Travel Teachings..from Chile

I am a traveler. Exploring new places and getting out of my normal world is liberating for me. I enjoy learning new cities, talking to different people, learning new words and customs and trying new food & activities. The remote and less traveled the better. So this is why my husband and I chose Chile for our honeymoon. A beautiful country of diverse climates and terrain and not many people we know have been there. What fun?! We had out expectations of seeing mouth dropping sites, of resting and rejuvenating our souls in remote lands and experiencing the thrill of figuring out our itinerary as we go . Chile had something else to offer us not as riveting but equally impactful.

Tips to avoid when traveling #1: Don’t bring your “life at home” to the destination. Our normal lives carry a certain momentum, a certain speed and energy that over time I think we get numb or discognizant to if we don’t interrupt it from time to time. The beauty of travel is that is does indeed interrupt our routine and momentum. We have to be more conscious and aware because our normal has changed. I find that often I get to a new place and I am so eager to figure it all out and to schedule and do all the fun things the area offers that often I just take the busy energy oh home to the new place. I expect things to happen as fast as they do at home often. I inadvertently expect all the ways that I run my life at home to work where I now find myself. And most of the time it doesn’t and then I am frustrated or annoyed. In this trip I was so excited to “do Chile” right that I forgot to slow down, ground myself and fully arrive here. I failed to get to know Chile’s energy and vibe. I was still in Portland energetically. I needed to acclimate not only to the altitude but to my new place. Time to unplug from home takes time I suppose. Failing to leave home behind kept me feeling “off” with making plans and dealing with the snaffoos travel brings.. So my way of doing this in the future is to take the first day to just relax, move slower, make sure I am rested and recovered from the travel and to keep my itinerary simple and organic. Focus on really taking in each moment and sensing what this new environment is really like..meeting a new friend.

Tips to avoid when traveling #2: Forgetting your intention for being there in the first place It is easy to be bombarded with choices and options for experiencing a new place. You can read a bunch of travel guides and get many different ideas and views on the same area that you can feel lost and overwhelmed. I felt this for sure. We didn’t do much research prior so it easily became a task to sort through all the options, plan the next activity and ensure we got it all in before we headed to the next spot. Some places the options are limited and so this may have been less stressful. Not here. This is a huge country and there are endless options of how to spend our time and there is more to do than we can ever fit in in 3 weeks. Yet, we were on a mission to make our best attempt. So much so that we forgot our main intention: to have fun together! Easy peezy right? Well not when you are in areas with little to no wifi, when finding a rental car was impossible and when all the good places were booked…we got stressed. We started to let the tasks defeat us. We needed a time out to say “is this fun? If not let’s find a different way.” We realized that we were prioritizing the places and the check list over our own fun factor. We both agreed that we would rather have fun together in the same place for 3 weeks then to spend all our time busy, stressed or disconnected. So my tip to avoid this next time is to stay connected to my intention and the output of the experiences of the choices we make. Instead of spending half a day on the computer planning the next day, we can stop and just spend a day at our airbnb enjoying what is around us and having fun with what we got! We may not see what we planned but we will cherish the laughter and the connection we felt together way more than any volcano we climbed f they process of it was rought with stress .

Tips to avoid when traveling #3: Packing your bags full of expectations When I travel heavy with bags of expectations I miss often the hidden gifts that await. If my eyes are fixed on what I feel I need to see I may miss the beauty hidden in my periphery. If my mind stays fixated on only what I think I know then my heart cannot open to experiences I never knew to exist. I had an idea of what Chile would offer me. Chile provided beautiful landscapes and powerful displays of nature indeed but what it also offered me was a time to rest from my routines and plans and to just allow things to unfold, a reminder of the healing that occurs when we simply take in what is being offered despite our familiarity with it. Chile gifted my husband and I with an opportunity to remember what is most important : each other. That how you spend your time and what you make of each moment is equally as important as what you achieve.

For the Traveler by John O’Donohue                                          

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
 
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
 
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
 
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
 
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
 
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
 
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
 
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
 
~ John O'Donohue ~