Travel is all about balance, people!
August – September 2022: Costa Rica
Costa Rica, man. The trip of a lifetime. Before I get all sentimental about it, I want to share what I wrote in my travel journal as I waited at the hotel for my shuttle. This was the first real day of the trip, so at the time, that shuttle felt like an impending doom, creeping closer and closer. Getting into that van meant taking a blind leap off a steep cliff edge and free-falling into the unknown. And big leaps into uncertainty tend to send my stomach in knots. So, with that in mind, I found myself writing:
“There is too much pressure on beginnings, I think. For some books, that first sentence can instantly pull you in; others, you’re already daydreaming or running through a mental list of other things you should probably be doing. I hate that about beginnings, because the start of a thing almost never fully, accurately represents the rest of said thing. Take traveling, for example: if the first day—and in this instance, ‘day’ is sort of a blurred concept. First twenty-four hours, perhaps—of this trip was going to be all that my time in Costa Rica amounts to, I, without a doubt, would not have come.”
Wise, wise Victoria. In a way, I was right. After a day from hell, that anxiety would fade, and I would find myself on a life-changing journey that sent home a different woman from the one that arrived. A better one. But that is the sentimentality creeping in, and I’m not ready to talk like that yet. For now, I want to share that hellish beginning, partially because it’s funny in hindsight and I live for self-deprecation, and partially because it bears the proof that travel is not all beautiful views and delicious foods and perfect experiences. Travel can mean long days and sleepless nights and red eyes at the airport and trying and failing to navigate foreign cities. Travel can mean getting scammed or getting lost or missing your flight or booking something for the wrong day and then missing out on the experience entirely. And those things all sound horrible, I know, but they really do pale in comparison to those views and those foods and those experiences. You just have to know that it’s rarely one without the other. Life is all about the balance of good and bad, and I’m of the belief that hardships make the good times feel even better–you’re certainly less likely to take them for granted, and that is so important. I was definitely much more appreciative at the end of this experience because of its horrendous beginning. It began, as most horror stories do, in the Orlando airport.
My first night’s fiasco…
Actually, I’m kind of lying. It really began past dark just outside the Philadelphia airport, with me taking a deep, steadying breath, saying goodbye to my family, and walking away, suitcase in hand. I looked back—I almost always do—and then I headed off onto my big adventure, alone.
After hours of watching Grey’s Anatomy in the airport (what better time for a comfort show than right then?) and watching my flight get pushed further and further back (I have got to stop flying with this airline. You can guess which one it is), I finally found myself on my way to Orlando for… an overnight layover!
Now, I’m in my early twenties. I waitress and bartend. If you think I’m booking a hotel for a five-hour power nap, think again; I’m sleeping in the damn airport and saving a hundred bucks. So that is what I did. I wish I could say it was the first and last time, but it wasn’t (I have plenty more stories). Picture me, crossbody bag hugged to my chest, head resting on my backpack, legs curled around the armrest as I laid across two seats, sleeping as soundly as one can with children screaming, people chatting, planes humming, and announcements blaring. The only insider information I can offer you from this experience is that I now know the cleaning crew in the Orlando airport goes through each gate with a very loud vacuum between about two and four in the morning. Do with that what you will!
… And the first full day’s fiasco to match
So, obviously feeling refreshed and well-rested from my evening (morning?) in the airport, I began the next leg of my journey. Flying to Florida had been one thing: I know Florida. I love her. We’re on, we’re off, she does me wrong, and I forgive her. No matter what happens between us, I can’t stay away for too long. So although the airport nap was a new one, I still felt relatively comfortable, weirdly at home, even, while I was there. Scanning my boarding pass, walking onto that jet bridge and leaving behind what I knew for the unknown, though, that was a whole other thing.
I wish I could say it went well. It did not.
My journey began with the task of arranging transportation from the Juan Santamaria International airport to my hotel. Now, if you’ve never been to Costa Rica, the Uber situation is a little murky. Is it legal? Um… Is it illegal? Um… Like I said, it’s murky. The gist of the situation is that the taxi industry in Costa Rica is both very opinionated and very vocal about their mode of transportation, and they exercise both of these rights quite loudly outside of the airport. So there I was, hunched over, head down and phone hidden, dodging these taxi workers so that they did not see the Uber I had ordered. All I’ll say about this is to do your research before traveling here. I never had any issues and I found Ubers to be both convenient and affordable. Except for this first one.
Now, I don’t speak Spanish. It may be my heart’s desire to learn it, I may even be actively trying to learn it, but I do not know it. I could compile a mildly long (and mostly useless) vocabulary list on paper and pick out maybe one of every twenty words when other people are speaking, but that doesn’t get a girl very far.
So there I was, nerves finally dissipating and being replaced with that wonderful beginning-of-trip-excitement. I was actually gazing out the window of this car and acting like I was in an indie film. In fact, I was so busy gazing happily out of said window, damn near carefree, that I didn’t notice for long minutes that were going the wrong way. By the time I did notice, it occurred to me that I do not speak Spanish, and my driver did not speak English. Thus began a mortifying “conversation,” if you could even call it that, consisting of little words and many hand gestures that eventually got us back on track but delayed my arrival by about forty minutes. That’s right: homie drove the wrong way for twenty minutes. Worst of all, I knew for ten of those twenty minutes that we were going the wrong way, but I was too nervous to speak up. Now of course, as this was all playing out, my nerves made their way right back into my system after an all too brief reprieve. The only difference was that this time, it was full-fledged anxiety accompanied by one incessantly repetitive thought: “is this man trying to murder me?” You know what they say about secondary locations.
In the end, though, I guess he was not trying to murder me, because I was dropped off at my hotel and sent on my not-so-merry way with a grumbling driver and an additional charge on my account for time added to the drive. A charge which I quickly disputed, I might add. Feeling slightly worse for wear, I checked into my hotel and headed up to my room. Beautiful, comfortable, spacious, gorgeous room. Words cannot describe the bliss I always feel upon checking into a room on a trip: that moment when you are freed from lugging your belongings around, when you can flop into your new bed, when you can claim a base, a safe space, as your own. To me, that moment is unmatched.
Today, however, that moment was fleeting, because I realized most of the day was ahead of me and I had no idea what to do. The bulk of my trip—the volunteering, the homestay—wasn’t scheduled to start until the next morning. And I was hungry. So what now?
Starbucks, friends. Starbucks. To me, a familiar chain in a foreign city is a beacon of hope, coffee chains especially. So when she called out to me, I answered. Best of all, she was on the same street as my hotel. So off I went, eager for this reprieve from newness, eager for something familiar and comfortable.
As I think back on my old self, I wish I could give her a heads up here. I wish I could say: “Bestie… you are in a Spanish-speaking country. The menu is going to be in Spanish. The workers are going to speak Spanish.” I wish I could tell her that any feelings of familiarity and comfort were about to fly back out the window.
On one hand, I love this story. I love to laugh at myself. On the other hand, it still makes me cringe.
I would argue that objectively, it was brave of me to have embarked on this whole thing. Brave to chase my dreams, brave to travel alone. Well, apparently not, because any scrap of bravery I was clinging onto flew out the same window as the familiarity and comfort, and I found myself wracked with a rough bout of social anxiety. It took me like five minutes to try to order—I think I wanted an iced chai tea latte with brown sugar syrup—and eventually the barista had to get another employee to come over and try to figure out what I was asking for. Even with the two of them, they still were struggling to understand me, and I was still struggling to word it any other way. To this day, I still wonder, ¿Cómo se dice ‘iced chai tea latte with brown sugar’ en Español? Wait, actually… I just realized I know most of these words… that makes this even worse. Anyway.
One thing about me… I hate inconveniencing others, to a fault. I will say “thank you” to a server approximately twenty times when I go out to eat. Sometimes I say “thank you” when the server brings over something for someone else at the table, even if it benefits me in no way whatsoever. So in this particular moment, I felt bothersome. I felt bad for bothering them, they felt bad for not understanding me, and I felt bad that they felt bad (that sounds over the top, I know, but I am who I am). So there’s that whole mess of emotions, combined with the social anxiety and the anxiety I was having about life in general… Well, it all had my eyes filling with tears pretty quickly. I have never been closer to crying without a tear actually falling; it was nothing short of a miracle that I held them in. I finally got my silly little drink and my silly little bag of chips, and instead of hanging out there like I had planned to, I tucked tail and headed back to the hotel, social battery depleted and motivation gone.
The thought of braving another store to order dinner felt like mission impossible. Like I said, I still cringe when I think back on this. I peered into several places during the walk to my hotel and eventually decided that it was out of the question. Back to my room I went, those Starbucks chips destined to be my lunch and dinner.
What did I do with the rest of my day, you might ask? Well, for starters, I pulled out my laptop and logged into Netflix, deciding that if all else failed, at least Grey’s Anatomy would comfort me once more. And what do you know? Grey’s Anatomy is not available on that particular streaming service in that particular region. And so I cried. I cried, and I watched Tik Toks about tips for solo travelers with anxiety, and I ate my chips. They were good chips.
Let’s wrap this one up, please
So… that was day one (maybe one and a half) of my magical journey to Costa Rica. Was I being dramatic? Quite. I knew it then, and I really know it now. But we all have those days, those moments, those nightmarish beginnings. And really, it can always be worse. My tears were the culmination of little to no sleep, a lot of stress, and even more uncertainty. But this is the only life I have to live, and I needed to break through those negative emotions to see what was waiting on the other side. I’d do it all over again, too. It was so, so, so worth it for the two weeks I was about to have, for the life lessons and growth and knowledge that were all waiting for me once I stepped onto that shuttle.