Preamble to my South American Sojourn
As it happened my 1978 six month solo sojourn across Canada in 1978 was just a prelude to a longer, and somewhat more exotic, trip. In November of 1978, as the days and nights grew colder, it was clear that continuing to camp in Canada, as beautiful as Canada may be, was not going to be comfortable – or fun. But the Canada trip had really just whetted my appetite for travel. I’d started on the road to discovering Canada – and myself – but I wanted to keep going. I’d decided to go to South America.
I was disappointed, but not surprised, at how little support I received from family and friends for this travel adventure. Some were concerned for my safety. I heard countless warnings of the lawlessness in Central and South America, the muggings and murders, and the duplicity and complicity of the police, who commonly extorted money from anyone they apprehended. I was warned, repeatedly, of the risk of being molested and raped (and in truth of the dozen or so solo women travelers I met in South America only two of us had not been raped). More than one of my acquaintances offered this dire - and not particularly helpful - prediction: “you’ll come home in a coffin”. Most were content to offer poignant words of advice: “for god’s sake be careful”. In a way what was more discouraging than these overt expressions of fear were the persistent questions of why. “Why are you doing this? Why now?” And “what about your job, your career? What if it isn’t there when you get back?” “What are you looking for?” “Why can’t you just stay here?”
I wasn’t able then to explain the forces that compelled and propelled me: the essential dissatisfaction and discomfort I had come to feel for North American culture, society and lifestyle. The focus on getting and spending, the endless quest for more and newer things – cars, clothes, furniture, technology – and the tremendous wastefulness, the ‘use and throw-away’ attitude that had become so pervasive. I felt that as a consequence of having been raised in and continuing to be a part of this culture not only had I had lost my sense of self and what was truly important in life, but so had so many others. Too many others. I needed to get away from it, still, to gain more perspective, and perhaps to experience somewhere where the attitudes and culture were, well, different.
Call it an existential crisis. Call it youthful rebelliousness. Call it foolhardiness. I knew it then as the call of the road, of adventure, of exploration, and of discovery. It calls me still, at 70, this desire to travel, not as a tourist, on a guided tour or following a set program, but as a traveler, a sojourner, carrying as little as possible, with no more expectation than to stay open and enjoy every experience. It excites my senses, stimulates my mind, and touches my soul. There is nothing like travel to wake a person up to the wonder, the awesomeness, the beauty, the awfulness and the vastness and diversity of this place we call earth. The small blue dot that we inhabit for such a short, short time.
And so I left Canada on December 13, 1978, less than a month after getting back to Vancouver, having driven poste haste across the Northern USA, chased by snow storms, riding in the slip streams of big rigs. I got a passport, a good map, and few essential travel items (but limited them to what I could put in a carry-on backpack). I got two Spanish lesson books. And I bought a multi-stop ticket, good for a year, with stops in Mexico City, Panama City, Quito, Lima, La Paz, Asuncion, Buenos Aires and Santiago. Needless to say, that's not exactly what I ended up doing. But I did travel for six months, mostly solo, and I did get to Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
I planned only two things in advance: a ten-day intensive Spanish course in Guatemala in December and a ten-day cruise in the Galapagos Islands in February. Otherwise, my dance card was open. As it turned out, taking the Spanish course was an excellent idea. It enabled me to converse not only with the Latinos, the dominant culture, and usually the people running or managing transportation, hotels, and restaurants, but also with almost all of the indigenous peoples, for whom Spanish is a second language. It was perfect: both they and I spoke slowly and simply, with many facial expressions and hand gestures to help get our meanings across.
A significant and very special aspect of my journey involved taking advantage of and seeking out opportunities to connect with indigenous women. I was more able to do this as a ‘solita’, or solo gringita – a young (white) woman traveling without a male partner – and therefore someone who was non-threatening and more easily approachable, and someone who aroused considerable curiosity (at that time there were very few young women traveling alone, especially in Latin and South America). I learned as much about myself as I learned about them as we shared our respective realities. All of the indigenous women who were ‘around’ my age (give or take ten or fifteen years) were married with many (often ‘too many’) children, all of them were deeply religious or spiritual, and all of them were leading lives requiring great physical – and mental – strength and fortitude. They evoked both my admiration and my pity – their lives were, and still are, just so damned hard.
As usual, I kept a travel journal, attempting to capture as much of what I saw and experienced as I could. But of course, there is always so much more. One must read between the lines, and remember that the posts in this blog were written over 40 years ago, when I was 29 years old, single, and the world was a very different place.
I also took some, but not many photos, mostly of landscapes, ruins, animals, and sometimes children. I find I am not comfortable snapping pics of people, especially indigenous people. I cringed when I saw tourists pointing big cameras, especially with long telephoto lenses, at indigenous people, especially women. Sometimes the women would try to cover their faces – they were clearly uncomfortable, as I would have been. I bought many postcards, often of indigenous people, and have ‘translated’ some of them, along with my slides, into digital images that I can share in this blog. Again, please remember that these images are over 40 years old – some are dark, or not clear, but some are wonderful, with colours as true as my memory recalls.
I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed producing it, by re-reading my old journal, re-looking at all the old photos, and re-living what was, in no small way, one of the most significant events in my life. I returned a much changed person, and one now fully committed to travel as much as possible, and when traveling, to immerse myself in the culture and the everyday lives of the people – especially the women.
My friend Sal offered this prayer to me as I set out on my South American journey. It was particularly apt during this trip, in a land so often sun soaked, and during a time when, as a solo traveler, I had to chart my own course.
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