Bolivia and the Art of Podcast downloading

I am now the proud owner of an ipod. It has taken me a good two years to catch on but here I am. It is black, 30gig and plays stuff. I am very impressed. However this is not the reason I am posting. Part of the new ipod experience is the concept of podcasts... today I found that they do podcasts from the Lonely Planet websites, essentially recorded phone interviews with backpackers out in the field exploring our globe. One of these was a twenty-minute story on Bolivia.

I spent February and March of this year travelling through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Chile. At the end of the trip I was filled with doubt over whether or not I had enjoyed the trip or not. Strange in retrospect but at the time I was wondering whether I had chosen the easy path by returning to a land where I already had a certain degree of comfort and knowledge. Should I have ventured to Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam... should I have attempted to sneak into Burma? I hadn't been robbed, barely missed a bus, met loads of interesting locals, and through a series of unexpected coincidences found myself boating up an Amazonian tributary on the back of a petrol cargo cruiser... so why was I so uncertain as to whether or not I had enjoyed the experience?

The only response I have is that I am still living off those experiences, something that listening to the Bolivian podcast did nothing but re-enforce, a good eight months after returning. I now understand when they say ‘I left my heart in…’ Part of me feels as though I have left my heart in Bolivia. It may have been a mixture of the right time to be there, meeting the right people or discovering my capacity with the language. It may also have been that I was simply in the right frame of mind to be blessed with such an experience. I had graduated from university, finished my commitments to AIESEC Sydney, secured a role with AIESEC Australia and finished up at a very tiring hospitality job… it was the time to travel and the time to reflect.

I am a lone traveller by nature, drifting from group to group, travelling under the guidance of circumstance and fate. Some say this is travelling snobbery but I still maintain it is the single best way of meeting new people and finding yourself in unusual places. You are forced to make the most of every situation; it is no one’s responsibility but your own. The combination of lone travelling and developing nations is a match made in heaven. My limited experience leads me to believe that I travel the developed world to see places and monuments all achievements of mankind, whereas I travel the developing world to meet mankind itself. I claim no expertise in this field, this is simply my opinion, but I have found travelling a refresher in what is important in life, and this shows most clearly amongst people that are making the most out of the least. There is something wholesome and enviable about the lives people lead. Something informative about the practical and philosophical manner in which they approach their situations. Something I wish I could easily translate back to my life here in Sydney.

There is always the idea that the attraction lies in the novelty rather than the practicality. That I am envious because I would not be able to give away all I have now. Would I honestly change places with the people I met? I don’t think I would have the courage. One the key benefits of my life is choice. It is a priceless commodity, something we are born into… choice. Often it is a lack of choice that creates the situations I appreciate so much. Perhaps the solution is to learn to understand and prioritise my choices, use them to my advantage instead of bemoan their existence. It would be selfish and foolish to long for a situation that so many, the vast majority, cannot escape from. For me Bolivia was such a place, a place where if I had let it, I could have missed out on so much, as there is a certain degree of self-awareness and internal stability that comes from living in such circumstances. It was such a consistent experience that the mention of any part of the country, from La Paz to Santa Cruz brings up the happiest memories. Maybe that is why it has been such a slow burning experience, revealing new facets even now… eight months on.