Costa Rica 14

I used to enjoy meeting and chatting with fellow Canadians while travelling.  It always seemed nice to have someone nearby to remind me of home.  Some recent travel experiences have made me a little more reserved about this.  In Mexico City, it was a registered nurse from Toronto who, after snapping that she was an atheist when I mentioned casually and inconsequentially that I´m a Christian, morosely insisted that the then Stephen Harper government had irreparably ruined our country and we would never heal from the damage.  I agreed with her about Harper, but somehow couldn´t convince her that perhaps there was hope, then, remembering that atheists generally are unable to do hope, I just let it go.  My next memorable encounter abroad with a fellow Canadian occured two years ago in Bogota.  This fellow was a military man, conservative in both the small and the big c sense, and hated nonwhite immigrants.  I made myself scarce very quickly when he showed his true colours.

I have instructed the people at the bed and breakfast where I am staying here that should any other Canadians arrive, to please instruct them that I speak only Spanish, at least while in Monteverde.  In the soda today there was a family group of Canadians, I suspect from my part of the country.  After hearing their conversation I was determined not to make myself known, and besides, I was speaking to the staff only in Spanish (very good Spanish, if I must say so, myself)

Every time I see or encounter other white North Americans (and Europeans) here in Monteverde, it´s like looking at a very unflattering mirror.  It´s not that we´re all so bad.  We´re not, really.  We just come across as such absolute idiots, sometimes, and worse, because everyone I see here is travelling either with their families, as couples, or with friends.  Their hanging together and speaking nothing but English to each other just seems to increase their isolation from their host country.  I have come across but one other solo traveller since arriving here and he seemed so grumpy and unfriendly that I just gave up saying hi to him in the breakfast room.

A lot of people seem reluctant or scared to travel alone and in their pairs or groups they so reinforce each other and their North American or European characteristics that they seem completely impregnable by the surrounding culture.  Perhaps that is why people really don´t like to travel alone.  Fear, not of being robbed or killed or anything, but fear of losing their precious Gringo or European identity, if but a little bit, for the joy of adapting to a new culture.

I generally prefer solitary travel because I like the way this opens me up to the new culture.  There is always something to gain and to learn this way.  It does carry its risks, but who ever said that life is going to be risk-free?

In the meantime, I continue on my daily walks, greeting strangers, making conversation in Spanish with anyone who wants to stop to chat a bit, and simply enjoying this strange but beautiful music of another culture.  Speaking Spanish is an invaluable asset, of course, and I really think that if you´re going to spend even a week or two here, it is worthwhile to familiarize yourself with the language.
In order to travel well, not as a tourist, but perhaps as an apt student of life, one has to virtually ignore the tourist industry, and basically unlearn everything we´ve been told about foreign travel and simply make ourselves vulnerable enough to receive what the people whose country we are visiting have to offer.

It´s time to take consumerism out of travel and to learn new ways of becoming friends and allies with the countries we are visiting.  This doesn´t mean we all have to join CUSO or CIDA.  I´m thinking more of the idea of travel with an open mind and an open heart.  To be willing to be changed or transformed by the experience and to return home with something new and valuable that we can contribute to our own country, keeping in mind that with this different way of travelling we are really helping to transform the world into one country.