“To think it will soon be June!” grumbled Bilbo, as he splashed along behind the others in a very muddy track. It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk. “And I’m sure the rain has got into the dry clothes and into the food-bags,” thought Bilbo. “Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” It was not the last time that he wished that!
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Confession time again. Last week at Santuário do Caraça, I looked really hard at the possibility of calling the trip quits and coming home. Logistically, there was a window where I could have done it quickly and relatively cheaply. All it would have taken was a bus ride to São Paulo instead of Vitoria and a discount airline ticket to Orlando on the 20th with a connection to Atlanta the next morning. The “escape hatch” from South America was right there, and all I had to do was pull the rip cord.
Long term travel is difficult for me on the best of days. It’s a lifestyle not well suited to my personality. Staring at the option of returning home forced me to think hard about whether I wanted to continue. No more excuses. Did I want to see the trip through, or admit I wasn’t enjoying myself and pull the plug? I decided to keep going, but I did have to admit that if I was going to get any value from the miles that remain I’ll have to change my attitude toward travel and how I take care of myself.
If I’d written this blog yesterday, it might have been a different story. Yesterday I felt much like Bilbo Baggins in the passage quoted above.
Right now I’m in Porto Seguro, a mediocre tourist town on the Brazilian coast. I came here with the intention of unpacking all my luggage, walking on the beach, not thinking about long-haul bus trips, and enjoying cheap burgers and caipirinhas in the sun.
So of course it’s been raining like crazy. Twice, when the rain seemed to have passed, I went for a walk along the surf – and both times I returned shivering and drenched to the bone from a sudden storm. The rain was so heavy that yesterday I worried about parts of town flooding and stocked up at the grocery store in case I couldn’t leave my hotel. The forecast was grim: 100% chance of DOOM until my bus ride to Salvador on Wednesday.
But yesterday afternoon the rain stopped. This morning the sun came out and everyone in town poured out of their resorts onto the sand. I spent an hour drifting in the waves, finally, finally recharging my batteries. The forecast still calls for afternoon showers but Noah can put away his nails; Brazil will not be sinking into the Atlantic.
I keep saying “I” because at the moment Lea has gone ahead to the island community of Morro de São Paulo (no relation to the big São Paulo), accessible only by ferry from Salvador, where at this very moment she is snorkeling the reefs and hopefully taking some fantastic photographs that we’ll get to share later. In fact, all the pictures you’re enjoying this week are thanks to Lea’s eye for macro and underwater photography because frankly, I got nothin’.
Splitting and up and traveling apart was always part of the plan for this voyage, but aside from two days in Bolivia when I stayed behind to hike Isla del Sol, we haven’t done it. However, at this point in the journey I needed to simply stop for a while and Lea needed to keep on going. If she were here in Porto Seguro, I guarantee she’d be climbing the walls.
Like Bilbo Baggins, I’m a deeply introverted person. Introverts aren’t averse to going out and having new experiences, but afterward I need time to slow down and process, preferably in the comfort of a familiar environment that I’ve made into my own personal refuge. Long-term travel rarely, if ever, lets that happen. In my case, I feel that non-stop travel has exacted a heavy toll – one that I’ve ignored and haven’t truly dealt with until recently.
When we set out on this trip, I envisioned it as a “hard reboot” on our lives. I imagined that quitting our jobs (in my case, my career), stuffing our belongings in storage, and hitting the road for ten months would change us in many ways. I didn’t set any goals or expectations as to what those changes would be. I just dove in and hoped for the best, thinking that “travel broadens the mind” (the narrative that frequent travelers espouse) and that it’s good to get out of your comfort zone (the narrative that successful risk-takers sell).
Side note: Lea did set goals and expectations for personal development on this trip, and you really ought to read about them and her progress on LinkedIn.
Not setting personal development goals has turned out to be a mistake, because it feels like that “hard reboot” I expected hasn’t happened. Instead I’ve sunk into old patterns of withdrawal and not acknowledging my feelings until they bubble over. Going “out of my comfort zone” with no clue as to what I hoped to accomplish has simply made me crave that comfort zone even more as we’ve traveled. I joked to Lea once that my comfort zone has actually shrunk, and that as soon as we get back I’m going to dig myself a hole and burrow in like a tick.
“Knowing where the trap is – that’s the first step in evading it.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune
So here I am, alone in a town where no one speaks my language, trying to get my mojo back and wondering where I’m going from here. But what happens now, and what happens when all this is over? Has this journey changed me in any meaningful way?
Honestly, I’m not sure. This trip has taught me lessons, but many of those were things I already knew in theory. Now I just have personal experience to back it up. In that vein, let me impart some words of wisdom to any of my fellow lunatics as you consider chucking your current life and traveling the world for an extended time.
- DON’T.
Okay, scratch that. Unfair and too extreme. Let’s try again. Learn from what I didn’t do.
- Know thyself. Know what your limits are. Know what you enjoy and what you don’t. Know what you hope to gain by traveling the world. Know how you want to push yourself and why. And most of all, know how you’ll need to refuel yourself in order to keep going.
- Take breaks. Understand that you don’t have to do everything. It’s okay to say “no.” You don’t have to climb every mountain, visit every ruin, or hike to every waterfall. There are a million things to see in the world. You’ll never see all of them, but you’ll get to enjoy more if you acknowledge when you need to skip a few in order to take care of your needs.
- Adjust your focus. It’s very easy to ruminate on the negatives of travel, especially when it’s 3:00 a.m. on a bus ride on an unpaved road and your teeth are about to rattle out of your skull. Many times you’ll find yourself, like Mr. Baggins, slogging through the mud and wondering what the hell you were thinking. But not every moment is going to be like that. Many will be magical. Focus on those times. Relish them, and come back to them when you need to.
- Acknowledge that it’s going to be hard. Long-term travel is difficult, and even when you think you’ve figured it out it will get harder. I thought we had it mastered by the time we were coasting through Chile, and then we hit High Season for tourists in Patagonia. We escaped High Season only to hit the language barrier in Brazil. On top of that, we’ve just begun prepping for our return to the U.S. without guarantees and no fixed abode. The challenges change, but they never ease up. Be ready.
“No matter where you go, there you are.”
– Buckaroo Banzai, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Several times on this trip, Lea has asked why I didn’t go home when it was clear that I was struggling and miserable. I had reasons for staying, but none of them had to do with my happiness or well-being. On one level I was concerned about the financial hit we would take if I came back early, unemployed and uninsured, but I also knew deep down that I would beat myself to a pulp for “quitting” and giving up, even though I had no real plan to give up on.
It was in Caraça that I finally overcame the thought of being ashamed if I turned around and came home. So why didn’t I?
Because while we were there, I sat in monastic silence as a wolf walked by within arm’s reach and loped away into the dark.
I don’t travel to have fun and party. I’m not that guy at home, and I’m even less that person abroad. I don’t travel to relax. While I enjoy all-inclusive resorts and I love a lazy cruise, that’s not travel. That’s staying in a hotel.
When I travel, I do it to experience Wonder. I felt wonder when I saw the northern lights in Iceland, even though it was an ungodly number of degrees below zero and I was wearing too many layers of clothes to count. I felt wonder on the Serengeti, and looking over the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. I felt wonder in the maze of alleys in Fez, and in the ruins of Beit She’An. I felt wonder in the decorated cemeteries of Oaxaca, and watching humpbacks leap into the air off the coast of Ecuador. I felt wonder seeing the southern sky from a mountaintop in Chile. I felt wonder in the bite of the wind from the Perito Moreno glacier while watching a giant slab of ice calve into the water below.
I don’t know what wonders await in the jungles west of Salvador or south of Bogotá. I don’t know what wonders await in the barrios of Medellin. I don’t know what it will feel like to reach the Caribbean coast and know that I’ve circled a continent. But I’m willing to stick around and find out.
I could easily say that I don’t enjoy travel. I don’t like spending ten or more hours on a bouncy night bus. I don’t like eating the same food over and over again because it’s all that’s available. I don’t like being stuck in a room for days because of excessive heat or rain. I despise having to fix every damn toilet because apparently South America has a shortage of plumbers. I hate feeing isolated from the world I understand and unsure if my plans to start over will bear fruit when we finally return home.
But that’s okay. That’s the toll you pay when you travel for as long as we have. The question I asked myself when faced with the choice of whether or not to quit was whether or not those fleeting moments of wonder are worth the hardships that make them possible.
Today, the answer’s still yes.
P.S. Next week’s entry – the last for Brazil – will be posted on Thursday, April 4. On Monday, Lea and I will be exploring Chapada Diamantina and who knows what the Internet signal will be like. Besides, if I post on April 1 no one will believe a word I say.