Fast Friendships

Although this is something I've been aware of not only since arriving in South America, but really for a lot longer than that, my time in Mendoza made me acutely aware of the superficiality of many of the interactions I have while traveling.

In the hostel in Mendoza, as I mentioned in the last post, I felt immediately welcome by the hordes of English speakers. Jane and Sarah from Bristol, UK were staying in the same dorm room as me, and we ended up spending dinner and a whole day of biking around the wineries together. Yet, when they left early in the morning on Tuesday, we didn't exchange contact information and barely said goodbye. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that throughout all the time we spent together, neither of them could remember my name.

It's not that I think they're bad people, or that anyone did anything wrong; in fact the opposite. All the gringos traveling around South America stick together to help us feel some familiarity, even if it's just linguistic. Without that instinct to stick together I would have been really, truly alone, and it was really a releif to not have to go to a restaurant, or the wineries, solo.

That being said, I'm really amazed when I meet people who are on 6-month or longer solo backpacking journies around the continent or even the world. John, an American from Wisconsin was also staying at the hostel in Mendoza and has been traveling for a year and a half, starting in South East Asia and now making his way around South America, all on his own, and I have to wonder how lonely it must get, as well as how exhausting all of these fast friendships must get. Always having the same conversations about where he's from and why he's traveling, never getting beneath the surface of the polite and friendly conversation that is so easy to strike up with other gringos--it must get old.

This is all part of why I needed to have a home base, Buenos Aires, where I could at least have more than 3 days to try and get to know someone before stripping my bed, dumping the sheets and towels in the hallway, and getting on a bus to wherever's next on the list.