I’ve recently been reflecting on how dramatically my living circumstances have changed over the last three years. It’s been quite a wild ride indeed!

A little over three years ago I left the comfortable surroundings of the city I was born in and where I spent the first 31 years of my life. I moved to Devon in the south west of England, a very charming and picturesque place that many say is one of the most beautiful parts of England (and I would probably agree). Moving to Devon wasn’t something I’d been planning and I seemed to remember it all happened very quickly.

I spent about 10 very enjoyable months in Devon. I loved the tranquillity and calmness of Devon and the relaxed pace at which most people there seemed to flow through life. It was also the first time in my life I lived next to the ocean, and I still miss that ocean a lot. I never had any plans to leave Devon, but events happened, opportunities presented themselves, and bang, within a matter of weeks I suddenly found myself living in London, again something wholly unplanned.

I spent about 15 months in London and I loved just about every minute there. I loved the vastness of the place, the incredible amount of things to see and do and I was blessed to become friends with some of the most interesting, intelligent and fun, not to mention highly conscious, people you could ever hope to meet. I still miss London a lot to be honest, but I knew it wasn’t part of my path to stay there. I also lived in 3 very different parts of London during those 15 months. A couple of months in the East End, about 11 months in North London and then I spent my final two months living in a very swanky flat close to Richmond in West London.

Then, almost a year ago I moved again, and this time I moved abroad for the first time to Canada where I had some great friends I wanted to spend more time with. Canada was slightly more planned than the other moves, or at least I knew three months in advance of my move that I wanted to go there. However, I literally didn’t know until about week before I flew whether I was definitely going or not.

In Canada I was living in a small town in Nova Scotia called Wolfville, a very charming and friendly little town where very little happens. It could not have been more different from London, but I enjoy being there and I enjoyed slowing down once again after the mad pace of life in London. It was also fucking freezing!!

I’ve never experienced a freezing cold winter before. We literally didn’t see the ground for almost 4 months due to the snow. And my god was there a lot of snow. I don’t think that’s an experience I ever want to repeat but I’m mightily glad I endured it. It feels like a war scar of some kind and it’s certainly given me a whole new perspective on weather and temperature!

I also had no plans to leave Canada (are you seeing a recurring pattern here!?), and I was really looking forward to experiencing a Canadian summer after the long harsh winter. In fact I had literally just applied to renew my visa for another 6 months (and paid an administration fee) when a few days later I had a mad flash of intuition that I should move to Peru. 3 Weeks later I was jumping on a plane to South America, my most exotic and perhaps bizarre destination yet.

Each of those 4 moves (to Devon, then London, then Wolfville, then Cusco) was essentially a leap into the unknown. None of those moves were planned in advance and to be honest I never really had a clue what I would be doing when I got there. In all those cases I was essentially following my intuition and completely trusting that I was doing the right thing and that everything would work out for me.

Now I’m starting to feel like I might be about to take another leap into the unknown. In just over a weeks time I’m going to start travelling to Iquitos, a city in the middle of the Amazon jungle in northern Peru. At this moment I don’t have any plans to stay there for more than a few weeks; however, I’m starting to get a strong intuition that I will stay there a lot longer than a few weeks. I get this weird feeling that universal cogs are turning and that my life is about to take a whole new direction.

Also, as I finish this post I’m a few hours away from catching a bus to Bolivia. My visa expires in a few weeks and I want to renew it before I head to Iquitos. Tomorrow morning at 9am I should be arriving in a place called Copacabana on the Bolivian shores of Lake Titicaca where I intend to hang out for a few days before I get a bus back to Cusco on Sunday.

Hasta luego mis amigos!

I apologise these updates seem to be getting fewer and fewer. During the last six weeks I’ve been so busy with work projects that I just haven’t had the energy to focus on writing. Thankfully after this week I’m taking a break for several weeks at least, so I definitely will get back to writing more often.

If all goes well then I should have plenty to write about too. Around the 7th of October I plan to cross the border into Bolivia for several days and then come back into Peru to renew my visa. Then after Bolivia I will finally be visiting the Amazon which I’m really excited about. But more information about that soon once I have a better idea of where I’m actually going.

The most interesting thing to report about September is that it’s been a completely alcohol free month for me. I had to do it because things were getting a little crazy just before this month started, and I was drinking just a bit too often. It’s kinda ironic that I came to Peru for more spiritual and consciousness raising reasons, and instead I ended up on what was practically a four month bender! Slight exageration there perhaps, but drinking was definitely becoming too frequent, even for my liking.

Anyway, a month off alcohol (which has been far easier than I expected) has done wonders for my well being. I’m definitely a lot more clear headed and also a lot more productive in my work. I’ve also decided I’m going to stick with sobriety for at least another month. I hope to be doing some Ayahuasca ceremonies in the jungle in a few weeks time and I feel it’s important to stay completely sober until after then, so it looks like October is going to be an alcohol free month too. To be honest I’m not sure if I’ve ever gone more than 30 days without a beer in my entire adult life, so this could be a whole new experience for me! Who knows, maybe I’ll even give it up for good. Now that would really be something!!

I was going to start this post a few weeks ago and call it  ‘3 months in Peru’, didn’t quite get round to it, and it never ceases to amaze me how quickly time seems to fly for me these days. In about 10 days time I’ll have now been here 4 months and that seems hard to believe! Is time flying as fast for everyone else?

Anyway, it’s been awhile since I regularly updated this blog and I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping to get back into a more regular routine but you just never know with me. Writing has always been something I’ve struggled with and if I can put it off I usually will! Although the truth is once I get started I usually enjoy it more than I expect!

So what have I been up to this last month that’s made the time fly even faster? Not a whole lot strangely enough but it’s been a whole lot of fun!

As stated in one of my lasts posts I went without my laptop for almost 2 weeks due to my power adapter getting fried. At first I thought I was cursed but in the end it proved to be a blessing and I really enjoyed having a chunk of time away from the computer. I must admit I went a little bit crazy during that period, having a brief affair with a Peruvian girl called Ysabel (on vacation in Cusco from Lima), I ended up going clubbing, getting fairly drunk,  and staying out very late about 7 nights out of 10, which is definitely not my usual way of being. I certainly had a lot of fun but I was grateful for the rest when Ysabel returned home to Lima (she’s actually just returned to Cusco a few days ago but that’s perhaps a story for another post!).

Right now I’m busier with work than I’ve been in a long time with about 5 projects on the go, so definitely no late nights and parties for me at the moment! Hopefully this will mean I’ll be able to afford to take a trip into the Amazon in the next month or so which is something I really have my heart set on.

About a month ago I also did my fourth Ayahuasca ceremony while here in Peru. I’ve been meaning to write about that for quite sometime because I haven’t really talked about my Ayahuasca experiences so far on this blog and I really felt I received some lessons I want to write about any explore further. I will get round to that soon, and please give me a nudge if nothing appears soon.

Another positive development over the last month or so is that I’ve made quite a few friends with people who are either living permanently in Peru, or who are like me, staying here indefinitely. During my first 2 months here most of the people I developed friendships with were mostly just passing through on their travels, so I had to keep saying goodbye to a lot of people I really liked which was difficult at times. It feels really great to finally have some solid friendships with people who won’t be leaving anytime soon!

I’ve now been learning Spanish for about 3 months and I have to say I’m still really struggling with it, although perhaps I was expecting too much too soon. One thing is for sure though, it’s a very frustrating language to learn and I’m probably going to dedicate a whole post soon to my struggles with Spanish.

Anyway, it’s getting late and I have an early morning Spanish class, so it’s adios from me for a little while.

There’s a poster on the wall in Paddies (a popular Irish pub in Cusco) with the following quote. It resonated with me so i thought I’d post it here:

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deeprooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”

- - The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham

I’ve been without my laptop for the last 2 weeks. It seems that my power adapter got fried by the somewhat unpredictable nature of Peruvian electricity. At least I hope that’s the problem, if it turns out to be my laptop (which still runs fine on battery power, except the battery died long ago) then I have a serious problem.

I’m sort of still able to work from internet cafes and the computer in my Spanish school, but it’s not ideal and so I’ve essentially taken a holiday away from my computer which is why I’ve been quiet of late.

Anyway, I’m starting to feel like I have quite a few things to write about again, so hopefully posting will resume next week.