Women are the ropes that hold communities together. They've spun the thread, weaved the cloth, and transformed it into something unbreakable. That's what a woman is. She is the background, the foreground and the connector. We women work together, we work against each other, and we work on behalf of one another. But all day long, we are working for something.
It reminded us to never take a civilisation for granted, and never make assumptions about their capabilities. Because the Guarani of the Jesuit Missions proves all of it wrong.
Hot tears started brimming in my eyes. My chin started quivering. This was all my fault. I had misunderstood the Spanish, and got it wrong. Men were shouting at each other, and people were looking at us.
For all intents and purposes, it was in fact a protest, but like none other I’ve ever witnessed. More, it was a celebration of the space they love in the way they presumably love it - demonstrating just what the space means to them, rather than shouting down the people who wanted to change it.
The UNESCO factory museum at Fray Bentos is an engineering marvel and a meat processing masterpiece. This factory is a lasting monument to the Industrial Revolution in all of its glory.
Buenos Aires vibrates with life. It breathes, sings and dances its way through the day and night, bathing its vibrant colours and rich history in sunshine...even when the sun isn’t out at all.
What is it about whales that we find so fascinating? Is it that a living creature the size of a city bus can exist on a planet where we little humans dominate the land? Perhaps it’s because they’re fellow mammals from a habitat inaccessible to humans, nursing their young in the shallow waters near the surface where we can watch their slow hypnotic movements. Or it’s all of those things and more. We crossed Argentina, heading even further south into Patagonia than we wanted to go during winter, to reach Puerto Madryn, a port city that is home to the […]
We crossed into Argentina over a snowy Andean mountain pass, and dropped into a spectacular series of evergreen and stone gorges and cliffs, draped in white powdery snow. Some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world separate Chile from Argentina over the Andes, and it was hard not to beg Mark to stop the car every 100m so I could take another photo that would never do justice to the majesty of the place. The actual border sat atop the ridge between the two countries. It was windy, cold and covered in snow. The Argentinian border control […]
We’ve challenged ourselves on this trip to try things we normally wouldn’t try otherwise. Seeing the state of the earth in different corners of the globe has turned us into staunch environmentalists, and we were desperate to do something meaningful beyond recycling, and carefully buying in-season, local produce. Travelling involves a lot of taking. Taking in experiences, consuming the local sights, sounds and activities, and generally doing what pleases you. But human nature is to give something back, and we wanted to give something back to the environment. We searched for a NGO or charity that is doing meaningful […]
Today, we celebrated Bunny’s birthday. He was turning 12, and we bought cake (carrot, of course), had candles and balloons, and sang Happy Birthday to a brown stuffed rabbit in the middle of an Eucalyptus forest on a hillside in Chile. Two weeks ago it was Koala’s birthday, and we celebrated similarly. My son has always had an extraordinarily creative imagination, but he’s never had imaginary friends. He’s never had to….until now. I realised with the kind of guilt that punches you in the gut that these “birthday parties” are the only ones he’ll be invited to this year. While […]