4 months ago on New Year’s Eve, my partner Mel and I were sitting on a beach just outside the beautiful town of Sorrento on the Mornington peninsula. Sorrento, a sleepy village with Italian roots and golden sand beaches is just a short drive from the metropolitan city of Melbourne. This paradise-like getaway bursts into life during the summer holidays when people flee from the hectic chaos of the city, and this particular weekend was no different.
It was 5 minutes to midnight and yet it didn’t feel like anything significant was about to change. The beach was littered with party people adorning festive hats and colourful attire readying themselves to ring in the new year. Sparklers and roman candles intermittently created huge explosions of light along the white carpet of sand while RTDs and cheap wine were sipped from red solo cups and broken songs of nostalgia were belted out with energy and passion.
We decided to take a walk along the beach to soak up the atmosphere while sharing with each other how we would both vow to be better people in our own ways for the coming year. A few moments later the sky burst into a kaleidoscope of neon light as fireworks rocketed upwards from Melbourne, Geelong and Sorrento. Little did we know that devastating forest fires were just beginning to take hold only a few hundred miles north of us.
Shortly after welcoming in the new year I fell into bed tipsy and giddy from the festivities, completely oblivious to the fires and historic events that were soon to transpire for Sapiens worldwide.
Fast forward to April 2020, here I am living on a tranquil island in the Paraná Delta, on the edge of the enormous Latin American city of Buenos Aires (BA), or “fine airs” in English. Like many other millions of people my life has been completely turned upside-down in the past month. Any plans that I had have now been cancelled. It is near next to impossible to make any plan as no person has any idea as to when life as we once knew it will return back to normal.
Late 2019/ early 2020 word began to slowly reach Wellington New Zealand, where I was living at the time, of a highly contagious viral outbreak wreaking havoc in Wuhan, China. An unfamiliar enemy which infectious-disease experts have since coined Covid-19 was working its way so quickly across populations that make-shift hospitals were being thrown together in a matter of days while once-bustling centres of commerce were now essentially ghost-towns.
While all of this was materialising, the world was already gripped on the bushfires that were raging across New South Wales and Victoria in Australia where brave firefighters were putting their lives on the line each day and countless native animals were being decimated in what looked like an unstoppable inferno.
All of this only a few months after the Brazilian government condoned the burning of huge swathes of the Amazonian rainforest. This huge expanse of carbon sequestering native rain-forest is one of the last of its kind remaining on planet earth, and it is being drastically reduced in size year on year. This development is of course favouring the interests of the gigantic soy and palm mono-crop industries.
At the same time the world was being rallied into action by climate activists such as Greta-Thunberg, school children and myriad others. All taking to the streets to voice their worries of what was to come if politicians and leaders alike didn’t take radical action immediately and declare a state of climate emergency.
A movement was bubbling up to combat the interests of the most powerful organisations in the world in an effort to preserve what we still have left. Vocalising the thoughts of millions worldwide that we desperately need a dramatic shift in the way that each of us is living on this planet of finite resources that is already overpopulated and consuming at an unprecedented and unsustainable rate.
Our taxi driver was a legend and stopped at all of the most amazing viewpoints on the stunning drive from Salta to Cafayate
Since then the COVID-19 virus has been incredibly successful in strong arming the world into pumping the brakes and ceasing all but the most essential businesses and services. Almost all flight carriers have reduced their operation by 90% or more and some have even gone bankrupt.
Many countries have declared the highest level of national emergency. A total lockdown of citizens and residents is now commonplace with an estimated 20% of the world population in lockdown at the time of writing this. What this means is a severe limitation of freedom of movement and the imposing of strict social distancing measures.
The number or worldwide infections is already well over 1 million and has been particularly devastating in China, USA, Italy, Spain, France and Germany. The world is a crazy place right now and each and every one of us has a unique story to tell of how this modern plague is affecting us.
Mine starts with me and Mel arriving in Argentina mid February after taking a long haul flight from Melbourne. We had planned to stay in her mother’s house, in a northern suburb of BA known as Martinez, for a few weeks before travelling to the northwest to the region of Salta and then shortly after visiting the southern-most point of Patagonia and Argentina in the land of fire or “Tierra del Fuego”.
Our first couple of weeks was spent meeting Mel’s friends and relatives which spanned far and wide. The cost of living in Argentina is far less than New Zealand which meant that we could treat ourselves, which we didn’t hesitate in doing, eating out most nights.
Initially, it was a massive shock for me to be thrown into a situation where I was surrounded by Spanish native speakers. Most Porteños, another name for the residents of BA, have very limited English and speak incredibly fast in a dialect that is significantly different to the European Spanish that I had learned.
However the upside to all of it was that my Spanish was improving exponentially as I was in as immersive an environment as one could ever ask for. I found BA to be an incredible city. Some call it the Paris of Latin America because of it’s well-preserved European colonial architecture. It is bordered by the brown water Río de la Plata (River of the Silver) so called because of the way it sparkles on sunny days.
What first struck me on arrival was the scale of the poverty that was so blatantly obvious. Rundown make-shift slums, or as the locals call it “villa miserias”, seemed to expand endlessly. We spent our first few weeks wandering around Martinez while occasionally making the hour or so trip to the city centre. The centre is both beautiful and chaotic.
While one is surrounded by interesting heritage architecture, there is also a continuously uncomfortable level of noise and volume of people. Given the fact that Mel is from here, I was given an incredibly authentic tour of the capital.
I was introduced to the famous Malbec wine and local craft beer as well as many of the true Argentinian delicacies. Facturas, milanesas, empanadas, fugazetta and of course mate to name just a few.
We also journeyed out to the house of Ricardo a few times which is the house on the island that I previously mentioned. This was always an invaluable getaway from the concrete jungle that is BA.
Before we knew it 3 weeks had flown by and we were on our way to Salta. We spent just over a week up there, mostly in awe of the jaw-dropping multi-coloured mountains of the Jujuy region and the unique clay landscapes of Salta. Being in such a rural environment felt like a bubble away from the ret of the world.
We lived day-to-day not planning much. Catching local buses to take us to wherever we decided to see next and eating as the local ate which was mostly bread, empanadas, goats cheese and a sweet corn based delicacy called humitas.
We visited the salt flats “Salinas de Jujuy” and journeyed up to Humahuaca to see the famous Hornocal where the mountains supposedly boast 14 different colours.
Towards the end of our trip up north I was reading the news on my phone one morning. All of the headlines seemed to be talking about how the Coronavirus was starting to take hold in Italy and slowly infiltrating other neighbouring countries.
At the time I was feeling a huge amount of empathy for the unfortunate Italians but it still wasn’t fully on my radar as being something that had the potential to affect me and so many others worldwide.
Right from the moment we hopped on the plane back from Salta to BA, Coronavirus safety announcements were being broadcasted everywhere. Anyone that had been to China or mainland Europe in the past few days had to contact flight staff immediately.
Days after our arrival it was announced that there would be a full lockdown of Argentina in the coming days. Supposedly someone in Ushuaia of all places had tested positive for the coronavirus and the province had decided to close off it borders to anyone wanting to enter.
It was next announced that all national parks would be closed and entry to the country would be denied to travellers that were not either citizens or returning residents.
The next few days were a bit of a scramble as we began to learn more about the extent of the lockdown conditions. We proceeded to stock up on what we thought we would need for the times ahead.
The day arrived when Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez announced the specifics of the lockdown which stated that the only permitted reasons for leaving your house was for either a medical emergency, pharmacy or essential businesses visit such as grocery stores.
As far as I understood, exercising in public spaces was strictly prohibited. We collectively decided with Mel’s family that the best option fo us would be to spend the lockdown on the island where we could at least have some sort of freedom of movement and not be confined to a house for what was initially announced as a two week lockdown.
We initially intended to stay for only 4 days but later realised that we weren’t allowed to leave. Thus, I have been cleverly cycling through 2 or 3 pairs of jocks and 2 tee shirts for the past 3 weeks.
The day-to-day life on the island was incredibly relaxing but also completely surreal. Days just seemed to come and go and I lost track of how long we had been there very quickly.
The house is overlooking a main thoroughfare on the Paraná Delta where boats would usually be passing by in droves on a normal day. But now it was eerily quiet and the only thing that could be heard were the songs of the local zorzales “thrushes” and the barking of dogs from neighbouring islands.
The waterway is studded with piers and set-back houses of all shapes, sizes and colours. Once or twice a day a water taxi would zoom by as well as a food trading boat that signalled its arrival with an unmistakable melody.
I hadn’t had contact with the outside world apart from video chats with friends and family for over two weeks and it felt extremely strange.
Anxiety frequently crept in due to the uncertainty of what the future held. When could we go where we wanted and what would the world look like after? I practiced meditation and yoga whenever possible to keep this at bay.
With an eager mind for learning I always seemed to have something to keep me occupied and my Spanish was improving much faster than I would have ever imagined.
Day-to-day life was quite similar but also with enough variety to maintain sanity. I am going to go into a bit more detail about this in my next post.
For now I hope that everyone is safe and sound at home with your loved ones. This is an extremely difficult time for us all but we can get through this if we work together.
We will learn a huge amount from this both as individuals and collective societies. Please stay at home unless it is an absolute necessity and all of this will be over much quicker. Stock up on wine, hand sanitizers and avocados while you can because we still have a ways to go yet.
Wishing you as enjoyable a social isolation as one can have,
ST.
The Wave Forward 