Why We Travel - Real Travels in South America

Traveling through Patagonia by coach is like watching the same scene in a movie over and over again for ten hours. Then pressing rewind and watching it again. Heading south to El Calafate the coach is somewhere between Puerto Madryn and Rio Gallegos and the passengers are bored. They are trying desperately to avoid thinking about past mistakes, regrets and fears. This is, as anyone who has traveled for long periods will testify, is futile. You can't avoid it you just have to deal with it. Why? Because there is not much else too do.

Then you see it. The Andes rising up like fingers reaching to the sky. Out of nowhere the mountains appear finally shaking of the relentless scrubland. And while the dessert gives way to glacial lakes, crystal blue and off white, the travelers one by one gasp and point nudging their friends away from troubled dreams.

This is why we travel we think to ourselves. This is why we spend thirty hours on coaches desperately clinging on to the hope that it will be all worth while in the end. But how do you fill the periods of nothingness? The places you go when watching time float by in the search for social recognition. To be equals or superior to the friends you've left behind. To hold your head up high on a Friday night while you discuss how Peru has become too touristy and that Columbia or Bolivia is where you will find the “real South America ”.

To hear people say “wow” you've achieved a lot in your life is unfortunately one of the driving forces behind travel. But how much of this is really true? Can sitting on a Columbian beach doing nothing but dreaming of a life now lost be compared to people who have found true happiness in there lives? What you have to ask yourself is are you escaping from or looking for your life? By simply escaping you will always be looking for something that cannot be found. Why? Because what you were looking for was right under your nose. You just failed to see it. And all the mountains and all the waterfalls in the world will only lead you back to where you first began.

This is the fear that haunts you on every silent second spent alone. What am I looking for? And how can I find it? Yes this Jungle is beautiful but so are the moors of Yorkshire . Yes this little rich girl traveling with her father's money is pretty. But so is the local girl who begs for money on the street to spend on drugs. And so is the girl you left behind because you were not ready to settle down.