Dan and I are back home from our month in Argentina, and I still have quite a few drafts from our time in Bariloche and Mendoza. I'll be posting what I have over the next couple of weeks, but because the feelings are still fresh, I want to start with the post I wrote the last night of our trip. We've only been home for 3 days, and already it feels like it was ages ago.
January 24th, 2014
We finally made it to our last night in Argentina. I have so much I still want to write about, and so many posts in draft form thanks to nights of drinking in Mendoza, and terrible internet most everywhere else.
I feel like I should be excited to go home, but I am starting to feel incredibly anxious about leaving Argentina. I don’t know exactly why.
Of course I could chalk it up to the "I never want vacation to end," blues, but in this case I feel like it's more than that. Part of me wonders if it's the anxiety that comes from accomplishing a goal, from knowing my Argentina trip is no longer something I can look forward to or work toward. Maybe it's just stress about all the stuff I know I need to do when I return, or the backlog waiting for me at work. Maybe it's just that I completely fell in love with South America, and am sad that--at best--this trip only explored the tip of the iceberg.
To be honest, I had felt like something was missing through a lot of this trip. Don't get me wrong, Argentina is awesome--everyone should visit. And taking time off is awesome. And traveling with your husband is awesome. I'm lucky, and I get that. Mine are (for lack of a better term) first-world problems.
I think it's been tough to accept over the course of this trip that I am older, more attached to my life at home, and incapable of the same sense of wonder I had when I first started out as a novice to travel.
There is something about that first time out on your own that really gets you to your core, and I think I was a little disappointed to realize that--for all my wanting it--taking a month off when you have a job and responsibilities to return to, a fairly set itinerary and timeline, and a life that is already fairly well defined, is very different than walking down the open road when nothing in your life is defined or set in stone.
Of course I appreciate the things I have in my life now, but I also have an overly developed appreciation for the moments in time that are behind me.
What I do know, is that while I want to share some stories and photos about our time in Bariloche and Mendoza, I wanted to stop and capture how I felt as we left the last stop of our trip. All I can say is that this last month was such an incredibly memorable experience, and that these are the times of my life that matter to me the most.