How the hell do you travel so much? (Part I)

"Che (because this guy is Argentinean), could it be that Andre is a millionaire and she has never told us? Have you ever been in her house? Do you know where she lives? Maybe she has a lot of money and we have never known about it ...”

That's one of my friends, theorizing with my best friend, about the eternal question that, I know, goes around many people’s mind when they meet me: how the hell does she travel so much?

I know. This is a question that people always ask me and, if they not verbalize it, at least, implicitly, I can feel it behind all these stares of disbelief in persons who look at me with : 1. admiration , 2. envy, or 3. with "this fucking girl, minimum, has something to do with drug traffic".

What happens is that I usually don´t think about how the hell I travel that much because, for me, it´s very normal. In the backpacking world, virtually, we all have it clear. However, when I return to Costa Rica, I start noticing the huge question that my eternal nomadism arouses.

To my friend, I must reply that if he hasn’t ever heard of my money is because, obviously, I'm not a millionaire. In fact, I come from a low-middle-class background and if you don´t believe me, ask any Costa Rican how many millionaires live in Hatillo. Ha!

To the rest of the people, what I can offer is to tell them how I manage to travel so much. How do I do it, given the fact that I can’t answer otherwise than from my personal point of view. I'm not an authority on the subject and I don’t sell any self-help books with a title like: The Seven Habits of Highly traveled backpacker". But for sure I can share my experience which doesn´t exclude anyone: if there’s something I firmly believe in is that traveling is not impossible as many people might think.

So here are my seven habits for highly backpacking. The great secret. The post that will settle a “before” and an “after” in your life. The oracle that opens only for some enlightened. The backpacker guru’s wisdom of a... Just kidding! No way. Enough maniac episode (sorry, I'm bipolar). You'll see that, in fact, there is no rocket science regarding to traveling:

In Peru.

1. I make traveling a priority

In Costa Rica we have a saying that, roughly translated from Spanish, states: "Everyone is free to make a flower vase out of his/her ass”.

Beyond this somehow scatological statement, the fact is that this also applies to money: the obstacle that many people place in order not to travel. So let’s translate it into more capitalist terms: everyone chooses her/his own priorities and invests his/her money as they want.

Broadly speaking, in the Western world, from low-middle class up to high- class population, we could say that these are the most popular monetary priorities, at least as it’s traded in the dreams stock market: 1. Buy a house. 2. Buy a car. 3. Buy nice clothes. 4. Buy a good cell phone. 5. Party often.

As I said, the most popular ones. The trick with being the most popular ones is that, because of its popularity, people tend to think they are easier to achieve, easier than, for example, take one year to travel the world.

Fallacy. I promise I would take a look about which type of fallacy is, but fallacy. It’s not like that. I don’t think buying a house is easier. Not with all the money I've spent in all my travels I would be able to pay even the first fee.

What happens is that those who travel have decided to put traveling as a priority (we are many, but definitely not as many as the overwhelming numbers of people who prefer to buy a house, a car, clothes, a cell phone and party).

It’s not the most popular way, because in our society, people seem to value more other things, the ones you can see and touch with the hand. Those things give to people a sense of stability, a word that they tend to confuse with "eternity". In any case, beyond the fact that both of them end with the same letters, both words are highly valued because they promise that nothing will change, when in fact, almost everything that is not dead is always changing even a little bit.

So it seems good to invest, for example, in a house, because you can use it every day. It seems so stable, and so eternal, that even many persons shield themselves behind the phrase "Now I have a place where I can die”. Actually, I've never understood this slogan. I mean, at the risk of sounding a little bit Asperger, no one really knows where you will die. It could be in the middle of the street and anyways, someone will have to pick you up, unless they want to take the risk of leaving you there, stinking, becoming an epicenter of birds of prey, rats and other lovely animals. Or it could happen at a friend’s house, in which case I don’t think she or he would be such a motherfucker and leave you there. I guess she or he at least would call the morgue and say: “Listen, this fucking dude just died here in my living room, could you please come and remove him?” Or you could have a tragic death and no one will ever find your body. If I start thinking about it, I should rather save for a grave. And live to pay my death ... to me, that makes no sense. Buy a house where I can spend my old age? It isn’t too early to start thinking about that? Invest my youth so I can buy a few square meters so I can put my rocking chair? And don’t come to me with the tale of The Ant and the Grasshopper. Sorry, but let’s face it: the grasshopper had a blast too (if we translate it to Marxist terms, we could even say this might be a proletarian tale). Buy a house so I can leave something to my children? Well, I prefer to leave to my children a good education and unforgettable moments, not some concrete walls. Once they become well educated grown-ups, they can decide whether it worth investing or not in the same view from the same window. For now, I've decided not to.

Anyways, right now, if the house no longer seems worthy of any economic anxieties, the rest of the things don’t have a chance. A car? Anyway, in most cases, no one goes very far with it and it’s more expensive for traveling and not ecological at all. Clothes? While it’s true that sometimes I suffer from that stereotypical female weakness for buying clothes, it’s also true that in the vast majority of times, I restrain myself under my inaflible-art-in-90 %-of-cases to translate “clothes” in terms of "travel". For example: those boots …$60... With $ 60 I can buy a Ryanair ticket from Madrid to Morocco... And at home I already have three pairs of boots... And I've never been to Morocco... And with these boots I will walk the same streets as today... So sorry: Bye-bye boots.  A mobile phone? So I can forget it on a table in a bar, so somebody can steal it from me, or so I can accidentally let it go into the toilet? I will never forget my memories and the lessons I’ve learned on my trips on a table bar. Quite the opposite: I take them back to life every time I sit down in a bar and share them with my friends. No one will ever steal my memories, unless in order to steal my cell phone, they smash my head before. And certainly, my memories will never go down through the toilet, unless I throw myself in it. And if you stick to the party side, well, I do party as well in Costa Rica with my friends, because I also value my moments with them. But I try to measure myself with the money and not drink too much beer. As a Costa Rican and consecrated backpacker friend of mine says: “At the end, it’s all about peeing the money”.

I prefer to buy experiences rather than objects. I'd rather invest my money in moments, which are something you can’t touch with your hand and which go away fast. Unfortunately, as I once said, the present is very fleeting (My life has been worth every minute), but the stories and lessons will remain with me until the very last day of my life when, sitting on the rocking chair, after all, I will die, maybe next to you. In short: I invest in something that you can’t see and in something that is not “everlasting” to the eyes of many. But really, I invest in the only thing I can take with me beyond the grave.

And I've got news: traveling, in many cases, is not half as expensive as to live in one place.

Atitlan's Lake. Guatemala.

2. I make traveling as a lifestyle

To me it seems incredibly naive, but as logical as the reasoning of a child (and please note that for me children are tremendously wise) when people tell me: "It must be very cool to spend all your time on vacation". 

Vacation??? Ha! I don't know if I should crack myself up more with that or with the idea of my mythological chalet in Hatillo. I almost never have holidays. Us, who have made traveling as a lifestyle, know that backing is just that: a lifestyle. As other people wake up early, go to work from 8 to 5, and enjoy their time with their families in the evenings and weekends.

For me, holidays, what I call vacation, are quite similar to those which the average people have in mind: basically to sleep AS MUCH as I want, wake up in a nice place somewhere and throw myself to read without anyone bothering me, only to return to sleep AS MUCH as I want again. Something cyclic, lazy and predictable.

Rather, my vacations begin when I return to Costa Rica and, entrenched in my sacred bed, shielded by my legendary pillows, I hibernate for days, sleeping 15 hours in a row. Maybe you can understand it better if I state this: sometimes when you travel and you go back home, you feel the need of one or two days to recover. The real vacations because you finally take some rest. Well, that happens to me.

Few are the days when I am backpacking that I'm not busy. Logistics are like office work: I must find the next plane, train, bus, ride or whatever, analyze hostels or Couchsurfing profiles, learn how to get orientated in the city, read travel guides, get lost so I can find myself again. You can imagine it like this: let’s say every two or three days, you wake up with amnesia and you have to find, from scratch, an apartment, you have to know the city again, learn what to do there and what not to do, find out how much everything costs, and so on (I am writing this “so on” not because I don’t know what might comes next, but because this post is becoming huge. But believe me: we are talking about a long “so on”). Many times I have not even arrived to a place and I am already figuring out how to move to the next one. After a few months, it becomes exhausting, especially because since most of the times I travel alone, everything depends only on me.

Well, if that didn’t convince you as a day job, maybe something else that takes a lot of time will do: a job. In my travels, I have met people who have been on the road for two, three or more years. Including me: I've spent one year and a half backpacking. Non stop. How the hell do we manage to achieve that? Well, like all mortals do since Jehovah condemned us to earn our bread by the sweat of our forehead: we work! The vast majority of backpackers are not millionaires (yes, I live in Hatillo).

They say need is the mother of all inventions ... and it’s true. As soon as I see myself against the wall (or against the risk of returning to Costa Rica, which for me it's worse than the wall) I start to move myself so I can keep going. And believe it or not, my hands and my brain work well beyond the borders of Paso Canoas, Peñas Blancas, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. And yours work pretty well too. We all have talents and I've seen people that reinvent themselves and start teaching languages. They start working in bars. They start a small business. They start doing translations.

Of course, not all of them are glamorous or well paid jobs. Often it’s just about volunteer work in exchange of food and a bed. I have worked taking care of German dogs (Dog-logic), I cleaned floors in hostels, I loaded stones and weeded gardens, I have driven a truck, I have worked as a babysitter and in a construction site. But I do it, something that not everyone (especially those who give priority to their careers) is eager to go for it. And yet, I am pretty sure that even with your career as a priority in your life, if you were there in your country of origin, and there is no other choice to survive, you would do it too.

And, as it happens in the reality of most people, if you can devote yourself to do something you like, the better. I now dedicate myself to writing, for example. It is not always easy and I'm ready for the fact that, at some point, I might have to dig again a hole made out of dog shit from the last decade (Pain and gain). That's why my trips are so long: it’s not the same walking around as a tourist in a foreign country, than walking around in a foreign country with a regular job as everyone else worldwide. Undoubtedly, it makes the backpacker agenda even longer.

The misconception is that people think that I live in a fantasy world, “in a perpetual holiday”. No, no, ladies and gentlemen. My reality is this one. It’s a nomadic one. As you chose yours, whatever reality you might have. There is no difference between other people and me: as the people who work 8-5 in a city do that so they can have where to sleep, what to eat and how to move around, I have decided to travel and work even more hours so I can have where to sleep, what to eat and how to move around. We all seek to survive and, in particular, we all seek happiness. We all want to make our dreams come true: buy a house, a car, traveling, going to the moon. The only thing is that many people decide to focus their reality in only one place. I have chosen to do it in several.

Unlike many people, that when they return home , they sigh: "Back to reality", when I return to Costa Rica I go still to another part of my reality, because, as I said before, I have no home.

My reality is this one. It’s not always easy, as no reality is easy. It’s not always easy to see people on Facebook with their photos of marriage and cute babies. It’s not always easy to swim against the tide in a society that gives more value to objects than to the stories that can be told. A society that values more the titles and the status than the countries you have visited and the cultures that you can learn from. It is not always easy to spend so much time alone, living in the uncertain, in the confusion, in the instability. In the fear. But that’s the price I pay for living a "fluid, perplexed and exciting” life.

And I've got news: if you don’t like your reality, you can come to crash into mine anytime.

Seriously:  if I let myself being seduced by the temptation of the best-seller book idea, and I let myself go with megalomaniac thoughts that I own the ultimate truth, this could become a short self-help booklet about how to travel. At the end, many of these books reveal the secret behind how to create warm water, duh! Anyway, since this post is becoming huge, I will leave the steps 3 to 7 for future occasions.

That’s the way it is: I have my own reality too and I work in it: I write. So if you liked this text and if you think that being a writer is a respected job, like any other (including yours), you have two options: if you really think I write well, click the buttons on the right handside and subscribe yourself, or share this text in your social networks so more people can ride the rocking horse. Thank you for reading! :)