Of course after my dad caught a plane back towards Europe, I was still with family. Even though it's been a while since I was sixteen, and we don't catch up as much as we'd like to anymore, the bond that I share with my host family and friends in the small town of Puerto Rico in Misiones, Argentina (some of which have left for other places now around the country) truly is unbreakable and everlasting. I feel so incredibly grateful that I can come back to this place after all this time (6.5 years since the last visit), hug these people for as long as it takes to make up for those years apart, and then just sit next to them and talk like no time has passed at all.
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| La selva de Misiones (Misiones' jungle) |
I spent three weeks bouncing around Misiones and honestly, didn't do much besides spending time with people I hadn't seen in a long time. My base was my host family's house in Puerto Rico where I'd come for the first time more than ten years earlier. The house hadn't changed much apart from a renovated kitchen, and a new pool (which was a godsend during the unbearably hot subtropical-turning-tropical summer (thank you, climate change) of Misiones).
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| The streets and skies of Puerto Rico, Misiones, Argentina: Part I |
I joined the big family lunches on Sundays, reuniting with aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins and grandparents. I went on walks by the Paraná River and tried all the new coffee spots and restaurants that didn't exist 6.5 years ago with old friends. I took my youngest little sister out for ice cream, something I used to do during my exchange stay but now, she was 19 rather than 10. Puerto Rico had definitely gotten bigger. And maybe even a little richer by the look of the main street. But the sky was the same as ten years ago.
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| The newest family member and I having a siesta |
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The streets and skies of Puerto Rico, Misiones, Argentina: Part II
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I went to Posadas, the province capital of Misiones, where most of my school friends went on to study at university. Here, I exchanged my nose stud for a ring (my 10 year old, sorry I mean my 19 year old little sister also got a new septum ring for herself) which was nothin short of cosmically and comically appropriate as I first got my nose pierced while on exchange in Argentina 10 years earlier.
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| What you get when you just order one beer (Puerto Rico, Misiones) |
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The streets and skies of Puerto Rico, Misiones, Argentina: Part III
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As a final misionero treat, I caught dengue fever and lay sick my final week in Puerto Rico. I wasn't too surprised. The spread and intensity of the disease has been increasing every year in this part of Argentina, and basically everyone I know there has already had it. So now, it was my turn. After a week of high fever, muscle pains so bad I couldn't sleep, and finally an itchy rash all over my body, I got well enough to celebrate my 26th birthday and have a proper goodbye dinner with my family including homemade pizza and the hot, heavy, humid air of summer nights in Misiones that will forever feel uncomfortable yet like home to my skin.
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| Summer rain rolling in over Puerto Rico |
Leaving Misiones, I might've left home but I still didn't leave family. One of my best friends from Misiones had invited me to join her and her aunt and uncle on their yearly summer vacation to the coast of Brazil for a couple weeks.
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| On the beach in Balneário Camboriú, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Also known as the "Brazilian Dubai". |
We stayed in Itapema, south of the famous
Balneário Camboriú, and north of Bombinhas, the latter of which was were my host family took me on vacation nine years earlier. Our days were a repeat of mornings at the beach, lunch at the penthouse apartment (yes, it felt very surreal), going back to the beach in the afternoons, and then walking the boulevard at night. It was all relaxation and cheap acai bowls and walks on the edge of the water, and it was just what my body needed. Some rest after fighting off the dengue.  |
On the highway in southern Brazil. Nothing special about this photo. I just really love sitting in the back a truck. And I wanna brag about it every time I do it.
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| Final night in Itapema, Santa Catarina, Brazil. |
From Brazil, I went back to Posadas in Misiones, a 20-hour bus ride, only to immediately catch another bus, this time 30 hours until I reached Córdoba, one of the biggest and oldest cities in Argentina, and where my little sister Celina was studying at university. Located at the heart of the northern half of Argentina, this was a perfect stop on my way to the historic and unbearably beautiful northwestern corner of the country, but mainly I just really wanted to spend some more time with Celina.
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| Córdoba, Province of Córdoba, Argentina |
We walked around this wonderful city that is an eclectic mix of European and South American architecture, drank mate in parks, ate chipa and empanadas and reviro, and talked about life and memories and hopes for the future as we've followed each other growing up, and now gets to experience each other growing old (eventually anyway).
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| Empanadas and wine with Celina (the ten year old little sister who is actually 19 now because time is crazy) in Córdoba |
Now, leaving Córdoba meant leaving family. From there, I was on my own with a plane ticket out of Lima, Peru in five weeks time, and a loose itinerary.
