Part 5: Popping your Bubble

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
--Mark Twain

I know so many people that travel in a bubble, isolating themselves from the authentic culture that surrounds them: it’s so much easier to insulate oneself at the comfortable five star resort, venturing out into the community only from the isolation of the fully chaperoned and air conditioned tour bus.

It’s so much more convenient to accept the Disneyland version of a place, complete with all its stereotypes than to have to deal with the authentic version with its smelly, noisy, nitty gritty messiness.

Not that I advocate going out of one’s way to be uncomfortable, especially on vacation; after all, that’s why we spend all that hard earned vacation money, to pamper ourselves and to relax. No one wants to vacation in a slum.

But there’s a lot to be said about fully connecting with the essence of a place and to experience the foreign as fully as possible, if even for just an afternoon, or just for an hour.

Go ahead.

Tuck into that “iffy” little restaurant. Smile and simply order a coke. People watch. Look open to whatever happens.
Venture down that dusty little narrow street off the beaten path. So what if you get lost for awhile?
You’ll discover that even with a language barrier, most human beings are friendly and delighted that you’ve been willing to explore their little corner of the world.
You just might find, that in spite of a language barrier, most people are as curious about you as you are about them. You just might make a friendship in the bargain.

Part 5: Closure & Reflection:The Journey Continues

"Those actions or statements by a teacher that are designed to help students bring things together in their own minds, to make sense out of what has just been taught."-Madeline Hunter

“1. Leave home; 2. Go alone.” --Paul Theroux

People were always fascinated that I was traveling alone, without family. In fact, it was inconceivable to them. They lived with or very near to multiple generations, they slept crowded into single beds in tiny apartmentos or casitas, and they would do so their entire lives. For them, every night was a group get-together. I envied and was repelled by this at the same time.

“Where is your hombre?” asked a grinning toothless Bolivian man in a spotless white North Dakota Soybean Council polo shirt. “He let go you here all by yourself?”

“No”, I explained, “I mean, no man.” I replied, smiling.

“Where your family?” asked a cholita in a bowler hat.
“Working, my daughters are working.” “No más.”

Whispers. “Insólita”. Looks of pity.

“Insolita”, that multilayered Spanish word that conveys so much more than being single, implies a person unhappily alone, lonely, sad, a thing to be pitied. How do I explain a philosophy of travel, of life, of kismet, to people who have never ventured more than a few miles from home and never, ever by themselves?
I decide not to try.

“You like girl?” I knew this one was coming.
“No. not like that.”

“Where your man, then?” “Why no man?” “Not safe for lady travel insólita”. “Nice Bolivian man?”

“No.”

“Where you go next?” “Not safe for lady travel insólita”.
“Yeah, I know. It’s OK.” “I’m going back to La Paz.”

More whispers. Incomprehensible buzzing in Aymara.
Concerned looks. More pity.

I’d been raised in such a different situation and was used to so much personal space and privacy. The chasm between me and everyone staring at me made me feel that much more alone and hungry for a genuine connection that I certainly wasn’t getting much of this gypsy summer. I became immediately homesick.

Even the most remote parts of FoldintheMap are connected by highways, cell phones and the Internet; they are how I define the world. But there are millions of people who live in tiny hamlets like this; no roads, no electricity, nothing but clouds and mountains and llamas and scrub brush. And each other. Day after day, through good and bad, they always have each other, no matter what.

The villages of rural Bolivia were tiny universes as far removed from the Internet and the rest of the world as Mars. I was a loose neutrino, ricocheting around the planet. A teeny tiny speck on the face of the earth. A bug on the windshield. I just wanted to go home. And soon enough I would be there.