Tales of a Female Nomad Read Online Free PDF Page A

meet other travelers. During my Central American travels, I meet and hang out with dozens of backpackers, forming quick and easy friendships and sometimes going off together for weeks at a time.
    Once I discover the travelers’ network, I have no more problems about eating dinner alone. In fact, I’m almost never alone, unless I choose to be. My mistake in Mexico City was looking for companionship in the better hotels.
    Hotels are the domains of tourists on short-term vacations. They see the sights, eat in the best restaurants, and sun by the pool. In backpacker places, people are more relaxed, more frugal, and friendlier. They travel as much to meet other travelers as they do to see the world. Many of them are traveling without companions . . . and no one really wants to eat dinner alone.
    The typical backpacker is unmarried, educated, but not yet on the career track. Among the backpackers, there are always a lot of young Europeans who work for a year or two at home, save their money, then travel until it runs out. Canadians and Australians are also backpack travelers; so are Israelis, taking a year off after serving in the army, and New Zealanders on their great “OE,” overseas experience. There are Americans as well; but the Americans are usually on a tighter schedule, and I find them less friendly, at least to me.
    I also discover on the backpack trail that the age barriers we live with in the United States are not shared by the rest of the world. I am forty-seven; they are mostly under thirty. And it doesn’t matter to anybody. I love the energy of the young, and they accept me without hesitation. The variations in age add spice and depth to the conversations.
    From time to time I meet other women my age who are backpacking, but I rarely meet men over forty who are traveling alone. Older men, it seems, are not as courageous as women; all those years of being responsible have diminished their capacity for adventure.

    When the bus to Oaxaca makes a snack stop, I sit down with the Spanish-speaking couple, Miguel and Ana. They’re from Medellín, Colombia; he’s a lawyer, just out of school. With his jeans, long hair, and soft features, he looks about sixteen. He’s also a musician, carrying a guitar and trying to decide whether to go into his father’s law firm or work toward a career in music. Ana, his fiancée, is a teacher and spectacularly beautiful—dark sparkling eyes, and straight, shoulder-length black hair. She thinks Miguel should go into music, at least until they have children three years from now. If he hasn’t made it by then, she says, he can join the firm. But he owes it to himself to follow his dream, not his father’s. They’re a nice couple.
    When we get to Oaxaca, my busmates and I check into a hostel. I serve as a translator for Miguel and Ana so they too can be a part of the group. My Spanish is far from perfect, it isn’t even good; but I feel so pleased that I can communicate. I’m really happy I took the time to study and practice in Cuernavaca. Already it has opened a door to people and a story I would never have known.
    We are all put into the same dorm room. As soon as our beds are chosen and our things are stored, we wander the streets together. By the time we go to dinner, we are old friends. Friendship happens quickly on the road.
    I learn that the American woman is taking a six-month break between undergraduate and graduate school; she’s studying psychology. The German women are college professors on a four-month trip. And the Danish man is a mechanic; he’s been traveling for eight months. No one is over thirty. The seven of us wander together, split up for a while, and meet again for dinner. Then we all go to a bar to hear Miguel play and sing.
    As I listen to the music, I look at myself, sitting there confident and comfortable with five interesting people, all of whom know my name. I have come far in the few weeks since I stepped off the plane, afraid of being alone. I