Today is the day. Exactly two years since that dreadful late night at the airport, since that heart-wrenching hug, a bitter memory topped with a shy ‘I’ll see you soon’.
I am anxious for it is the first time I will see my family in over two years. Anxious about the changes on both sides of the world, about the progress – or lack of- that could have happened, about having become strangers to each other, separated by the toughness of emigration.

I leave Juan Santamaria Airport with a slight delay and the plane, packed to the brim with holidaymakers, weave through thick storm clouds before turning South towards South America.
In Lima, the wait becomes excruciatingly long, each passing minute bringing me closer to that hug only a parent can provide.

The last flight of this long multi-stop journey takes off shortly before midnight and after being suspended over an ethereal summery night for two hours, descend begins towards the plains of Viru Viru.

I fasten my seat belt and my heart beats faster. The lights of the city shine through the thick clouds and the flaps are fully extended. We touchdown and my heart seems to shrink at once. I am one of the first passengers to leave the aircraft and clear immigration. Across the tinted wall, I spot the heads of those I left two years ago. ‘Could customs formalities be any faster please?’ I think, while I close the zippers on my backpack, sprint across the corridor and hug tight, hanging onto two years of absence now finally over.  Honey, I am home!.

I am driven home in some sort of a suspended dream at two in the morning. The air conditioning roars through the rest of the night and in the morning, two scrambled eggs on toast and a cup of black Brazilian coffee are at the ready, officially starting the three week tour.

Under lush palm trees and with cups of strawberry ice cream in hands, I meet my father in the afternoon, and just as we try to eat our melting cones under the sultry sunshine of Santa Cruz as quick as possible, we try to catch up on two years of happenings, on the hugs that were missed.

And it is just that a visit to the places we call home is only about that. About catching up on what we missed the most, on who we missed the most and who we will miss the most. On ‘tea times’ of typical baked pastries covered in cheese and good conversation, on dinners with school and swimming friends, on telling the same old jokes and laugh about them as if it was the first time we heard them.

We drive up the mountains of Samaipata for a weekend getaway, at this stage a necessary tradition of freshly brewed coffee and avocado on toast in the morning and Malbec and seafood pasta in the evening.

I am offered a trip to Western Bolivia as a welcome gift and I queue at the local airport to purchase cheap air tickets from the military airline. A smaller backpack is borrowed and filled with light clothes and a thick overcoat. I am about to visit a new place, I am about to visit the moon.