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TO THE FIVE STRANGERS
ON THAT BUS IN THAILAND.
THANKS FOR PUSHING ME
ON THIS JOURNEY.
EVERY DAY IS A JOURNEY, AND THE JOURNEY ITSELF IS HOME.
—MATSUO BASHŌ
INTRODUCTION
Getting the Bug
I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—SUSAN SONTAG
I AM A NOMAD.
For a decade I have lived a long, peripatetic life on the road.
Three thousand nights.
In more than ninety countries. In a thousand different cities. In hundreds of hostels. With countless people. For half a million miles on airplanes, and half a million more (I’ve added it up) on trains and buses and tuk-tuks and cars and bicycles.
That was my home.
In all that time, over all those miles, I wandered with no goal. I wasn’t on a trip, vacation, or pilgrimage. I had no list of set destinations or set sights to see. My only purpose was to travel. To be a nomad: Someone who could move from place to place without urgency, without plans. Someone whose destination was the journey itself. Someone who just picked up and went wherever and whenever they pleased.
Traditionally, nomads—whether in the deserts of the Middle East, on the steppes of Eurasia, or on the plains of North America—were born into an ancient practice of living life in motion. They were my role models, but unlike them, I wasn’t born to travel, and had no tradition to draw from.
In my family, we didn’t travel. My dad did the hippy thing after college, sleeping in German wheat fields and partying around Europe, but by the time my younger sister and I were born, my father’s long hair had disappeared right along with any wanderlust he or my mom had. Instead, life became defined by the nine-to-five cycle of work.
Like most modern American middle-class families, if we went anywhere it was because we were on vacation—leisure travel with a fixed start and end, tied to the calendar of the working year, centered more often than not around visiting relatives. We left home to visit relatives in Philadelphia on holidays or took long road trips to see my grandmother in Florida. We’d visit Disneyworld and Universal Studios; go bowling; and eat early dinners with my grandmother Mimi. Long car rides, nights at big chain hotels, and trips to theme parks were par for the course.
Like figures from a Norman Rockwell painting come to life, we traveled like middle-class Americans were supposed to travel. Predictably. Safely. And never for too long. There would be no backpacking trips, camping excursions, or jaunts to exotic destinations for us. We were not only not nomadic, we were rooted, in place and in custom.
And, as far as I knew, there was no other way to live.
In my mind, travel was a planned break from the rhythm of corporate life, the adult equivalent of being on school break. You worked hard and you treated yourself to an all-inclusive destination a short flight away, or spent your time away from the office in some relative’s living room. You took just enough time off that you could muster the strength to go to work every ordinary weekday for decades until it was time for that fabled thing called retirement, when life could truly begin.
Life had a specific path you were supposed to follow: grade school, secondary school, college, work, marriage, retirement.
After you had paid your dues and followed the rules then you were free to do anything you wanted.
I carried that impression of life and travel with me through my teenage years and into my early twenties. When I finished college, I dutifully and happily took my rightful place at the bottom of the middle-class corporate ladder, and took an entry- level job at a hospital in Boston. I answered phones, stocked and ordered supplies, and told visitors which room their sick relative was in—I did every job you’d expect of someone with no experience.
My life became full of routine.
Commute. Work. Thirty-minute lunch break. Gym with the roommate after work. Take out for dinner. TV before bed. On the weekends, my friends and I would try to meet girls at a bar. Each day blended seamlessly into another.
But this routine gnawed at my soul. I wasn’t happy. I grew restless.
I felt as if I was watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to start. Life was supposed to start after college, right? Sure, everyone said that college represented the best years of their lives, but to me, it was always the “real world” that was supposed to be special.
The real world had things that college lacked: a place of my own; money; a steady relationship; the ability to go where I wanted; to do what I wanted; freedom. It was where I could finally start my life.
Except the real world turned out to be boring as hell.
It was my life, all right, and it turned out to be an endless loop of sameness. When I complained, I was often told that it was normal. How it’s supposed to be. “Don’t worry, honey. When you find a job you love, life will be a lot different,” my mother would say to me. “You just graduated. You’re twenty-three. Don’t be so impatient. We all start off at the bottom.”
As I approached my one-year anniversary at the hospital, my boss reminded me that I had to take my accrued vacation time soon. “It’s policy,” she said, “or you’re going to lose it.”
I can no longer remember how it happened—time has taken that precious memory, but I started thinking about Costa Rica. I had come across a tour in one of my many searches online. It wasn’t anywhere I had been before, or had even thought much about prior to this, but it was certainly the kind of place my parents wouldn’t have gone, which made it immediately attractive.
It looked … different. And I wanted different. Anything that wouldn’t be filled with dreaded routine. An exotic locale where adventure—and maybe some danger—lurked. Online I saw photos of people on a beach, hiking in jungles, and spotting monkeys and exotic birds. They were on ziplines and surfboards. Things I had never done in my life. They were young. They were happy. But, more important than that, they looked far away from where I was, in that work break room, eating my microwaved lunch, fretting about the long commute home through the harsh Boston winter, which only served to remind me that I was stuck firmly at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy.
When I got home that night, I booked a tour to Costa Rica. I thought it was just going to be my first grown-up vacation.
It ended up being my first step toward something more than that.
* * *
I DON’T PRETEND MY STORY IS UNIQUE. Many, many people can tell a story like mine—because many, many people have found that the endless loop of commuting and ladder-climbing and evenings in front of the TV (or whatever their culture’s version of that endless loop is) is not enough to satiate their being. Like me, they left; and, like me, they never came back—at least, not for a good, long while; and never the same as when they left.
The story of travel is a timeless tale. My fears and struggles and dreams have been feared and struggled and drea
mt many times before—and, no doubt, will be many times after I am gone.
But I want to tell you my version anyway. I want to tell you the things I haven’t told anyone else and that most travel writers seem afraid to say about what spending extended time traveling is really like.
1
Stepping Out the Door
He who is outside his door has the hardest part of the journey behind him.
—FLEMISH PROVERB
DO YOU EVER HOPE FOR AN EPIPHANY? That supposed moment of revelation or insight—the kind that happens near the end of a story where everything makes sense. In the story, the hero has struggles and doubts, and then something—it could be as small as the sight of a bird’s nest in a tree or snow falling from the sky—happens that clarifies everything. Suddenly, everything in the hero’s life seems to make sense. The hero has figured it out. They’re a changed person. And because the thing that set it off is so seemingly insignificant, the implication is that your moment of epiphany is out there waiting for you, in the ordinary things that you take for granted.
You could change—really change—tomorrow.
It’s a nice belief, right?
But life doesn’t work like that.
We change all the time. The you you are now is different than the you from ten years ago, and the you in ten years will be different still. But the thought that we can pinpoint that change to a single, story-ready moment is something out of fiction. “Aha” moments are a rarity. Learning and change—even mind-altering learning and radical change—aren’t spontaneous, and don’t happen all at once. Only with distance, as we look back at the narrative of our existence, can we tell there was a moment when our old self disappeared, and a new person emerged, with new eyes and perspective. But even that moment wasn’t when the change occurred, it was simply when we first notice it. This is the nature of evolution. Gradual, imperceptible change that accumulates over time until our first memory bears no resemblance to what we are looking at in present day.
That’s how it was for me. I didn’t become a nomad the day I booked my Costa Rica trip. It wasn’t as if I was Corporate Matt, and then my first day standing beneath a jungle waterfall a few weeks later, I became Nomadic Matt. When I planned the trip, there was no sense that I was also planning to change my life, that my trip would be the first step to a rejection of nearly everything and everyone I had ever known. I had no idea I was setting in motion a journey that would not end, perhaps ever, and would cost me the price of a nice house in the suburbs, kicking my way from city to city, country to country, hostel to hostel; into, onto, and through more museums, excursions, bus trips, and food stalls than I can even remember.
I was nowhere near that fearless.
All I wanted was a vacation. Those two weeks to get me through the next fifty.
As I boarded a flight from Boston to San José, Costa Rica, near the end of April 2003, I was petrified. Going to Costa Rica with a small tour group was the safest “riskiest” thing I could do. I wasn’t interested in a new life—I just wanted to go on some hikes, see some waterfalls and volcanoes, hang out on the beach, and make it home in one piece. Simple. Easy. Safe.
All of that other stuff—the freedom, the adventure, the possibility—the things that make you fall in love with travel lay in the future.
* * *
EXITING BAGGAGE CLAIM in San José, my eyes darted left and right. As I made my way into the arrivals area, taxi drivers pounced on me. I was fresh meat. It couldn’t have been more obvious to them if I was hanging upside down from a hook in a shop window. They spoke with such rapidity that my high school Spanish couldn’t comprehend a syllable.
“Necesitas un taxi? A donde vas? Taxi? Taxi? Taxi?”
“No I don’t want a ride. Uhhhhh … No me gusta,” I said trying to remember the right words. “Yo tengo un … driver.… No, no necesito un taxi.”
The unfamiliarity. The discomfort. The entire experience was overwhelming.
I looked around for someone with a sign with my name. My tour came with an optional airport pickup and, if I had learned anything from my parents, the most important part of any trip was responsibly navigating airport logistics. Check into the flight the night before. Get to the airport early. The airline says two hours before for international flights, let’s make it three just in case there is traffic. Pack your pillow and snacks for the plane. Find the cheapest rental car or the freest shuttle. Whatever you do, don’t get ripped off.
In spite of me having spent God knows how many hours trying to avoid even the possibility of uncertainty upon arrival, my driver was nowhere to be found. With my heart racing and my palms sweaty, I paced around the arrivals hall, the tropical humidity only adding to my anxiety, absurd visions of spending my vacation trapped in the airport dancing in my head.
“Come on taxi real cheap,” said a man approaching me.
“No,” I said, sure that the invitation into the backseat of his taxi was an obvious ploy to kidnap and ransom me. Why had I done this? What was I thinking? I can’t do this. Even if this man defied all the Central American stereotypes bouncing around my cloistered New Englander mind, how would I even know that he was taking me in the right direction? It’s not like I knew these roads.
The foreignness of where I was suddenly hit me like a boxer landing an uppercut on his unsuspecting opponent. Even in something as universal as an airport—with a layout like every other airport—I was still in foreign place. Even an airport was a different experience.
As I entertained the thought of calling off the trip (Maybe I was in over my head.), there in the back, standing near a pole, was my driver casually holding a sign with my name on it. Staring into space, he looked like he didn’t care one way or the other if I actually showed up.
“I’m Matt,” I said as I walked over him.
“Okay, vamos,” he replied, grabbing my bag and ushering me to his dilapidated car.
In better days, the driver’s car might have been a nice Toyota. Now, the sun-bleached blue paint was peeling to reveal a Swiss-cheesed rust finish. Inside, the fabric was equally worn. The floor was littered with trash and old soda cans. I don’t know what I was expecting from my ride, but this definitely wasn’t it.
As we pulled onto the highway, the nervous anxiety turned into pride. I had passed my first test. I had navigated the airport and found my ride! It was a small victory but it was my victory. Now, I was here. Settling into the threadbare backseat, I looked out the window and got my first glimpse of Costa Rica. There were cloud-covered mountains in the distance and banana fields as far as the eye could see. The blue sky was dotted with enough white, puffy clouds to make Bob Ross feel right at home.
But the pride (and the visions of a tropical paradise) quickly faded away as small houses with corrugated roofs and bars on their windows began to dot the highway into San José. I could see tiny dirt roads filled with potholes and trash strewn everywhere. Was this a shantytown?
As we entered San José, more homes sealed like prisons popped up, squished together on streets with run-down buildings and trash. With a burst of embarrassment, I remembered the manicured, middle-class suburb where I grew up. I’d been sheltered. I’d never seen anywhere this impoverished. I’d never had to navigate a road that was more pothole than road, or watch out for piles of trash littering the pavement as I walked. Boarded-up houses were reserved for the “bad” side of town, the side privileged kids like me stayed away from unless we were trying to get back at our parents or seem cool to our friends.
And just like that, all of the ugly stereotypes of Central America I’d absorbed from the news media over the previous two decades leapt to the forefront of my mind: crime; guerillas; drug cartels; kidnapping; disease. I was raised to be afraid of places like this—“places to be avoided”—and now that lesson was bubbling back to the surface.
What the hell was I doing here? And where is this guy really taking me?
I was alone in a foreign country, in a car with a guy I didn’t know,
who spoke a language I didn’t speak, and I had no idea where we were headed. This was not smart. This was not normal. This was not safe. This is why people don’t leave the country.
“Aqui,” the driver suddenly said, the third and final word in our entire exchange, his car and the escalating narrative in my head coming to a screeching halt at once. I was jolted back to reality and looked out the car window.
I had been so worried about “what ifs” that I missed the change in scenery. The neighborhood had changed. The homes were bigger, the roads were paved, the nearby park pristine, the streets clean. We were in front of a beautiful Spanish-style hotel. The scenery matched the expectations in my mind. And, to my young, inexperienced, sheltered self, that made me feel safer and reassured.
Okay, I thought to myself, maybe I was too quick to judge. This doesn’t seem bad at all.
The driver dropped my bag in the hotel lobby and left without a word. I didn’t even have a chance to tip him.
I gave my name to the front desk attendant, who scanned a sheet in front of him.
“Ahhh yes, excellent! Pura Vida!” he said, looking up with a smile. “Welcome to Costa Rica! Here’s your key. Everything is all set! This is the note from your tour leader.” He pointed to a sign on the desk that told us to enjoy our first day and to be back at 6:00 PM for a welcome meeting.
I walked to my room and saw another bag there. My roommate was already here. His leather backpack, the collared shirts neatly hung in the closet, the brown shoes laid out near the door, all spoke of a confidence that I was sorely lacking. He clearly wasn’t worried about the possibility of making a mad dash for the airport in the middle of the night because of a coup.
Sitting on my bed, I took a deep breath. I grew up a nerd. The kind that played Magic: The Gathering, D&D, and read Les Misérables (the unabridged version) for fun. I had been waiting for a growth spurt since I entered high school, but it stood me up at prom and at graduation, too. Even among my friends, I felt uncool. A nerd to the nerds, the one that got called last to hang out.
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