People and Travel Change Us

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I’ve been thinking about Anthony Bourdain a lot lately. Snippets of his videos and commentary are floating into my social media like butterflies seeking respite. His quippy manner of speaking and experience of the world are forever seared into my mind. If anyone ever asks me what I want to be one day, my truthful answer is that I want to be him. To experience the world open-hearted, allowing it to wash over me and help me change time and time again. 

Pain, fury, and sadness are in a constant battle with Bourdain clips in my social media feed right now. Duking it out for space in my already cluttered brain. The chaos of it all makes me never want to travel again — well aware that Americans are becoming persona non grata in so much of the world. 

Yet, there is a section of an entry on Bourdain’s Tumblr I look to to remind myself that there is much to do, see, and learn:

“Before I set out to travel this world, 12 years ago, I used to believe that the human race as a whole was basically a few steps above wolves.

That given the slightest change in circumstances, we would all, sooner or later, tear each other to shreds. That we were, at root, self-interested, cowardly, envious and potentially dangerous in groups. I have since come to believe – after many meals with many different people in many, many different places – that though there is no shortage of people who would do us harm, we are essentially good.

That the world is, in fact, filled with mostly good and decent people who are simply doing the best they can. Everybody, it turns out, is proud of their food (when they have it). They enjoy sharing it with others (if they can). They love their children. They like a good joke. Sitting at the table has allowed me a privileged perspective and access that others, looking principally for ‘the story,’ do not, I believe, always get.”

Then I think of Jose. 

Jose was our concierge/tour guide when my friends and I went on a Costa Rica work trip four years ago. From the moment we met, we were kindred spirits. He became like the father-friend figure of our little group, and we instantly bonded over nerd culture and tattoos. We spent a week with him, knowing full well we would stay in touch (something I’m woefully behind on, truth be told). I practiced my previously fluent and now pathetically strung-together Spanish with him as we became fast friends.

“We should get matching tattoos,” Jose said to my spouse and me one day while we were riding up front with him in the tour van. Looking at me, he then said, “You decide what we should get, and then we’ll all get one.” He half-jokingly said we should get Dragon Ball Z tattoos since his nickname was Goku. I laughed — that wasn’t going to happen. Heck, I wasn’t even sure he was serious. He was. Dead serious. We were getting matching tattoos. 

I suggested we all get sloths; we were in Costa Rica after all. I found a cute design online, and that was that. Jose immediately got in touch with his tattoo artist, Alejandro. Alejandro came to our hotel, and my spouse Kyle, I, and our friend Giselle got little sloth tattoos. Later, we found out that Rafa, our tour driver, got a matching one too. That felt even more special because, unlike the three of us, Rafa didn’t have any tattoos yet. 

Our kind, funny pal Jose had a bigger surprise. Not only did he get the sloth, but he also got each of our names tattooed beneath it. The five of us are there as an ever-present reminder of our time together. From total strangers to friends across the world, walking in harmony with our little sloths. Never would I have imagined getting matching tattoos on such a whim, yet I haven’t regretted it for a moment since. 

People usually say I’m crazy when I tell them the story of the sloth tattoo. How could we get permanent body art with people we’ve just met? It is mind-boggling, yet my sloth friends are not simply people I just met. We were destined to spend a week in Costa Rica together, experiencing life, becoming friends, and learning from one another. That’s what happens when we travel. 

There are not always visual reminders of these adventures; they live in our memories or photographs we take along the way. Even so, when we travel, we encounter people we would have never otherwise met. Sometimes those encounters last a bit longer, climbing up and up slowly like a sloth along a tree branch until they reach your heart — where they remain.

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