The Hidden Treasures of Solo Travel

“Never travel with someone you don’t love”, said Hemmingway. And since all those I love were either busy, sick or uninterested, I went with the only other person who was left. Me.

I had heard so many exclaim what a spiritual experience traveling alone can be. While I had always fantasized about it, I never thought it would happen like this- out of the blue.

Did it turn out to be a spiritual experience? I don’t know. Maybe it did– in a very Osho kind of way. Indulgent to the point of attaining nirvana. Chuckles aside, I will say, it was rather an experience of growth and vitality, of joy in knowing the extent of my own abilities and drives, and to be fully alive with my emotional experiences. And really, when one is immersed in awe-inspiring natural beauty, with no human distractions, how far away can transcendence be?

As I embarked on this first solo international adventure, to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, in the remote South Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, I learned a bunch of things.

Packing Made Light

I only needed one suitcase now. It contained all the things that I needed to make the most of this experience, and nothing more. I could actually pack light- as light as I wanted to! My stuff, and my planning shrunk because I didn’t have to know everything in advance so I could anticipate everyone’s needs. I had to plan for a few medical and safety emergencies, but everything else was free to alchemize organically. Instead of putting the Frommer’s guide in my backpack for constant planning, I tossed it in my suitcase!

Stranger-friendger

Okay, my vocabulary is questionable here, but it shreds the popular saying to bits as intended. People tend to chat up solo travelers more. I don’t know why, but the more I think about it, I realized I do it too. I’m guessing, with solo travelers, I feel like I’m not encroaching upon their time with dear ones. Also, pssst..they are often interesting people.

Now, in the airport alone, I met another 48-year-old who was on a completely different kind of trip- with singles- in a fancy house set in Manuel Antonio on the Pacific Coast. I also got pulled into conversations with a nervous grandma who was traveling to Costa Rica to visit her newly immigrated daughter and her family, and an African American woman who’d never heard of the Calypso-loving Caribe side of Costa Rica, and started grooving with excitement when I told her about it.

While in Costa Rica, in a week I ended up chatting with new expats, wanna-be expats, solo travelers like myself, backpackers, retirees, shopkeepers, homeless people, tuk-tuk drivers, couples, and a couple of families. The locals who often rattled off in Spanish thinking I was Tico (local word for Costa Rican), quickly slowed down to match my sloth-paced Spanish when I opened my mouth to speak. What followed was usually a mix of curiosity and amazement.

Pura Vida!

When I didn’t have others with me that I had to constantly take into account, my interactions and experiences became richer, and more meaningful. I don’t think I’d engage in an hour-long conversation with the French couple, listening to their South American escapades, or with the 60-year-old woman who wanted to quit her life in Chicago, and set up a house and an animal farm in Puerto Viejo, had I had others with me with their own agenda, and ideas of what fun interactions meant.

These conversations often did not involve careers, kids’ accomplishments, or where to find a deal on the new iphone, but were more about the intrinsic aspect of what it meant to be people on this earth for a short time. Within a few minutes of earnest conversation, people were sharing their bucket list items, their struggles with depression, their childhood dreams, or the birth of their grandchild.

I could also spend several minutes just observing a wild animal, or a view, without someone telling me it was time to move on. Recording dart frogs that were only a few centimeters to looking at a mama sloth through my binoculars for twenty minutes, or just waiting to gawk at a trigger fish that showed itself briefly every time the tide came in as I hiked along the cliffs, were some pristine, unhurried, moments made priceless by the fact that they were mine for as long as I wanted them to be.

Spontaneity Returns

I didn’t plan any tours in advance. Even if there was nothing in particular to do that day, I didn’t have to worry. I woke up, ate my wonderful breakfast, gauged my energy level, and my fancy that morning, and took off for the day. Some days it was wandering the beaches, eating yummies, and scouring souvenir shops; other days it was tours with intense hiking , swimming, and snorkeling through local preserves and national parks.

No sun? No Problem!

Heavy rains meant no kayaking to see sloths that day. So I sat in the little beach shelter in Punta Uva, with the staff of Pancho’s Surfboards and Kayaks, and watched the crazy surfers do their thing- even in the rain. When all conversation with my guide was exhausted, and the rain showed no sign of relenting, I hitched a ride back to town to catch a yoga class.

Yoga classes were also done for the day, and the masseuse was getting ready to leave. So I grabbed a smoothie, wandered the beautiful hillside the center was perched on, and went up to scope out the yoga platform to return to later. And what did I see there? A three-toed sloth hanging out, and cleaning himself. An active sloth, and not just a sleeping one that’s usually curled up like a ball. Like you probably guessed, I spent the next twenty minutes just gawking at him with little interruption, feeling like the luckiest thing alive.

I was never easily bummed unless a whole trip got canceled, but not having others’ disappointment to manage when plans fell through while on a trip, made my unexpected glitches seem okay, and made subsequent surprises that much more enjoyable.

As expected in tropical terrains, the sun eventually burst out into a clear sky, and I headed back to complete my river kayak tour which was nothing short of a slow, stunning, mystical Jurassic experience.

Hello! Me

It’s amazing how much mental space our loved ones take up. It’s one thing to take an hour to myself everyday, with a constant awareness in the background that I eventually have to return to reality soon, and quite another to unplug from it for a while, and just be with my feelings, desires, experiences, and responses to the world outside of me. And if that world happens to be entirely different or breathtakingly beautiful, the mind gets elevated to a whole new level of not just joy, but also clarity. In essence, I experienced myself at my core.

Confidence Boost

Things I thought I could never do on my own, I learned, that I could not only do them but even enjoy them thoroughly.

I never thought I would be able trust and relax with a guide on a private tour through the jungle. I did my research and I did just that. I never thought I could go snorkeling without my family with a random tour where there were currents, especially with me not being a strong swimmer. I did it with the help of other tour members. I thought it would be awkward eating every meal on my own, but I always ended up talking to other travelers sitting around me, or enjoying my drinks in solitude.

I ended up getting used to sunsets with strangers, massages in heaven (see pic below), and letting the night sounds serenade me in perfect solitude.

I didn’t think I could manage having fun, staying safe, and finding my way around town all at the same time, but I did. Of course, the internet helped a ton. I never did get horribly lost even though I wandered many a street, and beach on my own. I actually became more attuned to my whereabouts, and had a sense of direction now that I had only myself to rely on. Necessity indeed became the mother of invention.

I Am Enough

I had given myself and the world so little credit. I was like a toddler who’d just learned to walk. A little wobbly at first, but once I learned the gig, there was no stopping me. I became more adventurous talking to locals in my broken Spanish. When they giggled, I took it as a compliment. I got sassy with a suave restaurant owner who would not let me sit until I ordered. I got a free ride from a total stranger who locals seemed to know well. I seemed to amaze many that I was traveling alone for the first time, and that I was so comfortable by day three.

It’s not that I had launched myself into some alien piece of the earth, yet, I realized it amazed people because most of us don’t give ourselves credit for things we could do by ourselves without the constant assurance of company– for entertainment, favorable public opinion, or safety.

This is not to say I always want to travel alone. I missed my family at times. I facetimed them from the beautiful mirador at Gandaco Manzaillo National Park that overlooked the border of Panama beyond the exuberant coral-filled tide. I missed them at sunset- bobbing up and down in the waves in romantic, perfect Punta Uva. I missed them at the luscious breakfast in the mornings, and wished I could point out the 52 different species of hummingbirds that frequented the heliconias outside as we ate, or the toucan sitting high up in the almond trees singing it’s loud opera or the naughty capuchin monkey that tried to abscond with my backpack in Cahuita National Park.

But with that longing, and desire for the presence of my loved ones, also came the realization that I wanted to share MY experience with them.

My experience of this world was complete on its own. The joy and intermittent loneliness that was intrinsic to this experience actually made me feel complete. Even this occasional feeling of loneliness was mine. It would otherwise have been smothered in warmth, truncated moments, hasty sharing and oos and aahs and let’s gos that would have short-circuited my internal experience in a myriad ways.

And so– even for these brief lonely moments when other families cuddled, and couples kissed, and children squealed with delight, I was grateful for my ability to feel joy for them, and at the same time, appreciate my place in this world.