Ben Welsher | Writings

Day 82 - Cuenca Is it evolution that has given us the ability to internalise actions? That allows our conscious mind to leave the basic physics of any act to unconscious reflex while it wanders elsewhere? That sees the complexities of something like driving a car as nothing more than learned response? The subconscious takes over the familiar and rules routine. So it can be with travel. An autopilot takes control and the 'why?' of it slips almost as far back in the mind as the 'how?' Vision narrows and sees only the road. A whole country could be passed in this way and all memory will recount is "I was there". How quickly I forget the drudge of the past, how quickly our scale of what makes us happy and what makes us sad adapts to new realities. But then I believe there is no happiness without sadness, we need light as we need shade, we can detect only contrast. Sometimes life assumes the beauty of a symphony with its four movements of birth, youth, adulthood a...

Day 76 - Quito As an dance track from my youth had it "Ecuador!" After a day spent in Otavalo and its renowned market, where I picked up a Panama hat for a song, we had hit the capital. Long days of travelling had left tempers frayed but a couple of days of rest and an over-the-counter culture had restored moods to normal working order. Quito is a slender city pushed to elongate by surrounding mountains. It seems the planning policy employed by the Spaniards who founded these places was "is the site near a mountain, if so build. Better yet find a volcano." You know you're at altitude when a short flight of stairs leaves you bereft of breath and at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level Quito certainly had altitude. I hadn't realised that on stepping off the bus I was planting my foot for the first time on Southern hemisphere soil. There were no markers on the road to Quito still less a giant band ringing the earth's waist so my straddling-both-hemispheres p...