Solo Travels: Why You Should Escape Your Comfort Zone

It has been a year now since I found my new freedom. Over the past two years I have been adventuring more than my previous 20 years on this earth. My first step in planning any adventure is to check out the price of the flights to where my next excursion may be. I will look up certain dates from the cheapest airport near me. Find where the cheapest destination may be then research that area. Well, last year around March I started searching. I stumbled upon the cheapest tickets I could find. Next thing I knew I bought round trip tickets to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a ten day adventure. At this point I started asking friends if they wanted to join me. The tickets cost $250 for round trip from Boston, Massachusetts to San Juan, Puerto Rico. That is even cheaper than visiting my sister in Florida. Love you, Sis, but Puerto Rico? Yes! Who could pass up a trip THAT cheap?

Well, apparently everyone I knew. The date was getting closer and I had no one to go with. I would not have even thought about not having a travel buddy it if it weren’t for my mom calling me a zillion times a day saying, “You better cancel that flight while you can still get your money back! You are NOT going alone!” I am going to let you in on a little not-so-secret about me, I am stubborn as hell. If you tell me I can’t do something well, I will probably do it ten times over. After 23 years, I have learned to use it as motivation. If my mother would have just held her tongue and not mentioned anything at all I would have let the $250 go waste. I would have stayed home sulking about how much my friends suck and they are single handedly the reason I did not go to Puerto Rico. In all probability, this means I should thank my mother. If she did not bother me so much about how I cannot go on a solo female trip I would have never leaped out of my comfort zone and left for my adventure. Mother, if you ever end up reading this please note that everything you do kicks ass. This is a prime example of how you thought you were doing the wrong thing by letting me leave on my own but how I came back so much stronger and I thank you. Everything you have ever thought to be wrong in your parenting journey has shaped me to be the women I am today. As a consequence, I kinda like myself so thank you for that.

Now that we are done with the “If’s” lets get to the point. Before my trip my mom made it a point to hang out with me. Now, she does enjoy hanging out with me just because we have that whole mother/daughter deal going on. However, she tends to do things differently before I go on a trip. She will call me to see when the next time she can come over is even if it is just for five minutes. When I ask why she says, “I just want to hang out with my baby before she goes away for ten days, I will miss you.” Mind you, we have been apart for more than ten days. I spent a whole semester in North Carolina and we would go weeks without talking. No, this is different. She gives off this vibe as almost if to say, “I want to hang out with my baby one last time before she disappears in God-Only-Knows-Where Land and never returns.” Now that is kind of weird. We have gone through bad times before and from it we learned to cherish the ones that are with us. But this? Usually, I tend to scrape up a last minute traveller to join me. I feel the comfort of having someone with me that I manage to brush off the strange vibe my mom gives out. The day was getting closer and my regular routine was starting to fail. I begged everyone around me to buy a ticket but nothing. I had to come to grips with the fact that I was going to be all alone in the sunny Caribbean. I really started letting my moms’ “vibe” get to my head.

I held my head high. I put off an aura that it did not bother me. That I was ready to travel on my own. I have heard many, many times “Fake it till you make it.” This is exactly what I was doing. I wanted to be the independent traveller that bounced country to country, trying new things and laughing with my new friends all while gaining followers on Instagram. Instagram Followers are very important in todays society you know, it measures your wealth of awesomeness. I had it pictured in my head, the kick ass time I was about to have. I really like the phrase “kick ass” if you haven’t figured that out yet. Nevertheless, something kept taking over my brain, pictures of me sitting alone in my hostel crying the day away, pictures of people shooing me away as if I was one of the stray Puerto Rican dogs, pictures of me lost on a back road with no service asking for directions and some local that only spoke Spanish stealing the tires from my rental leaving me stranded with the Puerto Rican dogs. Just from this run on sentence you can most likely feel my anxiety. I tried to push these thoughts away but every time mother reminded me of my solo travels being friendless was all I could think of. I played it off, no doubt about that, that I was not at all bothered by the friendless journey. It was just another chapter in “Shannon’s Book of Kicking Ass.”

Now, you are probably getting the general gist of it, I will write it out plain and clear, I was scared shitless. I composed myself pretty well though. After being told I was stupid to travel alone by my coworkers and basically told I was never going to return from my solo journey by my mom, I persevered. Using this big word makes it sound like it was quite the battle to overcome. It sounds like my ideas were knocked down a thousands times, I dropped out of college, I was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, and I still managed to build a billion dollar empire based around a partially eaten apple as an icon. We all have our own ideas of perseverance. This was completely out of my comfort zone and the people around me did not even know it. I played it off until the day I left on May 5, 2016. There I was, sitting in the Boston International Airport all by my lonesome, palms sweating, my nerves taking over my excitement. This was it, no backing out now.

I arrived to San Juan, Puerto Rico on my non-stop flight from Boston around three in the morning. I could not pick up my rental car until 9 a.m. As fate had it, I met a friend at the gate in Boston. She was flying in to meet her family but they would not be there until 11 in the morning. We went our separate ways on the flight but managed to meet back up at the gate in Puerto Rico. We went back and forth with ideas on what to do at 3 in the morning. Boom, the only place open, Denny’s. If you live under a rock and have not heard of Denny’s it is a 24 hour breakfast place, also serving some lunch items. We grabbed a coffee and talked to kill some time. We walked around for a bit until it was finally time to go pick up my rental car. The company gave me some trouble when I tried to rent because I was under the magical age of 25. According to statics, I was probably going to crash their car. My new friend offered for me to stay in San Juan with her and her family instead of traipsing off into the unknown. Trust me, my gut was telling me to stay, but my stubbornness to prove to everyone I’m an independent traveler who does not take no as an answer was taking over. I grabbed the keys, said my goodbyes, hooked up my iPod and turned on some travel tunes to get me out of San Juan and off to Fajardo.

While in Fajardo, I took a ferry to the island of Vieques. The island seemed small enough to walk around. To my surprise, it was not. Where the ferry dropped us off and where I needed to be was a $10 taxi ride. The places I had planned to walk to where no longer a walkable distance. I took the taxi right to my hostel and tried to re-plan. Scratch that. No re-planning now, I’m here, lets do this. Good news is I did not stay in my hostel and cry the day away. I put on my big girl panties and took a walk. On my walk I came across some bike rentals, $10 for the day and I would be able to bike to the places I wanted. I told to man the places I was planning on biking to and he told me, “Oh no, it is far too hot and that is a long distance.” I agreed and took off, now remember you tell me no and I will do it ten times over. First obstacle, the hill from hell, kicked my butt. I almost turned around and coasted back to the hostel but no, I was determined to prove to the man I could do it. Next obstacle, torrential downpour from the Gods, it was raining so hard I could barely see in front of me. Someone was nice enough to stop and ask if I wanted a ride and my mind was telling me no, but my body, my body was telling me yes. My mind of course won. Shortly after the rain stopped. Third obstacle, speed bumps from R. Kelly, normally I would not seeing anything wrong with a little bump and grind but these were every 50 feet and my butt was already sore. Next, I could not figure out where this beach was. So many turn offs but not the one I wanted. Finally, the last possible turn off on Bumpy Lane. Let me tell you, this beach made everything worth it. I popped open my corona and laughed to myself about all the obstacles trying to hold me back. Sure, I wasn’t laughing with all my new friends I thought I would be making but my corona was the only thing I needed on that beach then and there.

 

Wild Horses, Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

Fast forward a few days, my gas tank is low, it hits me, I have to go to a gas station. I was in the middle of nowhere non-touristy town. There gas station was not inviting at all. There were bars on every window, trash scattered everywhere and I did not want to swipe my card in case someone was watching and stealing all my information. Paranoid, I know. This was it, this is the moment my mom had pictured me disappearing and never returning. It was an hour from my next destination and I definitely was not making it on a few gallons of gas. It was either sack up and fill up or have my nightmare of being stranded and having my wheels stolen from my car come true. Scary gas station it is. Guess what, I survived and I’m now here typing to you about it. I continued to travel around Puerto Rico, east to west and everything in between.

This trip was completely out of my comfort zone. Millions of times I thought to myself how stupid I was for traipsing around Puerto Rico all by myself. Millions of times people told me how stupid I was. And the Gods, lets not get started about the Gods. They had it out for me on this trip. However, every obstacle I learned to laugh off, I learned different ways to deal with emotions and the best way to navigate my Kia Rio rental car on my off road journeys without getting any dings. Every phone call from my mom I learned to play up as if the Gods loved me and everything was going just like the travel itinerary I had left her. Maybe lying to my mom is not considered one of the better things I learned on my solo travels but think about it this way. On my solo travels I learned how to put my mom at ease when I am on a valiant quest fighting off the scary gas stations and torrential downpours. In my eyes I was doing my mother a favor.

My “comfort zone” is all messed up. I will jump out of a perfectly good airplane or bungee jump off the highest bridge without second guessing it but traveling to a new area without someone to lean on when times get tough was out of my comfort zone. Now is the part where I tell you to go, do, see and get out of your “comfort zone.” But I won’t, we are trying to avoid cliches here, remember? What I will tell you is that your comfort zone is literally a hell hole. You’ve convinced yourself to stay there for as long as you like because who really cares? Nobody wakes up in the morning wondering how little Johnny is doing in his comfort zone or wonder if he has ventured out lately. Nope, nobody cares about you and your stupid little comfort zone. You can stay in there as long as you would like. Every one outside their comfort zone travels the world, makes billion dollar deals and gets a bunch of Instagram Followers. You can stay right there, convincing yourself you are something you aren’t and living that ho hum life. But we are having a blast out here, if you want something that makes your palms sweat, gets you all antsy in your pantsy, makes you think, “this is the dumbest/craziest/best thing I have done since birth,” then hop on out and come join the wild side. You’ll be surprised at how well it treats you.

Guilligans Island, Guanica, Puerto Rico