Email has its limitations. It is a convenient way of keeping in touch, particularly when travelling but for most it lacks the nuance of a face-to-face, hearing someone’s voice or even a letter or postcard. Many emails are rendered flat and homogenised as we autopilot into an approximation of proper written English. With email being much easier to edit than snail-mail it’s easier to edit the liveliness and personality right out of your text. I love it when I receive an email that’s unashamedly personal. It captures something about the personality, not just an exchange of facts.

The email quoted below is from a close friend who travelled from Australia to the US then Mexico by herself.

…the most exciting thing so far has been crossing the US/Tijuana border at night, alone. (sorry mum). What I find interesting is what you learn about yourself when you travel and I learnt last night that I dont know the difference in emotion between fear and excitement- both produce similar responses (raised heart rate, bp, adrenalin etc) so Im not surprised. But as I stepped onto the tram in san diego last night headed to San Ysidro (the town bordering us/mexico) it kicked in- the buzz. I think Im nursing an eeny-weeny tiny little addiction to adrenalin. I tried to have the travel-savvy look we all know- not looking around too much, slightly bored like ‘sigh…just another border crossing’ and certainly no camera (shame). I’m not sure I was pulling it off so I decided I needed a little music to set the mood and I was tossing up between Little Red’s Rock It (so cute!) but decided I needed something with a little more oomph- get me psyched up a bit. Im happy to educate you all- the best song to cross that border is Kashmir (LZ). I found it hard not to fist-pump the air as it started up (what a riff) but that kinda contradicted my too-cool-to-travel look. Sufficiently psyched i jumped off and followed the masses across the bridge into Mexico. Its pretty cool. The only weird part is Im not quite sure exactly where the US soil stops and the Mexican begins- but Im guessing about where the Federales were standing. The plan was to get a bus from Tijuana to Ensenada but mercifully D (my mexican friend) decided that was not a brilliant plan as even though Mexico’s reputation on whole is undeserved, Tijuana kinda deserves it, at night anyway…

I’ve kept this email even though she’s long (safely) returned from her holiday because in describing her Mexican border crossing it captures a slice of her. Not just her itinerary or agenda. She is fearless, always in the thick of things, passionate about music (and many other things), liberated, generous.