Hola! Bienvenido to a kind of different Miss Demeanour aka a woman of a certain age on the loose in Latin America, what can possibly go wrong?

You can expect the same amount of ridiculous but just in more exotic climes.

Dear reader,

I come to you from the Northern Highlands of Nicaragua.  More precisely Nicaragua's liberal coffee capital, Matagalpa.  You maybe thinking say what?  I thought she lived in Brighton and this blog was meant to be about sewing (though of late a lot of politics albeit very sporadic).  You would be correct on both counts.  What can I say life got in the way as inevitably it always does.  

Johnny, my lovely old rogue of an uncle.  He was always fully in support of my wandering and wondering.  I know he's out there now at the edge of every sunset.  Raising a glass and wishing me well.

I was actually going to really get back into blogging when this trip originally began in December 2016 in Mexico.  I'd mentioned previously I was spending half a year whistling through Central American and down the West Coast of South America.  Again life is what happens when you're busy making plans.  I was 6 weeks into that trip when my Uncle got very sick and we sadly lost him at the end of January.  I went home to say my earthly goodbyes in February with the intention of returning and finishing what I started.   So I was at home for a few months and back working with the goodest of good eggs in social housing and now I'm here.  I actually flew back out to Nicaragua on the day I would have been flying home so I just feel like this trip is ebbing and flowing just like the rest of my life.

You maybe thinking what will I be writing about if not sewing.  Well there may still be some crafts in here along the way as Latin America is rich with artisans.  However, writing was my first craft long before anything else so I've decided to properly document my travels.  I know many of you follow my ramblings on various other social media, which I have been dutifully filling with my wanderings and so I did wonder if a blog was overkill.  I decided it wasn't because as I started to think about writing about this trip so many words were flooding into my head that I knew Facebook statuses just wouldn't cut it.  Then I remembered on of my favourite quotes (above) from one of my favourite writers, Anais Nin and my mind was made up.  So these wafflings will be as much a memory box for me as anything else.  Who knows maybe it'll be the start of a book?  Though fear not darlings I will aim to keep things entertaining for you the readers.  As well I hope I can impart some useful information on travelling Latin America.  At the very least there'll be the usual unplanned nudity and errant shoe stories, which seem to provide a good laugh.

A travel hero of mine who had a great deal of common sense.

I did also wonder about starting a whole new site for travel related adventures but I know some people have been reading this blog since the beginning and I don't see my travelling as separate from the rest of my life but more another chapter.  As well I tended to often intersperse my sewing with a large amount of what else was going on in my world and that seemed to be what people liked.  So I say give the people what they want!  That said I also delayed getting on with it because I now have a backlog of adventures to write about whilst now on this one.  I thought about it long and hard and that caused me to do nothing so today I kicked my own ass (the quote above helped) and this post is the result of that.  I figure for a while I'll post in real time as well as historical posts and you can be as confused as I am.  Hopefully it'll just be a few weeks of swinging backwards and forwards for me to catch up and then we can be in sync.  Though again this could all be wishful thinking on my part.  

It's nearly 11.30pm in Matagalpa and there's a good chance my heavy handed typing is keeping a few people awake in the hostel so I'll bid you adieu.  I'm up early in the morning to head to my next destination, San Rafael del Sur where I'll be volunteering as a vegan cook and a gardener in a yoga ashram for the next 3 weeks.  That darlings will a story for another post entirely.

Until next time darlings.

Miss Demeanour in dispatches xxx