Poor Travel

Andrea Peebles is in Portugal.

I travel poor. I look homeless, my bike looks feral and care very little what people think. I wash my clothes in the public bathrooms. I have dined out twice in 5 weeks. I eat all the wild grown (or wildly grown over someone’s fence) in season fruit I can find for free (there’s heaps!) My ‘shower’ consists of rubbing sand all over my skin and rinsing in the ocean. I cycle on my bike all day – which is my travelling home, until dusk (around 8.30pm) and then look for a bush/discarded property/hidden spot I can set up camp for free. I am always on the look out for a free power point to charge my devices & will often be ‘cheeky’ and ask people (and have always been met with a yes.) I drink free tap water (with a great filter that filters chlorine and fluoride out) and often source from public bathrooms. I am often found sitting outside the cheapest of Supermarkets with dusty, grimy legs (from the chain grease that doesn’t get off with sand), dribbling food down my top (thankful for supermarket toilets so so can wash it ) and hanging my washing from my bike.
I speak to and meet so many interesting and interested people in my day (except when at Tourist spots, like I am now; I feel absolutely invisible there.) I love how resourceful, capable, independent and in tune with myself and the world around me I am. I love travelling this way as it teaches and shows me SO much more about life (as in truly living – being connected to nature and oneself) than throwing money out there. To me, that makes very little of thee.
I am fully connected to everything and everyone around me. I experience the full reality of it all – the harshness, the heartache, the humility and the harmony. But it is also tough and at times super challenging. The not knowing is exhilarating but also can be tiring.
Simple tasks like washing, Eating and sleeping are what life is centred about. A simple sunset, a heart felt smile, a cool breeze, reaching a hill top or the tingling sensation after being in the ocean makes life so so joyous. These simple pleasures when travelling this way are tireless. They are beyond abundant. They are what I live for. They are what fuels my journey here, day after day after day. Could I experience them as raw, as insightful or profound if I were to throw money (and therefore ease) at my travel experience? Maybe, maybe… Although, I don’t quite believe so, and so I continue to travel this way…