Mapmaking

To get here, pick up the N3, heading east from Johannesburg towards Durban. There are shortcuts that bypass the tolls, but if the traffic’s not too bad, it’s easiest just to stick to the highway. Depending on the season, the road is flanked by mielies, sunflowers

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An accident with the delay pedal

Not long after I moved into my first house – my own house, one that was neither my childhood home nor the university residence I shared with other post-adolescent girls – I found a running route I loved. I would turn

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A world away in Iceland

No one knew where I was when I fell asleep that night, alone in a green tent in a small village with a name I couldn’t pronounce. I’d spoken about going south, but the rain was torrential, visibility nil, and after 35km and some map-and-soul

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A screw loose

His voice pulls me back from the depths into which I am sinking: "Is she gone?" My eyes snap open, the edges of my vision feel blackened and blurred, and I have the sensation that the rest of my body is submerged in a dark, bottomless ocean, with only

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Learning, loving, leaving

Another warm, blue-skied autumn day swallows Johannesburg whole. I have been back in South Africa for two weeks and it has been a little over a year since I first arrived in Toronto – on a similarly warm, blue-skied day. Johannesburg’s autumn and Toronto’s spring

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Ups and downs, highs and lows

From the top, the world is two-tone: blanketed by the whiteness of snow, ice and clouds below, an inverted bowl of the sharpest blue above. At the back of my throat, a cough-inducing coating that, to my mind, has the colour, consistency and taste of

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Serendipity and viticulture

Friendships form without warning, I’ve learnt, and projecting their trajectory is an impossible task. You just never know who you’re going to meet one sunny day in Mendoza, Argentina’s greatest

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A slice of life in Lima

They call it la garúa. Today, it swallowed Peru’s largest city whole. A dense, white fog that hid the tops of even relatively low buildings, that concealed the ocean and

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Food for thought, thoughts on food

Scolded. I consider myself scolded. One of my closest friends, a dedicated food guru and creator of some of the greatest culinary delights I have ever had the pleasure to

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How the Amazon made me feel

Our boat driver kills the engine with a single click. It is silent. A moment later, our guide turns off the enormous torch he has been using to search for

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Where the sun was born

People travel and they talk. They form opinions and pass these on to friends and fellow travellers, they rave and condemn, they write guide books and online reviews. You listen

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Move your body

Slowly, I close my eyes. And snap them open. And close them again. And open them. As much as I try to search for a slither of light, for a

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Impressions of Bolivia

My weeks in Bolivia have passed by with ease and fluidity, with a gentle contentment and a wide-eyed wonderment. Instead of running my fingers over a keyboard, I have run

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The dinosaur of the Argentine

I spend my week in Argentina on the back of a stegosaurus. He moves laboriously, with gentle movements that have me rocking from side to side. His flesh is calloused,

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Learning about life in a land of dust and salt

My heart hammers in my ears. I attribute it to one of two things: either its the whopping altitude I suddenly find myself at, or it’s the fact that I’m

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Infinity in the palm of your hand

A jolt in the road, roused from a sleep so deep I feel drugged, I peek one eye out from the curtains of the bus carrying me into northern Chile.

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Feeling the heat

Chile’s intercity public transport system is impressive. Buses leave precisely – precisely – on time; those that don’t are met with flailing arms and frustrated wrist-tapping by the next drivers

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The imaginations of Valparaiso

As it turns out, I don’t have an ass of steel at the end of day two in Valparaiso. I have an ass of jelly and I have legs of

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All the world’s a canvas

Valparaiso wakes up like an infant, bleary-eyed and disorientated; overcast, quiet and cool. I roll over and go back to sleep. It was a late night – a few beers

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Don’t judge a country by its capital

Santiago’s blue skies blister down as I take to the streets. I never actually confirm this, but for the duration of my five-hour walk I have the distinct feeling that

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Here we go again

This blog was born of a broken foot. Now, 13 months later, having sufficiently healed, having recouped the travelling money I was forced to spend on medical bills, and having

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