a chilly night in guatemala
¡hola!
i’m currently sitting in the courtyard of my tour company/homestay for the next 2 more weeks in Antigua, Guatemala. it’s only about 15 degrees here but i’m glad to not be cleaning the snow off my car in the hockey arena parking lot after a shift at scaddabush. lol
it’s only my 4th full day here and i’ve already climbed a volcano, seen an active lava eruption, and been back. WHAT!!!!!
in the past two weeks life has moved incredibly fast. at the end of february i was accepted early to my first choice of grad school! i had been agonizing over my future and my grad school plans since basically april 2025 so it was very refreshing to finally feel like i had a solid next stone to step on.
but the very next day i was panic searching for roommates, housing, all while trying to plan a last minute trip to guatemala (since the dry season ends after april).
yet here i am, not even a full two weeks after receiving that acceptance letter, on a friday night in guatemala, sore all over from a bucket list-once-in-a-lifetime-hike. i also have a lease signed with 2 girls from my program and a deposit made for school which starts end of may! like… holy shit that was a busy two weeks.
now that i’m here, where i’ve been talking about going for over a year now, i’m trying to figure out what i want from the trip? if that makes any sense at all?
i knew i wanted a longer, slower travel experience in comparison to my 28 days of chaos in peru last year. i also knew i wanted to give worldpackers and volunteering a try before “real life” has to start. i’m also trying to approach this all with a much more type b mindset, despite every internal instinct i have.
the result is that, i’m in a quite modest shared room in a house? with 2 other volunteers who mostly only speak spanish, and 5 other women who strictly speak spanish and work for the tour operator.
so for the first few days i quite literally followed the workers around trying to understand what was going on at any given point and how to do my “job” without just standing in their way and unable to communicate with anyone i live with.
it’s a bit lonelier of an experience than i pictured for my first solo travel trip, but i guess that’s what i should have expected since im not staying in a hostel. trying to give myself a bit of grace that i’m writing this on a friday night and not out meeting people but frankly i’m still exhausted from my hike and the early morning shifts at reception.
after i got up the courage to get myself some birria tacos and a mango margarita in a very popular but dead bar (because it was 6:30 pm) i sat in the central park for a while. i mostly people watched and tried to fend off the sweet old lady street vendors (but ultimately lost — new fridge magnet incoming!). i watched as almost every person had another person. someone they were meeting up with or waiting for, walking together, experiencing, together. i know that solo travel is supposed to be good for you, but i just want someone to talk to about how good that damn taco was. or someone to hang out with me at the bar while to help me mingle with new people for the first time.
i always thought solo travel would come naturally to me, but i find myself texting my parents and my boyfriend a lot for some community. i feel like i’m updating them about literally anything interesting that happens in my day.
i think travel is often glamorized as a way to find yourself, your inner peace, the meaning of life, true happiness blah blah blah. but the reality is that for most people travel is a very minuscule part of life, and frankly for good reason. humans need consistency, routine, and community. truly i have never met a single soul who felt better when they were truly alone and had no one to share the experience of life with.
maybe i’m saying this because i’m currently missing my boyfriend’s 23rd birthday party with all our friends, but i think if anything travel makes you appreciate how to make your everyday life feel just as good as your best day abroad.
i miss my people! excited for what’s to come in guatemala and equally excited to be staying in toronto(ish) for the foreseeable future and not being far from the people that make life full.
hoping that my first day off tomorrow does me well :)
goodnight from antigua,
lauren