Travelers Meeting Travelers

The final weeks of the adventure brought me through Peru with my family, meaning mostly big beds, sharing a room with my sister, and showering every day just because the shower was nice. When my parents went home and left us to our own exploits for a few days in Cusco, we moved back into the hostel scene, taking advantage of the $8 12-bed dorm, hanging out in common rooms and hostel bars, and what really caught my attention: travelers meeting travelers. 

It's the beautiful thing about travel. You can be in any hostel common room, alone or with travel companions, and if you want to make some new friends or adventure companions, they're there! I found nine of the best wine-touring, airplane-jumping, meat-buffet-eating friends in Mendoza, people I hope I will always be in contact with. I met the craziest Aussie and spontaneously rented a car to trust my life to him that same night. I joined tour groups to sandboard the Peruvian dunes. 

Travelers are spontaneous, open, and beautiful. No one showers frequently, they wear the same clothes every day, and just about all agree that that is OK. 

At the end of the trip, though, I found myself ready to leave and quickly learned it was time. I listened in on a conversation on a train in which two new acquaintances discussed where they'd been and where they were going. I had no interest in the conversation. In the hostel young travelers met up and went off to dinners or bars or daily adventures and I preferred sister time with our Irish brother. I had moved on. I was no longer part of the beauty of travel but onto the next thoughts and endeavors. 

And being back to my "Real Life" (a joke when you realize I lead tourists on zipline tours or serve them BBQ food and beer and really am Living the Dream) I realize it was acceptable to finish up in that way. All good things come to an end and it's not a bad thing, it's just life. I'll be ready for another trip one day, but nine weeks was perfect. 

Now I'd better start replacing some funds and make some Real Life friends. 

Watching and Mooching My Way Through Soccerdom

Before the World Cup started I saw an article on Facebook claiming that while 90% of the world would be watching this global event, only 1/3 of my beloved countrymen would be joining. 

I thought of my friend group, realizing that while most people I'm close with fall into that 33%, the split in spectators and difference in sports fans often comes down to global awareness and education. I went to a small college where most people I know not only studied abroad, but studied abroad with required research projects on the Masai or signing language contracts while living with a host family in Europe. We love the world and we love the world's game. 

Traveling in a powerhouse continent for this beautiful sport, I was never at a shortage for places to watch a game. I unfortunately left Argentina just as the pursuit began, watching the first group games from Lima. Staying with my sister I didn't have cable or a TV "at home", pushing me to find a bar. After traveling for so long I never hesitated to just plop into a place, as many locals do. You don't have to buy a drink or a snack or have a single friend with you, unlike anywhere in the States. 

I found myself at a hostel I wasn't staying at for about half the games, picking new names of staff members there each time to claim "I was visiting". Julio, Mike, you name it, I was their guest at one point or another. I drank the free coffee and bought nothing from the bar. 

During another stretch I had a view of the Pacific Ocean to my left out the door as I sat in an outdoor courtyard with a bar and TV. In between games I plopped into the ocean with my surfboard, checking back in on scores when the waves were minimal. 

I watched in fancy hotel lobbies, airport bars, garden patios, and our own hotel rooms. I occasionally bought food, sometimes took a seat, often pretended I was from one country or another depending on who was playing, and nearly cried for many nationalities and disappointments (my teams are as follows and in this order: Spain, USA, England/Argentina). I painted my face with national colors, wore colored hats, and draped myself and my beverages in a few flags. 

South America was the perfect place to watch this World Cup. I met dozens of fans making their way east to Brasil through Argentina and followed their crazy journeys to soccer/fútbol paradise, living vicariously through them. 

My only regret? Being back in the US for the final three games. I found more disdain and hate for soccer and for the countries playing in these games here than I've ever found. I realized how closed-minded so many of my countrymen are, being labeled as the crazy liberal who thinks soccer a "real sport". 

For the record, old man and friends and acquaintances I had to hear it from: when you complain about how "boring" soccer is, how they're whiny and the game is slow and "why aren't there stoppages or commercial breaks?!" I want you to think on what I see. I see people who fear change, who perpetuate a closed-minded North American opinion of superiority and therefore inability to join this global society. I question your ability to appreciate competitive pursuits, thinking your fanaticism for American football has more to do with the Doritos commercial at the next down than the beauty of a game or the finesse of the athlete. Soccer is beautiful, in the same way that hockey has few goals or basketball has points at almost every change in possession. It's a dance, slow moving at times with incredible bursts of touch and strength. It's a game everyone can play, in all parts of the world, creating a true stage of nations. And I've said it before and I'll say it again... If you don't like soccer, you must not like music, dance, or foreplay. 

Wear Through ALL the Clothes

I've always had trouble with defining happiness or how to determine if I am happy, a common problem for one who grows up in the capital of over-analyzing the emotion and basing all life's success on whether or not we are happy. 

What I've found, in living in other countries or looking at family and friends who have obviously mastered the thing, is that definition has more to do with it than anything else and too often people in the US have created unrealistic expectations for themselves. 

As I've traveled I've recognized specifics that have made me incredibly happy, if only for the few days surrounding the experience. One is the people I meet, though I often become sad when we part ways after a few days of adventuring together. 

The one concrete happening that has never failed me yet, and been tested in "Real Life" back in the States, continues here on the road, too: wearing through my clothes. 

I love giving my underpants a full life and ditching them when the ventilation outweighs the practical purpose of covering my bum. 

I get my kicks from seeing the soles of my shoes bordering pure slippery sheets of rubber, allowing me first to slide down the well-worn stone streets of South America and then to leave them in a bin on some street corner. 

And more than anything, I love that a pair of pants I've worn teaching in Spain, traveling Europe, waitressing in Maine, and on at least 50 of the last 60 days backpacking Argentina, Chile, and Peru finds their final resting place in Lima. 

If that doesn't make someone happy, I'm not sure what will. 

Before I come home I have at least two other articles of clothing I expect won't leave the country, and when it happens, I hope you'll all be able to picture how big my smile is. 

Worshipping the Sun at Disneyland Peru

We are fresh from the most expensive, most touristy, and most impressive site I'll be visiting in my travels this trip and I can't say enough how important it is that everyone visit Machu Picchu at some point soon. 

I'm aware that I sound like a broken record, the same album played by the Peruvian-born, San Francisco-raised woman bringing her son along on her sixth trip there, but Machu Picchu is becoming more official, more expensive, more built up every year and while it will only help the preservation of the town, it continues to lose the magic. I loved it, but I am very much in-tune with the fact that I took a train for over $100, a bus up a hill with 50 other foreigners, and followed arrows around a rocky hillside for 10 hours in order to feel that my $50 entry was well-spent. 

What I mean to say by all this realism is this: amazing sites are expensive, can be busy, and likely will continue to be limiting in the freedom they allow travelers, but they are popular for a reason. Machu Picchu is an incredible demonstration of the history of this amazing region, of the agricultural research and feats of engineering of the Inka times. It's a must-see for anyone interested in history, nature, rocks, or the most amazing places in the world. 

There are so many llamas to feed bananas to and adorable chinchillas pooping on the rocks. And despite the lack of bathrooms inside the site, it also has some really great nooks that I would have loved to use as a bathroom, so I recommend not doing the visit with my mum.