LA: And you made it and you got to your hostel.
CB: Exactly.
LA: It’s no surprise that a trip over six months to so many regions is bound to, in retrospect, fall into distinct chapters.
CB: I feel like the first part of my trip, Brazil is just so bright and colorful and fun. And then I did Argentina with my friend Alex, and then we did Patagonia for a couple weeks. I kind of consider my midpoint to be that time in Chilauea. After that, I felt like just being on what I recognized as now the back end. There was kind of a mindset shift. It took me a couple weeks to shake. I did feel like when I look at those two parts, if I partition the trip that way, it does feel like different people were doing them.
LA: I feel like solo travel at this point kind of gets sort of almost kicked into these tropes where it’s empowering and transformative and glamorous, and it’s some woman standing on a cliff finding herself. It does sound like you had some of those moments, but what does solo travel actually look like to you? How would you describe it?
CB: I would not call it gLAmorous, at least not the way I do it. I guess at the risk of sounding buzzwordy, I do think it’s centering. I guess the best answer to that question is I’ve never felt more alive than when I was there. Every day, something new. Every day was something different. Something I did learn about myself is that I really crave those moments to see what the planet’s got to offer.
LA: Do you find that after you got back you wanted to change certain ways that you were living to allow those things to enter into it?
CB: I honestly planned to alter my lifestyle a little bit more than I actually did.
LA: It’s like an extended version of when you get back from holiday and you think you’re going to change everything.
CB: Literally. Yeah, literally. I came back with very low funds. I was going to try to take the opportunity to maybe find a different career path or maybe live somewhere else, and then real world logistics just came into play. I’m not upset with how I ended up, but my life looks pretty simiLAr to what it looked like before I left.
LA: Christie is planning a short trip to Guatemala later in the year with her friend Alex, but is it too soon to start planning for another extended trip?
CB: I would love to do six months again. I think three months might be a good sweet spot. If I can get to that at some point, I would love to do India. That’s pretty high on my list. And I would really like to do, Egypt and Jordan are also pretty high on my list. So I’m always looking for places where I can dive.
LA: Christie, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your tips.
CB: Thank you.
LA: And I hope that people listening feel inspired to plan their own trips, big or small. If people want to follow along with your travels, is there anywhere on the internet they can find you?
CB: Sure. Yeah. I’m on Instagram @Christie.bowser as in the Mario Kart character. So you can see some of my South America trips, and I’m happy to provide tips for anyone thinking of doing something similar.
LA: Love it. Next week, our third and final solo travel story is about world record-breaking Explorer Preet Chandi, who skied solo across Antarctica. 700 miles in 31 days.
Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel, I’m Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @LaleHannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus, James Yost, Vince Fairchild, and Pran Bandi. The show is mixed by Amar LAl at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner of Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. Stephanie Kariuki is our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is Conde Nast’s, Head of Global Audio.
