Walking around the city, Montevideo, Uruguay, January 2026

After a few days of movement and discovery, I find myself in Montevideo.

The journey unfolded gently. One day in Panama City, just enough to let memory walk beside me again. Three days in Lima, where the city revealed itself step by step, patiently, through walking rather than explanation. And now Uruguay, arriving not with spectacle but with a quieter promise.

Panama was brief, but full.

Returning there always feels layered. Casco Viejo held me again in its narrow streets and softened façades, shaped by centuries of destruction and reinvention. I walked past places where earlier versions of my life unfolded — cafés where mornings once stretched lazily, streets whose rhythm I still carry in my body. Panama never feels like a stopover. It feels like a place that remembers, even if the remembering happens mostly inside me.

Beyond the old quarter, the city opened outward. Avenida Balboa, where the skyline meets the Pacific and ships wait patiently offshore. Vía Argentina, alive with conversation and shade. And Ciudad del Saber, where ideas once mattered more than speed, where I worked, worried, hoped, and believed deeply in cooperation. Being there again felt like opening an old notebook and recognising your own handwriting.

Then Lima.

Three days of walking until the city began to speak.

I arrived without a plan, which felt exactly right. Lima does not demand preparation; it asks for attention. Miraflores welcomed me with calm streets and filtered light, before suddenly giving way to the cliffs and the Pacific below. The ocean there is not decoration — it is presence. Constant, steady, indifferent.

Barranco followed, narrower and more introspective. A place that remembers. I crossed the Bridge of Sighs almost accidentally, held my breath, made a quiet wish, and smiled at myself for participating in a legend I had just learned. Cities endure not only through architecture, but through these small agreements to keep stories alive.

The second day deepened everything. With Sebastián, the historic centre opened its layers — the cathedral heavy with centuries, a discreet library behind the presidential palace where silence felt intentional, protective. Then Chinatown, alive and unapologetic, where fusion has long since become tradition rather than novelty. And later, fountains rising and dancing at dusk, joyful and slightly absurd, children running between jets of light. Lima does not resist contradiction. It embraces it.

The final day was deliberately simple. Shopping, coffee, familiar streets that had already begun to feel known. That moment when a place stops being new is always bittersweet. I packed slowly, knowing I was leaving unfinished conversations behind — with the city, and perhaps with myself.

Since leaving Caracas, I have been walking constantly. Fifteen thousand steps a day has become the norm, and one day in Lima reached just over twenty thousand. My legs feel it — but in the best way. Walking remains my favourite way of understanding a place. It aligns thought and movement, quietens noise, sharpens attention.

And now Montevideo.

Yesterday was bright and full of sun. Today it is raining lightly, and the change feels welcome. The city seems to soften under rain, colours deepening, sounds lowering. Later today I will meet a guide who will show me the highlights of the city — an introduction, a first conversation. Together we will also plan a visit to Colonia, and perhaps further east along the coast, to places where the map loosens and the rhythm changes.

I am looking forward to all of it.

Being here feels like the right pace. Not rushing, not accumulating, just moving attentively from one place to the next. Travelling like this — walking, listening, letting cities unfold rather than perform — reminds me why distance matters. Why change of place changes something inside us too.

More soon, from this side of the river that pretends to be an ocean.

Casco Viejo, Panama, June 2024

The day of travel has come.

The bags are packed, the apartment unusually quiet, and that particular mix of anticipation and calm has settled in. In a short while I will head to the airport and let the journey begin.

First stop: Panama, just for a night. A pause, a threshold, a familiar in-between. Then onward to Peru, where I will spend a few days letting Lima reveal itself slowly, without expectations. After that, Uruguay awaits — Montevideo, the river that feels like an ocean, streets I have never walked before. Before returning, I will pass through Panama once more, this time for meetings, closing the circle before heading back.

I cannot wait.

Travelling has always felt like oxygen to me. Not escape, but alignment. A way of breathing more fully, of remembering who I am when routines loosen their grip. New cities sharpen my senses; unfamiliar streets quiet my thoughts. Exploration, in its simplest form, brings me back to myself.

So this is the moment to disconnect, at least a little. To put distance between schedules and alerts, and to focus on what makes me genuinely happy: moving, observing, learning, wandering.

I will write again from elsewhere.

Panama, City, Lima & Montevideo: Here I come!

Life sometimes brings unexpected surprises.

After weeks of closed skies and constant adjustments, things have begun to open again in Caracas. A few international lines have quietly resumed their services, and with the calendar offering a rare moment of breathing space, the decision came almost naturally. I am going on holiday.

It feels strange to say it out loud. Even stranger to need it this much.

In the coming days I will first pass through Panama City, a place that for me is never just a transit point but a collection of faces, conversations, shared meals and unfinished stories. I hope to catch up with friends there, to sit somewhere familiar, to let time slow down for a moment before the journey continues.

From there I will head south, towards two cities I have never known before: Lima and Montevideo.

Lima, resting between desert and ocean, carries the weight of centuries in its stones. I imagine walking through Barranco at dusk, tracing the edges of Miraflores above the Pacific, tasting something simple and local in a market whose rhythm I do not yet understand. I want to stand on the Malecón and watch the sea stretch endlessly north and south, as if the continent itself were breathing.

Montevideo feels quieter in my imagination, more inward. A city of worn cafés, long rambla walks, bookshops and river light. I look forward to wandering Ciudad Vieja, to the hush of museums, to the slow curve of the Río de la Plata where the water pretends to be an ocean. Perhaps I will take a bus and leave the capital for a day, just to see what lives beyond the map’s main lines.

This is not the kind of journey built around checklists. It is a pause. A space between responsibilities. A chance to let unfamiliar streets speak before returning to what waits.

I so much look forward to the break.

As always, I will keep you posted.

La Castellana, Caracas, Venezuela, January 2026

Caracas, early hours of 1 January 2026

I wasn’t necessary for the clock to announce midnight — I slept through the arrival of 2026. There were no fireworks from my bedroom window, no shouting from the street below. Instead, at 3 a.m. I woke, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out over the soft, low hills of Caracas, where lights blinked like uncertain constellations in a city that never really stops trying. The sky was deep and quiet, and in that hush I began to wonder what this year might hold.

The night was neither spectacular nor silent — just that familiar murmur of distant horns, of life continuing without grand declaration. It reminded me that time’s turning point is not always a moment of brilliance; sometimes it’s simply a breath taken in stillness.

Much like the many mornings in foreign cities — dawn in Kabul before the streets have begun their clatter, the Atlantic’s hush at first light on Portugal’s coast, or the glow of lanterns among graves in Przemyśl — this early hour felt like a quiet threshold. There is something tender in these hours before daybreak: a sense of possibilities resting like mist over familiar terrain, fragile and waiting.

2026 will not arrive with certainty. It comes to each of us shaped by our presence, our choices, and the way we sit with both light and uncertainty. The world will carry on its vast dialogues — the troubling headlines and the quiet acts of kindness alike — and we will, as ever, find ourselves part of that ongoing, imperfect story.

In this year ahead, may we lean into questions as much as answers. May we listen more than speak. May we hold the small wonders — the kindness of a stranger, a city waking gently, a book that expands our understanding — as dearly as the grand visions we carry in our heads.

To friends near and far, to the strangers we haven’t yet met, and to the memories that keep us rooted even as we wander:

Happy 2026. May it be a year marked by clarity, compassion, presence, and a deep, abiding curiosity about what it means to be fully alive.