We Need Solo Travel More than Ever Right Now
Why I dared to travel alone across the post-Covid world, and why you should (if you can), too
I love the part of myself that needs to travel alone, and has dared to do it even during this complex post-Covid time. This obsession of mine has its roots in the first trip to Europe I took on a summer break from graduate school when I was 24, not knowing then that the continent would become my home 14 years later.
I was traveling with a hippie chick and party friend named Nancy who had parents living in England at the time, which seemed like a good a reason as any to travel with her. The European Union did not yet exist; borders and various and puzzling currencies did. We started at her parents’ house in Harrogate for a few days, popped up to Edinburgh, and then made our way south to the continent via the ferry in Calais, France.
It became quite clear soon after the trip began that we were incompatible travelers. I was more independent and quick to learn the ways around Europe’s ancient cities and metro systems. She took her time, wanted us to stay together at all times, and needed to read every sign carefully before figuring out directions or which train to take.
This hesitancy and deliberate behavior annoyed me. So did two other particular tendencies Nancy had. One was to get completely naked and hang around our shared hostel rooms that way, and the other was to get stinking drunk to the point of my having to make sure she wasn’t date raped and could make it back to the hostel without incident.
Our parting happened in Switzerland at a train station in a most unceremonious way. We disagreed about the next destination. The train to the place I wanted to go was on one platform, while the train to where she wanted to go was on another.
We stood together in a stand-off as people hurried past to catch their trains. After a long silence, she said, “My train is this way,” and started to walk in that direction. I said, “Well then I’m going this way,” turned and headed the opposite way — and never looked back.
Lauterbrunnen, a tiny town in the Swiss Alps, is where I forged my identity as a solo traveler. I remember the rush I felt when I found myself traveling alone in a foreign country, at a time when communication was not as ubiquitous as it is today and the Internet, while invented, had not yet hit the mainstream.
I Wasn’t Born with It
Given the panicky, hovering mother who had raised me — who was herself afraid to fly on planes or travel by car over bridges, and was always warning me how dangerous just about everything was — I should have been terrified, knowing all the dangers waiting to befall me out there in the world.
Strangely, I wasn’t. I had an initial, fleeting moment of fear that was quickly replaced with elation and a sense of freedom the likes of which I’d never felt before. I felt like I had wings. Adventure was out there waiting for me and it was all mine. I didn’t have to share it with anyone else.
I guess to instinctively have this feeling upon parting ways with a friend on a train platform makes me selfish. And for sure I am, and I’m not afraid to admit it. But that decision and that feeling also set me off on a path that in retrospect means so much more than just that.
I write this from Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, where I traveled about a week ago to flee a strict lockdown in the country I’ve adopted as my home, Portugal. My journey here was done within the parameters of travel that exist currently. I have two passports — one from the United States and one from Italy — that allowed me to move freely between several countries and continents as long as I received a negative Covid-19 test and filled in necessary pandemic-related paperwork that is unique to each country.
This is my third trip to this dusty outpost on the Nicoya Peninsula of this wonderful and welcoming country, which has been spared the worst of the pandemic. Here people spend their days surfing or swimming in the Pacific or swinging in a hammock. The single, barely paved road that runs about two miles through town is a constant chaos of various vehicles — motorbikes and quad bikes are among the most popular, converging with more conventional SUVs and cars that weave their way perilously around cyclists and pedestrians.
Once everyone leaves the beach after the obligatory daily sunset-watching ritual, nights in Santa Teresa are passed dining on various cuisines in one the town’s surprisingly gourmet restaurants thanks to the range of culinary-minded locals and ex-pats who have set up shop here. The younger set also attends fiestas on the beach or in lavish rented houses, parties that persist despite pandemic restrictions, which have driven this aspect of the town’s night life underground.
I’m here to surf, eat, enjoy the sunshine and fierce heat of the tropics, and to work remotely, as I always do, as a freelance writer and journalist. I’m also here to catch up with a friend I met on my first trip to Santa Teresa in 2014, when I spent two months traveling alone in Costa Rica.
I’m not the only person here who’s a refugee from a country with a strict Covid lockdown; there are a number of Canadians also passing their days in Santa Teresa — so many that the common area of the lodge where I’m staying is a makeshift digital nomad office. There all also many other travelers — solo and otherwise — from the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany who also came to experience the relative freedom of Costa Rica during these extraordinary times.
Finding Myself to Find Another
Before I met my partner just a week shy of my 45th birthday, I spent almost 10 years without a significant relationship. I didn’t want my life to be that way and I resisted vehemently for many — no, most — of those years.
That’s probably why despite short-term couplings with a series of totally inappropriate men, my partner-less existence persisted. I clearly needed to make peace with doing life on my own before the universe was going to grant my wish to find someone to spend my life with.
One of the key ways in which I found this peace was to travel alone. After that initial trip in Europe, I had a couple of long-term relationships that provided me with a travel buddy. I also traveled extensively for my job as a technology journalist for about 10 years as I built my career, so I didn’t have a lot of time or motivation for solo travel.
But then when I was 34 I had my heart broken, badly, which led to my 10 years of going it alone. I still wanted to travel, and decided that I needed to tap into that courage my 24-year-old self on that train platform, and just get out there on the road.
I began tentatively at first by taking group adventure trips that included lots of my favorite outdoor activities, or yoga retreats that had everything pre-programmed. This worked well at first, but I always found myself craving alone time on those trips, or wandering off from the group when I wasn’t supposed to and appearing to the others anti-social, or even rude.
When the constant group agenda began to feel tiring and constricting, I realized that I was already more independent than I thought, and thus more than ready to set off on my own again.
Taking the Leap
I went right from the frying pan into the fire, quite literally. The first place I chose to travel alone — really alone — without knowing a soul at my destination, was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. When I arrived there on Jan. 2, 2013, it was the hottest place on the planet that day — 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
I arrived to the airport after a 12-hour flight from Lisbon in a mixed state of shock and expectation and caught a cab alone to my accommodation that snaked its way through rush hour traffic in the steaming city crackling with activity. It makes me laugh to think of it now, but with the windows down (the cab had no AC), I clutched my purse close to me at every stoplight, having read that thieves in Rio like to approach cabs and snatch bags from tourists.
As luck would have it, I wasn’t alone for long. A Facebook friend of a friend hooked me up with his Facebook friend, Denize, a friendly Carioca who was on holiday, like most Brazilians during January. Though my Portuguese was halting at the time, and she didn’t really speak English, she became my personal tour guide for the first five days of my trip.
It was a dream come true and truly one of the most fortunate traveling experiences I’ve had to date. Denize showed me all wonderful delights of the marvelous city — from the authentic samba joints in Lapa to climbing the famed hill Pao de Acucar to beach days at her local posto on Copocabana Beach — that I know I would have completely missed on my own.
Thus started my love affair with solo travel that continues to this day. What I realized on that trip to Brazil is that traveling alone has a certain magic when you give yourself over to it, let the trip take on a life of its own, and fully embrace the idea that being alone not only isn’t so bad, it’s actually pretty freaking awesome.
What solo travelers learn is that out there on the road there are loads of people just like them seeking connection while they are far away from home. You don’t even have to look too hard to find them; sometimes, you even want them to leave you alone.
Indeed, I find I actually crave solitude after passing days with various other travelers I’ve met along the way to recharge after telling my story and going through the motions of getting to know someone new over and over again. That’s not to say I sometimes don’t feel lonely or homesick — of course I do. But it’s all part of the experience, and the feeling never lasts too long.
Back to Basics
The other thing traveling alone does is allows us to be our true, authentic selves without any of the preconceived notions about who we are that exist when we spend all of our time in the same community — or during these days of Covid, our “bubble” or “pod.”
People we spend time with every day have seen us at our best and our worst, and know our habits and typical reactions to common life scenarios. This is wonderful when it means we are loved and accepted, but can be limiting when people always expect us to react or just be a certain way and don’t leave room for us to surprise them.
Solo travel is a chance to go back to basics and start over anew with strangers — a return to the bare essence of who we are and how we respond to new and sometimes unexpected situations.
In short, it forces us to rely on ourselves, consider what we really think and feel as well as what first impression we leave on others. This can teach us a hell of a lot about ourselves, including a recognition of both qualities that are positive as well as those we may want to examine and even change.
It may be a bit more challenging to travel at all, let alone solo, in this post-Covid world in which we find ourselves. Aside from those who are restricted from leaving home due to individual country measures, many may even be afraid to do it for personal health or other reasons, which is completely understandable.
But for those who dare and have the means to do it, I think it’s never been more necessary, or rewarding, to go somewhere far away from the homes that have confined us for so many consecutive months.
Exercising this freedom and act of independence is an act of courage, defiance, and a celebration of survival and the irrepressible human spirit — and I daresay it’s exactly what the world needs right now.