Words /  by Camila Bernal

“Believers, like all contemporary people, wrestle instead with the threat of meaninglessness, the elusiveness of purpose and moral order, especially in the face of suffering. ”
— James Carroll for The New Yorker

Rambling /  by Camila Bernal

Here's a quote from the movie Waking Life. 

“Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that. Or saber tooth tiger right behind you. We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting I think is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing. What is like... frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I’m saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we’re understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.”


May Madness /  by Camila Bernal

On May 1st I adopted Lupita, this 14 week-old pup has managed to flip my world upside down. 

Trayvon Martin /  by Camila Bernal

Demonstrators protesting the not-guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman marched through downtown San Francisco on July 14, 2013. Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of teen Trayvon Martin.

La Ruta Del Sol /  by Camila Bernal

The long bus rides, unpaved streets and cheap almuerzos, children running barefoot through the streets, juice stands, late nights, sunny days, street dogs, seafood, friendly locals and hippy foreigners. The list actually goes on but when I close my eyes and think of the journey we had when we did La Ruta del Sol, these are things that come to mind. 

La Ruta del Sol (The Sun Route) or more recently known as La Ruta Spondylus, is a highway (sometimes small road) that travels parallel to the Pacific coast of Ecuador passing by miles and miles of virgin beaches, small towns, and slightly more metropolitan cities. 

We technically started in Machala and then went to Salinas, Santa Elena and Ballenita, then to Montañita, Puerto Lopez and Los Frailes, and finally Canoa. We ate, we surfed, we partied, we got lost, we fought and almost broke up, we talked to locals, we laid naked on the beach. It's no wonder we found so many lost souls along the coast, Argentinians, Chileans, Peruvians, Colombians, Europeans and even Americans, all who looked as if they fell down a rabbit hole and didn’t really want to find their way out.

Cuenca, Gualaceo, Chordeleg & Ingapirca /  by Camila Bernal

We made our way to the southern regions of Ecuador around Carnaval. We went to Cuenca (10 hour bus ride no big deal) a very beautiful and colonial city and we also went to smaller towns nearby where we saw the Incan ruins of Ingapirca, a shawlmaker that dyes and sows everything using the techniques of his ancestors, and ate some delicious traditional food.

Quito Lindo /  by Camila Bernal

My partner is from Quito, Ecuador, it was a pleasure to finally see this place that I had heard so much about. It was absolutely beautiful, it is metropolitan but manages not to feel as dense as Medellin. It is modern but still manages to maintain that colonial feel with the preservation of the historic center. The people are nice, the weather is perfect, the altitude is a bit hard to get used to, and the food is to die for. 

La Ciudad Perdida /  by Camila Bernal

I should have made this post earlier since I was trying to go in order of the places we visited but I just recently finished this lot so here goes. After Cartagena we took a bus to Santa Marta, we planned an excursion with a group of other hikers and guides to go to the Lost City. The Lost City is the Colombian equivalent of Machu Pichu, the Tayrona were an indigenous people that inhabited the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta hundreds of years ago. Much like other civilizations, they had to face the invasion of Spanish colonizers who brought with them war and disease. They were forced to abandon many of their cities and move higher and deeper into the jungle, where to this day virgin tribes still reside. It took 5 days and 4-6 hours of hiking per day to reach the Lost City, it was hot, humid and gruelingly exhausting but definitely one of the most exciting and memorable experiences I had on the trip. 

Cali /  by Camila Bernal

When we finally reached Cali we were really excited, the salsa, the food, the culture. I was born in Tulua, a small city about 45 minutes from Cali, so it felt the most familiar. I had aborrajados, a fried plantain and cheese delicacy, we ate sancocho de pezcado, we went to a salsa club, we walked around the old neighborhoods and took late nigh strolls.