What drives you to pack?
traveling is not my life . I wrote my first article for Traveler exactly two years ago, and that front page for the print edition of Vanity Fair was also about travel (rainy afternoons in the Serengeti and nights on the beach in Mombasa) on March 15, 2011.
Doesn't matter, but Since then I haven't unpacked ; she's still there, asleep on the guest bed, zipper open and some undershirt still folded inside her, waiting for the next destination. Weekly. And again.
I travel without rest. And when I'm tired of traveling – this is usual, I buy a ticket to some abandoned city (for me) I don't know, Bilbao.
I will buy a ticket As soon as I send this article (or maybe make a Spotify playlist with the car ride in mind) without being very clear about where or how or what or with whom : Maybe I'll see Eneko, a good friend I want to sit down with again. Running in front of the river. Smile at Puppy. Surrender to Nerua's nudity. Kick the Seven Streets. remember her
Another destination: Rome. Procastin. This huge cover crosses my mind in the middle of this A4 of six hundred words.
I have decided (I am deciding) I will go to Rome to explore the streets and bars, the baths of Caracalla and the Colosseum, Piazza Navona and the sad sunrises of Jep Garmbardella, and hopefully I will remember what I sometimes forget: "Intelligence, meaning, sense and heart: this is important" , maybe there is an article there.
Maybe not. What else will it give? Yes Deep down, it's just a trick.
"They tell me that this is not traveling, it is running away"
They tell me that this is not traveling, it is running away . That (damn Unamuno) "you travel not to seek your destination but to flee from where you start" and that fear does not stay at home or at the gate.
Well, okay, it works for me; to escape what is ours, we are then left with the other.
The Treasure Chest: the books we have read, the unforgettable wines, the movies and the songs, the pins on the map and what we have learned on each trip; that private, intimate, non-transferable treasure. The real treasure, the one that will not be detected by any scanner, will freely cross all customs and borders.
And now, a confession. Traveling was never a priority —not a wish, nor what I wanted to do "when I grew up". I did not go to Erasmus, I gave up the end-of-year trip because I preferred a turntable with an amp and four records . Queues bore me, I hate tourism and I get seasick on sailboats. I hate vacations, cruises, full pensions and clubbing in Ibiza.
But traveling, you see, I have learned to unlearn (the hardest lesson) , I learned to shut up and listen. To look at things with new eyes; to be alone and to move: action kills despair.
I learned to read the constellations (Perseus, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia) on the terrace of a bar that is now closed, at the twilight of love and the beginning of something new. Something better. I also learned (a good friend taught me) that Mexican saying: "The bird is not from the nest in which it is born, but from the sky in which it flies".
So put down the phone, close the book, for a moment. Look at a map and choose a destination . Give yourself excuses (money, time, "their" doubts, disappointments and fatigue) and buy a ticket. Pack your suitcase, zip it up and retrieve that neglected book. Travel light, but travel. Get drunk on life.
Discover -it's not easy- that not everything has been said, that there are still islands to conquer. There's a world out there full of treasure chests; overflowing with secrets, liturgies, friends, tenderness and affection. Chests waiting for the pirate you were (because you were) to claim their loot.
Have a good trip, pirate.
why we travel
- Article originally published on March 6, 2014 and updated on October 29, 2018