Why I travelled around South America for one year?
Have you ever gone on a holiday or vacation and asked yourself, wouldn’t it be great to stay here longer? Wouldn’t it be great to just not catch that flight and see where this journey takes me? Well this is exactly what I did. And this is exactly how my trip to South America turned into one of the greatest years of my life (53 weeks to be precise).
Travelling with a return ticket is a fairly normal thing to do. But have you wondered how much pressure this puts on you to see and do things which you really want to do? Even when beginning a trip you may think that you know all the things you want to do. But then you start travelling. You start talking with other travellers. Begin to meet with locals. You share stories and gather tips. And then all of a sudden, you haven’t got enough time to fit in all the activities that you want to do and you feel a little … restricted
(She was never really stuck)
…And with this feeling of restriction, comes a feeling of being rushed
It’s probably because you are. We try to rush through each location and see the things we ‘have to see’. We travel as if it’s a check list – ok, we’re in South America, we’ve reached the top of Machhu Piccu, taken a photo, now lets get back down so we can tick off the next location. I have, admittedly, fallen guilty to this style of travel. It wasn’t until I realised what I was doing that I could fully appreciate the landscapes I was crossing. I actually began to taste the foods which I was eating.
10 weeks into my trip to South America and I knew that I had only two weeks left until my flight out of Colombia – I was in Bolivia at the time. I had just arrived to Sucre, the capital of Bolivia and I was presented with the opportunity to go to a language school there and improve my Spanish. I knew however that this would be impossible as I wanted to travel up through Peru and Ecuador, before flying out of Colombia. So after talking some friends from England they helped me realise that I wasn’t really enjoying what I was doing. I was more so trying to see everything I possibly could in a time frame which wouldn’t allow for it.
I therefore had two options. Option one – to only choose a couple of spots and enjoy them properly and then go up to Colombia and take my flight. Or option two – to decide to miss my flight, stay and learn some Spanish, and then see where the journey takes me. I happily chose the second option and it was the greatest thing I have ever done.
FREEDOM IN SOUTH AMERICA!!
From that moment on I felt this overwhelming sense of freedom surge throughout my body. I was no longer worried about thinking if I had enough time to do what I wanted to do. I began thinking about the culture. The food. The people, the landscape and the language. I wasn’t so caught up with arriving to a new destination and then immediately thinking in the next. I was free to roam through South America however I pleased.
Forgetting to enjoy the simple things?
I think that when you quickly pass through a country you seem to only get a taste of it’s outer beauty. Sure, you definitely seeing some picturesque waterfalls and some really high mountains where the tops pass through the cloud, and it is an incredible thing to experience. However, you’re not really immersing your self in the culture and taking the time to actually appreciate it. Its almost like when someone eats a meal and they have to be somewhere before finishing it. They’re not even tasting the flavours. They’re not enjoying the textures of it. They’re just eating to fill that void in their stomach, which is what most people do when they travel on an unrealistic time-line.
Maybe you don’t have an unlimited time to travel …
Well then that’s ok! Even if you’re not in a position to just wander and gallivant in a country willy-nilly, you can still take the time to enjoy it on a more profound level. You should just pick a few things that you would like to see and do, and enjoy them. Don’t overload your schedule with more things to see then you have hours to see them with.
And remember, once you get there
Have an experience. Take a moment away from a place instead of just crossing it off the list and you’ll be bound to enjoy your self!
Also be sure to watch out for the travel bug. It does bite. And in this blog I’ll tell you some more about it!