How my year of solo travel in South America left surprising, indelible lessons

In the spring of 2009, after selling half of the things I owned and putting the other half in storage, I departed New York City with a backpack, a guidebook and a one-way ticket to Brazil. I planned to make my way around South America for a year. By myself, with no real itinerary.

I’d been in New York just shy of two years, working an unfulfilling job as an editorial assistant at a textbook publishing house. Lured by the path less taken, I was uninterested in carving out a five- or 10-year plan, looking for a husband or saving for a down payment on property. I was young and spontaneous, emboldened by the city itself, brash and daring.

My pace would be determined by my whims. And it would seem, my heart.

In Bolivia, I fell in love with an Argentinian named Hugo. Because of the language barrier — my Spanish was getting better by the day, and Hugo didn’t speak English — we talked little. But we got on just fine: cooking asado (South American barbecue), hiking around Uyuni and hitchhiking when far from the centre of town.

With Hugo, I learned there’s a world of communication that doesn’t exist in spoken words. I also learned that saying goodbye never gets easier and it’s often inevitable, particularly if one has a sense of adventure.

So I left Hugo in northern Argentina and travelled south, onward to Patagonia. Nursing a bit of a broken heart and wondering if I’d made the wrong decision in leaving, I felt a raw loneliness as the increasingly remote destinations made it harder to strike up conversations. I wallowed in the sadness for days, spending a depressing Thanksgiving by myself in a country where no one celebrated the holiday, before realizing the only way I would snap out of it was to remember what I was doing out there.

Set on changing my attitude, in Puerto Natales, Chile, I boldly approached a group of guys at the Erratic Rock hostel and asked if I could join their Torres del Paine trek in Patagonia. My gut decision did not fail me. It also (delightedly) saved me from carrying the heavy tent or resigning myself to staying in refugios along the way, an option I considered too easy — and thus unacceptable — for the five-day trek.

Trusting my gut would turn out to be one of the biggest take-aways from my year of solo travel. There was the time in Lima, Peru, when I arrived at my couchsurfing host’s flat to discover only one small bed and no clear indication of the sleeping arrangement. By the time a giant bug scurried past my toes in the bathroom, I already knew I could not stay there.

Sleep, I came to learn — good, restful sleep in a safe environment — was the difference between feeling like I could keep doing this thing, a single woman travelling in South America, and feeling like it was time to give up, a foolish woman out on her own, no idea what the next day would bring.

Toward the end of my journey, I had a decision to make. Every traveller I’d met along the way said if I could afford it, I had to go to the Galapagos. Just getting to the main island would eat into my budget, and then there was the cost of the cruise, which was apparently the only way to really experience the remote (read: pricey) archipelago.

Fearing regret, I booked a flight from the mainland, grudgingly paying the $100 island entrance fee. I found the cheapest accommodation I could and planned to stay only as long as it took to book a last-minute spot (the cheapest option) on a ship. In the few days I waited, I subsisted on tuna cans and avocados and the occasional cold beer as a reward for holing up at an inn with no air conditioning.

Ramba, the modest ship with a trickle of cold water for the shower and cramped quarters, which I shared with a man from London, took our group of eight snorkeling multiple times a day. I swam with sharks and sea lions and manta rays. I watched penguins mate in the water. I walked next to blue-footed boobies and giant iguana, aware I was the intruder in their home.

When it was all over, I had no buyer’s remorse, no stress over splurging as much money on one week of travel as I’d typically been spending across three months. All I had was the satisfaction of knowing the decision — like the entire trip itself — had been the right one.

The Star understands the restrictions on travel during the coronavirus pandemic. But like you, we dream of travelling again, and we’re publishing this story with future trips in mind.