how to travel

I have been preoccupied for most of this trip with the idea of how one should travel. Or how I should travel... which of course is an inane question to start with. I had never left the country until I was 20, my parents having instilled in me a fear of everywhere on earth outside of the midwest.

At 20, I begged my parents to fund a study abroad trip to Italy. They finally agreed, and I spent a very full and planned to every detail three and a half weeks traveling through northern Italy with about 20 other students. No need to make plans, plans were already made. No need to make decisions either. Just along for the ride.

I have traveled alone outside the country twice now since then, this trip to Ecuador is the third after Mexico and Canada (francophone, thank you). Still, I find myself at a bit of a loss of exactly ´how´to travel. Sure, I know how to book a flight and, generally, how to pack (though I tend to pack too much). The problem lies in how to spend my free time. Social norms seem to indicate to spend every weekend traveling, to always be on the go. We met one girl who had been traveling around South America for three months, spending no more than three days in any given place. I find that I worry that I´ll go back and someone will ask me, ``Well, for sure you visited such-and-such? Oh no? Oh... too bad, you really missed out.´´ How then to explain that really, I preferred to sip coffee each weekend in the same old touristy cafe, reading the paper and knitting? Well sure, if the non-touristy cafe had real coffee, I´d be happy to hang out there instead. But this is Ecuador, where instant reigns supreme. Touristy cafe it is.

I am, of course, only arguing here with my own head. I am simply fighting with my own sense that, because I had never traveled internationally with my family as a kid, that I somehow don´t know how to do it properly. This is, of course, absurd, as vacations should really just be about enjoyment. I like to think that I´m someone who knows the difference between her ass and a hole in the ground, but my preoccupation about just spending a weekend in Cuenca, hanging around at the house and maybe visiting the cafe in the afternoon, indicates that this may not be the case.