A Traveler's Diary - The Day to Day

Caribbean beaches, death roads, mountain treks, lake-side relaxation. My blog is full of the perks of travel. It sounds entirely idealistic, an easy life away from the real world. What if I were to say that the reality of travel is that it is hard? It may sound ridiculous, especially after reading my blog, but I mean it. If traveling isn't hard, then you aren't traveling.

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, and I love travel. The rewards are well worth the effort, but they are earned, not given. Travel isn't some road paved in gold and lined with daisies which you can skip along without the slightest care. There are marathon bus rides, new beds nearly every night, dirty clothes, cold showers, suicidal drivers, dietary conundrums, security issues, and cultural awkwardness. You share your bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, and shoulder room on a bus, if not your shoulder itself as a makeshift pillow. This is not vacation. It is trying, it is tiring, and it is hard. There are times you would rather set your bus on fire and dance around its flaming wreckage than be taking another 10 hour, overnight journey, or take an axe to your squeaky bunk bud with its saggy mattress and lumpy pillow. Whether it be transport, clothes, showers, cooking, or sleeping, what we are talking about are daily needs; there is no getting away from them. Suddenly, what may seem like a simple thing, like sleeping in a lumpy bed for a night, suddenly becomes extremely tedious. Let's go over some of these day to day experiences, and we'll let the ball roll where it rolls on the side of travel being difficult or not.

Intra-city bus rides can happen any day, intercity bus rides occur every couple of days, and sometimes for two or three or more days of consecutive bus hopping. I already wrote a whole thing on busses, so if you want more on the joys of bus rides, you can read about it here.

Who doesn’t enjoy a good shower? Good luck finding one of those. Usually you’ll get hot water and no pressure, or plenty of pressure but and not a drop of hot water. Sometimes you won’t get either. To find both is literally a miracle. I think since Argentina I can count on two hands the truly good (heat, pressure, don’t feel gross standing on the floor even in sandals) showers I have had.

What I would give for a pair of clean, fresh clothes to pull on. I don't think mine qualify anymore, even if they have just come out of the wash. Usually I pull on a sweaty shirt to sweat in it again for the 4th time. Laundry is too expensive to be doing all the time, and with the budget, I wear dirty clothes repetitively, going weeks with a shirt, even longer with pants, and we'll just keep the underwear a mystery. They get gross, stiff, and smell, but you have to stretch it out or you will be spending $4-6 every 4-5 days. I have been gone nearly 18 months, or about 540 days, so that would be at least $540 on laundry alone. That is a month of travel in Bolivia, maybe 3 weeks elsewhere. See the predicament? This is why we travelers frequently wear dirty clothes and try to hand-wash them in a sink whenever possible.

Light sleeper? The dorms are not for you, but you can bust a budget avoiding them. People snore, they come and go, sometimes drunk and loud, they laugh, they fix up their packs, they turn the light on and off and on and…nope, just left it on. Rarely, but not unheard of, you may even have the experience of two people rocking the bunk bed squeaky-squeakingly either above or below you, no matter what comments you make or shoes you throw to make them shut up. No shame, I tell you, no shame ‘tall.

Hungry? There is one kitchen to share between 30 of you. Have fun. My fellow travelers, non-Israelis and Israelis alike, will know all to well what I mean when I say that you better hope there isn’t an Israeli dinner party for that night either, or you ain’t a gonna be using the kitchen for a good long while. And don’t be alarmed if you are sharing the left over meals of the generations past of travelers, forever caked onto the eclectic mix of dented pots and pans; you will absorb their residual travel auras which will in turn enhance your own travel adventures.

Si vos podés hablar el español, pon este texto en babelfish y tradúcelo a japonés o algo. Para alguna gente el idioma puede ser otra cosa para frustrarse cada día. El español no es un gran problema para mí, pues hace tiempo que estoy en Latina América, aunque es obvio que mi español no sea perfecto. No puedo comprender como algunas personas puedan viajar por Latina América sin saber casi nada de español, porque a mi me parece que sea un gran lío. Fíjate, es posible, de verdad, pero púchica, sea redifícil y no se pueda conocer la cultura o a la gente tanto, o sea, no puedas realizar completamente tu papel como un viajero. He encontrado tanta gente y he trabado amistad con ellos simplemente porque hablo su idioma. I’m sorry, were you not getting any of that? Welcome to the language gap. It can be a seriously annoying and frustrating reality of your trip without a decent grasp on the language. However, don’t worry too much. If you are an English speaker, the universal lazy obstinacy of native English speakers everywhere to learn other languages just about guarantees that someone speaks English wherever you will be, at least enough for you to get some food or a place to sleep (this is not a slight on those who are trying to learn but are still beginning. Keep it up. I am talking about the people who have been around months and might only know “hello” and “how much does that cost?," if that.). Sometimes I find it frustrating when I want to practice my español and there are all these local people walking around spouting English, pero así es la vida (tampoco es un insulto a todos mis amigos que hablan inglés. Nos hablamos en español bastante, pero uds. pueden imaginar como sería para venir a un país para aprender su idioma, pero se encuentra que todos te hablan a ti en tu idioma).

The backpack. Your life, your baby, your curse, your ball and chain. Travel would be so hard without it. You avoid rolling a bulky suitcase throughout countless city blocks on your way to here or there, and buy the right pack, and it can double for trekking and climbing. On the otherhand, heaving it on and off of busses, trudging around town, and living out of it becomes a chore. You soon dread the inevitable time of packing up, somehow fitting all your stuff that shouldn't fit into the small, confined space of your backpack, possible only after careful, tediously spent time. And as you only carry what you need, it is unavoidable that, soon, what you need is at the bottom of everything else you need, making it impossible to try and stay packed while you visit a place. It is an endless cycle of fold and stuff, search and pull, in and out, out and in, over and over and over again.

Then there is the joy of directions. Latin Americans loooovvveeee to give directions. They love it so much that they will give you directions to a place even if they don’t have the slightest idea about its location. This has sort of been an evolving difficulty. When I started out and only understood maybe 50% of what people said to me about 50% of the time. The other 50% I didn’t understand a thing. This is where mad mime skills can get you through a dialogue that would otherwise be hopeless. That, and asking every few blocks for directions to your destination. These days, I understand everything said to me, which doesn’t always help. People will tell you it is “over there” with a vague hand motion indicating a general direction. This same response is given if the place is a block away or 20 blocks, or even a diagonal 20 blocks. Never mind that you don’t have a clue of the city’s layout or what street the place is on. It is, quite simply, over there. The ultimate irony of the Latin American courtesy comes in with directions in that they absolutely have to give them, as I said earlier, even if they don’t know where the place is. You quickly learn, after walking 8 blocks in the exact wrong direction, that the best method of inquiry is to ask one person, walk a bit in that direction (half block to a block), ask another person, and verify stories. If they agree, you are doing well. If not, find a third person until at least two stories coincide. And what do you do if all you get are numerous corroborations that the place is “just over there?” Walk in the general direction, ask again, continue, and repeat, and the distance should inevitably get smaller. It is, after all, just over there.

So, that about covers all your basics: Travel, hygiene, sleep, food, language, and getting around. Some days every one of them can be a chore, but I said at the beginning that I love travel and the rewards are worth the benefits. That is because for every saggy bed, hard mattress, long walk, confused exchanged, gross kitchen, disgusting bathroom, poor excuse for a shower, there are amazing people, breathtaking sights, amazing meals, and priceless memories. And when you do get that cheap private room, that wonderful mattress and fluffy pillow, the empty spic-and-span kitchen, or that godsend of hot water blasting out endlessly from the showerhead, you rejoice all the more. If you get all that at once, for an affordable price, I imagine you may well be on the verge of tears, although I have yet to find all that in one hostel since I left home. Now you have the other half of the story. Happy travels.