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Diaries from the road, Australia. December 2017.
” – I have to go home
– You are home”
After taking one last walk around Coober Pedy, we get going.
We go to the Breakaways, it’s beautiful and we are all alone. The view, the place, the moment is for us only.
There’s a snake in the middle of the road. It’s not moving, looks dead… but I’m not gonna get close that’s for sure. Quick stop to cook something in Marla. I don’t feel too well after lunch, probably because it is so incredibly hot out there. We arrive at the Northern Territory and after some time that I am unable to determine, I finally see it appear in the distance: Uluru.
It’s weird, I don’t know exactly why but I start to feel like I’m about to cry. Al notices something and keeps asking me if everything’s ok. We go to the grocery store and while we are trying to find something to cook for dinner, I can’t keep it together any longer. A couple tears slowly begin to fall.
Sometimes I feel that I live my life inside my head. And at times it’s just too much. The road is a great metaphor for life. I set destinations because I need to move towards something. But I don’t really know what I’m doing, nor how I go or even if I’m getting there.
It’s all expectations.
Why was I crying? Because I was there, finally. Because I had wanted it so much. I really had to fight for this one. But above all, because I knew that this was not my true destination. My destination I can not see or reach. It is in the world of my ideas. It moves almost at the same speed at which I approach. It is a horizon.
I have sacrificed a lot for this road that I like so much. I guess it’s fair and humane that sometimes I wonder if I did well. I find it incredibly easy to travel anywhere, to very different and far away places. I don’t feel afraid, I don’t need to plan it for months like other people do, and I adapt easily.
What terrifies me is going home.
…”Home”…
*
We spend the night at the Uluru campsite. I enjoy our nights in the jeep, I sleep like a baby in a bed Al built all by himself. Breakfast calmly, planning the day while I transfer photos to the laptop and charge the battery of my camera.
We see Uluru under a killer sun. I take many photos. Then we go to Kata Tjuta, also amazing, but the heat makes it so hard. A snake hides in the bushes and makes me stop for a while because I do not dare to walk by. I finally cross very quickly.
One of the best things about coming during this time of the year is that it is so hot there are almost no people. It’s perfect.
When the day is coming to an end, we go to the key point to take a picture of Uluru with the sunset. There’s a French guy with his family and he asks me to take a picture with his compact camera. Then he starts to give me a lesson in photographic composition. Yay.
Alberto, who hears everything in the distance, laughs quietly while hearing the guy mentioning incorrect things and mixing up technical terms. I can’t.
We made the decision to skip King’s Canyon in the last minute to avoid running out of money. We stop at a petrol station/rest area from hell. It’s 10 pm and the petrol station is closed so we spend the night in that little piece of hell where I do not care so much about what creature hides in those bushes making so much noise. What worries me is the trash can from the bathroom that moves where I have just seen something with a long tail disappear.
*
In the morning as soon as we wake up we get out of there, still in our pajamas, not knowing that we are taking with us a little bit of hell in the form of something that I don’t think deserves the name of gasoline. The return was going to be a real, big adventure.
“Listen to Tommy with a candle burning, and you’ll see your entire future”
“With thoughts as bold
As thought can be
Loving life and becoming wise
In simplicity”
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