South America: Atlantic coast

We do not see things as they are.  We see things as we are.

-- H. Jackson Brown, A Father’s Book of Wisdom

       On good days, I still thought I was doing the right thing. The particulars of new places grabbed me and held me, the sweep of new coasts, cold, lovely dawns. The world was incomprehensibly large, and there was still so much to see. Yes, I got sick sometimes of being an expatriate, always ignorant, on the outside of things, but I didn’t feel ready for domestic life, for seeing the same people, the same places, thinking more or less the same thoughts, each day. I liked surrendering to the onrush, the uncertainty, the serendipity of the road. And I generally liked being a stranger, an observer, often surprised.

-- William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life