Well it's alright, riding around in the breeze.

Well it's alright, if you live the life you please.

Well it's alright, even if the sun don't shine.

Well it's alright, we're going to the end of the line.

How wondrous to watch the shadow of one's own airplane slip across the fields and homes below. How can I guess what effect has this darkening? Were it slow enough, would a dog chase it, staying always in this cool patch I cast down from above and arriving finally and inadvertently in my same destination?

A glass Coke bottle from above: the gods must be crazy. A metal tube thrown by faith and ultimately magic into the sky, to cast its shadow out over the land and lost in the clouds: the passengers must be crazy.

And crazy we are not to rejoice and exult: we are strung up in the heavens, delicately balanced by the shape of a wing and the thrust of an engine. I am but a feeble man but set my wallet to vibrating and the gods of the sky accept me as their own. I fly.

I fly to Buenos Aires, to Argentina and away from Bolivia. Would that I could make this journey within the warm savory crust and stew of a salteña. A final goodbye to this fair and complex land.

But my airplane invokes the magic of metal and light and wind, not of whimsy and spice. Truly, I am an airborne god but surely they will serve me only a middling sandwich. Better they should light a grill in the mess and char a red bloody Argentinian cut. Bring me a glass of Malbec, steward, and some llaqwa for my steak.

In the face of everyday wonder, how impossible becomes the everyday. Yes, we will glide over the spine of this continent, but no, we cannot offer passable fare. I should calm my stomach and mind, awaiting whatever culinary offerings that come.

Forgive me and understand only that I tire in this station as a god and that already I feel the ache of absence of Bolivian soup and meat and rice and potatoes and llaqwa. I tire, indeed, every day in contemplation of and immersion in a decidedly unordinary life.

I never wanted to be a god. I never dreamed of this but instead a warm home, a place that smelled like forever, and a dog to follow my shadow and a partner in whose arms I could soar to the heavens and return to earth every day, every moment.

Better I should be a man eating soup at home than a god lost upon every wind and shore. Homeward, wherever that may be, but not quite yet.

We set off on a three-day tour with Cordillera Travel. We were comfortably packed into a Landcruiser with Brenden and Allison, from Australia; Tony, from England; and Robin, from the Netherlands and with whom we had shared a ferry from La Isla del Sol to Copacabana. Our driver was Jhonny, younger than all save Robin, married with two kids, and totally great.

I'm just going to say, and then get to the photos, that Uyuni is the shit.

The train cemetery just out of town is filled with the evidence of a once booming international mining operation.

Jhonny checked on our LandCruiser frequently—the trucks took quite a beating driving through all that salt and sand and such.

Allison applied a (thankfully temporary) shrink ray to Trina and Robin. I always knew Australians were deviants.

And then they all got in a Pringles tube.

Trina and I did a bunch of jumping.

The Salar has an "island" of rocks and ancient cactus, some of them thousands of years old.

You see, it's this ginormous, um, gargantuan, um, LIMITLESS plain made of SALT. Apparently they could keep mining the salar for another million years, at present rates, and they still wouldn't use all the salt. (I might be misremembering this statistic, maybe.) Wikipedia tells us that Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world at 4086 square miles, was formed by the transformation of a few lakes 30,000 years ago, and contains 50 – 70% of the world's lithium reserves. Really, other than it being huge, who cares? You just need to go there and see it. It's incredible.

And this was just the first day! I haven't even started telling you about the salt hotels or llamas or rocks or lagoons or flamingos or vicuñas. Wow. More to come! For now, I give you the A Team.

Now.

Katie just stuck her head out onto the balcony and asked me if I want toast. I do not want toast. I want instead to drink this coffee and sit shivering on the morning balcony (despite the llama-patterned alpaca-wool socks on my feet and the puffy down Patagonia jacket on my, um, torso).

Katie is my lovely roommate in this here 5th floor Palermo apartment. Katie is the the sister of a longtime friend, a man some may know as Charlie and others as Chuck. Before that Thursday evening, April 1st, when we arrived to receive our keys for the month, Katie and I had never met. Faith! And well placed, because we're great and this apartment is great and wow, seriously, Buenos Aires!

That is a sunset. Now is morning. Now is when Claire Fisher Scott, my dear dear friend, sleeps still and dreams perhaps of a certain husband arriving in just a few hours. I hope my hands warm up by then so I can give Whit appropriately awesome high-fives.

Claire and I have been spending a relaxed week since she arrived to visit on Sunday. We have been eating much delicious and drinking much wine; we have been laying in the afternoon by the heated pool in my apartment courtyard. She has been putting up graciously with my need to bill hours. We met new friends from the States, saw a hippie drum show, visited a cross between Disneyland and Bourbon Street, and purchased and destroyed so many galletitas from the bakery around the corner.

Claire, Whit and I will travel tomorrow to Bariloche for three days in the lakes region, northern Patagonia. I will make good use of my Patagonia gear—thank you, Sarah—as it is already epically cold down there. And by that I mean 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

We will return to greet so joyously Dave! Zucker! Have I mentioned that I love my friends? Have I mentioned that I will have three particularly pleasing ones here in Argentina with me? Morning, life, how brightly you shine on this ugly hospital ventilation system on which my gaze rests from my balcony!

The leaves are falling in Buenos Aires. Autumn is sharply, crisply here and winter is coming. I will escape north ahead of the freeze to Mendoza and then Peru and then Ecuador. Eric and I will surf for a week—SURFING—in Ecuador. And then I might, you know, be flying back... home... to Seattle. What home, what city: only Buenos Aires for now. No one is even awake on the West Coast yet.

Buenos días, Buenos Aires. Good morning, all. Now, what was I doing again?

On the morning of January 4th, I waited in the Miami airport and ate guava pastries. Brittney had arrived back in San Francisco that morning from Hawaii to find a package from me containing one DarkHorse Rainbow Pony fuzzy wristband. We exchanged photos of said wristbands, hers and mine, over airport wifi.

And then I flew to Costa Rica and then I took one hundred more morning photographs of my most important subject.

Sometimes I was not wearing a shirt. Frequently I had a cup of coffee. This was... is... Morning Carlos.

With changing light and backdrop, I would be hard pressed to measure my increasing and then declining tan. I forgot to flex my bicep in every single one so that's a bust, too. But my hair! Oh, my hair!

Go go go!

Oh, there it is.

Super Saiyan? Probably. Glorious? Definitely. Now, what to do with it... to cut or not to cut?

And, perhaps more importantly, when I finish this trip, to what song will I set the slideshow of all my portraits? Is there any song anyone knows, preferably a slow jam, called "I am so totally in love with myself (or maybe that's the coffee talking)?"

Spiral Staircase - I Love You More Today Than Yesterday

Imagine me, please, singing this to myself.

I am back in Santa Cruz for a limited engagement, having flown in from Sucre on Saturday. I leave Bolivia on Thursday for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I will be, for the first time on this trip, entering a country so far unknown to me.

Where have I been? Wait, shoot, right: where have I been? I went from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba to Sucre to Potosí to Sucre to La Paz and there I reunited with Trina, out and about on her own southern adventure. We kicked around La Paz. We rode mountain bikes down the world's most dangerous road, known affectionately as "La Carretera de Muerte." We visited Lake Titicaca and La Isla del Sol and La Paz again and Uyuni and its surrounding wonders and then to Potosí and Sucre. And I am here and she is there and soon we will be elsewhere.

I love Bolivia. Am I surprised? No... well, maybe a tiny bit. I would not say that Bolivia has a particularly strong reputation with people from the United States. Before Christmas, I was in Elliott Bay Book Company at the checkout and I said something in passing, to my companion or the cashier, regarding my upcoming time in Bolivia. Another customer, head on a swivel, turned abruptly to me and demanded if I was scared for my life to go there. No, no I was not: Bolivia is not all cocaleros and Scarface, actually.

Still, what did I expect? I truly had no idea—I had not been here in twenty years. I was caught a bit off-guard by the incredible warmth and hospitality of my family here. And I was not prepared, at all, for the wealth and diversity of the land and culture. Dude: this country has salteñas and chorizo and it has rustic little islands that would be just as well at home in the Mediterranean, you know, if not for all the llamas and 12,000 feet of elevation. What a wonderful thing, to have passed two months and discovered that I actually love Bolivia, my father's homeland.

I am not sure that I could ever live here permanently but I hold no uncertainty that I will be sad to leave, and that I will return. Bolivia visit: success!

Trust I will be featuring many more specific stories from Bolivia as I work through my backlog of photographs.

The day was Thursday the 4th of March in the year 2010.

I love Cochabamba. It happened suddenly—that morning, I think, in fact, yes. I love Cochabamba. I don't know how to describe this sentiment really. I don't even know how to describe this city fully. But it's a good city.

I put a good amount of pavement under my feet that day and the day previous. Perhaps I was finally connected?

Mi tia drove me a bit into town, on her way to art class, and then I walked a good length of blocks to reach la Plaza Colon, stopping to photograph whatever and walk my forehead into a low-hanging branch. I considered blonde, naked mermaid mosaics in a fountain and visited a gorgeous church. I installed myself at Cafe Casablanca for orange-carrot juice, cappuccino, laptop work and a friendly connection with Nima. He was wearing a Red Sox cap; he is Iranian and has family in Boston and a brother in Tehran and two years of residency in Bolivia. We chatted about the relative merits of countries and government and he offered me the cookies baked there, in this Italian-founded cafe. What a small, wondrous world.

I caught a taxi to my cousins' house for lunch, joining Mauricio, Nicole, Natalia, Pablo and, of course, mi tia Tuti. They served me richly, of course: salteñas, menudino, pan, and a delicious meringue, whipped cream and strawberry cake. They offered insight on Bolivia and brilliant recommendations for my time in other parts. I took photographs; we said our goodbyes.

Mauricio dropped me off at la casa de Simón Patiño. The mine tycoon was at once one of the five wealthiest people in the world. He and his wife were building a new house in Cochabamba but, sadly, the house was never completed before he died. After his death, and the passing of his family's time in the house, it became a museum and the seat of an arts foundation. There was beautiful (modern) Bolivian sculpture all throughout the grounds and in a special exhibition within the house.

I saw a piece of art there and the image and title of this work were a not-so-metaphorical representation of recent events in my life. And I laughed in joy and surprise: I felt stronger for the first time.

The house closed at four o'clock, so I walked down to la Recoleta for a refreshing maricuya frozen at Juice'Zen. See, Mauricio and some associates started an ice cream franchise—this specific shop was owned and run by his mother. I then called the cab company and secured a dedicated driver for the next few hours of my afternoon.

El taxista picked me up at la Recoleta and we were off—he drove me first to Cristo de la Concordia. I had gone the Sunday before, wanting the chance to climb inside Jesus, which you can only do on Sundays (duh), but was completely thwarted by the rain. I could neither climb inside nor see a damn thing of the city.

But I was back and it was a beautiful day.

Cristo de la Concordia is the tallest statue of Jesus in the world, beating out Rio by a few meters. He sits atop a hill in the middle of the city, with gorgeous views of everything in the surrounding valley. I was more than happy to sit and walk in the sun, considering the huge friggin' statue and the changing light and vistas of Cochabamba.

I considered staying for the sunset but there was limited light remaining for my final stop.

I was heading to Calle Carlos d'Avis.

So, my name is Carlos Andrés d'Avis. This is a good name. This was the name of the father of my father—mi abuelo, who tragically died when my father, Federico, was quite young. But Señor d'Avis was a famous doctor in Bolivia and once even the mayor of Cochabamba. He lived a good life, maybe even a great life? So he has a street; it's only three blocks long. How long is your street? You don't have a street? That's what I thought.

El taxista found it without problem—I had, in fact, been there once before, late at night with Mauricio, but without my camera or sufficient light to photograph. I walked around my street—the street of my namesake and grandfather—and I felt connected. Here was proof of my life and of the history of our family and of the lasting impression and memory of a bit of good work.

I was leaving Cochabamba the next day. I had a sight or so to see, and mi Tio Carlos y Tia Ida with whom to lunch, but I felt that I had found my heart of Cochabamba. I was happy and I was triumphant and it was a good day in Cochabamba.

I miss the sunset, and the sundowners.

I miss the surfing, and I miss two sundowners.

And I'm sorry, Ashleigh, but the mustache was brilliant, and I miss that, too.

We Grupo Did It, Grupo Do-It.

Hold me, Eric, and tell me we can always go back.

I am pictured above on the morning of my departure from the United States, on January 4th, 2010. My mother took this photograph in our house in Hamilton, Massachusetts.

I appear to have many possessions with me—two bags-full, in fact—and such is true. I had to choose those items such as socks, shirts, books, electronics, etc. that would last and satisfy me throughout journeys somewhat indeterminate. Do you know how many awesome t-shirts I have, not to mention button-downs? It's a bunch, for serious, and it was no simple task to elect apparel companions for my southern sojourn.

In other news, and themed similarly, I made a few changes to the website here and added a little view of my time abroad, titled "Morning Carlos." Here's a hint: if you want to be happy, look for some happiness, and click on it. (It's up there at the top! It's a SMILEY FACE!) So far, I have only missed documenting myself one morning since I began the trip. I will do my best!

I was happy to purchase the lens used from Emlyn Stokes, reunited with him briefly in Massachusetts between Christmas and New Years. This lens provides a bit more versatility than the single lens I owned previously,  a 50mm f/1.8 prime. To be fair, I freakin' love my 50mm prime, and I used to have a 28-200mm lens that got kicked a few years ago in Italy. Anyway, the lens will be my go-to while traveling and the 50mm stayed at home.

I was quite pleased to shoot a few lovely photographs from seat 10a on my flight from Miami to Liberia.*

My first few photographs from Costa Rica are on their way—I am quite pleased with how the new lens is performing. Here, let me offer you a preview. Pictured throwing is Arnie Larson.

* I am not in Africa, people. Liberia is a city in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. Come on, people, learn some geography (that is specifically relevant to me).