deartraveller

My dearest Sara,

First of all, I can’t believe how cute your friend is! I’m so jealous! You have to invite him to visit our town so I can meet him too and please if you are truly my best friend… MARRY HIM! Just kidding (but seriously, he looks like he was photoshoped!).

Well, speaking of other matters, what you said about Queen Elizabeth left me very curious too. I rented the movie and there was a particular speech of Walter Raleigh telling of his adventures that got my attention:

“Can you imagine - can you feel - what it is to cross an ocean? For weeks you see nothing but the horizon. All round you. Perfect, and empty. Your ship is small - tiny - a speck in such immensity.    

You live with fear, in the grip of fear - fear of storms, fear of sickness on board, fear of the immensity. What if you never escape? How can you escape? There's nowhere to go. So you must drive your fear down, deep into your belly, and study your charts, and watch your compass, and pray for a fair wind - and hope. Pure naked fragile hope, when all pure senses scream at you, Lost! Lost! Imagine it. Day after day, staring west, the rising sun on your back, the setting sun in your eyes, hoping, hoping.

At first it's no more than a haze on the horizon, the ghost of a haze, the pure line corrupted. But clouds do that, and storms. So you watch, you watch. Then it's a smudge, a shadow on the far water. For a day, for another day, the stain slowly spreads along the horizon, and takes form - until on the third day you let yourself believe. You dare to whisper the word - land!

Land. Life. Resurrection. The true adventure. Coming out of the vast unknown, out of the immensity, into safe harbor at last. That - that - is the New World.”

Isn’t it incredible? This description simply took my breath away. I was enraptured with such deep and meaningful words. Suddenly I wasn’t here in 2012, I went back in time and found myself on a ship, heading to the unknown. I consider myself an explorer since I’m travelling around the world with nothing but a bag pack and a map, but can you image how it would be to go on a journey like this? The feeling of adventure, not knowing what you are going to find, how many days left to find it. The fear of end up not finding anything at all or the excitement of finding a bit of paradise here on Earth. The unavoidable doubt: how is it like? Is it even real? Or just a product of a mad man’s imagination? Is it an inhabited place or just desert land waiting for us to discover it?

I can’t help thinking that travelling is not so exciting now, I mean, it really is wonderful visiting other countries, meeting new people, experiencing new things, but the boring part is that we already know where we are going to. The possibility of just getting on board of a ship and set sail to the horizon with no direction and hope to find something never seen before is nothing but a dream now. Everything has been discovered already and that leaves me thinking that the world has become a smaller place. Or if not smaller, more empty. Don’t you agree?

I was really surprised to find out that Virginia was named after the “Virgin Queen”, it’s funny, in its way. I searched for pictures of “Virginia beach” online and it really is beautiful there. Besides, you know I can’t resist a nice beach like that! So don’t leave just yet, I’m going to meet you! I already bought the plane tickets! I guess I won’t have to wait for you to bring Gabriel to our town after all! Some of the friends I made here in India agreed to go with me so I won’t be going alone!

I hope I find a cute friend like yours during the flight! I miss you a lot and can’t wait to see you!

Love,

Érica.

Dear Erica,

 As I was leaving Africa, my dad sent me an email. He was so impressed with my new tan that he wrote and I quote « you passed from Queen Elizabeth ( that queen we studied on the 12th grade which was very very pail ) « to Naomi Campbell! » ( the supermodel of Afro-jamaican descent).

As you can imagine this sentence made my day, but it also made me curious, so I stopped in the airport and before I decided where to go next I watched the movie ' Elizabeth : The Golden Age '. I hardly knew that inside this movie was my next destination!

 There's a character that personifies the real finder of Virginia, named Walter Raleigh (1584), that explores the so called 'New World' and he is the one that baptized Virginia.

On behalf of the Queen, he explored the american coast and claimed the region from South Caroline untill Maine to the United Kingdom and named this immense area 'Virginia', because of the Queens's epithet 'The Virgin Queen'. It was expected that she would marry and produce an heir so as to continue the Tudor line, but she never did and as she grew older, she actually became famous for her virginity. (Weird ...)

Well after all this new discovers I think you can guess where I'm heading ... Virginia Beach! There was a boy seated right next to me and after a short chat I realized he is also going to Virginia Beach so I learned all of this : every year the city hosts the East Coast Surfing Championships as well as the North American Sand Soccer Championship and it is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest pleasure beach in the world!

So please try to visit me there, you know how much you love sun and sand girl!

Missing you a lot and with a very nasty backache due to the hours I've spent seated watching the movie, answering to you and to my dad and talking with Gabriel, I'll be waiting for your answer and hopefully your visit.

Love, Sara

P.S: I know you got curious about Gabriel so guess what ? ... He's just like Brenton Thwaites!!

The Virgin Queen

First place I want to visit.

Gabriel saying 'Hi' to you!