North or south? Chicken bus or first-class? Road made dangerous by landslide or the long way around? These are some of the thoughts that woke me up way too early this morning.
So, my latest foot-loose and fancy-free travel plan was this: Come north to Alta Verapaz for a long weekend and hang out at Semuc Champey (done), then head back (south 10-12 hours by bus) to El Salvador to help Manolo with his tour company in Tabuca for a week, and then head back north to Mexico (2 days at least, or a day and an overnight bus--travel warnings be damned!) to meet Kater in Oaxaca for a week, then come back south to Alta Verapaz (home!) to meet Tracy for another week of Spanish school before holy week.
Reading it now it seems obvious that the plan is a little bit flawed. Because traveling by bus on your own, while sometimes an adventure, is also tiring, long, hot and slow, and the movies they show have bad sound quality and are usually crap.
So this morning I woke up at 6, packed, bought a ticket for Guatemala City, boarded the bus, got five blocks out of Coban and--asked the driver to stop so I could get off. Walked back into town. I just wasn't ready to set out on that journey by myself, tired and unsettled, and feeling ill-at-ease about the distances I was about to try and cover and about the destinations I was trying to squeeze in.
I remember the excitement I felt when I was still a relatively new manager at the Fraser Valley Library and a staff member came to me with a question and I made a decision, told the person what to do, and--they went and did it. And amazingly, it worked. I remember feeling so empowered, but also surprised that I was capable of such rapid decision-making and communicating of said made decision.
So here I am, supposedly older and wiser and traveling the world, and even though I have no where important to go and nothing to in particular that I need to do, I find the decisions I have to make at times overwhelming and even immobilizing. Every day is filled with small but demanding decisions that I took for granted at home--what to eat and where to buy it and how to prepare it, how to get from one place to another, where to sleep for the night, how to best pack wet clothing without soaking everything else in my bag, and how to make myself understood when I am trying to explain why I want a refund for a perfectly good bus ticket that I decided not to use.
I think the hardest thing about decisions is that, once one is made, it closes the doors of possibilities that the other options offered. I've never been especially good at letting go of those missed opportunities, those alternate realities and what they may have meant if I had just made a different decision.
So I am trying to keep my mind off of where I would be now if I had stayed on that bus this morning. I am trying to be OK with just laying low for now, seeing what happens, and not trying to travel 1500 miles by bus across three different countries in the next seven days.
But who knows what questions will wake me up tomorrow.
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3 comments:
I completely sympathize with you on the questions that arise after decisions are made. The only thing that keeps me sane is trusting in myself. I am sure you will find where you are supposed to be, and more importantly, appreciate and enjoy where you are. We miss you on the field, but I hope you are having an amazing time!
Traveling alone is definitely a test. You're the only one looking out for you. I think you have more unique, adventurous stories to tell at the end of the day but I'm always a tad jealous of those cute adventurous couples. Sometimes it would be nice to have someone help you make those decisions, hold your bags while you pee, and puzzle over maps and language guides together etc. Hang in there! Trust your gut! You are amazing!
That does seem like a lot of traveling in a short time. Enjoy the place you are and look foward to the places you're going. But don't regret bailing on something at the last minute, that is your gut telling you what to do so.
What Crystal said became true for me when I was in Thialand well most of it. In Oz traveling alone was fun and easy. But as I got older and set in my ways it was harder to find people to really connect with while traveling. Decisions are what you make them. For me some to most of them come with a sense of accomplishment especially when traveling. This thing needs a spell check:0
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