Imagine you live in Melbourne Australia and you have a 27 year old daughter. She’s got a great job working as a lawyer in a bank and her prospects are excellent. Imagine she comes home one day and announces she’s going off to travel the world with a back pack by herself.
Were you Cassie’s mom you’d pat her on the back, drive her to the airport and promise to meet up with her in Egypt to see the pyramids together. Lots of parents might be worried but not this one. Rusty knew a sucker when he saw one.
She’s traveled alone around Europe North Africa, South America and Antarctica and had nothing but good times. It shocks me how scared people are of travel especially when I come across youngsters not trained to be fearful and who are open to experience.
Why is it I ask myself there are no Americans traveling South America, their own backyard. It can’t just be fear can it? We had a birthday party for Mark Saturday night. He’s from Boston and actively considering settling down in Barichara. We had four French, two English, one German, two Dutch, two Colombians and one New Zealander around the table eating Layne and Greg’s food.
Mark Layne and I were the only travelers from North America. Layne checked in with a Facebook group that did a roll call on people actively driving around South America and about 330 people checked in. That’s a number conjure with next time you find a campground fully booked into the foreseeable future.
An afternoon break of stuffed doughnuts and cappuccino in Barichara, not exactly uncivilized. These musings lead me to wonder why this is my first time visiting south America and why exactly did I delay it until I was 66?
For some people who style themselves adventurers, not a term I’d use on myself, driving from Alaska to Patagonia is an accomplishment to be achieved. Get it done. Then again I remember my neighbor on Cudjoe Key, watching us pack our lives aboard GANNET2 who asked where we were going. I was shy about our destination but I figured in 24 hours I’d never see him again so I said “Patagonia,” which seemed impossibly distant and remote from the Florida Keys. My neighbor screwed up his face in puzzlement. “Pata- what? Where’s that?”
I was talking with young Alex twenty four years old and from New Zealand Sunday morning and he was talking about his parents happily farming and his contemporaries settling down in careers and child raising and he’s spent the past eight months wandering Europe and Latin America.
He’s looking forward to going home because he misses the freedom of New Zealand. He told me you can hunt freely in New Zealand’s open spaces and national parks. Indeed he says hunting is encouraged to reduce the out of control deer population in the parks. He was surprised to discover in the rest of the world you need licenses and permits to hunt and fish. We compared notes on how restricted public access to wilderness is in Latin America. Hikes in Colombian parks forbid dogs of course but also require guides and scheduling.
Travel teaches you to try to appreciate different cultures but for me it also gives me a greater appreciation of the good at home. The people we meet often asking I would consider settling here or there had I’ve never been tempted. Like Alex I like the freedom we have at home simply by ignoring or sidestepping convention. I look forward to summers in the mountains wild camping Colorado or Arizona and looking back remembering the mad moments on the road in South America.
There is much to enjoy and new places to see and weird animals to watch in South America and it’s a shame more people aren’t doing it I guess. Sooner or later, in a week maybe we will fire up the van and get back on the road.
