I’ve been visiting Lula for many years but have always skulked around anonymously in the background, feeding off the wealth of knowledge so generously shared. I never felt I had much to add to any particular topic discussed by wiser heads than I and I have an instinctive recoil reaction to standing up in public and voicing my thoughts.
I’m writing now to thank the active members of this community for sharing and increasing my understanding. Your passion for the craft of photography has always acted as a tonic. It may also be partly why I am taking a creative sabbatical from my regular commercial work and setting off for a two month trek round South America, just myself and my cameras. I hope to do myself proud and maybe share my work and thoughts back to Lula, now that I’ve broken the silence. You never know, I might be one of those that never shuts up.
I’ve enjoyed spending way too long researching routes and spent too much on gear that suits the great outdoors rather than my usual studio environment. Now I just need to pack, make sure everything fits and that I can still function as a mobile unit. I was actually born in Buenos Aires and spent my childhood in Lima, but it has been a while. I still have excellently pronounced but limited Spanish, which should help a bit.
If anyone in Buenos Aires, Santiago, La Paz, or Lima, fancies getting together to walk the streets, drink coffee, or show me where the best Pisco Sours are (just to stir up the age old controversy, that would be somewhere in Peru, not Chile, unless someone wants to prove me wrong!). I’ll be heading as far south as El Calafate, from Bariloche over to Chile, up to Santiago, back over to Argentina to head north through the wine region, crossing over to Bolivia for Uyuni, heading north to La Paz, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Cuzco, Lima, before stumbling onto the beaches at the northern tip of Peru. I fly back from Lima to Buenos Aires for a final few days(and then back home to Helsinki).
I wish I could make it as far as the Caribbean coast of Colombia but I think I have taken on too much already. Any suggestions for must-sees along the way would be greatly appreciated. I’m now off with my partner in crime to celebrate Neil young’s 70th birthday by watching a cover band do their best. I wish you all well.
-tim-
