View from hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina
It was halfway into the middle of a night that I awoke with my answer: “Buenos Aires.”
I had been contemplating for some time where I would go on my first solo voyage. Fortunate to have a telecommuting professional lifestyle, I had the enviable position of being able to say “I can work from anywhere in the world.” But I wasn’t working anywhere in the world. I was, day after day, at home on my computer, in my hometown of Seattle. But still, the idea of setting out and actually working from anywhere in the world was of strong appeal and had been brewing for a long time — and after six months of pondering it, I finally knew where I wanted to go.
The next morning I booked a one-way plane ticket to Buenos Aires, and a hotel for my first night’s stay. I had traveled abroad before, and set a rule early on that I would always stay in a higher-end hotel than my budget would allow the first night — to acclimate to the layout of the heart of the city, and more, to celebrate my arrival.
I woke once again in the middle of night, this time on the other side of the world and all alone. The Earth was trembling beneath me and the sky sounded like it was falling. I walked to the window where the mid-night light came in and looked across the cityscape from the 15th floor of the skyrise. Hail the size of grapefruits streamed into the city like meteors and, as I would see the next morning, crashed into the windshields and hoods of parked cars. Lightning cascaded down and latched onto the steeples that crawled up from the rooftops of city buildings. It was a wild night, weather-wise. I stayed up half of it trying to capture the most fantastic photo that I could of that storm. But I didn’t capture the photo, and so here it is in story. It was a most visceral welcome. Without knowing it, I stood just a mile or so looking towards the apartment where I would live for several months and thought, “I wonder what’s next.”
World on a Fork 