Americans are traveling wrong
Notes from a French man in Nicaragua on why Americans are doing it all wrong
I’m taking you all back to 2017. 25 year old Steph is sitting around a table in the common area of a hostel on Isla de Ometepe with a bunch of other travelers from around the world.
We are drinking some cheap Nicaraguan beer, the Europeans are smoking, and there is this seamless camaraderie that happens among travelers at hostels. I’m nervously thinking about how stupid I must be to have signed up to hike a volcano in the morning. Everyone immediately becomes friends, and you somehow end up telling the person you met 20 minutes ago some of your deepest fears.
I was chatting with a French man and and another Canadian man about why I was in Nicaragua. I was spending 2 months volunteering with a food rescue organization in the capital of Nicaragua, Managua, and spending my weekends exploring every nook and cranny of the country. I started to explain the work I was doing in Managua, and the French man goes, “Wait, you came here to work?”
To me, it was a no brainer to spend some time learning more about global health and international development before I started grad school to get my Masters in Public Health. My travel to Nicaragua had a purpose—it was a resume booster.
The French man said something to the effect of, “Why isn’t traveling here just to see the country enough? You Americans always need to have a reason to go somewhere… why isn’t the fact that you want to go there good enough?”
He said this without malice, more of an observation—one that I clearly still think about nearly 7 years later.
He was traveling throughout Central and South America for an indefinite amount of time, essentially until his money ran out. I think he had already been on the road for 7 months at that point.
I think about this conversation a lot because I think it’s true. Several other countries build in gap years for young adults, where high school graduates will go off for a year or more to just see the world, gain insight into themselves, and learn about other countries.
Why don’t we do that in the U.S.? There is such an urgency to ‘get your life started’ and go immediately from college to a 9-5 job, which has clearly led to cases of severe burnout (at least in the case of the millenials that I know).
I keep thinking about this conversation with this random travel friend because his round the world trip is something I would love to do—something that also seems so impossibly crazy as a 32 year old woman with student loans, a dog, and a full time job.
He’s right, you know. Why do we always have to turn travel into something else? Why not just enjoy it for what it is, see the places for what they are, and be in the moment. At least this is something that I need to work on.
I probably don’t need to say this, but those two months in Nicaragua gave me something I could have never anticipated. I truly fell in love with that country, not only just for it’s beautiful landscapes, but for the people, and for what it gave to me. I learned how to pass time quietly without netflix or a ton of friends. I learned how to stop being embarrassed to stumble through Spanish to communicate with my host family and check my ego at the door when it came to my host mom correcting my grammar. I learned how to wing a weekend trip, do things on the fly, and not worry (too much) about the outcome.
I made friends with and danced with people from every corner of the world, snorkeled with turtles in the carribean, drank out of a fresh coconut, hiked a random volcano, sweated my a$$ off going to sleep every single night, drank all the homemade fruit juices out of plastic bags, dodged roosters on my daily commute to the market or the office, ate the freshest corn tortillas I’ve ever had, and hugged my host mom as much as I possibly could.
It was such an intense period of growth and learning and LIVING and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Nice and thoughtful post. I agree with you and that French man wholeheartedly.
This is lovely.
You struck a nerve that runs across most of the United States, Stephanie.
The need for ulterior purpose in activities runs deep through American culture and mores.
It makes me wonder if there's some underlying guilt in doing something just because you want to.
The wisdom of that French tourist is deep.
Now you need to do a follow article on American tourusts being jerks overseas!😆😅