Journal
Hostel Life
My last two weeks in Rio were a mix of emotions, sad to be leaving yet excited to be returning home. But after almost five months my enthusiasm for going through the meeting routine with new travellers had diminished. “Where are you from?”, “Where have you just been?” Where are you going next?” etc. Hostels become an integral part of your daily life on this kind of trip, and who you meet there will often dictate how much fun you have.
Everyday in the hostel a string of new eager arrivals would assemble at the hostel bar. Its funny how it works. The day you arrive in a hostel you look around and see groups of young people laughing and swapping stories. and it can be intimidating because you know no one and can feel isolated. But after a day or two, you become part of that posse. How fast you feel at home can depend on your own confidence to sit down and just say Hi, but also the hostel in question. In Buenos Aires I stayed at the infamous “MillHouse”. It is impossible not to make friends there. Within minutes of arriving I was booked in a group to see a football game. There were daily activities. And the main living area had a pool table, kitchen, stereo, TV, internet and notice board. Everybody mingled with everybody. In fact everybody slept with everybody. There were 150 guests, all up for it. If it wasn’t going on in the dorms, the third floor shower was popular. I should point out that Im passing on observations rather than my own experiences!
And when you arrive at these types of hostels there’s always one or two individuals who seem to know everybody and know the scene a bit better. The staff call them by their first names… its simply a matter of being there longer. In Millhouse, I realized, after ten days, that I had become that person. Id gone from the shy traveller who played pool to try and make conversation, to being head entertainment officer… time to leave!
Another misconception, of mine at least, was that backpackers live out of a bag of dirty clothes. In fact every single hostel I stayed at had a laundry system….you put your clothes in a bag, hand them in at reception. And a few hours later they give you a flatpack of folded fresh clothes. I spent 4.5 months smelling just dandy. And the hostels tend to be clean. In one, “Botella de leche” (the MilkBottle) in Costa Rica, you could have eaten your food off the floor…
Another daily routine is the swapping of email addresses. Sometimes because you want to but often because its easier to. When somebody leaves, who you’ve spent time hanging out with, it’s a nicer etiquette to swap email addresses than to say “See you, have a nice life”. But it can be silly too because you meet so many people. Anyone I genuinely wanted to see again made my address book (about ten people in four and a half months). The others I put in my pocket out of politeness. By the time I hit Rio, about five of those ten were in Rio too which made for a fun two weeks.
I took the view that to know Rio is to know its beaches, just like in Buenos Aires it was to know its nightclubs. And it was fun. But on the 12th May it was time to return. But not before waking up at 5am to photograph the fishermen of Copacabana beach setting into the morning surf. As I took a taxi to the airport and night switched on the lights of Rio, I looked back at my adventure. I thought about how the trip had gone by in a blur. It seemed like only yesterday that I set out to Mexico…
I flew Air France to Paris for a connecting flight to London and in no time was walking through Paddington station. I suddenly found myself being overtaken. Everybody seemed to be in a rush somewhere. I stopped and bought the Evening Standard… “London House prices to crash”. Have I been away at all? I thought. As I exited Elephant & Castle tube it struck me how well paved the roads were. The cars actually respected the colour of the lights. People were driving inside the lanes. Later that day I hit Tesco. Gillette has stopped selling blades for the Contour Plus. I guess I’ll have to succumb to the Mach 3 Turbo. I walked home and opened my mail.
And so my Sabbatical ended. I’ll never forget my trip to South America and the people I met. The experience will live with me forever.
Your traveling friend…
Flavriguez