Wandering with purpose

Understanding myself and my needs more deeply as I travel has been both eye-opening and reassuring

It’s been a while

It turns out it’s much easier to write about travel before you actually travel. Or to understand your feelings and hopes in the anticipatory stages and then when the excitement gets underway that thinking and writing about it takes a back seat. For me at least.

So, apologies my faithful friends, for the delay in filling you in on my adventures. What’s been going on? I hear you ask.

And I will tell you, I have discovered something a little unexpected. I do not enjoy travel for the sake of travel. In fact, journeying from place to place to see the best of what’s there doesn’t do it for me. Or let me clarify. I actually love the journey. I will happily take a longer journey that is far less convenient and harder to undertake over the ease and speed of a flight. The physical act of travel I love. And in every place I have visited there has been a highlight, whether a tour or a meal or a natural wonder. Going from point A to point B to point C, though, is only sustainable for me for a period of time before I want something else. Something deeper.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

I used to characterise myself as someone who preferred to live somewhere than to travel. Similarly on this trip, I find that if I am in a place predominantly peopled by tourists and expats that I quickly get frustrated. What I want instead is to meet people from there and feel into how they live. That seems like a suitable purpose, and now I know purpose is essential for me to feel both connected and fulfilled. 

I remember travelling in South East Asia over a decade ago and how I would arrive in a town and go on a tour or to some museums and the whole thing could seem a bit arbitrary. Admittedly I did often enjoy the randomness of some of the museums I found myself in, but it could feel like I was doing things for the sake of it, to fill the day.

Being in nature in helped me to feel more connected. Finding my way to a park or gardens in a city, or walking by a river was always a source of joy, and of course being immersed in nature, particularly a forest or mountain landscape, had a deep pleasure all of its own. Maybe that is because I become more part of it, and it is the nature of passing through that I find challenging.

I was struggling to clarify what this period of travel was about, because it was serving a number of different purposes. A break from the trials of life over the past few years, a way to heal grief and social anxieties, and to hopefully find somewhere I wanted to live. But as I started my travels I was putting pressure on myself to find a solution to my housing situation, and it overtook my thoughts until I decided to just let myself be a tourist. The point when I started to really sense a solution, though, was when I decided to go to Dominical in Costa Rica to learn to surf. 

Me happy on the beach in Dominical

It was successful because I was there for three weeks, helping me to feel more settled, more part of things. I had a group of people at the surf camp who I connected to on a daily basis who gave me community and offered insights into this town and being from Costa Rica. And then I had a definite task to complete every day. Not only a schedule but also a thing to work towards and achieve, improving slowly each day and knowing there was a reason to be there. The fact that it was happening within a natural environment was an added bonus. It gave me the same feelings I had when I went hiking in the Peruvian Andes where purpose and environment came together to give me a almost spiritual experience leading me to feel at ease in myself. 

Going from a place where I had purpose to a place to a place of predominantly seeing things, admittedly incredibly beautiful things in Bocas del Toro in Panama, has lead me to book a stay at another surf camp on the Pacific coast and I already feel more settled about that.

I always found it a little unusual how much I like the journey and sometimes felt less connected in the days I spend in a place, but a journey serves a purpose, it is also something to be figured out, something to focus on. Arriving somewhere and knowing how to fill the time can feel overwhelming. I always thought I was very easy going and would happily let others decide what we’d do, but I think I actually find that decision making process and taking the steps to making those things happen challenging. But knowing I am in a place to do a certain thing, whatever that might be, feels far more reassuring. So with that knowledge I will go forward in my travels with set things to do, which as much as I have fallen in love with surfing, might become what I focus on. 

And in doing that I might find a solution to one of my other quests, because as Jordy, the co-owner of the surf school told me, all surfers are looking for their family. I sense that I might just have found one of mine.