The big things are the same, it’s the small things that are different.
When traveling outside of the United States, especially into something as seemingly foreign as South America, I expected it to feel very foreign. I expected at all times to feel a sense of otherness, from architecture to temperature to general societal energy, I expected a feeling of exotic intrigue at all times. That feeling is not what I’ve found.
For one, the geography rarely feels alien. As Phillip and I bike from Panamanian mountains to the coast to Colombian Caribbean seaside towns to the Andes mountains, we catch ourselves reciting a familiar script: this looks just like Oregon. Or this looks just like Florida. Or this feels like California. The mountains and trees and roads and cliffs and beaches are all relatively familiar. It’s the little things that are different. And those little things matter.
The world, at least the Latin American world, is broadly the same as the United States. There are post offices and restaurants and snack shops and gas stations. Every country we’ve visited so far drives on the right side of the road and their electronic plugs are the same format as the US.
The poverty in some of these places is indeed drastic. More so than it seems in the United States, the cities hoard the wealthy and the country people live starkly simple lives removed from the globalized norm of the metropolis. These places do indeed feel different, but the humanity that stands clearly at the center of everyone is kind and homey. The old ladies adorably laugh at our terrible Spanish and offer us too much food, and the old men are speaking slow and mumbled Spanish, but I guarantee they’re talking about the same things American old men are talking about: better days in the past, golden years, and how everything is too fast and forgotten today.
Even in the remote places, the young people have stylish hair cuts and their parents probably stretched their last peso to get them a smart phone. Phillip and I no longer feel like aliens. We just feel like people meeting people. Our differences are shallow and circumstantial, our key building blocks are the same. And that human and geographic familiarity makes easy friendships and quick local guides.
Another interesting discovery: not once in our four thousands miles have we feared for our safety. Every town and village and slum and city has only introduced us to kind and helpful people. The one time we saw violence was in Cartegena, Colombia. A local woman had been hit in the head and her purse had been stolen. Within seconds, every single bystander jumped to her aid, chased down the thief, retrieved her purse, and almost beat the thief unconscious. By the time we stopped staring in disbelief at the protective mob, the police had arrived and were protecting the thief from a public lynching.
It seems that people are here to help each other and to protect each other. Makes two small guys on bicycles feel pretty good, and makes almost anywhere we go feel like home.
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