Michael's Travel Journal

Greetings from Cartagena, Colombia

brasunas — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:36:00 GMT

Hello my dearest and closest family and friends.

I wanted to let you guys know that i have arrived and somewhat settled in safe and sound into this beautiful city of cartagena. Its my first time in south america and i am traveling alone after a sad, yet wonderful and important goodbye with my loving partner gabriella. as you may or may not know, we have decided to go our own separate directions for now and are opening ourselves up to our independent experiences. so, its been abit sad and abit lonely and abit different and on top of that, up until about 5am this morning ive had like really terrible diahrrea in which ive probably sat on like 30 various toilets in the last four days (i think i used every bathroom in the panama city airport yesterday while i waited from 11am when i arrived from mexico city on one airline, then had to enter the country to retrieve my baggage and check into a different airline which would take me to colombia at 6:30 last night). there were some travelers on the plane and we shared a taxi to the hostel district, which is quite a dirty part of town. so, anyhow, as youre probably waiting...back to the shits...it had been really rough, leaving gabriella and not really knowing what was going to happen, and also not being able to really eat or drink much without having to go use the toilet a few minutes later. so, in the middle of night after four days of this crap (pun intended, though i wouldnt really describe it as crap, different consistency if you know what i mean) and getting up twice (once to clean my pants from a minor "accident," the fourth of such occurences) only to lay down and feel that gurgle/unease in my stomach, i decided it was time to actually heal myself, i mean come on, i claim to believe in all that stuff, that i have the power to heal myself and such. so i lay my hands on my waist and shoulders in the angle i was laying at and channeled love and reiki energy into my body. the experience became quite powerful as i felt that i needed to call in many of my guides and ancestors too and a vision of them dancing around a fire which represented my power center came into my consciousness. they poured every possible liquid that emanates from the body onto this fire to create an alchemical flame that i needed to bring into my being. i also felt the extreme importance of truly believing that anything was possible and i needed to fully trust that i could do this. i slept with many strong dreams and awoke happy and healthier, though very weak. a capsule of thieves essential oil, with peppermint and basil (funily, i hadnt tried any medicine except charcoal up until now)was my breakfast, coupled with a limonada a hour or so later. so that was about four hours ago and ive been walking all over the city giving thanks to my power and trust and healing potential. i feel that these are some of the important lessons that i am going to be learning on this solo journey of mine and i guess the shits are giving me a little bit of an initiation into that.

so, Colombia appears to be a fascinating country and this city really is beautiful. the old walls of the city which protected it from all sorts of invading dudes back in the mid teen centuries are still intact and cars drive under the various tunnels to enter the historic center, which is also surrounded by water. supposedly this was a main port for south america in the old days of european invasion and expansion. there are colorfully painted colonial buildings and big bushes of fragrant flowers and fruits and all that nice stuff and beaches nearby and the sun was directly over my head at one point and i looked down and i had almost no shadow behind or next to or in front of me, just a little thing right at my feet. the people seem really nice too and all and i could see myself exploring this region alot, the only thing is its friggin hot, like all day long and i think im just also yearning for the mountains and the rivers and the trees. its just really hard to explain to myself leaving so soon since i originally thought i/we would be staying in this city for awhile...oh well, explanations need not be had here today i guess.

oh and another fun thing is the money. one dollar in mexico was about 10 pesos, which is really easy to figure out, just take away a zero to think in terms of dollars. not so much here, one dollar right now (its been totally dropping) is about 1800 colombian pesos so ive got all these bills of 1000, 2000, 5000, 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 pesos. my bed last night was 12,500 and my lunch today (i actually ate almost a full meal! for the first time since i was in oaxaca city with gabs) was 5,000.

so yeah, the next time you hear from me i might be on a beach or i might be about to hike deep into some crazy guerilla infested jungle...but probably ill just be in some nice colombian town, eating fruit and taking care of myself. which i hope you guys are all doing out there too (the taking care part, though fruit is good for you too, and probably hanging out in some nice colombian town too).

lots of love and blessings,

michael

ps-i also need to put some stuff about the last couple months in mexico into words too and as ive mentioned, that may come soon.

Gallery: 12/13/07-2/28/08

brasunas — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:33:00 GMT

finally, hi there

brasunas — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:23:00 GMT

well let me just start by saying that i see myself much more of live storyteller than a computerized one but i also recognize the ease of use and benefits of technology to help us all tell our stories. for some reason neither giving a grand summary of my experience or sitting on a really slow computer with a faulty space bar and writing out lots of details appeals to me. i would rather just tell what comes through and let it exist in it own time and space.

so here i/we are/am right? im traveling with my partner gabriella with whom ive been with for 16 months, the last 3 of which have been in mexico. as you may know from previous posts, we flew into mexico city, worked our way south to acapulco and then headed up the pacific coast, had a grand christmas at one beautiful beach and new years at another (two very different experiences, just as different as christmas and new years are from one another). Christmas found us in a place called barra potosi where we found a lovely bed and breakfast called casa del encanto (enchanted house) a 10 minute walk from the beach, where we were welcomed into a random gathering of mostly american families who had all found this little jewel to rest and relax. at night there were hundreds of candles lit and hammocks around the patio to hang for awhile. gabs and i stayed there one night and camped on the beach for about four or five other ones including christmas eve and night. Then we headed up to the isolated coast of michoacan, did a little random hitchhiking/surrendering to the flow experience (the people who picked us up went way past where we were trying to go so we rode with them another 50k to where they were headed, it ended up being perfect and we met a great german couple who we spent new years with), found some completely untouristed beaches and then arived at what we thought was gonna be a mellow place but ended up being the gathering place for mexican hippies who wanna camp on the beach for nye, a gourgous place called Maruata where there were techno bars set up on the sand and a sweet reggae band playing back in a banana patch (we could hear the beat and just followed it through the pitch dark until we arived at the place to be. we also had some great lobster on new years day. Next, after the revelries, we went inland for two weeks around the upland michoacan, so called the soul of mexico, and we loved it. we met an artist in uruapan who we totally vibed with and he invited us to a temazcal (a traditional sweat lodge) the next night. it was gabriella´s first and my second time sweating in this way and it was very powerful. the space created by the leader was beautiful and we all went around the circle during each of the four sessions sharing what we were letting go of our afraid of our what our hearts wanted to share with the group...we exited to a smorgasboarg of fresh fruits and it was a moment that i was exspecially happy to be alive :)

I will leave you there for now and post more soon, for now i must just get a letter out there to yall.

more love than humanely possible and more fun talk soon, and know that right now youre caught up to about mid january...february and march to come

Gallery: 12/5/2007-12/13/07

brasunas — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:53:00 GMT

Mexico City and Tepoztlan

Detalles

brasunas — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:18:00 GMT

So it turns out i can only attach one photo to each story so to look at all of the photos ive uploaded, go to the gallery to the right and browse through them there (ive added descriptions to each)

Some pics

brasunas — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 09:28:00 GMT

My apologies for the poorly written last post, i was having a hard time trying to get all my thoughts out and the computer that i was using was at low battery. my goal is to actually have some nicely written blogs that depict the experiences being had down here. but for now, some photos.

Finally time to update

brasunas — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:01:00 GMT

Okay folks, here, finally is the first of many (hopefully) stories/updates on me and Gabriella's travel. Partially because of time, partially because of poor internet service, and partially because of exhaustion, I have not written in the journal till now. Also, we havent figured out how to upload pictures yet (although we already have many great ones) and i have wanted to put pictures with my stories.

Anyhow, we arrived in Mexico city on Wednesday the 5th and found ourselves walking several blocks to our hotel from where our taxi driver dropped us because the streets were either being reconstructed or closed due to crowds. It was the first test of our trust in terms of walking through a big city with all of our stuff. The crowd was mostly families and friendly looking people out in the historic district, specifically in the main square where there was ice skating and noisy revelry commemorating "el invierno en la ciudad" (winter in the city). We crashed that night after some dinner and allowed the craziness of getting here to settle.

The next day we took our time getting in the flow of preparing our stuff for a day out on the town (i.e. making sure valuables are protected, purifying water with our magic UV wand, etc.) and wandered the streets of the neighborhood. Let me just say this, Mexico city is crazy. There are so many people on every street that one is often forced to walking on the on the street itself just to keep moving. I was constantly finding myself switching between wanted to leave as soon as possible and wanted to stay for awhile in order to see as much as possible. There are so many plazas and museums and interesting foods and neighborhoods and the list goes on. Yet i also woke in the morning with lots of stuff ready to be coughed up from breathing the pollution and was very ready to get to some cleaner air. We spent a perfect couple of days in the city with a great side trip to Teotihuacan (the holy city originally built by pre-Aztecs with giant pyramids; one with the same base area as the great pyramid of Egypt) one day. The guide showed us ruins of the Aztec civilization and pyramids and temples that have been re-vitalized right in the center of Mexico city before driving out to Teo. En route we stopped at the Guadalupe cathedral where the original imprinted image of Mother Mary (en Mexico, Guadelupe) is worshipped daily by thousands of Mexicanos.

Saint Louis for T-Giving

brasunas — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:21:00 GMT

Gabs and I have headed over to Saint Louis for the holiday with dad, wendy, tony, ellen, mom, and various cousins and second cousins. So far we've been doing a lot of hanginout and eating but tomorrow we go get tetanus shots and watch some more football. I've also had some more calls for my car and hope to sell it later this week so that I can afford this trip.

Leaving Ashland

brasunas — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:47:00 GMT

Well, this is the beginning, last night Gabs and I said our goodbyes to our dear friends in Ashland, Erin and Paisley, Ali, Chad, Jenny, James, Sara, Becky, Baker. Thank you guys so much for a wonderful party friday night, the book with the great photos to remember you by, the love, the love, and the love. I feel so happy to have a smily crew of faces wishing us off on our journey of discovery and wonder, thank you so much. And so as i put my faith in the hands of the universe and surrender to what shall unfold, i give thanks to the abundance flowing in to allow this trip to occur and to all the beings who have supported me and will do so as we move through time and space. Lets get it started, but first, i must sell my car.