In November 2023, I crossed the land border between Nepal and India, which marked my second entrance into the country that has changed my life. My first time in India, in September 2023, was brief and painful, marked by a whole host of issues including Delhi Belly, bedbugs, and a near kidnapping, but this time I knew it would be different. I hitch-hiked and took trains through Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan with friends, and then decided it was time to do something a bit different, a bit radical. This piece reflects on the solo journey I undertook afterwards:
Bleary-eyed and desperate for a place to charge my phone, I collapsed into a chair at Indian Coffee House, Indore, and took out an old paper map from my bag. It was early in the morning and I’d spent the entire night at the very back of a sleeper bus, flying around my cabin every time the driver went over a slight bump or took a corner at 100 mph. After travelling by train through Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan I’d seriously forgotten how terrifying Indian driving was, and now I was just happy to still be standing.
I squinted at the map, a map of India, which I’d found in an old bookstore in Udaipur. The distance between the small ‘X’ I marked in Indore and my next destination, Goa, was intimidatingly large. A vast chunk of the unknown stood between me and my cliche backpacker Christmas plans, areas which even my Lonely Planet couldn’t tell me about. But I had two weeks to kill, and I’d be damned if I was going to take the easy route south.
In my journal I’d started calling it ‘The Great Solo Indian Odyssey’, this insane plan of mine. I intended to spend two weeks solely travelling by local bus, taking a slow and obscure route through places I’d never heard of before, just to see what happened. And obviously, I was completely alone.
A confused woman came up to me in the coffee house as I tugged my masala dosa apart with my hands. “Are you a journalist?” she asked, peeking at my map and journal and the scarf covering my hair. I replied no, just a tourist. “I’ve never seen a white woman here before.”
I did not yet know, but this was to become the statement of my journey: I was to be the first white woman, the first white person, period, most people would see in their lives, traipsing around their hometown lugging an oversized backpack with a battered yoga mat strapped to the side. And while this would have its thrills, obviously it would come with challenges.
I was definitely not in a hedonistic bid to prove myself as a danger-loving solo female traveller, but more than anything, I just wanted to know some sides of India other people may not. I had spent the previous month battling insane culture shock, Delhi belly, and moments of overwhelming confusion through my travels, only to come out the other side bearing my entire soul to this country. Mother India is a driving force; she pushes you past your limits, guides you down perfectly designed paths, and I was ready to completely let go.
And so I got on a bus. I left Indore behind, the last semi-secure city I’d see in a while – a nice, clean place, I’d decided – and before I knew it I was hurling down highways, passing heat-soaked barren flatlands, in what I can only describe as a huge tin can death-trap with the dashboard missing. Dust flew around the bus like stars in a washing machine sky, and the driver, a short barefooted man perched on the raised seat, slammed his feet on exposed pedals, holding the shaking handbrake as if it would snap off at any moment.
At the next town he accidentally drove into the back of a truck, smashing the entire front windscreen. The men all filtered off the bus to argue and discuss a solution. Heads were nodded, glass was cleared from the floor of the bus and anything remaining of the windscreen, and then we began again, flying through India now missing two significant parts of the bus. Only the frame was left, and that too was rattling dangerously. And yet I arrived at my next destination, Maheshwar, perfectly on time. I later learned a term in Hindi for this madness: jugaad. It means a ‘quick fix’, to make something work even though it technically shouldn’t, to improvise and adapt. Understandably, jugaad is a very fond way to describe India.
The next two weeks unravelled in the same comically confusing way, and I learned a hell of a lot – about myself and about India. Mostly, I was struck time and time again by the kindness of strangers; people I met in obscure places who wanted to help me out of a tricky situation or enjoyed speaking English with me. In between my moments of being intensely alone, these people provided connection and warmth, and they reminded me that you are never truly solitary when you move through the world with an open heart.
However, I also learned a lot about safety, and mostly through my own mistakes. The route I took gravitated around domestic tourist sites – from Maheshwar to the Ellora Caves to Bijapur and then to Hampi – but I also spent a lot of time in strange towns in between, mostly arriving in the dark or taking a government night bus to another unknown place. These were my scariest moments of the trip, and I was humbly reminded – and frustrated – at how vulnerable I was as a woman travelling alone. I learned to thoroughly research or ask about the next town I would arrive at, to triple-confirm my place in a hotel for the night (to avoid walking around at midnight with no place to stay, which was definitely not my favourite experience), and to generally just avoid local night buses where possible.
No, I had not completed a daredevil odyssey that would make headlines, but I’d pushed myself further than I’d gone before and been sincerely rewarded. I fell utterly in love with Central India, with the process, with the fields slowly turning from yellow to green as I watched from a window, with the tongue and dialect changing in each state I moved through. I had empowering conversations with local women, I took (and equally refused) many selfies with stricken domestic tourists, and I was astounded at how chaotic yet effective the Indian public transport system is.
By the time I reached the safety of Hampi, where an old friend waited for me with open arms, I didn’t quite know how to feel. I’d travelled over 1000 kilometres south, through Madhya Pradesh, Maharasthra and Karnataka, alone and without seeing another white person. Now it was time to step back onto the tourist trail and make the last journey to Goa. Goa, where many things awaited me, like comfort, familiarity and a lot of beer. Goa was the yin to this yang, this wild and terrifying unbeaten path I was treading, and the two together were in perfect balance.
So, along with my friend, I decided to hitch-hike west and say sayonara to middle India in another bold move, knowing that the road would always be there to welcome me back.
I have just spent a few months – very unintentionally, but very blissfully – in Kerala, South India. I settled myself in Varkala, a small surf town near the capital of Trivandrum, and found myself in a beautiful community of Indian surfers. We talked of waves, of social projects to come, of love and joy, and we shared everything. It is a community strung together by unconditional kindness, and somewhere I will be returning to very soon.
So, although I don’t pride myself on my poetry, I wrote a poem about my friends and community in Varkala. It is called ‘The Dance of Everyone’s Everything’:
People of the ocean, gifts from the ocean.
Sharing wounds, waves – it’s everyone’s everything here anyway.
Howls into the night, into the young morning sun, we watch the horizon all day.
Go on flow, drink chai in the gasping heat of day or in the heavy light of dusk,
let’s share a cigarette, have you got wax?
It’s everyone’s everything here anyway.
And I don’t know what I did in my smal life to deserve this love but it must have been good.
We dance to the music like it belongs to us all, the same song filling our bones.
It is not inward but outward!
And we dance to the pure joy of the sun, just like Rumi told us to.
Dance on waves. Read the newspaper, touch only the top rim of the glass so you don’t burn your hand.
Sip the sugar, the heat.
The sweat never leaves, it is a companion on our brow all night.
We dance by the moon and then by the sun.
A porotta torn apart by rough hands, flesh grazed on sand and bleeding,
I had to admit to myself, so far the sofa surfing was working great, and I really wasn’t feeling as awful about London as I had last year. I’d been spending my time after lectures investigating anarchist book shops, rediscovering my uni campus, getting catch-up beers with old friends and generally dodging actually living in London for a more chaotic, yet happier lifestyle. But after two weeks of sofa surfing there was still one thing missing that I found in abundance at home: The slow, simple, calm pace of life outside of the city, the happiness, the hippie-ness. I still needed to lighten up a bit, to have a laugh and be friendly and not get wrapped up in the London habit of everyone marching everywhere, angrily, all the time, without seeing how lovely life can be. It’s far too easy to ignore the outside world, the pollution and noise and traffic and weather and general misery, but in doing so I’ve always felt that Londoners can only perpetuate an individualistic and, quite frankly, very lonely city life.
I needed a true hippie saviour, someone who could really make me re-envision the way I see London, someone to walk these streets with me and paint the city with colour rather than dull and isolating shades of beige. And, extremely luckily for me, I’d already met the perfect person for the job.
I first saw Craig, the hitch-hiking Kiwi, before uni even started for the year on a solo car-camping trip I took to the Brecon Beacons and Gower coast in Wales. He’d just come down from the Rainbow Gathering happening in the hills next to Hay-on-Wye, England and Wales’ oldest book town, and by fluke I’d decided to pay it a visit on the same day as per a recommendation from a nice Belgian couple I’d car-camped next to. I took the opportunity of being in civilisation to buy a can opener for my tin of tuna, an apparently essential ingredient for the makeshift pasta I had fashioned on my camping stove crouched on the side of the road, and sat on a bench nearby to open it. A man with long dark hair, bare feet and a wooden staff approached me timidly and asked if I knew where the nearest shop was, because he fancied a tuna sandwich. Up until this point I was admittedly trying to ward him away, but as I cut my finger on the tuna tin I looked up at his comment and laughed. “I don’t have bread but if you want tuna, you’re in luck,” I said, and we shared the tin together on the bench.
He was trying to hitch-hike back to Croydon for an adventure post-Rainbow Gathering, but after hanging out in Hay-on-Wye for a few hours, meeting some old hippies and looking at a lot of old books, he ended up sticking with me as I drove further into the national park instead. We spent a bizarrely beautiful few days camping and exploring the Brecons together, hiking barefoot, drinking weird cider and washing naked in rivers. Picking up a hippie man from New Zealand in Wales was up there with one of the last things I’d expect myself to be doing, but probably because it was so strange, it was a lovely turn of events for my trip. The last time I’d seen him we’d driven back to Bournemouth together, where he caught a bus back up to his flat in London. I promised we’d see each other again soon and proceeded to go about ‘normal’ life, not really thinking that there could be an opportunity to hang out with him in a starkly different environment to the rolling hills, nosey sheep and stunning sunsets of the Brecon Beacons.
Fast forward a month, and I’m staring at my list of sofa-surfing names trying to summon up the courage to call on someone else for my third stay in London. I’m also craving some light-hearted fun, some barefoot rambles and socially unacceptable antics, which is when I think of Craig the hitch-hiking Kiwi. Back in Wales he’d asked me to write my number on a scrap of paper the old-fashioned way, keeping it as a souvenir of sorts, and texted asking if I was available to kidnap a hippie at some point soon. I look at that text conversation now and smile, before asking if he has a sofa and some time to spend with me in London. His flat is tiny, he says, and very limited in the way of furniture, but he has an idea. It’s a surprise. I hope by ‘surprise’ he means a sofa bed off Facebook Marketplace, but I don’t ask. It’s settled; I’ll come up in a week.
I’m sitting outside my uni building, smoking a cigarette, reading my book. I’m perched on a wall so I can watch everything, wearing my bright yellow flower jeans, feeling an ever-so-slightly nervous flutter in my stomach and throat. Considering Craig is pretty much a stranger, a man I met in the Welsh hills not even a month ago, it seems weird to be meeting him again, and weirder that we’ve now swapped scenery entirely to the Big Smoke. Waiting for two minutes feels eternal, but when I spot a hairy bare-footed man walking towards me I smile, and the worry dissipates. He joins me on the wall, asks what I’m reading, we giggle a lot.
“It’s really amazing to see you,” he says for the fifth time. “This is so weird.”
Perhaps even weirder than everything is Craig’s history with Hare Krishna, the religious and spiritual movement whose volunteers give out free food next to SOAS and IOE every day at lunchtime. They roll up with a painted cart and a box of out-of-date bananas and apples to give out, followed by orange and white-clad monks who hand out copies of the Bhagavad-gita. I’ve been a proud Hare Krishna-goer since moving to London in 2019, so when I mentioned it to Craig in Wales, thinking a hippie might’ve heard of the movement, you can imagine my surprise when he told me he’d lived with the Krishna volunteers for two years. Two years. In an underground ‘castle’ underneath Holborn viaduct, in the middle of London. You literally couldn’t make it up. I still didn’t fully believe him, that is until we walk up to the cart barefoot in London after my lecture and say hi to the volunteers. Craig chats with them; I let it sink in that he wasn’t lying about living in an underground fortress outside the margin of the law with a load of spiritual food-making Krishna followers.
We’ve sworn an oath of bare feet, so as we walk towards Regent’s Park, making use of the sunshine, I pinch my fingers in the Uggs that I usually wear (to emulate the feeling of being barefoot, and no I will not be apologising) and swing them around while staring at my white-ish toes. I’m instantly grateful for Craig’s company. He breaks out into a run unexpectedly, flailing his arms and shrieking in the midst of a lot of solemn and serious Londoners crossing the road, and I let out a laugh as I run to catch up. Don’t take yourself so seriously, lighten up! Life is too short. Far too short to care. So I decide not to. And suddenly, a little bit of weight is lifted off this city’s shoulders, the sun spreads a little further, my lungs breathe a little deeper, and there is more space to play with. More fun, more happiness, more life.
We lounge in the grass of Regent’s Park, turning our faces and closed eyelids to the sun, digging into the dirt with our toes. I read him something I wrote a few days ago, when I was hanging out with my friend Dori after a lecture. As I read I enact the scene, twirling and miming and laughing in the autumn sun, orange leaves falling all around us, Mother Nature rewards my eternally bare feet with incredible textures and senses. He tells me it’s beautiful writing, I blush and realise I’ve not really ever read something of mine aloud to someone before. We keep walking towards Camden, get a pint in the pub I used to work at, I say hi to the security guard I used to make coffees for every day just to make him smile. Next, a hippie Kurdish bar with amazing food. Then a thrift shop; we try on stupid hats and blazers and laugh. Then home, and I’m excited to see what Craig’s ‘surprise’ for me is.
Above the Croydon high street shops, an old, crumbling, slightly prison-looking housing association looms, and Craig guides me up the stairs. His living room makes me burst out laughing and I realise why he told me about the unconventional furniture situation in the flat. There is a stool, a worn-out pink armchair that sits about an inch above the floor and looks like it’s about to collapse, and a broken gaming chair, on top of which perches a tiny TV. Aside from that, and a garden table pushed back to the wall, the space is comically empty. It has the impersonal plastic-coated floors and ceilings of a classroom, and the walls are painted a slightly sickly yellow. His flatmate walks in, a loud and strange Irish man with a stammer and probable autism, and I introduce myself. We walk down the corridor to Craig’s room, and I notice that he no longer has a lock on the door, and instead has stuffed the hole with tissue. I laugh again, and ask where this mysterious sofa is. He points to a boxed up airbed in the corner of the room excitedly, and I silently thank God that I’m not taking the floor.
Craig is in a bit of rut, you could say, and desperately wants to get out of London. He’s been struggling with money for years so hasn’t really been able to leave, and for some reason ended up very much stuck in a housing association flat in Croydon before seemingly giving up. Behind his happy hippie camaraderie is someone quite lost within themselves, and I can sense it. He went to Wales to detach from London for a while, and now is much more motivated to get out of the city, do a Workaway somewhere and get back on his feet. It’s happening soon, he promises me. Maybe Morocco. We talk a lot about our lives, about how weirdly ours have intersected with each other, and I say goodbye the next day promising to come back.
I do. A few times. We go to my favourite anarchist bookshop / bike workshop, share a bottle of wine at the Barbican at night, make a bed out of the comfy sofas on the top floor of Waterstones, write weird quotes on walls in Sharpie, all the while being completely barefoot. Being able to place Craig in my bizarre little London life has brightened the edges a lot for me, and now I see the whole picture quite differently. It is full of a lot more laughter than I thought possible, it is not as serious and the city is much more peaceful. I start speaking to the Krishna volunteers every day as we hang around to eat our lunch with them, I watch funny characters go about their daily lives, I smile into the sun. It’s November when we say goodbye for the foreseeable, and Craig leaves for Morocco to teach English and hitch-hike and start over. I’m proud of him, I wish I could join, but there are things to do here. He gives me his wooden staff to look after while he’s gone.
I pull my car into the drive at home, Bournemouth, and open the front door to greet my mum. I haven’t seen her much since I went to London and started my sofa surfing project, and I want to tell her about the impromptu night out I’d had with Zsofi and some old uni mates in a Polish restaurant, which ended in me getting wasted on the train home and walking for half an hour at 2am back in Bournemouth without shoes on. But she asks me about my day at work, where I’m a relief support worker for a housing association, and instead I find myself moaning about having to report a client missing today – a pretty regular occurrence at work. For the next hour I absent-mindedly switch from Bournemouth stories to London ones, mentioning the potential for surf tomorrow in between remarking at the extensive selection of second-hand bookshops I’ve yet to try in the city. My mum smirks at me while I speak.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“You’re living a double life,” she says, bemused. “Surfing support worker in Bournemouth half the week, bookworm vegan student in London the other half.”
I laugh back at her comment, and then can’t get it out of my head for a while. One blink and I’m writing peace signs on lamp posts in the Big Smoke, quietly people-watching as life all around me flourishes, and in the next flutter of eyelids I’m rushing to get my wetsuit on and go for a surf before it gets dark, having spent all day walking my dog and meditating. 2 hours on the train and I’m trying as hard as I can to refrain spending money in Pret, and another 2 hours later I’m sitting at a desk writing handover notes at work. In London I hang around uni bars to study and snag free drinking water before they get annoyed and kick me out, in Bournemouth I sprint out of the door to make it to my yoga class in time.
My double life. It’s working pretty well for me so far.
Before I know it, I’m back on a train, back watching Bournemouth disappear, back on the commuter route to London. This time, though, I’m ill, so socialising with strangers and sleeping on sofas is sounding less appealing. If I lived in London I could skip a lecture or two, rest until I felt better, go to my next one in the afternoon. But with this lifestyle, I commit or I don’t – if I don’t go now, I’ll miss the next two days’ worth of content. And I’m not one for quitting early, so I stock up on painkillers, haul myself around the city, and warn my next host that I’m not down for a big one tonight.
Host Number Two is a very good friend of mine, who I’ve known for years and have always adored. His name is Theo and he goes to RVC, making him a) much more dedicated than I could ever be, and b) a sucker for the uni sports night. Luckily, said sports night was yesterday, so he, along with his whole flat of football guys, is nursing a hangover and planning on a quiet night in watching Game of Thrones and making risotto. I take a Thameslink to Potters Bar, where Theo is studying at RVC’s second campus, and pick up a 12 pack of beers as well as a cheesecake from Sainsbury’s to say thanks for his hospitality. Expecting to be positively intimidated by staying at a house full of testosterone-filled football lads for the night, I’m pleasantly surprised at their wholesomeness after the antics last night, and start catching up with Theo while he introduces everyone and tends to his prized risotto cooking on the stove.
The house is busy tonight; one flatmate has his girlfriend over, and another friend is there staying for a few nights. We laugh over football sports night rituals, chat about our uni courses, and I repeatedly try and wrap my head around the vet procedures the boys all have to master to pass their never-ending exams. If anything, it feels like a mass sleepover, and while I get my sleeping bag and travel pillow out of the obnoxiously large backpack I have to carry around London before getting to my bed for the night, Theo sets up the TV for our Game of Thrones session. One flatmate has only just started watching and doesn’t quite understand why we’re all obsessed with it, much less what on earth is happening in the lengthy confusing episodes. We spend the hour trying to explain the plot without letting anything slip, which is pretty unsuccessful. When it’s over we all prepare for an early night, with Theo and another flatmate sneaking off to complete their nightly crossword puzzle – “We have to do it every night, Cerys, it’s important” – and the friend who is sleeping over blowing up his air bed next to my sofa abode. I giggle to myself as I watch it all unfold, enjoying the wholesome turn of events.
I wake up feeling rested and slightly regretful about having to run off back to London and then Bournemouth so quickly. Theo’s flat ask me to come back soon and wish me luck with my uni / sofa surfing experiment, and then I’m back on the Thameslink and off to my classes for the day.
Squeezing a sleeping bag, travel pillow, towel, toiletry bag and change of clothes in a modest 40 litre backpack is no massive feat for me, given my extensive experience backpacking and painful practice having to pack up and dash out of the hostel door within minutes to catch my bus on time. But something I’ve never done carrying a backpack before is walking around central London and rocking up to lectures with it on. The first few times were hilarious, a novelty, something I would do only half-subtly while sniggering at myself and ducking into a seat at the back of my lecture hall, so no one would get annoyed at me unloading all the goods on my back. But this time round it is getting more embarrassing, and while I heartily try to keep my chin up and stop the flush coming from my cheeks as I cause a commotion in the seminar room trying to find somewhere to put my stuff, it’s hard to be that confident about it. I feel the need to sheepishly explain to my classmates my predicament, and am met with anything from wild stares to comments of support.
On the streets though, it’s worse. I find myself being shunned, or at least that’s what it feels like to me, by people who would usually not even notice me. The simple adornment of a backpack has suddenly shone an uncomfortable spotlight on me, and I start getting lightly shoved, glared at or murmured about as I walk the streets. It’s a bizarre feeling, accompanied by a wave of empathy and appreciation for the homeless, the hidden, those on the margins of urban life who must experience this every day without the safety of a home to return to at the end of the experiment. Yes, in London I may be temporarily homeless, and a lot of the time I really do feel the vulnerability of it too, but I’ve never been looked at like this; the privilege is a wake-up call. On the way to a lecture a man in a suit holding a disposable coffee cup jogs up to my stride and asks me if I’m camping. “I’ve just never seen someone like you walking around London with a big backpack before,” he says, and I laugh in annoyance. I make an attempt at explaining myself and then decide that life is too short to listen to businessmen from Essex, and swiftly take a turn into my uni building.
At lunch I’m in the Russell Square Tesco and, as if by an irrational impulse, I pick up two pastries instead of one. I’m unsure what I’ll do with it until I pay, leave the shop, and stand above the homeless woman who sometimes sits outside begging. I offer the pastry to her and she takes it quietly, and then without thinking I offer her the pasta I’ve just bought. She refuses, she doesn’t like the sauce, so I walk back towards Russell Square park and find another homeless man sitting by the gates, who is usually camped out there. I wordlessly give him my other pastry and pot of fruit, and he thanks me with a huge gappy smile. I’m not quite sure when I decided to become a serial Tesco philanthropist, but doing it feels right, so I decide to do it more often. Those who are so often ignored or looked down upon can be great conversation, it turns out, and funnily enough they are incredibly ordinary human beings with flaws and loves and laughs too.
Funnily enough, all my big stupid life adventures seem to begin in the rain. I’m counting this London sofa-surfing project as a ‘big stupid life adventure’ more to make me feel a teeny bit more optimistic about having to finish my university degree, which quite honestly, I don’t want much anymore. But I’ve come too far to quit, so now I’m here, on a train to London Waterloo after a year’s sabbatical away from this dreaded city, watching the rain streak diagonally down windows. Maybe there’s something symbolic about rain on Day One of my journeys. Something about rain clearing the air, making way for new growth, new life, prosperity and opportunity.
I’m not so sure.
I could feel the spirituality seep out of my body the minute I woke up, in a constant grumbly rush to get to the train station on time and dodge the rain. Everything annoyed me, from my dad harmlessly forgetting to pour me a cup of coffee to my raincoat being slightly harder to squeeze into my backpack than expected. I had this terrifying urge to scream, this all-encompassing anger, until I took a seat on the train and accepted the inevitable. This was London entering my system again, the impatience, bitterness, stress, and it was going to be quite the mission to suppress it, to focus instead on the hippie-like positivity I’d perfected over the last year.
At least, that’s what I thought. As if on cue, the rain cleared, the world seemed a bit more beautiful, and I rolled into Waterloo Station with a thrilling sense of anticipation in my bones. As if by reflex, I swiftly moved past dawdling people milling onto the platform and down the escalator to the Underground, didn’t even need to think about getting to the Northern line and was instead guided my by ever-intuitive feet, and slid into the carriage knowing I’d positioned myself exactly where the exit was on the other side. The body remembers everything, and it seems even a year’s worth of insane travel-filled memories wasn’t enough to make my brain forget London. I laughed to myself on the Tube, confused at the ease of it all. My return.
London is an interesting place for me. I was born here, lived in NW6 until I was six, and moved here again at the naive, fresh and optimistic age of 18, ready to inhabit MY city again, make it my home. And for two years it was. I fell in love, with the hustle and bustle, with the opportunity and confusion and chaos and sheer life that London gives you. I was in love with having uni, friends, job, flat, boyfriend, the ‘real’ London life success. In love with house parties and jazz nights and book stores and thrifting. In love with the thousand different worlds that all exist inside this one city. It’s always been beautiful to me, London has always been home. But just because it’s ‘home’ doesn’t mean it’s not hard.
London is also isolating, cold, rainy, abrupt, brutal and uncaring. It’s unfriendly and aggravating, depressing and drowning. It went wrong in the end, with friends, job, uni, boyfriend, flat, everything – I was unlucky and foolish, or naive and stupid, take your pick – but whatever it was, London became a nasty place for me, and I had to get out. Sometimes the loneliness suffocates you, the grind batters you, the cluelessness sinks your soul. I needed to see the world, escape the big city, understand who I was and what I wanted. All I knew back then was that I definitely didn’t want this London existence; working overtime in a pub full to the brim with sexist estate agents for pittance wage, just about keeping my head above water, in a uni degree I’d started to loathe, living in an overpriced flat with a small square box to call my room throughout Covid lockdowns, in an unhealthy relationship that made me more miserable day by day without realising. This wasn’t life, this wasn’t living. I needed to get out.
So I did, and I didn’t look back. I dropped my whole life, and spent over a year dodging every excuse to come back to this city, instead exploring Latin America, learning to surf, falling recklessly in and out of love, finding my passions, realising who I was always meant to be. I stayed as far as I could from London, from my friends, my ex, my former life, and I healed. Slowly. But I did. Somewhere in my deepest conscious I always knew I’d need to return, so until that day came I cast the city life aside, healed from it, learned to trust myself and prayed that I could cope with going back.
And today, I start uni again. My final year has inescapably and inevitably arrived. Today was always coming, but somehow it came too fast. Back to London.
If I’m completely honest, I always knew I wouldn’t commit to moving back here in a real flat for 12 months of my life. After travelling, after discovering how invigorating it is to be on the move, to not have a base, to keep going through uncertainty and make it adventure, I couldn’t inhabit a single space for a year and not get incredibly stuck again. I belong to the unknown, it belongs to me, and the only thing I was certain of coming back to London was that I needed to do something radical. I needed to paint ‘FUCK THE SYSTEM’ across my forehead, or at least something to that effect.
Hence, my sofa-surfing experiment. I’m curious; I want to know if it’s possible completing final year of uni while being technically homeless in your uni city. Of course, I’m not homeless in every sense – my amazing parents let me base myself at home for the year for free, but ‘home’ is at least a two-hour commute away from London, as so many of my professors’ emails relentlessly reminded me. But I was fully aware of the stakes. Fully aware of the risks. And I decided to do it anyway. Why not?
I curated a list of sofas and who they belonged to – friends I’ve picked up along the way, all of whom now live in London. I debated the actual feasibility of doing this, of bouncing from sofa to sofa in between working in Bournemouth and attending lectures and writing dissertations and studying for exams and maybe squeezing in a bit of yoga or surfing too, but I figured it was worth a shot. Fuck it. So I called Name Number One on my list, my gorgeous Hungarian friend Zsofi, who I’ve known since my first day of uni, and who I haven’t seen since I left the city over a year ago.
“Have you got a sofa I can sleep on?”
“I actually have a box windowless room which only has space for a double mattress, and it’s all yours if you want it.”
Everything I wanted to hear and more. I was starting to feel good about this stupid plan.
Until I was sat on the London Waterloo train at 8am on a Sunday in the shitting rain wishing I’d never even agreed to go back to uni. I never thought I’d feel this sentimental coming back to London, but as I stepped off the Tube at Camden Town, my old home stop, and walked out into the wall of tourists and locals sprinting around like there was this insane urgency to be moving all the time, a wave of nostalgia hit. I saw Parkway, where I’d walk every day, the cafes I used to go to, the Sainsbury’s I basically inhabited, the bars I’d put on my list to try. It’s just a city Cerys, for God’s sake. But it is much, much more than that, and I wasn’t sure how I felt. So I walked, down Camden Road and towards Holloway, letting the memories wash over me as I went, until I was further away from my little former stomping ground and they slowed down. Then I walked past the skate park at Cantelowes Gardens, pausing to smile and watch the kids learning how to drop in from teenagers and dads, falling and laughing and fist-bumping. Tearing myself away from the beautiful scene, I saw more precious droplets of life everywhere, gifted to me ever-so-briefly, by people passing on the street arm-in-arm, people hovering outside shops sharing a cigarette, people laughing getting off buses. London is alive with life, and it constantly amazes me.
Another thing that constantly amazes me is Zsofi, who somehow always manages to light up my life. She brought me into her third-floor flat, made brunch for us to share over a catch-up and asked if I wanted to accompany her to a haircut appointment. I, still besotted with the ordinary everyday London scenes going on outside, enthusiastically agreed, and spent the whole time at the hair salon bemusedly watching people living their lives outside the window. The salon was right next to Caledonian Road station, and according to Zsofi, promised the cheapest price she could find online. Its employees sported trendy haircuts, had strange accents, and took an immediate interest in our conversation, which had turned to my stupid sofa surfing plan.
“Are you visiting London then?” the manager asked me, a funny and outspoken Scottish woman.
“Sort of,” I laughed, looking at Zsofi’s smirking reflection in the hairdressers’ mirror she was facing. “I’m visiting Zsofi but I also go to uni here.”
“But you don’t live here?”
“No, I’m staying on people’s sofas and commuting.” I furrowed my brow, trying to think how better to explain it. “In other words, temporarily homeless for half the week.”
“Right.” Silence, and then the hairdresser started giggling. “That’s brave.”
“Or stupid, I haven’t figured out which yet.” Zsofi and I started laughing back.
The day was a mindless, pointless but beautiful meander around London, back and forth from Zsofi’s flat collecting Facebook Marketplace furniture, eating homemade vegan toasties, drinking coffee in the park in the sun, walking down the canal. So simple, so peaceful. We spent what felt like hours inside the famous bookshop barge at Kings Cross, comparing political essays, biographies, classic fiction and travel writing, buying second-hand books that made us feel intellectual and studious. As we skimmed yellowing pages and gently swayed in the rhythm of the boat on the water, behind us the sun set and cast orange rays into the glowing canal. The air was fresh, with a bite to it like a splash of cold water on your face in the morning, and I swear I’d never felt more energised. As we drifted away from the book barge, Zsofi and I started passionately discussing our shared favourite topic: Changing the world. We talked education, social justice, anarchism, empowerment, travel, our life’s purpose. Since coming home from backpacking and taking up a summer job as an ESL teacher in a language school at home, I’d been inspired to make a difference in radical ways, vowing to simultaneously travel, educate and change the world. No point dreaming small, I suppose.
Within the hour we’d met up with Dori, Zsofi’s flatmate who just so happened to be on the same course as me and, like me, heavily lacking in course-mate friends. Together, we all walked to a secretly massive loft mews flat inhabited by two cool Irish girls, picked up some odd bits of furniture for Dori’s room, and struggled to walk back down Camden Road, a long mirror hooked under my arm and an awkward clothes rail being shared by the two flatmates. Back at the flat, a humble top floor establishment with no hot water at present – not unusual for London – and a lovely jumble of mismatched furniture and flower sprigs in empty wine bottles, we admired the walkway view over London, pointed out the neon red tip of the Shard, and gratefully dumped the Facebook furniture into Dori’s room. She’d made a bright green pasta dish with salad while we were out, and as I guzzled up the luminescent noodles on my plate, I couldn’t help thinking that if all my sofa-surfing locations were like this I’d be in literal heaven for a year.
This is where my story becomes a lot less ‘solo’, and a lot more German. After the night buses and painful 12-hour wait sleeping on the floor of Bogota’s airport, and after the tantalising flight and Uber ride on the other side in San Jose, which dragged on and yet went too quickly, I couldn’t decide, I stood outside the hostel where I knew Paul and Lukas had booked us beds, and hesitated. I’d done a lot of scary things in the last four months, but this pretty much topped it. I was nervous as shit. This was it. I was about to start travelling with two German boys who, if I’m completely honest, I barely even knew, and one of whom I’d managed to fall in love with. We’d not even spent two weeks together collectively, and yet here I was. I’d missed a flight home for this, I’d convinced myself that I’d never been so sure of a decision in my life, and even so, I was terrified. What if things were different now we’d left Puerto Viejo? There was one way to find out. I pushed the gate open and rang the hostel doorbell.
Needless to say, Paul and Lukas were just as cool as they’d been in Puerto Viejo, and we were still as good of a team as we were back then. Upon seeing their faces I practically jumped into their arms, abandoning all bags and leaving a bewildered hostel staff member at the reception desk. Immediately, we resumed our calm Caribbean ways and went on a group shop, labelling everything, bananas, bottles and bread, with our initials ‘LCP’, and cooking a massive vegetarian dinner. The hostel we were staying in, aptly named ‘Relax’, was to become our favourite San Jose hang-out spot to date, with its ultra chill stoner staff members, free American pancake breakfasts, and absolutely tiny bunk-beds that only added to the vibe. We spent a couple of days whizzing around Costa Rica’s capital city preparing for our trip to Nicaragua, doing PCR tests, printing documents, and buying goods that we wouldn’t have access to on the rural Pacific side for a long time, and then suddenly we were off again. On the road.
And thus began our month-long journey of ups and downs, huge highs and mega lows, scams and surf. I won’t go through everything considering it wasn’t very solo of me, my own special little journey ending at Bogota airport a few days prior, but some details are too gold to miss.
Our first challenge, which obviously went wrong, was getting all the way from San Jose to Popoyo, Nicaragua’s most famous surf town that I hadn’t been to before, in a single day. That meant two buses on the Costa Rican side, a border crossing, and two chicken buses on the Nicaraguan side. As expected, with Costa Rica being the land of true pura vida and shit public transport, and after a child legitimately peed through the seat in front of us on a local bus towards the border, resulting in all three of us gripping our bags and knees to our chests and watching the urine slide around the bus floor in a horribly long trail, it didn’t work out. We got to the border far too late for anything, and barely even made it through considering most of the offices were shut. Forever in good spirits, though, and still laughing at the pissing child on the bus, Lukas managed to secure us a taxi to the nearest town, Rivas, and a place to sleep there for the night. This was the first time of many we had to navigate fitting three full-grown adults and a six-foot surfboard into a small saloon car, and each time we wriggled into our jigsaw places curved around the board crossing the entire length of the taxi, it didn’t get any less funny.
Rivas, the southern Nicaraguan hub for chicken buses and markets, is a crazy bustle of local life, and even though I’d visited before, I was still in awe of its rawness. With two men, I found myself able to do things I never would’ve before, like checking into the sketchiest local motel in town and grabbing breakfast in the heart of the town’s mercado maze, being served by utterly confused locals watching us scoff down our rice and beans and platanos. Paul and Lukas had never taken a chicken bus before, so it was my honour, pleasure, to introduce them to the wildest mode of transport in all of Central America, the old yellow school buses-turned death contraptions that could fit an entire community, all their animals, and a few ice cream carts inside. Being back in Central America felt like returning home, like entering dream-world again after the sincerity of Colombia; here, everything was hilarious, unbelievable, strange in the best way. And Nicaragua was a whopper place to start, being much less westernised than Costa Rica and much more chaotic in every single way.
We sat at Rivas’ chicken bus station, the most interesting jumble of blossoming life I’ve ever seen, for half an hour before starting towards Popoyo, just watching: Sellers calling out their goods and prices, children squealing and running, people throwing each other bags of weird snacks and cold Fanta bottles, chicken bus conductors yelling their destination over and over again until the words became blurred with one another, completely incomprehensible. The boys were in a state of shock, and me in a state of sheer pride; they’d never seen anything quite like it, and I was the one showing them. The crew operating our chicken bus to Popoyo decided they were in love with me, and I decided to start a proposal count, which was already on at least two after our stint mixing with locals in Rivas. The leader of the group regretfully waved me goodbye as we hopped off, blowing kisses as they quite literally left us in the dust, our ‘bus stop’ being more like ‘in the middle of nowhere’.
The week we spent in Popoyo reminded me just how intense Nicaragua’s dry season can be, just how sweltering and exhausting it is. After leaving the boys’ extensive arsenal of food for cooking on the top of the chicken bus, our days were spent hitch-hiking to the nearest ATMs and supermarkets for any hope of buying goods cheaper than the extortionate tourist prices in Popoyo, and for me, fending off yet more proposals from white van drivers while Lukas got thrown around in the back. Paul stayed and surfed a lot, and we occasionally joined him, but before long the temptation to return to our hostel, relax, make dinner, and soak in the dying sun after its lingering midday heat, overtook all of our ambitions. We met a group of backpackers, which included the most terrifying small woman I’ve ever crossed paths with, and who we spent the whole week trying to dodge. A trained doctor, who seemed to be simultaneously a gynaecologist, geneticist, surgeon and dermatologist, based on her loud claims to let the entire town know, she spent her time talking AT us rather than to us, telling us we would get skin cancer and barging in on me in the toilet and watching me piss. After ten unbearable minutes during one group dinner of listening to her heated inner monologue about how underestimated she is in the medical world, I hissed to Lukas out of the corner of mouth, “We have to swap, she’s sucking my soul dry.” He pouted and tried to protest, but seeing me on the verge of breaking down, engaged the tiny scary woman in conversation and flinched as she launched into a new speech.
Saturday came, and Sunday Funday in San Juan, one of my favourite Central American parties, called – as did Challis, my gorgeous American friend who I volunteered with in Guatemala, and who had finally made it down to Nicaragua only to settle on the island of Ometepe, vowing to never leave aside from partying in San Juan. Paul, Lukas and I narrowly caught the last chicken bus of the day, hitch-hiking back to the dusty bus stop signified only by a tortilla stand, and after the initial mad rush of throwing ourselves and our bags on the back, the entire crew paused, as did we, as we realised we knew each other. It was the exact same team who brought us here, and with an outcry of joy, the man who proposed to me guided me to a seat and commanded a couple of the boys to pick up some beers from a local tienda. The entire ride back to Rivas turned into a rural beer crawl, with the chicken bus stopping abruptly every ten minutes at a new shop, someone running to grab beers that were ready and waiting at the door, and launching them back inside for our group to celebrate with. I gingerly told my admirer that I was actually with Paul, and he promised the German boys that he wouldn’t take me away and marry me, as if, otherwise, it would’ve been a reasonable course of action.
I reunited with Challis in San Juan, who’d managed to misplace her phone and was now armed with possibly the worst excuse for a smartphone I’d ever seen. Together with her friend Fanny, a volunteer at Challis’ hostel in Ometepe that she had basically claimed as her home, the five of us became Guacamole, with each person’s code name being an ingredient in case we got lost in the party town. We snuck into Sunday Funday and consequently got chased around the pool by an angry security woman wanting to make us pay, and travelled from hostel to hostel via pick-ups and chicken buses, slowly getting more and more intoxicated and wild as the night ensued. After Challis left town, the boys and I spent a few groggy days trying to recover from a seemingly permanent hangover, noticing how asleep San Juan became during the week, how slow and stuck it felt to trudge around the streets, as if dragging ourselves through mud.
Finally, an open-mic night at a local bar awoke us from our joint slumber, and we met Ewald, a German rapper who could freestyle from English to German to Russian in the space of a single breath. I’ve never witnessed a mind working quite like his does, the beautiful, spiritual and wise thoughts it comes out with, and for a heavenly ten minutes, he and Lukas jammed together, Lukas being able to pick up a new beat every few verses on the guitar to match Ewald’s rapping. Paul and I danced together and cheered on the incredible scene we were watching, the whole bar coming alive at these two making music together on the spot. What was more unexpected, though, was running into the same genius freestyler Ewald in Ometepe, where we joined Challis and Fanny at Zopilote, a permaculture farm on the rural side of Ometepe where we extended our stay for a week and settled down into paradise. The farm-hostel was a hippie haven, where cacao ceremonies, fire shows, wood-fired pizzas, home-picked starfruit, and stargazing from the jungle mirador were daily occurrences.
As well as our new group of friends living or staying in Zopilote, we were joined by Pipo, a good friend of Lukas’ back in Germany. A newcomer to hostel life, he took some time to get used to the giant spiders who’d made our jungle cabin their home, and the basic simplicity of the facilities here, in this tiny little corner of the world. But I was in love. With it all. With the small outdoor kitchen, or “kleine kuche” as we fondly named it, with the daily picking of starfruit to add to our porridge or mismatch meals that we’d share with passers by, with the walk up through the side of the volcano to our beds, with the nature and the beauty that co-existed here.
But as always with me, things go wrong, a lot. This time, it was really bad. On a drive back from Playa Mangos, our sunset hang-out spot, Paul and I fell off our moped on a dirt road, and despite him trying to pull me onto my side to avoid injury, it was inevitable. Immediately after the fall I took very slow, deep breaths to stop myself having a panic attack, and the next thing I knew, after screaming “mas agua!” at the local woman gushing water over my mangled knee, I was on the back of a motorbike clinging on and trying not to pass out from the pain. The locals had rushed to our aid instantly, taking me to a local healer woman in a back-yard pharmacy who cleaned my wounds as best as she could. I laughed and compulsively tapped my unhurt foot on the ground through the pain, repeating “be brave, Cerys” in my head as she scrubbed my knee and my elbows and my hand and my foot. A little boy watched with a phone flashlight on the injuries through the darkness, looking worryingly up at me and back down at the horrible bloody mess that he shouldn’t have been witnessing. The woman told me I was incredibly strong, that others would scream in pain where I just blinked away tears and smiled at the boy. It’s funny, but in that moment I felt so alive. This was real pain, waking me up, making me completely understand my body’s ability to keep going. Paul arrived shortly afterwards on the back of a motorbike to get cleaned up, and while his wounds were much less deep than mine, he looked into my eyes as the woman turned to wash away the dirt in his leg, and we smiled at each other. We were strong. We were a team.
And we were the best team I’d ever known. I remember reading adventure and action books as a teenager and creating a dream that one day I would be as strong and brave as the female protagonist, that one day I would meet someone who was just as brave and strong as me and that we would just work together. And as Paul and I sat in our cabin, peeling off gauze to re-dress and re-clean our horribly black wounds, it struck me that this was it, this was me living my dream. Obviously I hadn’t dreamed of falling off a moped and being put out of action for weeks, potentially having to go home abruptly because of it, but the way we laughed and grimaced and shined flashlights on disgusting gashes in each other’s skin felt like a dream, a dream I’d been waiting a long time for. Maybe it was the shock or the painkillers deluding me into romanticising it, but I felt more powerful than ever before. I was so proud of myself, of us, so alive and bold.
We begrudgingly extended our stay in Zopilote again so I could regain my strength, and I started going to the public health clinic in the local town Balgue to get my injuries scrubbed and re-dressed every day. Every day, I woke up early, walked down through the jungle to the main road, hitch-hiked or caught a bus into town, endured the pain for an hour, and then hitch-hiked and walked back up to the hostel, only being able to pass out from exhaustion after the whole ordeal. It was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, and it was relentless. Every day I hoped it would be quicker, easier than the day before, but every day it was the same, sometimes worse. First the nurses would peel off the excruciatingly stuck bandages off my skin, then use soap solution to scrub wounds all over my body, then water to wash it off, then a scalpel to dig out pebbles buried deep in flesh, then antiseptic spray, then antibiotic cream, then dressings again. It was the longest hour of every day, no anaesthetics, sometimes just a table for me to lie down on if the pain was too much, but I was strong. I would blink away single tears from my eyes, silently screaming as the scrubbing intensified, staring out of the window motionlessly, whispering affirmations in my head. Be brave. Be strong. Come on.
The nurses were very kind, and I felt like they liked me. There was a group of them and they each had a turn examining my wounds, patching me up. The service was completely free, as per Nicaragua’s surprising healthcare system, and while it was by no means NHS-approved, I was just immensely grateful for them making sure my wounds were kept clean, out of the goodness of their hearts. They didn’t have to tell me to return every day, but every day they did, and every day we tried a little bit harder to get the dirt out of the deep gash in my knee. It would leave a permanent scar, a big one, and I knew that, but I didn’t mind all that much. It was a reminder that I sat here, in this pink cement building that’s only usually used to weigh babies, in a foreign-speaking country on the other side of the world, with completely inadequate equipment, able to conquer this pain. Mostly Paul came with me to the clinic, and he wasn’t afraid of seeing wounds or seeing me in pain. He was actually fascinated with the healing process, and he watched the nurses peel off old dressings, examining changes in the wounds with them. He didn’t try to hold my hand or tell me everything was okay; he knew I could handle it, so instead he sat on the chair and watched me wriggle through the pain, smiling at me when I looked at him. We said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Just accept, and stay strong.
During this time I was able to see both Challis, who I’d missed immensely since leaving Guatemala, and Jan, who I’d volunteered with in Costa Rica and who’d met Paul and Lukas in our harmonious week of pura vida. Each reunion was horribly bittersweet, constantly reminding me of my current weakness as I had to turn down climbing a volcano, beach parties and pizza nights. Where I’d usually be thrilled to have so many of my favourite people miraculously in one place, I was overcome with a sense of entrapment – I was stuck in the hostel, stuck with a very large group of German natives who’d often forget I was there, stuck holding back my friends who constantly had to check in with me, infuriated at even being there. Sometimes I wanted the ground to swallow me up and propel me to the safety of home, Bournemouth, instead, where I knew I’d inevitably have to go soon due to my dwindling money and poor physical health. But going home was escaping the pain, entering a comfort zone, being able to see a real doctor and waiting for the next boring year of my life. No, I thought. The world is my home now. I can’t run away from it.
And so I made my last impulse decision, my last crazy adventure on this whirlwind ride of a backpacking experience. Jan, Pipo, Paul, Lukas and I sat in a new hostel on Ometepe, smoking cigarettes and watching the sun go down, discussing our options. A Nicaraguan coin sat on the table in the middle of us, on one side an old, important looking man, and on the other, the volcano, sun and lake which appeared on the country’s flag. The coin was flipped, and as the silver volcano glinted in the day’s fading light, we all muttered together. Corn Islands. It was the side for the Corn Islands, on the Caribbean side of Nicaragua, two days’ journey away. My insides tightened, with fear or excitement I wasn’t sure, and I exhaled, laughing. “Okay, let’s do it,” I said seriously, knowing the decision was already made. The table broke out into celebration, a buzz of new plans and adventures spreading into the night, and this chaotic universe made sense again. Fuck it.
That was, until Paul, Lukas and I reached Managua. Initially, we intended the stopover to be for a brief hospital check-up on my leg, to grab some antibiotics and new dressings before getting on the night bus to Bluefields and reunite with Pipo and Jan. I was not prepared to spend a second longer in Managua than absolutely necessary, given my last escapades in this horrid capital city losing my phone at night. But Paul managed to contract an awful illness and serious fever, ending up in hospital overnight with a kidney infection that delayed all our plans. I acted as translator as well as nursing my deep, infected leg, almost imploding from stress while staring into various nurses’ eyes pleading that they’d just speak a bit goddamn slower so I could have a hope understanding them with my dodgy Spanish. We extended at a hostel after Paul was admitted, stuck in this hateful city once more and only able to wait for Paul to be pumped with fluids in a Nicaraguan hospital, lying on a table in a communal waiting room because all the beds were gone. The hostel was a bizarre, nightmare-induced establishment with an unbearable set of rules, and watched over 24/7 by its creepy owner, an older American guy. For some reason, the city managed to attract the same kind of machoistic, throttle-worthy American guys, all boasting about how much knowledge they had in infuriating monologues and competing against each other over nothing.
A day after Paul returned from hospital and rested off the worst of the infection, I drew the line. I didn’t care where we went, but we had to get out of godforsaken Managua. The Corn Islands was looking unlikely, and the only other place we felt happy enough to go to was Puerto Viejo, our home in Costa Rica. Either way, it was two days of travelling, and at this point I was considering just booking the next flight back to London, but Paul chose Puerto, and my heart finally calmed. Yes, of course. So while Jan and Pipo pushed on with the initial plan, our trio, our beautiful chaotic team, headed back to the Penas Blancas border, the border I’d been to at least three times now, back into pura vida land. We drank our final beers before crossing, washed down with a painful $60 taxi to the nearest town Liberia after the buses stopped running, and found a lovely hostel for the night with writings all over the walls which we contributed to.
Smoothly arriving back in San Jose the next day, the only other obstacle left was getting a bus to the south, however this proved to be the hardest, after being horrendously scammed out of $150 by an evil taxi driver who span us a web of lies about catching up with the last bus of the day which had already left. My terrible gut feeling was right, and after escaping the taxi and catching the only bus available to Limon, a horrible place pretty much equalling to Managua, we re-grouped in McDonald’s, the only safe place in the whole vicinity, weighing up our options and internally crying over the scam. We called William, the owner of Hostal Cecilia and our sole potential saviour at 10pm, stuck in a dangerous city hours away from Puerto without a place to stay, and he arranged for a friend to pick us up and take us directly there for a small price, telling us we could stay in the hostel for free tonight for our troubles.
Arriving at the door of Cecilia felt like we’d finally escaped the battle ground, and suddenly the 24 collective hours of travelling, with my deeply wounded leg and Paul’s recovering infection, was all worth it. I almost collapsed into an emotional and exhaustive fit of tears before even entering, and being warmly welcomed by Cecilia, William and their family, we knew we’d made the right decision. We were home.
The only news better than the free night’s stay, in my last blissful week of adventuring, was that Anna would be making a return. Yes, Anna, the crazy German legendary solo female traveller I’d met up with in Mexico and Colombia. She was now making her way up Central America after her South American journey, and would just so happen to be in Puerto Viejo the same week as us. It seemed beautifully poetic that, just as I started my trip by her side, I was ending it with her too. She had single-handedly changed my whole view on travelling, my whole life, really, with her insane spontaneity and lust for adventure. She arrived in town in the shitting rain, and we spent a lazy day laughing together, with me displaying my battle wounds which were still yellowing and grey, as we made food, drank beer and did nothing in particular other than watch the rain. I also found it beautiful that Paul and Lukas were with me during my final week, the people who had undoubtedly impacted me the most other than Anna, and who had brought me more joy than anyone else in the half-year I’d been backpacking. I watched Paul surf, read books, drank beer, cycled to Manzanillo with the others, watched the sunset from the plateau above Puerto, and slowly reflected on what I was leaving behind.
The most obvious and painful thing to leave behind was Paul, who I wouldn’t see now for at least a couple of months. Just as we fell more in love after the moped accident in Ometepe, with pride and strength in each other, when faced with my leaving it grew immeasurably more. We went on small dates, walking to the beach and watching the waves and eating veggie burgers and grabbing coffee and reading together, we talked a lot, we learned more about each other than I thought was possible. I glowed with pride watching him skate, effortlessly dancing over cement like an angel, and he watched with a smile on his face as I nonchalantly sprayed antiseptic on my wounds and re-dressed them myself, which I was getting pretty good at. I’d decided to take up surfing properly at home when I was recovered, itching to move my body and do something that makes me scared to feel alive, and he lit this passion within me with a fire that could only come from him. This was the boy I missed a flight home for, who I took the biggest risk of my life for, who I’d do it all again for.
The other thing I was leaving, which was much harder to comprehend, was, to put it simply, my whole life. Travelling had become my world, packing and unpacking and moving and exploring was my norm. For five months I’d called every new place my home, I’d left behind material possessions all over Latin America, as if they were scattered markers that said ‘Cerys was here’; I’d become so comfortable with the uncomfortable that I had my own chaotic rhythm of moving with the world, like an unsteady heartbeat. But I knew that this was exactly the reason I needed to leave. I was getting too comfortable with the familiarities of backpacking, I was feeling safety in the unknown. To leave, to change, to start again all over again, was a harder, bigger, more important challenge. I couldn’t cry when Anna and I caught the bus away from Puerto Viejo, towards San Jose, the place where everything begins and ends, the bus we almost missed because it wouldn’t be me without some chaos. Everything happened so fast, saying goodbye to Paul, rushing to stop the driver and getting yelled at to hurry up, that I couldn’t process the weight of leaving. So I sat on the bus for hours doing nothing, staring out of the window, thinking about the life I had which had just come to an end.
And so, as always with this silly little solo trip of mine, it was time to start again. Onto the new chapter, the next adventure. Como siempre, the world belongs to the brave.
I’d never been as conscious of how broke I was until this moment, sitting on the bus to Santa Marta to take a flight, not home, but to Salento, on the other side of Colombia. The only thing I knew was that I’d rather be broke and make the money back slowly than ignore my gut, which had undeniably told me to go back to Paul and Lukas, the German boys I’d met in Costa Rica. I couldn’t explain the immense pull I had to people I barely even knew, but it was there, staring at me straight in the face, and I knew I wouldn’t regret it. So I missed my flight, flushed that money down the drain, extended my stay in Colombia for a few more days, booked a new flight back to San Jose, the place where everything begins and ends. There was more to learn, about myself, the universe, about friendship, love, hope. I couldn’t stop here. I was free, stupid, young, foolish, and ready for another wild adventure.
Just when I thought I was rid of moto-taxis at last, it became clear as I got off the bus that I’d have to get another one to take me to the airport for a cheap and quick ride. Holding onto my 80 litre backpack with all my might, swaying with the weight that the bike was barely holding, I prayed that this wouldn’t be the fatal moto-taxi ride that would end up with me dead on the side of a Colombian highway. But I survived, swore off the dreaded contraptions for life, and rushed to the check-in desk, only to find that I’d booked my flight to Salento for the wrong month. Typical. Of course, being me, I’d made this blunder. My fool-proof plan to squeeze in Salento before returning to Costa Rica wasn’t looking so fool-proof anymore. I suppressed a laugh at my idiocy and asked whether there was a flight to Salento today instead, doubtful that I’d ever live out my missing-flights curse. There just so happened to be one in an hour, quite literally perfect timing, so I paid the small price difference and silently enquired to the universe why I was so luckily unlucky with the lessons I was being taught.
A flight, bus ride, and uphill slog to my hostel later, I sat on top of my bag in the luggage room waiting for my dorm bed to become available. I was tired, weathered by my travelling experiences, and still slightly in disbelief that I was here instead of thousands of metres in the air, flying to London. I deflected some bad, heard-it-a-million-times-before jokes from an annoying middle-aged American man, made small talk with the hostel staff, and changed my clothes, desperate for a shower after my night in a tent on the beach but having to wait for the room to be cleaned. To kill some time I returned to the town’s main street and started walking absent-mindedly, only paying attention to the rhythm of Salento.
I’d read a lot about this small town in Colombia’s famous coffee region, and how much internet bloggers raved about it. On every single backpacker guide, Salento and Cocora Valley, home of the tallest palm trees in the world, are bound to feature, and I’d reluctantly given in to the resounding praise of these tourist hotspots out of curiosity. Now it was time to see what I really thought about them. And as I strolled around Salento’s colourful streets, boasting beautiful colonial architecture, small cafes, galleries and artesanal shops, and cobbled pavements trodden by horses, barely a car in sight, I relented. It was beautiful. The air was fresh, being at such a high altitude, and the aura was calm, with the soft buzz of people’s voices, street sellers and music coming from local bars following me as I slowly lapped each square. I didn’t know exactly why I felt so relaxed and happy here; I just knew that I liked Salento, a lot. I visited as many local and independent shops as I could, stopped to grab coffee (and fall in love with said coffee, thanks to the delicious blend that Cafe Jesus Martin had crafted from heaven), and people-watched in the backstreets.
When I returned to the hostel and finally took a shower, the universe gifted me with another chance second meeting in the form of Esmee, the lovely Dutch girl I’d met in San Gil. She’d suggested I hike around Barichara the afternoon I arrived and told me about her horror story throwing up during paragliding, and I’d hoped to make friends before she told me she was literally on her way out of town that night, so I let the idea go. Now, she stood at her dorm bed next to mine, having managed to stay in the same hostel in Salento at the same time, looking at me quizzically as we tried to remember each other. So funny, how the universe does that. We then went down to the hostel’s outdoor bar, showing off spectacular sunset mountain views from all around, and collected a large group of backpackers around a table, all drinking beer and sharing stories.
Esmee had been travelling around Colombia for a while and was now planning to go to Cali in the south, before entering Ecuador by land. Sam, a vibrantly happy American hiker, was wrapping up his journey in Colombia soon and heading to Peru to tick Machu Picchu off his bucket list. Ryan, a long-term Canadian traveller, worked out that we both knew the same Danish girl, Naya, who I’d worked with in Mr Mullet’s, Guatemala, and who he’d met in Mexico the year before. Tim, a German student who’d previously travelled in South America a few years before, told me stories about his adventures in the northern Colombian desert which meets the sea. Hannah, a sweet Dutch girl with a wandering spirit, had picked up another Dutch travelling companion who was beautifully batshit crazy and called us his “party people”. A lot of the group had gone to Cocora Valley today, and tomorrow they all had different plans, mountain biking or visiting a coffee finca or exploring town. Until now, I’d done most of Colombia alone, occasionally meeting a couple people but not making any firm friends, but here I suddenly had a whole group of them, all inviting me to their multitude of plans. And, while I love being solo and deciding my own adventures, I’d definitely missed this. We were all like-minded backpackers, people who’d put their world at home on pause for a while, bumming around Colombia without a care in the world for now.
I embraced the idea of a long, deep sleep, and happily missed the group’s morning plans if it meant I got more rest. By the time I woke up, appreciated the mountain views surrounding the hostel with a cup of free coffee, and leisurely made my new hyper-fixation meal, tuna yoghurt wraps made from basic tienda ingredients I’d found the day before, it was well into the afternoon, and I regretted nothing. I was still in time to join Ryan and his other Canadian friend in the finca tour on the outskirts of town, which we could not find for the life of us until the owner came to our rescue and guided us into the trees. Terrence was born in the Caribbean, brought up in London, and had ditched his whole former life to live out his dream, growing and making his own coffee in the Colombian mountains with his wife. It sounded like a good dream to me. He took us around his plantation, showing us unusual tropical plants, telling us about the different coffee grown here, picking ripe coffee beans off plants for us to try. Here, in this little slice of hidden, peaceful paradise, the rest of the world really didn’t matter. Just incredible-tasting coffee and tending to the land. There was a beautiful simplicity to it all.
We returned to the hostel feeling calm and doused in nature’s rich aroma, where I made more tuna wraps and we were greeted by our backpacker group. Within 10 minutes we were back out again, all spontaneously deciding to walk up to the town’s mirador to watch sunset. On the way, Sam managed to find a German girl and drag her along with us, and I introduced myself, instantly feeling like I’d known her for years. Her name was Mona, and she was 19 years old, young, crazy, careless, on a gap year after school, with the most infectious smile and bold outlook on life I’d seen in a while. She’d been living in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, for months, and had decided to take a little break to travel Colombia for a few weeks before returning. I laughed and told her about my Costa Rican adventures, and how I would also be going back to the land of pura vida. We were both in love with the nomadic solo lives we’d created for ourselves, both so in tune to the fear and excitement of having no plans, both incredibly brave and alive, both completely detached from life at home. Mona and I shared incredibly similar stories, about boys and dangerous situations and a lot of missed flights, and I laughed at how quickly we’d become firm friends.
Sitting on top of the mirador, drinking beer, watching the sunset, talking about the huge risk I’d taken by not catching my flight home and instead chasing love by going back to Costa Rica for Paul, looking at the girl who’d managed to become my best friend within the space of an hour, I tried to pinch myself. A few months ago I didn’t even know what Salento was, or that I’d end up in Colombia, or that I’d go back to Costa Rica, but somehow it all made sense. Mona and I made friends with a French Canadian and Swiss guy and recruited them to join us for Cocora Valley in the morning, and after this small success, we all returned to the hostel for a few drinks.
It didn’t feel like a success at 8am the following day, though, when said French Canadian and Swiss guy rolled their first cigarette of the day and cracked open a beer at the entrance to Cocora Valley. It felt like an embarrassing bachelor party that Mona and I had accidentally intruded on, and now we were stuck with it for the day. Initially, after saying they wanted to get up and out at the crack of dawn to beat the tourists in the morning, we’d had to drag them out of the hostel and into the centre of town so we’d make it in time to catch one of the Jeep taxis that ferried people to Cocora. The four of us volunteered to stand on the back of the pick-up for the journey, hanging onto the Jeep bars and leaning back with a rush of excitement as the vehicle hurtled through the forests, swaying and holding on as much as we could. There’s nothing quite like an adrenaline rush first thing in the morning, and while I feasted on the exhilarating Jeep ride for breakfast, the boys accompanying us decided to dine on cigarettes and beer in celebration. I couldn’t judge them, really – the views awaiting us justified this and much more.
It’s true what they say about Cocora Valley: It’s a real life Jurassic Park, something you just can’t quite wrap your head around, or believe that you’re witnessing. Directly above us, vast mountainsides gave way to the tallest palm trees in the world, whose comparatively skinny stalks seemed to defy gravity as they creaked in the gentle wind. They were dotted everywhere, giants among the neatly trimmed green hills, and wild horses calmly grazed around them. We staggered around with our heads permanently craned to the sky, gasping at each viewpoint during our short hike like it was ten times better than the last, when in reality we just couldn’t fully believe what we were seeing. It was all too much for the boys, who demanded a zoot break to truly appreciate Cocora, so Mona and I sat next to them with our pots of squished fruit (we’d both developed an unhealthy obsession with the small fruit stands in Colombian towns) and reflected on the morning.
We’d tolerated, and even had a laugh with, the boys in our group for an impressively long time, but a line was crossed when, on the way down from the hike, they excitedly stopped at the tourist-trap valley of fake Jeeps, Colombian flags and insta-inspired swings. Mona and I exchanged a glance and ploughed straight on down the hill, occasionally glancing back at the French Canadian and Swiss duo taking turns to sit in the drivers’ seat of the fake Jeep, don sunglasses, smoulder, and take dead-serious photos of each other. “They’ll probably caption it ‘not all those who wander are lost’ or something,” Mona giggled. We marvelled at how well the tourist photo traps actually worked, watching flocks of people gathering around the artificially decorated swing for their ‘candid’ insta pictures when they could just walk 10 minutes and find equally amazing views with much less people, and instead got talking about how amazing travel can be without searching for the most aesthetic reels backdrop.
Having basically settled into local life in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, with a whole makeshift family and social circle, Mona told me how easily she’d been able to uproot everything she knew about life in Germany and embrace a completely new journey on the other side of the world. This felt uniquely her, it set her alight, Tamarindo was her place with her people; for the first time, she was utterly proud of where she called home for now. But she also craved the adventure of moving around, the thrill and fear of dotting from place to place with no plans, which she did intermittently around living in Tamarindo, like this little trip of hers to Colombia. Having also ‘popped off to Colombia for a bit’, a seemingly casual move until you remember how fucking large this country is and how dangerous it can be, I felt immense pride in us both, two young women completely unafraid to chase their fears down and rebuild from strength to strength. While I didn’t have a Tamarindo, I shared with Mona stories from living on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, and how amazing it felt to be integrated in local life in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, appreciating the uneven rhythm of slow and fast, daunting and comfortable, sociable and lonely, that all travellers experience differently in different places. Not one of us has the same story anywhere. We are the only ones who make our stories what they are.
We returned to Salento on another whirlwind Jeep ride, just in time to grab coffee and a souvenir package of ground beans at Cafe Jesus Martin and then hide in the hostel while the heavens opened. We’d had suspiciously nice weather until now, which was unusual for Colombia’s coffee highlands, famously lush and green for a reason, so I accepted the sudden turn as a natural response from the universe and retreated to my laptop, writing furiously. Tonight was the night – tonight was my final night in Colombia, tonight I would take a bus to Bogota then fly back to Costa Rica, tonight I would embark on the next adventure instead of going home, tonight I would be just within arms’ reach of Paul and Lukas. But even though I’d spent a good few days hanging out in Salento, it didn’t feel like enough. I really, really loved it here. It felt mellow and lively at the same time, friendly, beautiful, grounded yet surreal. Mona was here, our backpacker group was here, there was always more to see and more funny karaoke nights to be had at local bars. And while I knew all of this, and knew that I would miss not only Salento but the whole of Colombia, it was not a painful goodbye. I didn’t wish I could stay. I gracefully accepted the end, silently saying farewell to my last days as a purely ‘solo’ traveller, and waited in anticipation for the next journey to come, pouring out my heart and soul into words on the laptop screen.
To celebrate my last night in Salento, and most of the group’s final days together, we gathered at a pizza place in town and treated ourselves to local red wine by the bucket. I quizzed Sam about the PCT, the famous hiking trail I’d read about in Wild, and he gave me recommendations for if I ever ventured over to the northern end of the Americas. He would be spending this summer working in Alaska when he got home, his life being a seemingly never-ending adventure, and I wished him the best. I was completely taken by Sam’s camping and hiking stories, as well as his kindness and enthusiasm for life, and made him promise to at least stay in contact through social media in case we ever bumped into each other again. The same could be said for everyone: From Esmee’s hit-or-miss attempt at surviving election weekend in Cali before the hit-or-miss Ecuador border crossing, to Tim’s sporadic breaks from studying in Stuttgart by slowly ticking off every country in South America, and from Ryan’s eternally nomadic lifestyle hopping around the world, to Mona’s constantly changing plans, none of which involved going home for very long. I understood these people and their predicaments, and they understood me. We were all chasing different versions of the same freedom we felt while exploring, while pushing boundaries and growing out of comfort zones. I was very lucky to get to know them, if only for a short period of time.
I’d impressively managed to squeeze both hiking boots and trainers in my backpack this time round, and didn’t fancy disrupting my meticulously, aeroplane-proof packing method enough to dig them out, so instead decided to firm it and rock the fluffy socks and flip-flops look. While we were in the restaurant no one seemed to notice, but as we left and I strapped the rucksack to my back, preparing for my long night-bus journey, the whole of Salento stared in disgust at my footwear. It didn’t help that I was wearing my comfiest trousers, comfiest fleece, and carrying everything that could possibly make this journey the slightest bit less painful, because now I just looked homeless. I laughed with the others at my own impeccable sense of backpacker style, too full from pizza and buzzed about the journey ahead to care what people thought of me, and started my goodbye hugs before walking to the bus terminal. Esmee and Mona cheered me on, telling me to get the guy and live out my movie-worthy love story in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and I assured them I’d give it my best shot.
Before the romantic reunion, though, there was a couple of buses and a 12 hour wait in the airport to get through. Too excited to sleep, I curled up next to the window on the bus to Armenia, where I’d change for a night bus to Bogota, and blared my music while looking out into the darkness whizzing past. I would truly never get over the thrill of moving from one place to another, I thought to myself, of leaving one journey behind and setting off on an entirely new one. I could stare out of the window thinking about life on buses for hours, remembering the things I’ve done, thinking about what on earth I’ll do next, listening to the songs that all have a memory attached to them from my travels. Four months is a long time. My memory bank was getting pretty extensive. And funnily enough, some of the times where I’d felt most elated was doing exactly this: Sitting on a bus, watching the world go by, just reflecting on everything. And so, on to the next. We go again.
I got off the bus at Rio Guachaca, or rather, on it, being literally in the middle of the bridge over the rio, and waved away the confused-looking locals peering out of the bus windows at me, a white woman standing in the middle of nowhere with a massive 80 litre rucksack on her back. Completely self-assured, I made light conversation with the men who had also stopped on the side of the road on the bridge to fix their cars or stock up their food-selling carts. I glanced around at the beautifully empty, lush green fields and rivers on either side of me, the Sierra Nevadas in the distance, where I’d just come from, and watched as cars and trucks whizzed past on the highway inches away from my face. Then, taking my time, I set off at a slow plod over the bridge and into the outskirts of Guachaca, the local town where I’d be staying the night, and where there was not even a whiff of tourism.
The bus conductors had been utterly confused when I told them my destination, assuring me I must mean Buritaca instead, where there was a popular backpacker hostel, or even Palomino, the famous beach-party town where young people flocked on hot sunny weekends like this one. But no, I pointed again to the town name on my map, Guachaca, and gave them a confident smile. I left out the part where even I didn’t know the location of my hostel, aside from the fact that it was in Guachaca next to the river, but I thought this would just stress everyone out needlessly. So I got off the bus, walked across the bridge, and turned down a dirt side-road that ran parallel with the river, convinced that in between the ramshackle houses belonging to locals I would stumble across a clearly marked, obviously signposted hostel.
I did not, so it was Plan B time. I asked a frail old woman lurking in her garden and watching me if she’d heard of my hostel. She hadn’t. Then I asked a young mother who has half guiding, half yanking her toddler away from me. She pointed in a vague direction and scurried off. That’s when I started to panic. What if this place just doesn’t exist at all? What if Booking.com had sent me on this stupid, endless mission of lunacy just to convince me I was going mad? The sweat was coming with the heat of the day, and my bag straps were getting increasingly painful rubbing on my shoulders. It must exist, I thought to myself stubbornly, and started circling the town’s residential streets aimlessly without knowing what paths I’d already taken. After passing the same man smoking in a rocking chair twice, I gave in to my silly plan and begged him to give me some clue as to where this hostel was. He pointed in the same direction that the woman had earlier, convincing me that this was an evil plot by the whole town to send backpackers off into the wilderness clueless and alone, but as I opened my mouth to protest, he said, “further.” The way he said it was like there was something mysterious about this place no one was telling me. “Five minutes more, I promise. You’ll see it.”
I believed him, and walked further down the river. The road ended and a vague dirt track trailed off through the trees. I heard what the man had said echoing in my mind, further. There was still no sign of a hostel, so I kept going. I walked, and walked some more. Finally, I understood why he’d told me that it was not hard to distinguish. A perfectly constructed and painted wooden pirate ship suddenly towered above me, unexplained in the middle of a clearing of trees right by the river, like a massive playground with no kids playing. Next to it, an old American yellow school bus sat parked, becoming one with the tree roots and leaves that seemed to be growing through it and slowly concealing it in the jungle. Utterly confused, I walked through a timber arch that signified the hostel’s entrance and wordlessly let my bag slide to the floor. There was no way I could even dream this up. This was like one of those times when real life is crazier than the imagination. Surrounded with palm trees and tropical plants, the hostel consisted of a main building constructed of what looked like bamboo and timber, an open common area with 70s style sofas, outdoor mirrors and coffee tables placed randomly among the dry earth, a basic outdoor kitchen, and, coolest of all, a cement toilet block with glowing neon paintings of skulls covering every inch.
It was without a doubt the most interesting hostel I’ve ever set foot in, a true hippie hideout creation designed to make you completely untraceable, and yet in a bizarre paradise of your own. But an eerie air still lingered; I was completely alone. No other guests. An English woman, the owner, appeared out of nowhere and ran up to me with one of her staff to check me in, clearly excited to see another white woman among the jungle and local life. She was covered in patchwork skull-like tattoos, had a head of dreadlocks, and told me with extreme satisfaction that the Wifi password was “pirates of the Caribbean”, obviously reflecting her fantasy of the weird little life she’d built for herself. In a strange way, I loved it.
But I couldn’t hang around for long – as per my jammed itinerary for the remaining time I had in Colombia, if I wanted to finally try tubing, it would have to be today. Tomorrow I would wake up bright and early to enter the Tayrona national park and sleep there overnight, so my stay at this hostel would remain a fleeting visit, almost like I had dreamed up the whole thing. I’m still not fully convinced I didn’t. So I dumped my stuff, walked to the main road of Guachaca and browsed the local tiendas while I waited for the public bus to take me into Buritaca. Picking up two unidentifiable bread creations, one which happened to just have lumps of pure sugar in it and the other which had a faint taste of cheese accompanied with the same lumps of pure sugar, I once again grimaced at Colombia’s awful cuisine and gave them to a child on the bus, signalling for the driver to stop at the entrance to Rio Hostel.
Tubing, to put it simply, is a way of combining drinking, partying, sunbathing, swimming and generally fucking around on a river. It’s usually great to do with a group of mates, but considering I was on my lonesome in this area of Colombia, unknown to everyone, and still very keen to try it out, I figured I could make friends on the way. And it didn’t take long; I was soon chatting to Dylan and Patrick, two friends from London who were taking a mini sabbatical from their effortlessly cool arts careers in the big city to backpack around Colombia for a while. They’d joined forces with a Belgian couple, also effortlessly cool and hippie with their long-term travel stories and ideas for the future, and together they’d stocked up with a lot of beers in preparation for the tubing. I knew I was in safe hands.
An afternoon of jumping off rocks, swinging off ropes, drinking beer and trying not to get washed down the river later, the sun had gone down, the buses weren’t running, and my next challenge was being able to pay for the tubing tour as well as a moto-taxi back to my hostel. The only ATM in this northern region of Colombia was unhelpfully in Santa Marta, meaning that both in Minca and here, I’d had to take out wads of cash to prepare for my trips, only praying that I didn’t run out. Except this time I had. I counted my peso bills and reiterated to Rio Hostel’s reception staff that I seriously didn’t have enough for both the tour and a taxi, panicking as the night got darker and the tour leaders got progressively more angry with me for not being able to cough up. How on earth I was going to survive until going back to Santa Marta, let alone where on earth I was sleeping tonight, was beyond me.
My moto-taxi man just so happened to save the day, telling me to give my remaining cash to the tour guides and that he’d stop off at a shop where they did a small amount of cash-back, so I could survive the night. It just about justified taking another dreaded moto-taxi, but this time I internally swore to myself that this was definitely the last. Definitely. That was until we were off, flying into the night, and my fuzzy brain, intoxicated from all the beers, lit up with happiness as I watched the stars blinking, the blurs of people and cars whizzing past. At the shop I flirted with the cashier, a handsome and funny local who threw in some free peanut butter with my purchase, for a better cash-back exchange rate, and bumped into another dread-locked westerner who appeared to have settled in this random corner of Colombia. As I jumped on the back of the bike and we continued along the highway, I decided drunkenly that I liked it here, a lot. It was weird, unexpected, beautifully different and mismatched in an intriguing way that you just can’t put your finger on. Or maybe I was still dreaming, I wasn’t sure.
The next morning I was definitely sure I wasn’t dreaming, because I currently had about 10,000 pesos cash to my name (about £2) and could only hope that the entrance office at Tayrona accepted card payments, because otherwise I’d be stuck again. I had to save my cash for the bus ride to Santa Marta, so I only had one option when it came to basic nutrition for the next 24 hours: Make all the food I’d been stock-piling, carry gallons of water with me to the national park, and survive off as little as possible. A challenge I was willing to accept. Regretfully, I stuffed the huge stir fry and mango porridge portions I’d made the night before into a couple of the hostel’s tupperware pots and, checking no one was watching, hid them deep in my bag, replacing the pots I’d stolen with one from a previous hostel as if it balanced out my karma a bit. At this point, I’d been couriering different assortments of tupperware around various Colombian hostels like Royal Mail, dropping off one container as I stole two more in each location. I hurried out of the hostel to avoid any unwanted suspicion or conversation with the owners, who no doubt thought I was as much of an apparition as they seemed to me, having been and gone within the space of 24 hours without a word, and jumped on a bus to Tayrona.
Tayrona national park is one of northern Colombia’s main attractions, with its unique, mountains-meet-sea, jungle beach landscape and abundant wildlife. Small indigenous communities still inhabit the vast natural area and, as a protected site, it is one of the best places to experience Colombia’s authentic beauty. All of which obviously mean that it’s crazily popular with tourists, and if you want to stand any chance of making it in by a reasonable hour, you have to be standing at the gates at the crack of dawn. Even at 8.30am, the earliest I could possibly drag myself there, there was a hefty queue already waiting. I organised my accommodation for the night, a single tent on the beach at a campsite near the entrance, so I could shoot off in the morning without getting lost hiking for hours, but not without some problems. The card machine decided not to work for a while, and after explaining that this was literally my lifeline, the staff member jabbed the machine buttons a little bit harder and we both manifested the shit out of it until it worked. Thinking the shuttle to the nearby campsites was free, I then had to sprint away from it into the trees when the driver started asking for money as I stepped off. And it was barely even the beginning of the day.
I was surprising myself at just how mentally prepared I was for this segment of the trip, hauling myself from Minca to Guachaca and then from Guachaca straight to Tayrona, before a cheap domestic flight from Santa Marta to the other side of the country, Salento, tomorrow. It had all happened so fast, so chaotically and yet systematically, that I couldn’t decide whether I was proud of myself for being successful so far or incredibly stressed at the sheer amount I’d planned for myself. Checking into my beach campsite and being shown to my pop-up tent in the sand, furnished with a mouldy mattress and 10-year old sleeping bag, I internally made a note of the fact that my tent was a clearly identifiable bright red contraption, and that both men at the reception desk gave me creepy vibes, so decided to be on my guard tonight. The good news was that directly in front of my little home for the night was the most beautiful view I’d ever sleep in front of: miles of glowing Caribbean sand, swaying palm trees, lapping waves all the way into the horizon. Admiring it silently, I gobbled up half of my stir fry portion, packed my day bag, took all my food to the kitchen and asked them to store it safely in the fridge, so the thriving ants’ nest underneath my tent wouldn’t decide to pop their heads inside and say hi while I was out. Then it was time to hike.
After a very therapeutic half an hour of solo hiking, keeping pace to build a sweat in between marvelling at the friendly monkey families jumping around the trail, I noticed a certain French man had been silently tailing me for a while. He’d stopped to take photos of the monkeys when I had, and we’d awkwardly smiled at each other as we laughed at the babies’ playfulness, but now I wasn’t able to shake him because he was annoyingly keeping my pace too. Eventually I turned around and introduced myself, because it seemed like all he really wanted was company. I was right. The French man sparked up conversation with me instantly, and while I was enjoying my peaceful and reflective walk, I had to admit I also liked chatting to him. He was interesting, a bit weird, the kind of person you’d never expect to hang out with but actually end up having a lot of fun with. We took the piss out of other loud French hikers, talked at length about Colombia, and became each other’s designated picture-taker when wildlife was near. This is what it must feel like to actually travel with someone else, I thought to myself with a small laugh, noting how unusual it felt to me.
After a couple of hours of fast hiking and extensive conversation, we reached a playa that had a restaurant, so decided to scavenge some free drinkable water from the servers. We weren’t going to stop, but as we passed the table area, my eye caught something and I reflexively did a double-take. Standing there, lanky and smiley, armed with a massive Canon camera, was Dylan, the very same English boy I’d met the day before on the tubing tour. Patrick turned around too, and we exchanged confused laughs and looks at each other before abandoning all plans to plough on, and sitting down to catch up. The universe has a funny way of gifting you second meetings when you least expect it, when you could be anywhere in the world, and they could be anywhere in the world too, but you just so happen to be in the same place at the same time. In my opinion, when these second meetings are gifted to you, you cannot pass them up. I was very happy to go with the wind, to let the universe throw me together with Pat and Dylan for a fleeting afternoon.
We stopped at the beach, ran at the sea, and after swimming spent a while warming up in the sun, chatting about life. The boys were only visiting Tayrona for the day, for Pat’s birthday, while I had my cozy, ant and sand-infested beach tent to look forward to tonight, so as the afternoon drifted on around us, we begrudgingly packed up and started the trek back to the main trail. The boys were both starting to think about their lives back in London, where Pat would be headed soon and Dylan after a trip to Mexico, but I admired their fluidity, the ability to drop life for a while in the depths of Colombia, truly experience something so different, before heading back and picking it all back up. Mentally, I was in a completely different space to them – I was so deep into Colombia, into backpacking itself, that it occurred to me that I had nothing at home. I’d essentially dropped my whole life, and apart from a university degree that I wasn’t sure about completing, there wasn’t much waiting for me on the other side. And I was so enjoying not thinking about what would happen when I went home, that chatting with Dylan and Pat was almost an inevitable wake-up call, something I needed to hear. Even if it wasn’t time to leave yet, it was time to start thinking about the next life I would build myself when this one ended.
I hugged the boys and waved them goodbye as they hopped onto a shuttle to the exit, silently thanking the universe for another brief lesson. The rest of the evening and night was solely, deliciously, all mine, and I embraced my alone-ness on the walk back to the campsite by talking aloud to myself and smiling at the nature all around. I went to the weird flirty guy at reception to organise a moto-taxi to the entrance of the park at 7am the following morning (“Now, this is the last moto-taxi I’ll take”, I promised myself yet again), and then realised how hungry I was. I scavenged a can of beer from another weird flirty staff member at the campsite’s ramshackle bar, and asked the chefs if I could grab my food from the fridge, which turned out to just be a massive cool-box that had frozen half of my noodles and kept the other half very warm.
As I devoured some of the noodles while waiting for the rest to thaw, relishing the sips of warm beer in between, I got talking to the staff who were living here. I was obviously not their typical guest, refusing to spend money on food and helping myself to their cutlery for my own, sitting alone among the groups of Colombian families or travelling couples, unconcerned about my oddness. One of the women’s curiosity piqued and she finally asked me, as nicely as she could, what on earth a white girl like me was doing here. “Is your boyfriend joining you?” she asked, and I shook my head with a smile. “Do you have a boyfriend?” Another no. “So, you’re alone?” A nod. I finished my mouthful and explained that I was a solo traveller. “You go everywhere alone?” Yes. “But why?” I laughed, and she laughed back, utterly confused. “It’s better,” I explained in my basic, shitty Spanish. “I love travelling alone. Right here I’m free. I can do whatever I want.” She paused, soaking in my words, finally understanding them. “But aren’t you scared?” she asked, a question I would never be rid of apparently. “All the time,” I replied. “That’s even more of a reason to do it.”
After chatting to the women sitting at the staff table, answering their endless questions and asking a lot of my own about their life, their work, I bid everyone goodnight with a flutter of pride in my heart, not only at being able to finally get by with my Spanish, but feeling empowered in the presence of more strong women. While the men working in this campsite were all incredibly weird, at least the women were cool. I walked back to my tent on the beach, phone flashlight in hand, and scanned the insides for any ants still kicking around. There were mercifully small numbers and I decided to keep them alive, trying to transfer them back to their nest in the sand. After falling asleep to the sound of the Caribbean ocean, flicking sand away from my face at random points in the night but sleeping positively soundly considering the conditions, I awoke to a beautiful sunrise from the east. I bounded out of my tent and towards the sea, throwing my arms wide and gazing up at the endless sky above, the endless water to the horizon. Pink and orange swirls scattered the fading stars, and as I ran back and forth around the beach, feeling utterly alive, I stopped and laughed aloud.
Today was the 9th March, the date of my flight home. But instead of taking it, here I was, waking up for sunrise on a beach in north Colombia. And as I thought about the decision I’d made, to not catch the flight, to stay in the adventure, to heavily eat into my student overdraft, to wing it like I’d never winged it before, I couldn’t be happier that I’d chosen this path. This freedom.
After a very rough night’s sleep on the San Gil – Santa Marta night bus and numerous mysterious stops, where the driver would meet a random man on the side of the road and load or unload big brown packages, which seemed to be suspiciously common in Colombia, we rolled into Santa Marta and were instantly bombarded with taxi drivers and terminal workers all shouting something different in Spanish. Nadine, Evie and I managed to determine where to catch a bus from, and crossed a busy motorway to an unmarked spot where buses were apparently stopping. My chances of saying goodbye to Nadine and Evie diminished when I realised, via the ever-shouting taxi drivers swarming us, that my bus didn’t go from here but theirs did, and I’d have to reach another mysterious terminal. In the midst of my panic surrounded by hagglers, the girls’ bus arrived and I meekly waved at them, watching it drive away and longing for something to be easy for once.
Now I was alone and surrounded by at least 20 shouting men in a city I’d never been to before, and all I could do was stand in bewilderment and try to think through the chaos. I couldn’t figure out where the real Minca bus station was, and didn’t trust any of the answers I was getting from these people. I finally remembered my hostel’s email with instructions on it, and hurriedly scrolled through to find the best way to reach Minca from here. In this moment of weakness I was lured in by a particular motorbike taxi driver, and was about to blindly follow him before his mater pulled him into a huddle ahead of me, sending alarm bells clanging in my head. I backed away and towards a legitimate yellow taxi, confirming that he wouldn’t scam or kidnap me before finally letting him take me to the bus terminal. It was only on the colectivo ride, involving 12 people crammed into a mini-bus that was reminiscent of my days in El Salvador and Guatemala, from Santa Marta to Minca, that I realised how incredibly tired I was. Despite having no space or legroom in the tiny vehicle, I passed out for the whole journey, only to wake up to more shouting men, but this time in a little town in the jungle.
I was sick of being in vehicles, sick of hagglers, and ready to finally take a shower and brush my teeth, but first there was a big hill to get up before reaching my hostel. It was called Casa Loma, quite literally meaning ‘house on the hill’, something I was very aware of when I booked it but thought, at the time, I’d be able to manage. Now, feeling battered as if I’d just come through a war, I had no choice but to walk uphill, and I knew it, so I begrudgingly started climbing. It felt like the longest climb of my life, longer than even the Uran summit in Costa Rica, longer than the hill in Maderas, longer than even Fuego at some point, but I finally reached the top and threw my 18kg backpack on the ground angrily, as if it was the bag’s fault, or the hill’s fault, and not my own, that I was drenched in sweat and exhausted after choosing a hostel in the mountains. The heat was sweltering compared to the cooler highlands climate, and I desperately tried to fan myself to stop the sweat escaping every pore of my body, watching the owner sensing my anger and timidly approaching with a glass of water.
Finally, I calmed down and looked around me. It was a hippie hostel for sure, with the smell of weed and incense and coffee clouding my senses like a mystical drug in the air that was zenning people out. Everyone moved in slow motion and with absent smiles on their faces, carrying yoga mats or exclusively vegan food or massive joints from table to table, mingling in the same rhythm as the calm music playing faintly in the background. I knew it was a beautiful place, with a beautiful view and a beautiful chance to connect to nature, but right now, still sweating and worked up from my journey, I refrained myself from rolling my eyes. I really wasn’t in the mood for hippie-dippie shit right now. Give it time, I thought to myself as I went to check the hostel’s notice board for a yoga class to stretch out my bus-burdened muscles and clear my head. There was a class down at the local river that afternoon. Perfect. Scenic, relaxing, immersive in this gorgeous jungle and its nature. The proper introduction to hippie life in Minca.
At least, that’s what I thought the yoga class would be like. Yes, it was all of those things, but ‘immersive’ also turned out to mean being uncomfortably close to a nest of massive, angry-looking ants, and being crawled on by an annoying great black wasp, a species I was scarred by after my experience in Nicaragua. The bugs were evermore relentless as the sun started to go down, making my zen yoga practice much harder with the constant wafting and itching I was doing in my paranoia. Not only that, but what I thought would be straight yoga class ended up being a mix of stretches and hypnotic, nonsensical dance movements, the kind that hippies do when they’re around a bonfire and tripping off their face. I tried to embrace the flowing arms and rhythmic side steps, but fought to conceal my laughter and thought on how strange this all was. If I thought I’d turned into a spiritual nutjob with my experiences so far, I was consoled now in the knowledge that I still had some scepticism left. I could only look around at the beautiful river setting as someone smoked a joint on a rock in the sun, and paddle in the crisp waters, splashing my face with after class, at last happy and relaxed after the intense travelling it had taken to get here.
That night I treated myself to some local sushi, a bold but desperate move after months of abysmal cuisine, and returned to the hostel, collecting a sweat on the way up as I raced to catch the sunset. The rumours were right: The views of the mountains and Santa Marta and the sea beyond really were magical, and the sunset’s colours seemed more powerful and beautiful than they’d ever been. As I approached the top of the hill, I heard the faint mellow sounds of live guitar music coming from the hostel bar, and smelled weed in various clouds wafting through the air. I smiled, letting myself fall into this peaceful environment head-first after the chaos of the cities. Approaching a table of chatting backpackers, I instantly recognised a couple of faces in the sea of new people. Emma and Vera, two Norwegian girls who’d been at Lake Atitlan while I volunteered, had surprisingly ended up in the same hostel as me in the middle of Colombia’s northern countryside. We hugged each other in surprise as I started catching up with them and meeting other people around the table.
I’d wanted to get up early and do a long hike the morning after, since Minca was a notorious spot for beautiful jungle treks, but the only problem with the infectiously chill and hippie vibe of the area was that it made it a hundred times harder to do literally anything at all. I tried to make the 9am morning yoga class, but was so sleepy and happy waking up that I completely missed it. And after that I couldn’t seem to drag myself out of the hostel to do a hike. I wasn’t alone; Anna and Joanna, two friendly women from Latvia and Germany, rolled their first joint at breakfast time as they sat with me, and buckled in for a whole day of rolling and smoking continuously until it was time to sleep, only moving a few times to find a new comfy spot like cats. They were so permanently baked that I wondered if I ever really got through to their real brains, and the same could be said for most people at the hostel. When everyone and everything went in peaceful slow motion like this every waking hour, it felt completely impossible to snap out of it.
Which was obviously lovely up to a point, but I reached my point quite quickly, getting restless at my inability to move or do anything significantly productive. It dawned on me that my non-existent plan going into the future didn’t just mean where in Colombia I’d find myself next, it also meant what I would do each day, where I would sleep, how I’d get from one place to another, how to financially support myself, and whether I was staying or going home. While I rarely stressed about anything anymore, in the moment I remembered all this information I realised that now was a very reasonable time to be overwhelmed. I’d got so caught up in my freedom that I was dangerously close to just becoming a headless idiot instead, and as I bolted upright in my beanbag chair and stared down at the panicked thought snippets jotted down on the back page of my journal, I finally felt myself revive from my carefree slumber. Sure, I could chill out and do yoga and smoke weed and be happy on a hill for a few days, but it was time to really think about what I wanted again.
I called my family, booked some flights and bullet-listed a rough itinerary for my remaining week in Colombia. I’d been completely annoyed at myself for not even managing to leave the hostel today and instead relentlessly overthinking everything into a spiral, but now I reminded my thoughts to be kind to myself, to let myself breathe and clearly the musty fog that had clouded my mind this morning, to ground myself back down to earth and feel secure in my body again. And yes, while the morning was now gone, there was no point letting the negative thoughts stay – they, too, should be gone with the morning. So I looked down at my plan, pictured the lovely faces of my family, looked around me at this lush, mystical jungle, and decided to just start walking. I took the main trail to same famous waterfalls, down the hill and into the trees, tying up the shoelaces on my lighter, smaller trainers and starting to walk away from Minca.
Ten minutes in, I looked down at my feet again, but not just to tie shoelaces. My step faltered as I thought about the trail, about how evenly inclined and declined it was, about its mostly sturdy terrain. And then I thought to myself, I could just start running. So I did. My feet started colliding faster and heavier with the ground, my breath quickened and deepened, my lungs burned slightly, sweat rapidly gathered on my forehead and neck. I breathlessly looked up at sunlight flashing through the trees and suddenly felt at one with nature, like a powerful force was tugging me towards the trees and rivers and even to the ants creating highways on the trail. I hadn’t trail ran since Guatemala so I was in full knowledge that this wasn’t my fittest, but regardless I pushed on, not entirely sure why. I passed locals and tourists on the trail, all of whom stared at me with the same bewildered shock and sometimes cheered me on in Spanish. At times my legs burned too much and my lungs felt too small, and I slowed to a walk again and winced into the sunlight, before taking a deep breath and beginning again, daring myself to run further and faster.
The walk up the hill to my hostel almost killed me off after my afternoon of quite literally chasing waterfalls, where I’d eagerly jumped in each cold, fresh pool to wash the sweat off before repeating the whole process again. My legs were jelly, my heart was bursting from this electric alive-ness and the beautiful nature I was surrounded by, and, not wanting it to end, I’d stubbornly refused to take a moto-taxi back to Minca as the sky started to darken, instead running as fast as I could to not get stuck in the jungle at night. But now, trudging up this god-damned hill, all I wanted to do was find a comfy bush and turn in for the night. When I finally made it up, completely conscious of how disgusting I must look and smell, Joanna and Anna were there to greet me, their eyes barely opening and their smiles coming from another planet. I breathlessly explained my amazing adventure and they nodded without really hearing me. They’d sat and smoked all day, they said, like always, and were about to smoke again by the looks of it. I laughed with them but quickly left to take a shower, glad I’d decided not to join them. My head was clearer, my body healthier, and my mood drastically improved from this morning. The universe had also answered my prayers and made a bed available for the next two nights in this hostel, so I could extend my stay in Minca.
After a bizarrely sweet live music night, and a very interrupted night of blocking out the loudest sex noises I’ve ever heard coming from one of the hostel’s private huts, I had a slow morning taking a yoga class and wandering the small streets and local craft shops of Minca. I treated myself to my hostel’s vegan chocolate pancakes for breakfast and more sushi for lunch, relishing in being able to have genuinely nice food after so long, and somewhere along the way decided to spend the afternoon visiting one of the fincas up in the mountains, where they did coffee and cacao tours for tourists. With my legs still feeling like they’d fall off from yesterday, though, I didn’t fancy the rigorous climb to get me there, and the road was so rough that cars couldn’t make the drive, so instead I concluded that my only option was to flirt with death and take a moto-taxi.
Now, I haven’t fully explained the concept of a moto-taxi yet, I suppose half in denial that I even partook in such a terrifying mode of transport. In Colombia, it’s popular for men in possession of motorbikes to act as taxi drivers, for a cheaper price and more access to tricky, remote places. At first I thought this idea was downright insane – why on earth would I ever trust a man with a motorbike promising he wouldn’t murder me if I got on the back? But the more time I spent in Colombia, the more legitimate I realised this enterprise was. There are actual moto-taxi companies who employ drivers and own offices in towns and cities, and boys are literally raised riding motorbikes to prepare for it. Still completely in denial, partly due to my absolute terror of not being in control of the bike and putting my life in someone else’s hands, and partly due to the insanely real possibility of being kidnapped, until now I had pretty much refused to take one. But after seeing so many tourists hopping on moto-taxis at the waterfalls yesterday, seemingly without a single worry in their brains, I managed to convince myself that I would be safe, and it would get me up to the finca much faster, and besides, it was only one time.
Fast forward half an hour, after the most hair-raising journey of my life spent clutching at the driver so hard that my nails had started to dig into his skin and mentally accepting that this was the end of my life, I stood wind-blown and shaking at the entrance of the finca. At one point, on an almost vertical incline, I’d really thought the bike would give up and roll all the way back down the hill, squashing both me and the driver. I was instructed to push the ground with my feet while the man revved the bike as much as he could, both of us making running motions while the motorbike spluttered and struggled to make it up. I’d blinked away a tear of petrifying fear as the bike jumped into action again and almost toppled a few more times, before miraculously making it up alive.
Also waiting for the next cacao farm tour at the entrance were a group of three friendly backpackers, two English men and a pretty Canadian woman. They looked almost as shell-shocked as me at the hellish journey we’d just made up the mountain, and I quickly established that they were staying in my hostel too. “Did anyone hear those people shagging last night?” I asked conversationally, laughing as I recalled the porn-worthy shrieks coming from one of the jungle huts. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a woman being that unrealistically loud during sex.” My remark was met with awkward silence, and as I looked around at the group, my heart skipped a beat. One of the guys let out a snort while the other two looked at each other sheepishly. “Yeah, I think that was probably us,” the Canadian woman said, looking mortified.
In that moment, I really wished I had died coming up that wretched hill on the moto-taxi.
After frantically apologising and trying to divert the conversation as much as humanly possible, horrified at my own ruthlessness, I managed to deduce that the two English guys had started travelling together but were unexpectedly joined by the Canadian girl when she’d fallen for one of them. I felt bad for the third wheel, who seemed completely upbeat about his situation but nevertheless must have been putting up with a lot of shit in addition to the sex noises. We awkwardly shuffled behind the finca owner as our tour started, trying to think of anything other than the shagging situation last night, and feigned utter intrigue at the different kinds of cacao plants he was showing us.
After a cacao facial treatment, hot mug of real cocoa and a demonstration of the ancient machines that this family still used to make chocolate, I was finally starting to feel better about my comment. We played with the family’s dogs, discussed how awful mainstream milk and white chocolate companies are, and admired the stunning plantation mountain views together in bliss. If anything, I think my bold introduction made the trio warm to me more. They invited me to walk down the mountain with them (there was absolutely no way in hell I was getting on another death contraption), and when we’d reached the town of Minca again, I found myself following them into a local snooker bar. The sweltering room stank like the 50-strong exclusively male crowd that had gathered there, with no method of ventilation in sight, and in between fending off creepy Colombian men and watching the English guys get stroppy over a game, the Canadian girl and I sank some beers and stood outside to breathe again. Being able to watch such an organic local scene, albeit a dodgy one, was refreshing compared to the high-as-kites hippies on the hill, and as we watched, we chatted about solo travel, love and taking risks for it. I confessed to her my German boy problem, and she told me that life was short. “Take of that what you will,” she said with a wink.
Back at the hostel, I made the cheapest meal I could think of, mango porridge, which at this point was at least 60% of my body weight, and got an early night. My new shagging friends were leaving in the morning to another hostel higher in the mountains, via moto-taxi of course, and I was leaving to the coast, so without even catching their names I let them disappear to their separate rooms and have sex a bit quieter this time. Anna and Joanna looked more vacant than ever as I waved goodbye to them at reception the following morning, their reactions delayed as they wished me luck while keeping one eye on the joint being rolled, and Emma and Vera, the Norwegian girls, were nowhere to be seen. As I thanked the hostel’s stoner owner, who’d been so kind to me for letting me extend, and started my final walk down that dreaded hill, I reflected on my time in Minca.
It was so stunning and peaceful here that I’d ended up staying longer than I’d planned, giving me a beautiful chance to slow down, get into yoga, settle into myself and roam barefoot, grounded, in this magical spot of the Sierra Nevadas. I was more in tune with who I was spiritually, and better off for the experience. But as I took some more steps, and the faint wafts of incense and twinkle of the hostel’s calming playlist faded into jungle noises, I breathed a teeny, tiny sigh of relief. Being here had also been like being in an alternate hippie universe where everything happens in excruciating slow motion; everyone seemed brain-dead, stuck, too zen to feel anything in particular. I was immensely glad I’d dodged that bullet, that I’d forcefully stayed awake, even if it meant being alone most of the time. And now, as the next exciting adventure in my Colombian chapter began, I’d never felt more awake. I hopped on a colectivo back to Santa Marta, and, looking through my next spontaneous hostel booking, mused on how exactly I’d find it if it appeared to not even exist online. It was good to know I’d never run out of problems, I guess.
Two days after arriving in Medellin, that feeling of being separated from Paul and Lukas lingered like a lump in my throat, and I realised my gut was trying to tell me something. I sat in my hostel in downtown Medellin, a dodgy establishment full of both young and old men bragging about how many prostitutes they’d shagged since arriving, and suddenly, seriously, contemplated booking a flight to Panama. I was so confused at how I could be surrounded by such good friends, with Conal, Paul, Josh and Anna coincidentally all being here, and yet feel such a pull to the silly German hippies who made me so unbelievably happy.
After arriving in Medellin at 3am and sleeping off the rest of our hangovers, Anna and I had gone on a stroll around a fruit and artesanal street market in the morning before I went solo to admire the works of Botero, Latin America’s most famous artist, in Medellin’s galleries and sculptures scattering the main square. The day after I’d gone on the search for more art at the beautiful museum of Antioquia, and then joined a walking tour of Comuna 13, a famously ex-violent neighbourhood that had undergone a transformation of street art and dancing in the last few years. It had been so lovely to explore the city’s culture, of which there was copious amounts, but now, sat at the hostel’s large stone table, I opened up my laptop and stared at Kayak’s ‘flights’ screen furiously.
I was annoyed at myself for not falling in love with Medellin as much as I’d wanted to. It had such a fascinating and sad history, so many tales of cartels, of guerrillas controlling favelas and police bombing innocent civilians trying to catch criminals. Of the tiny staircase mazes in comunas such as 13 being the havens and secret passageways used by drug smugglers to be unreachable by cops, of the turnaround after relentless street wars, of arts and culture replacing violence. I’d loved looking at how Colombia’s proud artists so incredibly painted pictures of the country’s resistance to crime and its growth, the way that local painters and hip hop dancers told the same story on the streets. And yet everywhere I walked alone was clouded with the same dirty, loud, unsafe atmosphere as Bogota, with the horrible thoughts in every man’s head etched on their faces like it was in permanent marker – including the men at my hostel. Colombia’s hooker and cocaine culture may be slowly subsiding, but it was still evidently here, and as a result I couldn’t shake my discomfort.
My saviour once again was beautiful Anna, as well as being able to reunite and spend a night with Josh, Paul and Conal, during which we called Kurtis, where it was about 5am in Spain where he was, to laugh about the good times at Christmas. It was so miraculous that all these incredible people were here at the same time after taking completely different paths, and if Colombia wasn’t proving to be as freeing as I’d hoped, at least I had them. Anna and I had gone on a Pablo Escobar tour in the morning, detailing the famous cartel leader who’d operated in Medellin and started a drug war to maintain control after being discovered, and visited his grave, a memorial for assassinated victims, and the ‘prison’ Escobar built for himself in the mountains. For some unexplained reason, a techno DJ duo were recording a set on its helipad, high on the hill and in between clouds, and Anna and I exchanged utterly confused glances before bobbing our heads along with the music.
But back at the hostel, with Kayak open in front of me, I had a big decision to make. Do I jump on the next flight to Panama to meet Paul and Lukas, or do I ride it out alone in Colombia and then catch my flight home in nine days? Considering the burnout, illnesses and relentless travelling in the last month I’d been feeling pretty ready to go home, four months after starting my trip. I’d done enough, I kept telling myself, and besides, the idea of having a wardrobe, my own room and good food again was incredibly tempting. But now, panicking at how little time I had left and trying to decide what to do with it, I realised I no longer had that feeling of missing the little things at home. I was finally immune to such material comforts. To try and figure out a plan of action, I enlisted the precious help of a friendly German boy and a lairy, slightly creepy English guy, writing down exactly how I could reach Bocas del Toro in Panama, where the boys where staying. Before long a crowd of hostel guests were arguing each other about how Cerys should handle this crazy situation, all completely invested in my tragic tale. I tried to listen to my gut but it had gone unhelpfully silent, and in the end the deciding factor was simply logistics; that it would take an overnight bus and at least four flights to get to Panama and back in time for my flight home. I couldn’t abandon ship, and a defeated knot settled in my stomach as I realised it.
Just as I was starting to wallow in self pity at the result of my quest, Anna arrived with a questionable box of hair dye, sporting a picture of a white girl with Photoshopped purple hair on the cover. We had no idea what colour it truly was, and absolutely no clue how to apply the dye since the instructions were all in Spanish, but jumped at the opportunity to have a hostel hair-dye job. I was currently rocking pink, after having dyed my hair many times in the last few months, so was trusted to take charge and mix the dye with water and shampoo in a miscellaneous pot we found in the kitchen, telling Anna it didn’t matter that we didn’t have gloves. I combed through her blonde hair with my fingers, sending dark pink splatters of dye all over the floor and walls of the hostel courtyard and being unable to stop our laughter at the silliness of it all. The men sitting around the table froze and watched in stunned silence, clearly confused at why we’d thought this was a good idea. Our legs and hands and Anna’s scalp covered, stained with dye, I finally gave up and told her to try and wash it out, while I accepted that my fingers would be permanently pink.
Anna was slowing down her travels and staying with a friend in Medellin for a while, so as I decided to get a night bus away from the city that evening, we realised we’d have to say goodbye again. I was panicked at how little time I had left to see Colombia, and how long I’d have to wait before seeing Paul and Lukas back in Europe, so I told Anna that I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go home yet. “So why not stay?” she told me. It was true that I was incredibly broke when it came to funding my trip, having already stayed half a month longer than planned, but I knew there were always options to volunteer and work. “It’s up to you, but if you stay we might be able to meet up again!” And it wasn’t just about being able to see Anna again, it was also about the boys. They were heading up to Nicaragua soon, somewhere I’d already been but had rushed through to get down to Costa Rica, as well as experiencing major physical and mental burnout, so maintained that I wanted to go back. Sensibly speaking, it was a stupid idea. But speaking from within me, it seemed like the next adventure. I decided to sleep on it on the bus.
The next problem was that I didn’t even know what bus I was taking. I would either head to San Gil, the adventure sport capital of Colombia, to do some hiking and paragliding in the mountains, or I’d go straight up north to the Sierra Nevada jungle mountain range, entering warm tropical Caribbean territory again. I was sick of the rain and clouds that covered these cities, and the temperatures that now felt very low to me, but I knew there was more to see in the highlands. As I waved goodbye to the oddball group at the hostel, someone asked where I was headed next. I turned, sighed, and said that I honestly didn’t know. “I could never do that,” he laughed. “Choose a direction minutes before getting on the bus. It takes some balls for sure.” I smiled and agreed, too exhausted to continue the conversation, and flagged down my Uber to the bus terminal. On the way I decided I’d always wanted to experience flying, so my choice became suddenly clear. It would only be a whistle-stop stay in San Gil, but that was where I was heading.
I’d bought some sleeping pills in Medellin, which are amazingly available over the counter pretty much everywhere in Latin America and completely illegal back home, coming in a single strip with no instructions, just vibes. I Googled the name of my pills and the correct dosage to check I wouldn’t die, and then fell happily asleep on the bus all night, waking up to incredible mountain views and a stiff neck. As we started driving through San Gil I gathered my stuff to leave, but the bus kept going and I grew suspicious of being forgotten about. I told the driver my ticket was for this stop, and he started swearing to himself in Spanish and looking through receipts. Expecting him to turn around quickly to drop me off, I sat up front with my belongings, perched and ready. But he kept driving. I panicked and started raising my voice to get his attention, but all I got in response was laughs from the driver and his irritating mate sitting in the front, with both of them repeating “tranquillo!” as if it would make this situation any easier. I was not tranquillo, and this made me even more angry. I demanded to know where we were going, and managed to figure out that he was driving to the next terminal and sending me back on another bus.
Trying to keep calm but unable to stop thoughts of scenarios where I’d have to pay for the next bus, or get stuck in some random town until a bus came, I tried to tell the men that this wasn’t fair, that I shouldn’t pay and that they should’ve just turned around. But I just became even more infuriated at my lack of Spanish to articulate my feelings, so in the end gave up, and sat looking out of the window in defeat as they laughed. Luckily, there was already a bus back to San Gil at the next terminal, a dragging 30 minute drive away, and the driver ran to explain my situation to the new bus driver, chucking my backpack in the luggage storage and smiling apologetically at me. The new driver made me feel calmer, speaking quietly and giving me a curious-looking fruit for my troubles, so I could only accept the setback and take a seat.
I tried to cheer myself up after getting off the bus by stretching my legs and walking the 20 minutes into town instead of getting a taxi, buying a mango for my porridge breakfast on the way. But I couldn’t understand the Colombian Spanish the seller was using, and quickly got stressed again, dampening my mood further. To make matters worse, a storm was on the way, meaning I couldn’t take advantage of the whole afternoon here with a hike. But as I started making my porridge after a long-awaited shower and change of clothes in my new hostel, I realised the underlying cause of my looming bad mood. I couldn’t get Paul’s eyes or smile or curly hair out of my head, and I couldn’t bear the thought of going home without seeing him again.
At the advice of a friendly Dutch girl staying at the hostel, when the rain stopped and the clouds in my head cleared, I jumped on a local bus to explore a small artesanal mountain village, where I milled the craft shops, hiked up to a viewpoint of the mountains and grabbed coffee and a sandwich by myself at an adorable little cafe. I revelled in being completely alone again, in exploring at my own pace and being unsure whether I really would take that flight home. For now, it was time to enjoy the rest of Colombia. But San Gil was much bigger than I’d expected, and with its size brought the same dirty and busy discomforting feeling as the other cities. I felt like retreating to tiny villages like the one I was currently in, in the mountains and wilderness, for the rest of my time here, and getting out of San Gil as soon as I’d had my paragliding adventure.
After a questionably shit ‘pool party’ arranged by some of the hostel guests, including a Swiss French guy who turned DJ for the night, I hit my drunk limit and quit early, determined not to throw up mid-air while paragliding tomorrow. A friendly and lively Irish girl, Nadine, who I’d met at the hostel, suggested that if I didn’t want to stay long, I could join her and a friend taking the night bus to Santa Marta tomorrow night. It would mean only one night in a real bed out of three, and a very long journey to get up north before even reaching my next stop Minca, but I knew I was prepared for it. Not wanting to commit just yet, enjoying my carefree, turn-up-at-the-bus-station kind of lifestyle for the moment, I told her I’d sleep on it, and possibly even mull it over when I was almost 2000 metres in the air tomorrow. She said that sounded fair and bid me goodnight.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that I was late for paragliding in the morning, after idly making my staple mango porridge and leisurely sitting down to eat before being told that the instructor was waiting for me. I would forever and always be on pura vida time from now, it seemed, so I apologised and wolfed down my food. It was only me and a strange Swiss man on the tour that day, so we made painfully awful conversation on the drive up through the mountains to the Chicamocha canyon. He was solo travelling Colombia by motorbike, something I could never attempt for fear of the wrath of Colombian drivers, but it became clear that while the man was apparently unafraid of fatally crashing, he was terrified of heights. After asking me at least five times if I was scared, to which I mildly replied each time that I was more excited than anything, he chuckled to himself and clutched at his sweaty palms, trying to hold down the fear. We stood at the top of a mountain looking down on the vast stretch of landscape before us, just about being able to see the canyon snake through the mountains in a horseshoe loop. It was unbelievably beautiful, and I grinned at the thought of running off into it. The Swiss man shivered next to me.
We were given the option to add some adrenaline to the experience, with loops and G Force tricks while in the air, and I shakily agreed, knowing I would love it but also being conscious of how high up I would be, dropping at ridiculous speeds. I decided I wanted to feel alive and nothing less, so I fist-bumped my tandem professional as I got strapped in, and ran with all my might off the top of the mountain. My feet stopped hitting the ground and suddenly there was no ground, just rolling hills and tiny dots of people and houses. I let go of the paraglide straps and spread my arms wide like a bird, whooping and reaching into the air like I wanted to pocket this feeling forever. Whenever I get asked what superpower I’d have, my answer has always been flying, and now it was real, and before I knew it we were catching a thermal spiral and twirling even higher still.
My tandem told me to hold on tight, and I braced myself, knowing the G Force was coming. My stomach flipped and somersaulted, my eyes watered and I could only let out cries of happiness, with a tiny bit of fear, as we plummeted towards the ground and then shot up again. My heart pounded with adrenaline and I laughed when the trick was over, begging to do another one instantly. That feeling beats merely flying, I thought to myself. That feeling, the energy coursing through your body and making you alarmingly aware of just how alive you are, that is true freedom.
I’d wanted to squeeze in a visit to a waterfall in the afternoon before leaving, but as the clouds rolled in and a storm started brewing on our way back to San Gil, I accepted the fact that it was better to relax and wait for the night bus so that I didn’t almost miss anything else. With paragliding checked off the bucket list, done and dusted, I was also done and dusted with this place, and craved the tropical heat and jungles of the north. I joined Nadine and Evie in their wait for the night bus, all three of us going out for a final meal in San Gil to celebrate, but regretting it instantly when all three of our meals could’ve been compared to actual dog shit. My coffee was literally hot milk with a tiny aftertaste of real coffee, and the slimy vegetables on my plate made me want to vomit. We now wouldn’t eat a proper meal until tomorrow afternoon, so mourned over our gross-tasting dinners and left abruptly.
So far, 90% of local Colombian food I’d tried had been utterly disgusting, save the empanadas, and I’d ended up skimping my own food instead to make it last as many meals as possible. Every food establishment stank of deep fat fryers, everything was covered in oil, and vegetables mostly seemed like a thing of the past. I was glad I was forcing myself to eat as much fruit and veg as I could by buying from local markets and cooking myself, but I slightly missed the cheap and comparably nice street food of Central America. I packed rice cakes, peanut butter and an apple for my bus breakfast, a top-notch dish that only a night bus connoisseur could dream up, and followed the girls into a taxi to the terminal.
We’d split up in Santa Marta, with me heading straight to Minca, the famed gem of a small town hidden in the Sierra Nevadas, while the girls attempted to find the hostel they’d booked in the middle of nowhere. I’d been close to joining them, but my previous experience of middle-of-buttfuck hostels, and the physical and mental pain of getting all my stuff there and back, prevented me. So, save this incredibly long night bus journey, I was flying solo yet again, and buckled in for a numb bum and my rice cake breakfast.
my silly little solo trip 