I'm not running away
What I learned from traveling solo for 3 weeks in Ecuador
I’ve always thought of travel as the easy way out.
In college, I ran away from MIT each winter to teach science abroad. 2 years into working, I escaped the San Francisco tech life and moved to New Zealand. After leaving my second job, I disappeared into the Sierras to go on a one month hike.
The problem was, travel was not a long term solution. It didn’t matter how much I would experience out there, the same problems would await me when I returned. I came to think of travel as naive, even irresponsible, because in the end, it solved nothing.
In 2020, I swore that I would not run away again. I’d stay where I was and face things head on. Yet, when I lost my job this past March, I couldn’t help but run once more.
I thought this trip would just be another fantastical escape, but this time, something different happened. I came back with a different sense of self — and that newfound self is still here.
A different sort of travel
In all of my previous travels, I never left home without some sort of crutch. I’d be part of a program, have a travel buddy, or have already reached out to the local frisbee team. I wanted adventure, but I also wanted a plan to lean on so I could feel safe.
This time, I didn’t want that safety. I wanted to see what would happen if I relied wholly on myself. I decided to leave home with nothing - no friends to travel with, no itinerary, not even a language that I knew. All I had was 5 days booked at a hostel.
For the next 21 days, I traveled alone. I navigated public transportation, avoided getting pickpocketed, and overcame getting sick and shitting my pants in a hostel. I followed my whims and traversed the Andean countryside, climbed a 19,000 ft mountain, and lived in a cloud forest. But most importantly, my solo trip gave me an opportunity to look inward and realize a few things:
1) The reward for trying is so much higher than the reward for not looking dumb
To travel around Ecuador, I really needed to learn Spanish. But even as I started learning it, to be honest, I didn’t think I’d be brave enough to use it. I’ve always hated making mistakes, so much so that I’d rather not try at all versus try, mess up and look dumb. When I learned French in high school, I had never managed to get comfortable speaking it. It didn’t matter if I could win awards or pull together elaborate French skits. When the time came to speak, I’d grow self conscious about my accent, overthink my word choice, and end up saying absolutely nothing.
So how did I actually plan on getting around Ecuador? I was going to befriend travelers who spoke Spanish and stick with them.
My strategy was working perfectly — until I made a mistake. By the time I realized that my new travel buddy was not fluent in Spanish, I had already committed to going with him on a day trip.
However, despite both of us not knowing a lot of Spanish, the only one that was struggling was me. When we got to the bus station and saw people shouting various location names at us, I waved them away and wanted to figure out the bus system on my own. He approached them and asked. When we got to the buses, I started boarding the one at the platform. He asked the bus driver and saved us from getting on the wrong one. When it came to finding the market location, I turned to Google Maps. He walked up to a local and asked for directions.
It didn’t matter that his Spanish wasn’t the best. It didn’t matter that he didn’t always understand everything or if people laughed at his word choice. He simply had no fear of asking. I don’t think it even crossed his mind that he might look dumb. And what shocked me most was that his method of approaching people and talking to them worked way better than mine.
The whole thing made me wonder - what if I wasn’t so scared of looking dumb and just tried?
This mindset shift opened up my world. Because I tried, I had a full conversation with a friendly taxi driver who wanted to teach me some Spanish. Because I used Spanish to answer some questions about myself on the chair lift, a family invited me to join them for the rest of the hike. By trying to ask questions to the bird guide in the cloud forest, I was able to learn more about the forest and bond about nature. I even once sat in a cat cafe with a stranger and conversed through a mix of Spanish and Google Translate for over an hour.
I didn’t always succeed. In the beginning I would freeze and forget what I was trying to say. I definitely got a few eyebrow raises and some responses in English. But for all the laughs and looks of confusion I got, I received a whole lot more encouragement and support. In 21 days, I spoke more Spanish than I had ever spoken French, even though I knew significantly less. When I stopped thinking about how I might sound and just tried, the travel became so much more fun and fulfilling.
2) I can connect on a deep level with strangers (and if I don’t, that’s okay too)
Each day, I talked to at least 6 new people. Multiply that by 21 days, and that’s over 126 people over the course of my trip.
I met them on the bus, when I was looking for a friendly face to sit next to. At the hostel, where the people in your room became your de facto friends. On trail, when we got lost at the same location.
I used to get nervous when meeting new people. What would they think of me? Was I interesting? Was I worth their time?
But out there, it felt different. No one knew who I was, what I did for a living, where I had gone to school. There were zero expectations.
I decided to try an experiment. What would happen if I was unapologetically me?
When I met new people, I decided not to put on a front. I was honest. I shared why I was traveling, what I was working through, and what I wanted to find. I hid nothing.
I can’t say I connected with everyone. There were times when I walked away after joining a group for dinner after it was clear that we had nothing in common. But that no longer bothered me. In the past, I might have been mortified, but now, it felt perfectly okay to not click.
Because for every failed conversation, I had so many meaningful ones. By being open and honest, I connected on a new level with complete strangers. We’d end up talking about topics that would normally never come up — job disillusionment, divorce, cheating, polyamory, mental health. Amongst the anonymity of strangers, we could share anything and there was absolutely no judgment. We accepted each other fully, and that was so cathartic.
3) I am capable of making decisions for myself
When I go out with friends, I almost always refuse to pick where we eat or what we do. I’ve always said that it’s because I’m a people pleaser and don’t want to make a wrong choice for the group, but I think it’s also because I don’t want to make any wrong choices for myself.
However, when you solo travel, there’s no one to make decisions for you. So each day, I had to wrestle with the question: “What do I want?”
I had originally left my travel schedule blank so that I could make friends and join in on their itineraries — so that I could follow someone else’s decisions. But a few days in, I realized: I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to do things just because they were on every tourist’s checklist. I wanted to see what it was like to do what I wanted.
What did I want? What did I want?
I wanted to be in the mountains.
So that’s what I did. I chose to spend an extra day in Cotopaxi once I saw the views. When everyone I knew went to Banos, I decided to go backpacking in Quilotoa. When I heard about a more quiet, magical place in the cloud forest, I took a leap of faith, skipped the more popular Mindo, and went to Los Cedros instead. When I started feeling sick, I changed my itinerary away from that of my friends to give myself an extra day to recover.
In the end I never did the popular bucket list items like going to the Galapagos or the rainforest or the center of the world. But I did what I cared about and I made it work, and that was liberating.
A newfound confidence
Normally, when I run away, I discover things that I need—quiet, connection, a slower pace of life. But this time, I discovered things that I already had. I discovered that I was capable of trying, making decisions, and being myself. I saw that I had the ability to learn Spanish, navigate a foreign country, make friends, and stay safe. For the first time, I was able to look at what I had accomplished and actually acknowledge it. And I have every reason to be confident and believe in myself.
For so long, I had been feeling lost. I didn’t know who I was or what I could do. But Ecuador showed me who I can be at my best. I know it’s going to be hard to keep this newfound sense of self now that I’m back home, but knowing what’s possible is the first step to being able to get there.
Loved this one. So many good lessons. Thanks for sharing them.