Solo and female!

I’ve had quite the easy time so far: ride from the airport in Sao Paolo, maid service upon arrival, my own bedroom and private bathroom, the father of my couchsurfing host refusing to accept any money for shipping my laptop to NYC, ride from the bus station in Rio with help from friendly Brazilian I met while en route to Rio, assistance from current couchsurfing host, Marcelo, with purchasing bus tickets, booking accommodations and offering pleasant company for various things to do and see (read: everything).

I haven’t had any truly challenging days (unless you consider underestimating the strength of the bottomless caipirinha while on a boat in the middle of the sea a challenge), only a couple of snags along the way, but as a foreign female traveling by herself, I think I may even be at an advantage at times.  Recently, my friend Paula sent me an excellent (and brief) link to both the male and female perspective on the solo female traveler: does she have it easier than the solo male?

As Paula and I once backpacked together through Greece, Italy, and Spain for five weeks the summer after we graduated college (yes, we were overnight ferrying it to the pristine but festive island of Mykonos while the majority of our friends became acquainted with the cubicle), I can attest to the luxury of leaving my bag with a friend while I hopped on over to the restroom before the train’s (or ferry’s) departure.

However, safety and, ahem, pee issues aside, I think traveling alone is empowering, liberating, and thrilling.  While I don’t know if I’m ready after only a week and a half to conclude that we solo ladies have it easier than the solo guys, I am happy to share a couple of my positive solo travel experiences.  Social interaction, for example, Dave’s (aka the male perspective’s) first point, is not difficult for the woman by her lonesome; I’ve found myself bonding easily with foreign women who don’t speak a word of my language.  It’s not the kind of  bonding that leads to a best friendship, mind you, but it’s the small connection that warms the soul and reminds me that words aren’t always necessary.  (And, of course, it’s not all that hard following a little eye contact to make friends of the opposite sex either!)

Nilda (prnounced New-duh), the maid in the Patrick household, took a liking to me and I to her.  Though verbal communication was difficult, we had our moments.  One evening when I was leaving the townhouse, Nilda rushed to the door to ask me if I was staying for dinner.  I understood as  much from her gesturing towards the set table and the smells of food cooking in the kitchen.  What I wasn’t sure was how to ask her what time dinner was so that I could make an informed decision.  I struggled with trying to get her to uderstand me, and eventually I just took out my watch and pointed to the time (7 PM), which is when Nilda said “oito” for 8 PM.

“Ate mais tarde (see you later)”, I said, and when I returned with a bottle of wine and showed it to Nilda, she nodded, opened it and placed it on the table with the other dinner beverages.

In the afternoons, unable to tear myself away from my twice-daily caffeine habit, I’d timidly (still completely unaccustomed to havig a live-in maid) seek Nilda’s help with making the coffee.  Each time, she seemed to do it happily but not without looking at me in my tank top and bare arms and asking me if I was cold (frio?).  Once I put a sweater on, Nilda seemed content.

The day before I left, I took out my camera and indicated to Nilda that I wanted to take a picture of us.  Even though she wasn’t pleased with her appearance (something I figured out by her expression and quick removal of her hat) we smiled for the camera.  And when I left, she came over to say goodbye, and I asked Patrick to thank her for me and tell her I enjoyed meeting her.

When I was in China, I had similar bonding experiences in spite of the impossible language barrier.  There was the woman who owned the hostel in Yangshuo who gave me breakfast porridge and laughed when her daughters translated that iId named the kitten that lived with them.  We say together and drank tea, but we did not speak.   And then there was the old and sage Great Wall tour guide who looked out for me as I was the only one among the group traveling by myself.  When I showed her the picture taken of us, she smiled her big, toothless grin again.

Earlier today, an Argentine woman started began speaking to me.  She had somewhat of an ulterior (but harmless) motive, for she was practiing English, doing her homework as she told me.  A lovely woman, she stressed the importance of my safety, told me to be very careful in Argentina.  Certainly, we were in a safe and relaxing environment, on a boat in Arraial do Cabo, a small, sleepy (at this time of year, anyway) beach village a few hours from Rio.  (Next to Sao Paolo and Rio, it felt like an oasis of safety, but I was grateful for her insight.)

There are, undoubtedly, plenty of obstacles I’ll face by myself on my journey, feelings of homesickness notwithstanding, but I hope none of them will be serious or detrimental.  For now, I am mixing it up a little actually and will be traveling with a friend from college for a few weeks in Brazil.  I excaped on my own yesterday to Arraial do Cabo, and not without some minor scrapes and bruises either (story to come), but Erin and I will say goodbye to Marcelo on Monday and bid him billions of thanks for his incredible hospitality before we head to Salvador, which is, according to Lonely Planet’s South America on a Shoestring, *the* place travelers are most likely to get mugged.  They say there’s safety in numbers, so perhaps this junction of my solo travels is best interrupted.

From virtual meeting to couch

Definition couchsurfing: staying on a stranger’s couch free of charge, moving from one couch to the next over the course of travel, surfing as in sleeping or crashing when one needs a place to stay, that which provides budget accommodations, community-forming.

I’m not quite a newbie when it comes to couchsurfing–my first time surfing as we CSers fondly call it was in San Francisco in October 2008, and my second (albeit failed) attempt was in Shanghai in January 2009, and I’ve hosted surfers twice–but I’m no veteran either.

I’ve gone to exactly one CS event in NYC, and these types of events–bar parties, potluck dinners, picnics in the park, Bryant Park movie nights, RSVP-required shindigs, comedy club outings–occur frequently in the city and in its best borough, Brooklyn.

But I’m trying to get more involved.  I’m trying to be a regular surfer throughout South America.  Last night I quickly browsed the site for available couches, and if you’re interested in reading more about how this all works, check out Nomadic Matt’s excellent post on the subject.  I dashed off three brief but (I hoped) charming messages to potential hosts and changed my “availability” to “traveling at the moment” as the surfing requests had been inundating my inbox lately.

I woke up this morning to three positive replies: “Sure, Stacey, you can stay with me during those dates…”  “I can host you, Stacey.  Please confirm… “  “What time do you get in, Stacey?  I can probably pick you up from the airport…”

I read the entirety of the last reply to my sister, who also has a couchsurfing profile and good experiences to speak of, especially with the “meet for coffee or a drink” option that the site offers interested members who choose not to offer an actual couch.

“Go with Patrick,” Stephanie encouraged once I’d revealed the name of the possible airport pickup.

Now I’d been intending to take public transportation to my first in-city destination, be it a hostel or host’s place.  Budget travel doesn’t allow for cab rides just because they’re the easier option(at least not often, anyway).  Budget travel generally means opting for the more difficult option, which, in my past experiences, ends up becoming the story you tell over and over again, making it ironically the best option.

But this offer for the airport pickup was too much to refuse.  Plus, if I recalled correctly from my Sao Paolo couchsurfing profile-browsing, Patrick lived with his parents and siblings, which at least *sounded* safe.  I’d accept his offer and politely thanks but no thanks the others.

Initially, I was planning on staying in a hostel my first few nights.  Figuring it would be a good idea to give myself some time to get adjusted to the whole OMG-I’m-traveling-for-9-12-months-what-the-hell-am-I-doing? thing, a hostel, where I’d hook up with other like-minded travelers seemed like a wise first move.  Yet no one seems to embrace fully Sao Paolo as they do Rio di Janeiro or Salvador or Buenos Aires.  From what I’ve read, Sao Paolo is a huge metropolis, difficult to navigate, and not all that pretty.  Supposedly the nightlife scene was hopping, and it’s common to stay out until 6 AM no matter the night of the week, but I might want to ease into that lively scene.  Maybe with a local guide of some sort then, like a fellow CS member.

Cat, a lovely Canadian couchsurfer who stayed with me in early May, had just completed nearly a year of couchsurfing throughout South America, and she spoke highly of her stays, claiming that in South America the hosts were excited about taking you out and showing you around.  There’s no guarantee that a host will have time to point you to the cloest bus let alone take you clubbing.

Sure, couchsurfing is nice because at its most basic function, it provides you with a place to sleep; it saves you money.  But that’s not its purpose.  And it’s not what it’s all about.  When I hosted, although I had little time to entertain, I delighted in the giving.  Here I was, a person of little means financially, able to provide a towel, blankets, fresh, clean water, a rich cup of coffee in the morning, conversation, and a place to rest for a perfectly trustworthy stranger from a different city, country, or continent.

The community is growing in popularity, judging from the number of members–over one million–and it’s an excellent travel option for the backpacker.  Like most of my trip, I’m not sure when or where I’ll surf.  I don’t know when I’ll choose a hostel over a host, or why–until I’m in the decision-making moment, I assume–but that’s the idea, if you haven’t picked up on it yet.  I’ll go when I go.  Because I said go.

Permission to freak out

I’m wide awake at 4:47 AM, but I am not freaking out.  I’m just not particularly sleepy.  And I’m hungry and in a place (my parents’ house in a suburb of Buffalo, NY) where I can head straight to the fridge and grab any number of satisfying food items, something which will soon feel like a luxury.

It’s not the loss of a real bed–traded during my upcoming travels for a hostel dorm mattress or a stranger’s couch– or the realization that I won’t have a stocked pantry that freaks me out, though, admittedly, it has crossed my mind once or twice that I’m not about to be doing my back any favors.  And then there’s that little voice in my head, or rather the voice of a former co-worker’s spoken knowingly and yet without any knowledge of me, “You might not travel until your money runs out, you might travel until you get tired of sleeping on people’s couches.”

I had nodded and laughed to be polite, but even that–the unfamiliar, perhaps often uncomfortable sleeping arrangement night after night–didn’t scare me or make me question my decision to quit my jobs in New York and spend my savings to travel and write.

The recent freaked out feelings that I’ve been experiencing intensely (and on one or two days, that’s putting it mildly) don’t seem to be well focused.  Talking to my English Literature PhD-track friend Eileen didn’t move me towards any grand self-analysis beyond, “I’m…(hiccup, sniffle, sob) just really…(gulp for air, sniffle, cry) scared.”

According to Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, I’m precisely where I ought to be at the moment, questioning my move towards freedom.   In my case, given that I’ll be traveling solo, the freedom that I’m seeking (from the daily grind, the burnout, the lack of stimulation) will also involve isolation.  And following Friday night’s Say Goodbye party in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I gathered with a group of friends to share a beer and offer up half-goodbyes as we took to calling them, facing potential isolation is nothing short of terrifying.  After holding my one-month old nephew–my first–to my chest for hours yesterday evening as my family came together to welcome my sister, recently returned from a year in China, embrace the newest addition, my brother and sister-in-law’s baby, and wish me well on my journey, being alone seems, well, it seems daunting.

Some things I know: it will be great.  I won’t regret it.  I can come home anytime.  What I’m doing is pretty cool.  I am brave.  I’ll only be alone insomuch as I want to be (as it is with all backpackers, in my experience).  I’m ready for this adventure.

I anticipate experiencing a few more serious moments of anxiety and fear before I leave, and it’s good to be in a safe place now with family in close physical proximity and friends only a phone call away.  Having been given permission by so many to freak out as necessary before my departure, I am grateful and fortunate and comforted.

(Thanks to all those who endured my lengthy, tear-soaked voice- mails on Saturday afternoon.  It might happen again.)

The week countdown begins.