks. The course is given during winter months and they dive at the Magellan strait and sometimes in the San Isidro Lighthouse. Uh?. Diving, San Isidro lighthouse, Magellan strait, winter. Click.

Kanaan told me he would send me an email with the email of the diving instructor so I can get to talk to him and check the information about the diving course. At the hostal they told me they have plenty of job to do for at least a couple of weeks so they have no problems in me staying around for some time till I figure out what to do. From what I've read the commercial diving license is valid only in Chile, on the opposite the license they give here is the PADI, not commercial, but valid everywhere in the world. For some reason I want to stay in the area and I think now I got some chance to actually do it. Probably I always had the chance but I was kind of blind thanks to the anxiousness. Tomorrow I will go and talk to the people and check what's gonna happen.

Until then.


Cheers.

No comments:

Post a Comment