Three magpies

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret never to be told.

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I was mid run when I realised that this place felt fairly strange. The tall purple grasses -  or flowers - unnameable and the heat unnatural. I was not sweating, and it seemed as if I were moving through a dream.

Earlier that day I'd scampered down the wooden staircase and plugged my phone in to charge in the kitchen and felt enveloped by the sense of strange. A dream version of it would make sense; imagine: in this dream I am walking by the canal in Singapore and all at once there is a travellator. I step onto it and keep walking, the grey heron flies above me and the otters squeak and play, and I am on a travellator but it is in an airport in China, and I am on a travellator but it is in an airport in London, and I step off the travellator and I am plugging a cable into my phone in a green and red kitchen after buying ingredients from Sainsburys.

Anyway, it was about then in my run that I saw the first magpie. "One for sorrow," I thought, "Keep going." About two hundred metres later there was another. Did that mean that two for joy, or just one more sorrow? Chasing a sub-6 minute per kilometre outcome, I wasn't going to pause and ponder it. Yet a few minutes later, another: a girl? Or another sorrow?

I asked Jacob about it in the kitchen, after I'd cried over shrink wrapped tempeh. He thought it depended on your outlook. Life's what you make of it? You could even, he said thoughtfully as he boiled the tender stem broccoli, take the first two as sorrows and the third as a girl, it depends how you look at it. I took that to mean that perhaps when the waves of homesickness come I am a sad, sad girl.

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This morning there were two magpies, and then another two. My brother told me that birds are angels in disguise, and I felt moved to believe him when, after reading Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" before breakfast, I saw a great flock of the creatures, honking their way over the water. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination. 

Travel Top 3: June

Supremely Useful

1. Grayl Bottle. When we were in Oaxaca, we stayed in a lovely place that was perfect except for a chronic lack of sharp knives and no filtered water. Most countries we've been in lack clean, drinkable tap water, which makes me realise how much I took that for granted in Singapore. However, most hostels have a filter system for their guests. This didn't, and to save buying lots of plastic bottles, we filtered our water through the Grayl bottle which Jacob's Mum kindly brought over from the UK. The bottle is hard to use, because pumping the water through the filter takes serious muscle and water sometimes spills from the bottle when you tip it, but it's better than drinking contaminated water!

Runner up:

2. Duct tape. For some reason, our adaptor has worked happily with the sockets in all countries but when we got to Guatemala and Mexico, it hung loose and would sometimes fall out of the socket. We devised a simple solution with duct tape, taping the side of the adaptor to the plug socket so that it remained anchored. Duct tape also came in handy when I found a large hole in my linen trousers - no sewing kit on us, and the trousers are quite old now and don't merit a trip to the tailor (my mediocre darning will have to do when back in Singapore) so duct taping the hole shut from the inside of the trouser was a quick fix (although the linen is now so thin in that area that you can make out the white patch of the duct tape, but it's not too bad overall!)

Supremely Joyful

1. The sunrise from Tajamulco. Our final volcano hike in Guatemala was one to remember. Tajamulco is the highest summit in Central America, and from the top we saw fields of clouds broken by numerous peaks. We brought our sleeping bags up so watching the sun rise slowly was a cosy experience.

2. Slow days on the Oaxaca coast. I never thought that doing nothing would make the supremely joyful list, but truly. We stayed in a small village called San Agustinillo, and our days consisted of waking up, going on a run, going to the beach, and buying tortillas, tomatoes, cilantro, lime and eggs from the small tienda opposite our hostel and feasting on the combination of that for lunch. Every day we'd rinse and repeat, and I wanted nothing else.

3. Run and pastries in Mexico City. Jacob planned a running route that led us round and round a leafy walking path in a pretty neighbourhood, and then we continued on to Miga Vegana, a vegan pastry shop. We got there just after they opened, and they only had yesterday's pastries available, but we were happy to wait for the freshly baked ones. We sat in the sun, Jacob had a coffee, and then we feasted on a fig and cheese croissant, a concha, and a cinnamon roll. Everything was heavenly, but the fig and cheese croissant, so warm and buttery, was truly a thing of beauty and a joy joy joy. When we paid, I asked the service staff what their favourite pastry was. "Roll de Canela," the woman said, and then smiled, went into the kitchen, and brought out a slightly misshapen cinnamon roll which she gave to us on the house!

(Also a mention, Daniel Mason's North woods was a profoundly engrossing read. Not joyful, but it needed mentioning somehow!)

Supremely Tasty

1. Banana bread on the top of Tajamulco - just when we thought it couldn't get any better, we were presented with a slice of vegan banana bread with peanut butter and granola! (This was just one of three breakfasts that day...)

2. Taco Trail in CDMX. This was so much fun - we looked up different vegan taco places in CDMX and figured out a walking route between them. We went to two places in the end (the third was closed) and tried four different types of taco in each place. After the first shop (Por Siempre Vegan) I was convinced we had a winner, and then we went to Gracias Madre and my mind was further blown. 

3. That fig and cheese croissant! 

Travel Top 3: May

Supremely Useful

1. Umbrella. We've entered rainy season in Central America, and since my rain coat has really given up the ghost now having an umbrella to keep me dry has been paramount. I also use it, aunty style, as a parasol on hot days. I love how, when it rains, street sellers with umbrellas seem to pop out of nowhere shouting "Paragua! Paragua!" which to me sounds like the Spanish for "stop water".

Runner up:

2. Trip.com app. One of the worst moments of this trip was when we were denied boarding to our flight to Guatemala (by Wingo - absolutely never fly with them). We managed to book another flight for the next morning day, at a lower price than it would have been at the airport, using the Trip.com app. We also used the app to book our flights to Japan, and to the UK.

3. The kiasu mentality. On getting off the flight from Bogota to Guatemala, I noticed many passengers had left their plastic water bottles on their seats as rubbish. I knew we were about to go on a volcano hike, and would need to bring our own water, and so I blithely collected a few bottles as I went. Jacob was too embarrassed to pick them up, but I saw it as reducing single-use plastic waste! I washed them thoroughly in our hostel, and used them for our hike, and have used two of them since after my own beloved nalgene broke!

Supremely Joyful

1. Swimming in a lake in San Jose del Guaviare - I know, I know, water keeps making an appearance in these lists. As John Ames says in Gilead, water is a form of blessing and when I am in it I feel supremely blessed. In San Jose del Guaviare, there were a few water bodies to swim in, pools formed by rivers, the base of a waterfall, and the lake next to where we stayed. The lake was so quiet, and it was morning, and going into it felt terrifying at first but then gave way (on my second attempt) to a deep joy. 

2. Hearing a very British sounding "Hola!" when we arrived at our hostel in Bogota. Catherine and Izzy flew out to meet us in Colombia, and after travelling just the two of us for 4 and a bit months it was so nice to have other company, and familiar faces!

3. Running around the crater rim of Acatenango. The Acatenango hike wasn't as strenuous as we anticipated, probably because we were already quite acclimatised to altitude, and because the first hike up to base camp was at a very leisurely pace with plenty of breaks given a range of fitness levels in our group (we concluded that while the Huayhuash circuit appeals to the hardcore hiker, the Acatenango hike appeals to every body whether they hike regularly or have never hiked at all...!) When we got to the crater rim, after enjoying the views for a while, I asked Jacob to run the circumference of the crater with me. I'd read that this was a thing, and what better way to see the views from the other side of the crater? We set off, and it was so hard, but so joyful and silly - I was out of breath from the altitude and the laughing. The sun was golden and as I crossed the 'finish line' there was a big cheer (not for me - someone had just proposed to their girlfriend nearby!)

Supremely Tasty

1. Patacones! Patacones are plaintain chopped, fried, squashed and fried again. When I asked our guide in San Jose if they were a considered a fruit or vegetable, she wrinkled her nose in thought and then replied "A carb". They came with almost every meal we had, and although Izzy was quite sick of them by the time their trip in Colombia was over, I couldn't get enough of them! Usually served with egg, rice, sometimes arepas, or avocado, or lentil, and a cold glass of sugarcane and lime juice.

2. Arepa de Huevo - an arepa grilled, sliced open, an egg cracked inside it and the whole thing deep fried to perfection! We had this fresh off a bus from Jardin to Filandia, still warm and the oil seeping through the brown paper bag it came in. It was savoury and delicious!

3. The breakfast at Casa Tsao, our hostel in Bogota. Every day there would be vats of cut fruit - pineapple, papaya, melon, and mango - different kinds of bread, and spiced honey (and cheese and butter for the non-vegans). Eggs freshly cooked, and sometimes arepas too!