The Andes

After finishing marking another batch of take-home exams, I look down on the Andes as our Airbus 330 continues its climb towards its cruising altitude. With this foray, I have now written posts on Rawls & Me from six different continents, a fact that only makes me more aware of how little of the world that I have actually seen.

Looking through my camera, I pause when I see this cliché tourist picture taken at Plaza San Martin. Though not visible in the picture, there were a lot of young kids selling sweets as we walked through Lima’s Centro Histórico. While there were also older kids in school uniforms taking selfies outside the ornate baroque churches, it is not their eyes that will stay with me.

Often in my research, I feel like I remain trapped in abstractions and extrapolations. To travel then becomes a way of breaking out, of experiencing other worlds, if ever so slightly. Ten years ago, when hiking through the Balkans with Gabriel, we travelled on a very tight budget, staying in the most run-down youth hostels in places like Pristina. Now I have truly become a “flashpacker” of the worst conceivable sort, still I feel like I have recorded so many images from this trip that I will carry with me in the months and years ahead.