Sarah Knows Nothing About Travel- South America

Why hello there, my three loyal readers (aiming high, I know)! It’s 2023 now, which means it’s not 2022 anymore—rejoice! I hope you’ve enjoyed a good year so far, and if not, well, it’s only March. The first two months basically don’t count anyway.

Since the autumn of 2022 when I last wrote on here, a couple of things have happened. I left South Korea, came home, turned thirty, and then travelled to South America for a month. You know, just some small things.

Deciding to leave Korea was a sad decision, but definitely the right one. As much as turning thirty is Not That Big Of a Deal (if it’s coming to you, you’ll be fine, you’re not on the Titanic or something), it seemed like a good milestone to mark my time away. My work in the academy in Seoul was fine, but uninspiring and unchanging—and that includes my salary. I was missing the people at home more and more, and had an urge to see a little bit more of this little ol’ planet before she inevitably runs out of everything (*nervous laughter*), so coming home was the natural choice.

So yeah, yada yada, I’m older and more unemployed now (lol), but that’s not interesting. That’s not the good stuff, the juice you came here for. Don’t worry, I’ve got your juice. They call me the Juicemeister. As I mentioned above, I wanted to travel more, and decided to start that off in South America, for just over a month. Why South America, you ask? Am I collecting ‘South’ countries? Can we expect updates from South Africa, South Sudan, South Dakota?

Well, as much as that idea does sound weirdly entertaining an idea (South Shields, here I come), the reason I picked this corner of the world is actually even stupider. It came from a dream I had in South Korea, where me and Britney Spears were being chased by guerrilla soldiers in unnamed mountains. As you do. Whilst panicking and running, I asked Britney (an old friend), where we were, and she told me it was Uruguay. Waking up at that moment, confused and curious, I googled the country to see if it was as violent as my dream had made out.

And you know what? It wasn’t. It’s actually a peaceful little liberal haven, with legal gay marriage and weed use, a well-handled Covid crisis and politicians who are sometimes human. From that moment on, I had the place bookmarked in my mind, perhaps as another place to attempt teaching English. Over months, this initial idea of going there to work faded, and was replaced with an extended holiday encompassing this tiny little country nestled into South America’s South-eastern corner, and its neighbours Argentina and Chile.

Peru was initially included in this itinerary as well, but, err, if you look up what’s been going on there since December, it was unfortunately not quite safe enough. Some flight changes (and a lot of damn money) later, I had the three countries set up in my head. Flying out to Montevideo on the 29th of January and landing on the 30th, I went across South America’s Southern tip, encompassing nine different towns and cities, various planes, buses and even a horse, with many different people and experiences.

Given that this is a relatively out of the ordinary thing to do, I thought I would write down some more of the details for anyone who’s curious. It seems most logical to break the trip down by country, so you can learn more about Uruguay, Argentina and Chile in each individual post, or have a mosey through them all if, I don’t know, you have a long bus ride coming up. I hope you enjoy my ramblings about a new part of the world (for me), and if you have any comments or questions, well, I’m all ears!