Going Home

During the last days of my trip I tried to think about all of the experiences I had enjoyed, all of the places I had been and all of the people I had met. It was a strange feeling; I was happy to be going home but at the same time sad to admit it had come to an end.

Puerto Viejo on the Carribean coast of Costa Rica was my last stop – I had two days for reflection, and managed to achieve a textbook outpouring of sentimental thoughts. Obviously it wouldn’t be a gap year unless I found myself, so, aware of the limited time, I went looking with more determination than ever.

I sat on the beach with my feet in the sea trying to remember each day of the trip in turn, to imagine being in each of the places, recalling how I felt, the high points and the low points and what lessons I learned. Suddenly I was aware that all in all what a fucking amazing experience it had been.

I thought about the cafes of Buenos Aires, the freezing nights and fierce sun of the Bolivian altiplano, the deserts of Peru, the volcanoes of Ecuador, the young women of Colombia and the islands of Panama. I considered the people who live in these places and the acute social differences that exist between them.

In these moments, what before had seemed normal: jobs, careers advisors, the pursuit of money, competition between piers, seemed no more elements of a standard existence than living in the jungle, catching fish in a small boat or selling cakes on buses.

That is not to say that my life is not more favourable than the life of the majority of Latin Americans. Of course it is: I have more freedoms and many more opportunities. Very soon, those aspects of western society will once again seem normal to me and I know I am lucky to be able to say that. (The fact is; I am rich. By the standards of the world, I am stinking rich, and so are you, and I would much rather be rich, to be here writing an Internet post about what I think about the poor, than be poor.)

But what I have learned and hope not to forget is that some things are only important in western societies, and only seem important when viewed from within them. If you attempt to consider all people in the world instead of just the ones near you, to take into account as many types of people as you can, you can try to get an idea of what things are important to all people. And I don’t think mergers and acquisitions, or even bad debt, count in this category, which it sometimes helps to realise.

I thought about how I had changed. I am (even) more left-wing than before. I am more up for talking to anyone. I am happier spending some time on my own. Despite Oxford, I don’t feel old, pressured to have a career, I don’t value money for money’s sake and I don’t want or need to be best at everything. I realised that your youth lasts at least until thirty, and travel is a pursuit of the young.

I thought about how I hadn’t changed. I am still often hopeless around women, at least when I like them. I am no better at making decisions. I still love to study, to think, to get the brain working a bit, and missed this at times. And I still like the sun and hot places more than cold dark places.

Spending time away from British people has allowed me to see my country more objectively. I am much more proud of some things (the best television in the world, the best music in the world, an relatively open society (for now) with the widest mix of races and backgrounds), but more disgusted by others (the only thing more cowardly that being a bully is being the bully’s inferior sidekick, kidding himself that the bully really gives a shit about him).

On the bus back to San Jose, to take my flight, I looked at everyone around me, trying to enjoy being away for the last few moments. As often happens when you are a skinny white man sitting alone, the large black woman across the aisle gave me a warm smile. I felt a little watery in the eyes, realising I was going to miss the warmth of the Latin people.

Later the bus crashed because a drunk driver skidded in front of it, and we had to wait 3 hours for the police to take him away. To pass the time, the black woman and I chatted for the whole time, about nothing; something totally normal in this society that would seem a little bit quirky, a bit strange even, in mine.

Sitting on the plane home, I was hoping for one last chance to speak Spanish, ideally with a slim brunette woman of average height between the ages of 19 and 30. I got what appeared to be a grumpy Spanish granddad. Still, we began to talk and he turned out to be a Costa Rican doctor, a widower who was going to visit friends in Spain. Within 15 minutes he had offered me his phone number and an open invitation to stay on his farm any time I might come back to Costa Rica.

On the Madrid – London, rush hour flight full of business travellers I was sat next to a middle-aged English accented woman in a suit. As an experiment I looked at her, perhaps also hoping to find out what job had required her to travel to Spain, but she immediately looked away. I’m sure she wasn’t unkind or antisocial: she was just English.

The Final List (quantity per 7 month trip to Latin America):
212 – days and nights out of the country
1 – day in Prison
1 – traveller met who spent three days in prison, actually in prison
4 – Spanish teachers employed
1 – traveller met who had slept with all 3 of his Spanish teachers so far
10 – countries visited (shortest, Brazil – 6 hrs, longest Argentina – almost 2 mths)
3 – number of gay blokes (all locals) that openly tried to seduce me.
2 – number of sexy time (not related to the above statistic)
2 – nationalities of the above
6 – times when I had spent a long time alone chatting to a girl who I really liked and was single and seemed to like me and I didn’t do anything.
5 – nationalities of the above
At least 20 - travellers I met who had been robbed in surprising, shocking or violent ways.
1 – robber I met who robbed me in a surprising, shocking and violent way
11- nights spent in hammocs.
5 – times I caught, or somebody with me, caught my dinner.
2 – times I travelled in aeroplanes (not buses)
1 – train journey
4 – number of nights spent at sea
2 – broken hearts, victims of my wish to keep on going
4 – random football matches with locals 3 – when I was the only gringo.
21842 tonnes – quantity of rice consumed
21842 tonnes – average weight of a cow in Argentina
21.842 grams – average weight of a cow in Bolivia
21842 - number of times I was offered drugs in and around Colombia
21842 – amount of grams of cocaine you can buy in Colombia for the price of a gram in London (apparently)
21842 pounds. Average cost of a weeks sheep shearing programme in Peru (with lots of other Bristol University students) arranged via Gap International in the UK
0 pounds (obviously) – average cost of helping people who need it when you get there for as long as you want
2 – readers of this travel journal who have actually made it to the end
0 – number of those who aren’t my next of kin