florence's blog

People at Oxford trying to convince me that I need a 2-1 in first year otherwise I won’t get a job at the end of uni. I don’t know what kind of bullshit jobs you’re talking about (well I do, investment bankers and corporate lawyers) but pretty sure 99% of the working population doesn’t have a degree from Oxford and are doing alright WHY THE ASSUMPTION THAT I WANT TO BE A RICH SOULLESS ELITE CAREERWOMAN *dies*

First, I watched this video, the Kony 2012 campaign video. Then I read this criticism. Then I read this response by the director of Invisible Children. A couple of issues still remain.

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It may come back to life soon. Current plan for summer:

Travel to Tanzania sometime in August.

Spend two or- most likely- four weeks in Milingano, the tiny rural village where I lived for three months in 2010.

Backpack across East Africa for three weeks afterwards, being a tourist in Uganda.

Fly out of Entebbe, or maybe Kigali (Rwanda). 

Get home sometime in September, ready to start my second year!

4th September is a significant date for me, because it was on this day last year that I embarked on my three month trip to Tanzania. It was such an important day, one which I’d been looking forward to, preparing for and worrying about for months and months preceding it. It was the starting point, the commencement of what I would soon come to regard as the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. But not only that, it was the end of “life as I knew it”- the end of a predictable cycle of year after year of school in the same town, living with my parents with little to no commitments or worries, and living just a few minutes away from almost everyone I knew. The end of my childhood.

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My day trip to Trujillo en-route to Máncora from Lima was actually one of the most enjoyable days here. I wasn’t even planning to go there originally, but it made for a useful stop-off point between Lima (the capital, which is on the south coast) and Máncora (a tiny village right up on the coast near the border). It’s about 18 hours on a direct bus, which in my opinion is too long for one journey, so I decided to split it up into two 9 hour, overnight journeys, with a day in Trujillo in the middle. I didn’t really like the idea of two nights in a row with no more than a bus seat to sleep on, but I thought- how bad could it be? Turns out, not that bad. I’d definitely recommend doing this to other travellers, Trujillo is nice enough for a day, especially with Huanchaco beach so close by… not bad at all.

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I’m so far behind now that I’m just going to do random entries on where I’ve been, backtracking and hopefully eventually covering everything! Right now I’m in Quito, which is the capital of Ecuador, and also the highest capital city in the world. It’s colonial, with a ton of churches, and is surrounded by the mountains- the setting is not so different to that of Cusco. Today was Good Friday and seeing as I’m in a strongly catholic region of a catholic country, they celebrate quite a lot. Sadly, they do this not by drinking a lot, but instead by putting on a HUGE procession through the city centre. So I went to watch this today, and it was really interesting, if not a little strange and disturbing…

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Thought I’d try and upload a few whilst the internet is good enough to do so without it taking hours! I’ve seen some truly stunning sunsets all across Peru. Here is a selection…

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This is Ceviche. Peru’s national dish, it’s seafood marinated in lime and chill, served with onion and salad. So nice!!

Me, zooming down a sand dune. AWESOME

So I got to Huacachina in the afternoon, fairly refreshed seeing as it was only two hours away from Nazca! If someone had told me this time last year that I’d soon be categorizing any bus journey under five hours as “short”, I doubt I would’ve believed them. There are seriously not many places you can go in England from Cambridge which would take you five hours; I never realised how spoilt we English people are in that way! Or I guess you could call it unlucky that we’re stuck on such a tiny island. Whichever. Anyway, Huacachina is a tiny desert village based around a lagoon, surrounded by sand dunes… The surrounding landscape is really stunning!

You see? This was actually taken from the top of one of the sand dunes, but isn’t it just incredible?

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