Wednesday 18 April 2018

The continent didn't want to let go of us a.k.a Arriving back home


Actually leaving my parents' house on this picture because we don't have any pictures of arriving (we arrived in different airports at different times)



At the time of writing the last post, we had already had our first obstacles on the journey back which we thought that we had tackled as best as we could. What was about to follow was something that we simply couldn't have predicted. It seemed as it either the American continent didn't want to let go of us or the European continent was not yet ready to receive us back. Or maybe we had hurt the feelings of Europe by staying away for a total of 21 months.




Taganga, where we started encountering our problems in leaving the continent

We were in Taganga (North of Colombia, on the Caribbean coast. A small fishing village invaded by tourists) with the purpose of having a week of rest and selling our motorbike. We had already bought our tickets back to Estonia and didn't have much worries in our head. Most if the flights going from Colombia to Europe fly through the USA. So after a bit if research and finding out that Estonia is part of the visa-waiver program we did not think twice before buying our tickets through Miami and Providence. The visa-waiver program means that even though you don't need a visa, you can apply for an ESTA online, which is basically a fast and easy online permission to enter the USA for tourism or transit reasons (yes. you still need it even if you don't leave the airport) easy enough right? Well apparently not.

Selling our bike

We applied for ESTA online and being from the Almighty Leader of the Free world (can I please laugh), it demanded some pretty specific information. I filled out most of it (didn't give them my social media accounts that they also asked for) while Erik was a bit more reluctant and filled out only the required fields. Because why should he give them his former employer's phone number and address if it is not compulsory.


The answer for the application came back within minutes and as it turned out, I had been granted the permission to fly through the great US of A but Erik had not. So at this point we (he) had two options. The first option was to go to Bogota right away (a 16-hour busride) to try and apply for a visa. That option would have meant that we wouldn't have sold our motorbike, would have had to pay for the visa even before finding out if there was a visa-interview time available and then they still would have had 60 days to decide whether they would give it to him or not. So wasting all that money and still probably not getting the visa on time and having to buy a new ticket (so actually probably spending double the money). The second option was to spend the same sum as the visa-hustle would have taken us and just buy a ticket that doesn't fly through the US. Which is what we did and got a ticket from Bogota through Mexico (I was still flying out from Medellin).


So we stayed in Taganga and and extraordinary thing happened. We were in the only club-like establishment that this little town has when during a casual conversation (in Spanish) a girl asked Erik where he was from. Erik's answer left the girl with such a surprised expression and open mouth that we were both quickly weighing the options in our head: is she Latvian? is she Finnish? But what had happened was something that we had completely given up hope for. We actually met another Estonian in South-America. Less that two weeks before leaving the continent it finally happened :D So we could actually celebrate my birthday speaking (part of the night) in our own language. I just thought I'd bring out one positive thing about our final weeks before I go on to the obstacles thrown in our way. We actually did have a good time as well and did end up going to the beach almost every day. Something that we hadn't done the whole trip.
Three Estonians in one picture in Taganga


Since I had not been to Bogota yet and had kind of developed an obsession of finding a nice warm poncho (so many cool ones in Bolivia and Peru, only very thin warm-weather ones in Colombia so far) then we attempted to buy two plane tickets to the cool and mountainous capital of the country. That turned out as expected - the web page announced that the "payment was not received" followed by "the booking is canceled" but when I decided to check my bank account on a hunch, the money had disappeared. I, of course, sent them an e-mail trying find an answer. They managed to send me an electronic, automated reply three days later. Another few days later I was sent a form that I had to fill out with exactly the same information that I had already given them. They literally didn't ask anything that I had already told them. I sent the filled-out form back to them almost immediately and have been waiting for either a refund or a reply for six days already. Customer help my a**. If possible, avoid VivaColombia, because I later found out that they are known for causing problems. (after all the hustle, did manage to get the money back)

Dancing on the bar did occur at my birthday party. Luckily Erik\s broken phone is hiding the rest of the pictures :D

With that much money lost already I decided to go straight to Medellin to wait for my flight. Now of course the trouble didn't stop there. When Erik was trying to take his flight from Bogota, it was canceled with not much information given for a very long time. When they finally git him to Cancun (almost a day later), with a promise if a new ticket to Manchester it turned out that they were not exactly keen on keeping their word. With a lot if hustle, he did finally make it to Manchester (kiwi. com does keep its promise and gets you to the destination and even covered some food and accommodation so another tip – feel free to trust them. They actually do keep their promises) it was almost two days later. He also managed to drown his phone in the hotel that kiwi had given him for one night and they threatened to send his last plane to Riga instead of Tallinn because of extremely thick fog (which they had done to all the morning flights arriving in Tallinn) It took him “only” 5,5 days but he did finally make it back to Estonia.


When Erik had just finished arguing with different airport officials and gotten a ticket to Manchester, I reached the airport in Medellin. They scanned my passport through, immediately announced that "you will not be able to fly through the US. not with us, not with anyone else". They were unable to give any explanation but "the US immigration has decided not to let you fly through" and "you have to go to the embassy in Bogota to find out any information". On the ESTA page, I still had "application approved" so I refused to leave and demanded to see a supervisor. The supervisor came, asked me quite a few questions, spent half an hour on the phone with someone (presumably the US immigration office) but I finally got on the plane.





My journey back was actually quite uneventful. They only confiscated all my palosanto because apparently it was a threat to the nature of US, when I carried it through their third-world-country airport. Colombian and Mexican airports had functioning wifi. Miami and Providence airports did not.


On the second night back home my mother came into my room and said “I have someone in my ear. Come with me”. I got handed a pair of tweezers in the bathroom and the chase begun. I managed to catch a 1-2mm black little insect from inside my mother's ear. Unfortunately I didn't get a good and long look at it because when I caught it, it was not very securely held with my tool, so I had an immediate reaction of running the water tap and sticking the visitor under the running water.

A few weeks earlier (if I should guess then since the night in Popayan when we didn't get into our hotel for the night and ended up sleeping in tall grass next to a park), I had had a tickly feeling in my ear. I even mentioned to Erik after seeing that one of our friends had caught an insect under his skin that “I should get a thorough check-up when we get back because I have a paranoia that there is someone living in my ear”. Although I did say that I was always quite convinced that I had caught a cold or something like that. But coming back to the moment of discovery, I still had a couple of hours to wait until the morning (my mother is a doctor and actually shares the cabinet with a nose-throat/ear doctor) and my mothers “Let's go and sleep some more before morning” wasn't very convincing. Instead I spent the remaining hours trying to google about insects in ears, but the closest thing that I found were videos of an Indian woman who had a spider pulled out of her ear. So I had these horror-film scenarios running through my head, with a swarming nest in my head with tunnels going into my brain and so on. But after all the tests (including a small microscope in my ear and a pressure test) the doctor concluded that even if there was something before, then my now it is gone and there are also absolutely no signs of anyone moving past my eardrum (the pressure test showed that) in the past few months at least.
My "little" sister and brother


Had to pose for many pictures before we were allowed to leave Parnu


My mother was in a happy mood :D


A big part of the family


I spent a few days in Parnu, visiting my parents, who had organised a birthday party as well, as I wanted to see all the relatives and friends of family and they wanted to see us as well. It is easier to do the first meeting with a big group. Since we are only renting a small room in Tartu at the moment, we are meeting all our friends one-by-one which is better because we can actually talk to the one or two people more but it is also tiring as we are meeting someone almost every day. We are both also trying to find a job as the mishaps on our way back drained us of a big portion of the money that we intended to use for living in Estonia. Actually Erik already found a job but I haven't found anything yet.


Maybe I am being a bit picky but I really want to find something that I could enjoy doing for the next couple of years at least so I don't want to settle for anything less than what I am looking for. It is made harder because I am not entirely sure what I want to do. At the moment I don't see myself going back to a big public school for several reasons. The biggest being that I believe that Estonian educational system is a bit too fixated on learning grammar and instead of testing and ranking students all the time and giving too much attention to grammar, the students are not developing to be as good and confident speakers as they have the potential to. Other reasons are not wanting to be in the same classroom five days a week and not wanting by schedule to be that determined by the schoolbell ringing in my ears. I would still love to work with young people and language but I am hoping to find something where all my international experiences would be useful (I have visited all the continents by now). So if anyone has any organizations in mind, let me know. They don't have to be looking for a worker either, I would contact them anyways.


So what about first impressions since coming back to Estonia?

*the first time I felt warm water coming out of a tap, I almost jumped back. For nine months, the only place you SOMETIMES encountered warm water was in the shower. Even if you did have the electrical warm water shower, it was occasionally a good wake up call, when the tap electrocuted you every time you touched it.


*I thought I would blend in a bit more, given that I now have a similar skin color to the locals but not really. Almost everyone is wearing black or grey colors and I am still at least as colorful as before, if not more :D
First meal: buckwheat, black bread, kefir and sour cream
...and more sour cream. Estonian sour cream is definitely the best. One thing that I didn't have false memories of


Parents' fridge. A picture on the first day - look at all this food! :D


*The other day we were driving past the most popular place where Estonians go to downhillski or snowboard. When Erik finished the sentence “So I guess that there is Kuutse mountain” we both looked at each other and started laughing. Although the sentence was not meant like that (to mock anything) it feels really strange to call any of these bumps in Estonia “mountains”. The highest point of Estonia is 317m from sea level, the highest we reached with our motorbike was 4600m. We had a half-kilometre drop next to the road more than once or twice or ten times. Estonia is so sweet and small.


*It is true that you could eat much cheaper in colombia, for example, than you can is Estonia. But in Colombia it meant eating rice with a little salad and meat. Even if you found a big supermarket, you usually just had a lot of the same thing, sometimes by a different company. And if you wanted to have anything different, then the prices were ridiculously high. Over here, I can spend an hour in a grocery store, exploring all the interesting things. You should see the selection of cheese! And so much ready-made stuff (don't really buy this stuff often. Maybe once a week but it is so good that you have choice to buy something when you really don't have to time or the energy to cook and can't afford a restaurant).


*The spring is here but the leaves are not here yet. So it is strange to see how empty and bare everything is. Strange to see through bushes and trees.


*The technological advancement is loco. I only need my smartphone and I have already done all my banking or other legal stuff. It takes me a minute (maybe two the first time) to transfer money or check if I have a valid medical check-up for my drivers license. And it is much cheaper as well. I managed to get a deal where I pay 2.5 euros to get a deal for my phone with 15gb of internet, 1000min of calls and 1200 messages. Beat that.
*For the last ten months my only electronic device was my phone (so all the texts from South America were also written on that). When I got back, it took me 1,5 weeks before I discovered that “Hmm... maybe I can open my Facebook in the computer as well”. But now that I did switch over (typing this text on a laptop already), I think I will get used to it quite fast.
*It feels wonderful to have a home, although we are not at our home yet, but are renting a room for two months until we can get to our home. But just the feeling of not having to pack and unpack your stuff every day. Wearing a new pair of underwear every single day is a luxury. Having a frying pan that doesn't decide for you that “Nope. You are not making an omelet today. You are making scrambled eggs” (every single frying pan in the hostels looked like it had been used to hit nails into the wall)


*Walking on the streets and seeing familiar faces. My face lights up even when I see a familiar bum begging money on the street :D And having actual friends is a luxury. Some have moved on, some have actually done something with their lives, some are still the same, some think they have gone somewhere with their lives and feel like they are better than the others because of that... we still have to figure out where we belong. But before we begin figuring that out, the first aim is to meet all the ones who want to meet us.


*Dressing for the weather is impossible. It was 20 degrees one day, then snowing on the other. You go out and it looks like autumn and then it turns into Spring. Then you enter a bus and it is so unbelievably hot that I don't understand how people can ride them without taking all their clothes off.

*The cars stop to let you cross the road. The pedestrians actually have some rights in this part of the world - like a right to exist, live and even cross the road. I usually stop to let the cars pass in front of the pedestrian crossings and then I am surprised when the cars actually stop.
Our house for the next two months and our new ride. A bit more comfortable than Starcraft


Snow was threatening to cover the ground again


New wall-art in Tartu


And some new walkways


Leaves are ready to come out


Don't get me wrong. I do not regret any part of the trip that we did. We had so many cool experiences that probably for the next months and years to come, many of our stories will start with “This one time in Bolivia/Paraguay/Peru/...”. And there are many to tell. So many that already now we have forgotten and rediscovered some of them. We have both grown as a person and learned a lot about ourselves and of course about the world. But the last few months were very difficult because we were physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Now we just need to rest and process it all because this was not one trip. This was ten different trips coming right one after the other. So we are just really glad to be back home as well. But the travel-bug is still within us, hibernating for a while now. Although it already woke up last weekend when we visited Latvia :D



Visited a Latvian castle. Half of it had been carried away in the soviet times


I have been writing in English so far so that the people that we met on our way could also keep an eye on how far we have gotten and so on. And I am definitely planning to make at least one more big post in English about South-America, where I compare the countries and try to make an overview of what is similar and what is different (tried to find something like that before the beginning of this journey but didn't find one). But after that... how many people are there, who don't speak Estonian but would be interested in reading about my/our doings in English? Please let me know under the comments of this post or write to me on Facebook. If there are enough of you, I will continue in English (probably if 5-10 say that they would keep on reading, I would already write in English). If there is not much interest, I will switch over to Estonian after the next post.