thoughts of a slightly smelly traveller

In my world of privileged university students, it's a right of passage. Like frosh and reading week road trips, it's part of the university experience. There's something about living out of an over-sized backpack, sharing bunks with strangers and showering in plastic flip flops -- a last rebellion against impending yuppiehood, perhaps?

This kind of traveling has its own rules, none of which are conventional. Take personal hygiene, or even cleanliness in general. Grammar says that a statement like "the clean shirt" is absolute. Backpackers know it is absolutely relative -- and at this point in my travels, frankly irrelevant. Showers occur only when several stars align: the bathroom is free, the hot water pressure is above trickle level, and you managed not to leave your soap in the last hostel. Even the most attentive preener slackens her standards. Untweezed eyebrows are less offensive; the solution for greasy hair is not shampoo but a hair-tie; the line between pajamas and street clothes begins to blur.

The magical thing about hostel life is that none of this skimping on soaping adversely affects interpersonal relations. At our hostel in Rio we'd all sit around after a day at the beach, still scantily clad and sandy, sipping Steve's happy hour caipirinhas or his even meaner mojito. Stevie's an Aussie -- been bouncing around latin america since finishing his degree in Psych 2 years ago. He's working at the hostel and learning Portuguese, thinking about heading home some time soon but no concrete plans. There were a lot of people on extended latin american adventures -- made our 8 days look pretty paltry. We made a lot of fast and good friends. Chris, our crazy danish roommate (who, despite speaking no Portuguese, boasts a vast collection of Brazilian girls' numbers scribbled on napkins and receipts) was rounding out a year exchange in Buenos Aires, where he purportedly researched for his masters' thesis. Barbara (aka Barbie) who was taking a break from her masters' internship with the German embassy in Bs As, proved that Germans are not all 'frios'. And of course, Capitanito, the Ecuadorian leader of our pack, who traveled 10 days by bus from Ecuador to spend a week in Rio. There were the Brazilians, too -- Rafa who asked me for a kiss everyday, Pedro whose mother is Portuguese, Leo who set me straight on politics, tropical fruit, and Brazilian musical genres. There were the three extremely loud Argentina brothers, with all the flirtiness, culinary talent, and boisterousness you would expect of Italian descendants. There was a cartload of Brits, a few Aussies, a few other latin americans. We were the only Canadians (there was one dude from the US but he slept all day) and I was the only Portuguese.

Life's a big question mark for me after graduation. There's a lot of the world to see and I haven't figured out which corner I'd like to start in. I don't know why I'm so addicted to picking up and starting from nothing all the time. I'm not even sure what I take from all these places I visit or the people I meet. But it was pretty cool to indulge my addiction with so many neat people these past couple weeks...

FOOD FOR THOUGHT. Pablo Neruda (Chilean poet, Nobel prize winner, diplomat, politician, traveler, etc.) writes:
"Pienso que el hombre debe vivir en su patria y creo que el desarraigo del los seres humanos es una frustración que de alguna manera u otra entorpece la claridad del alma. Yo no puedo vivir sino en mi propria tierra, no puedo vivir sin poner los pies, las manos, y el oído en ella, sin sentir la circulación de sus aguas y de sus sombras, sin sentir cómo mis raíces buscan en su légamo las sustancias maternas..."