International Romance

After years spent in my dear US of A, I had the opportunity to satisfy my international travel bug twice in 2015. One of those trips included a lot of new things – my first visit to Nicaragua and to Central America in general, and my first travel adventure with a romantic partner.

Traveling is exhilarating and eye-opening and life-changing and fun. It is also exhausting and uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous, and hard.

I’ve traveled with friends, with acquaintances, and by myself. This time, though, I traveled with a romantic partner, my pizza-loving man.

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I enjoy traveling by myself. When traveling solo, your activities and itinerary are 100% in your control. If you’re feeling tired, you can act on it (or not, as the situation may warrant). If you’re feeling adventurous, you can follow through. If you’d like to try something, you don’t need to worry about your companions’ discomfort or various opposing feelings. It gives you the unique opportunity to really think about what you want and need, and to consider what exactly will fulfill you as an individual throughout your trip. The solo experience also leads to wonderful new friendships and experiences with unique individuals also on their own solo or partnered adventures. At the same time, traveling solo as a young female means that some of my opportunities may be more limited due to safety concerns. And of course sometimes certain activities are more fun with a buddy, and you can’t count on the new traveling friend to show up exactly when you need it.

Traveling with friends can be wonderful, in that you have a group for safety, you have a group to commiserate with during the hard times, and you have a group to relish in the enjoyable adventures. I’ve definitely had times traveling with friends, though, during which I wished I had been alone. Specific friends can be the best throughout day to day life, but when it comes to negotiating group activities, or temporary living accommodations, or comfort levels when faced with with alternative cultures or strangers – these same comfortable day-to-day friends may not be able to fulfill their same roles. It helps if the travel group is a smaller one, and one in which all parties have the same travel goals – the same levels of luxury expected in traveling, and even the same levels of comfort when it comes to splitting off on your own, for example. 

Acquaintance travel has its pros, too. By acquaintance travel, I mean traveling with people you may have met along the way or more recently, but not individuals you feel intimately connected to or perhaps will even see again once the trip has ended. The feelings that, for better or worse, are a part of friend travel, are less involved in acquaintance travel. This means that less open, fun, comfortable times are had, but also that potentially more enlightening and educational opportunities are available – traveling avails itself to secrets and deep truths, and the opportunity to experience and appreciate these truths from an almost stranger can be life changing. 

Which brings us to traveling with a romantic partner. Ideally this partner is someone you can already share truths with, but travel and uncomfortable situations definitely lend themselves to discussing these truths and can either strengthen or break any relationship, but especially an intimate romantic one. Spending 24/7 with each other, worrying about travel goals and feelings, as well as your own safety and your partner’s comfort – it can be a lot.

“If you have someone that you think is the one… Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world. And go to places that are hard to go to, and hard to get out of. And if when you come back to JFK, when you land at JFK, and you are still in love with that person, get married at the airport” Bill Murray

This trip specifically, I somehow convinced my adventurous pizza-loving-man to take his first trip out of the country with me. And it wasn’t just a passport-required trip, but a 9-day hostels-and-backpacks-only journey to the non-English-speaking country of Nicaragua during his birthday week. And I must admit, he was incredible.  And it was one of the things that (TW for vomit-inducing corniness) brought me to the conclusion that this relationship was one I wanted in my life, one I was willing to make major compromises as necessary to keep.

With respect to the other types of travel and relationships I mentioned, this trip was different and the same (helpful, right?), and I loved it. Nothing except solo travel gives the same feeling of liberation and independence, but traveling with other people in general tends to push you even farther outside of your comfort zone as you try new things for their sake. Traveling in a pair was definitely easier than in a larger group, and my man and I had the added bonus of sharing a bed in hostels, which in most cases ended up saving us a lot of money compared to the more popular bunk/dorm options. It definitely made the stress of traveling more comfortable – falling asleep in arms that feel like home after a very foreign day was probably one of the more beautiful adventures I could have asked for.

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Since we’d been dating a little over a year (was it only a year? Man, we were bold), we’d already established a level of trust that made it easier to share certain feelings of discomfort or concern throughout the trip. And yes, this includes upset stomachs and loud pooping, at one point in an open compost-able toilet on an island eco-farm. It brought us together, as shared experiences are wont to do, and allowed me to envision a future where I always had the best travel buddy immediately at my adventurous disposal.

On this trip, we both realized a number of truths at the exact same time: how out of shape we were while biking up and down a volcano; that our perfect day entails a bumpy ride with new friends on the back of a pick-up truck to a deserted beach with unlimited rum, culminating with an open fire fish-fry and a rousing chorus of “I’m on a boat”on top of an old beached rowboat; that one dollar tacos are delicious and exciting no matter what country you’re in; and that Irish pubs feel like home everywhere, especially when you’re a ginger.

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We had our trying times, of course, but all the fights and annoyances were minor and admittedly were probably mostly due to me being cranky at points. Overall, he was up for any adventure, people remembered him fondly due to his red hair so any repeat visits we made were heartily welcomed, and upon leaving we were ready to do it all over again. That’s what most of us want, in the end, right? Someone excited to share the same adventures we’re excited about, someone who can put up with us at our hangriest, someone who deals well with stress, pressure, and discomfort, and someone who at the end of the day is still eager to kiss our sunburned garlic-y lips.

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