On sunday morning, my second full day in Huancayo I was again the first to wake up and because of the freezing temperature decided to stay in bed a bit longer. I happened to think about my experiences during the past two days and like to share some thoughts with you.

You could say this trip was my first real backpacking experience – I indeed had a huge backpack, was traveling alone, didn’t plan any activity in advance for this weekend and even stayed at a stranger’s place. On the train I guess everybody had an awesome experience, because somehow all backpackers seem to share the general attitude of being interested in getting to know people, culture and local traditions. These deep experiences and thoughts that getting rid of every-day life back home, work/study duties and all the routine things we do seem to put most of us in a kind of philosophical state. Somehow traveling together in an open and spontaneous way really binds together. It was amazing how naturally we talked to everybody else on the train, exchanged phone numbers and knowledge about the places we saw and Huancayo, our final destination. I am not someone to easily trust people I barely know, but in this case it was different. Like Couchsurfing it’s somehow a small community and at least I felt these people were somehow like me, leading to an intutitive feeling of trust.

I don’t know why we behave so much differently than I could imagine back in Europe. Is it the local culture we’re embracing, the sense of freedom away from home or just neccessity because we just don’t have a network of close friends over here?

Especially that weekend I felt is was the perfectly right decision to step out of the comfort zone and try something new and admittedly both frightening and promising in advance. It’s an extremely rewarding feeling to realize how social, friendly and plainly happy humans can tbe together without any materialism, luxury and entertainment and despite language barriers, different cultures and barely knowing each other. I’m already looking forward to my full three weeks of backpacking!