Getting Personal

Here I am in Lima, Peru, having arrived a whole day early for my Absolute Peru tour which starts tonight at 7.30pm. I checked in to my hotel room yesterday afternoon and enjoyed the luxury of complete privacy, the opportunity not to padlock all my stuff away, to take as long as I wanted in the shower and to walk around naked without worrying that anyone might come in.

This will be my last opportunity for the next three weeks, as I will be sharing a room with one of my tour mates, who I meet tonight. Lucky them.

It´s a strange reality of the kind of trip I am doing that it is impossible to conceal the less attractive parts of yourself as you are forced to be so close with other people, both physically and emotionally.

If you have a stomach upset, people know. If you have period pains, people know. If you have a spot or a cold, people know. If you wake up in a foul mood you can´t shut yourself off as there is nowhere to go. People just know.

This has been particularly true as I´ve been travelling with Jon and Richard. I realised that I spent a month with them, and Jon and I were pretty much together 24 hours a day. At first this was hard as, well, normally not only would I be making a special effort with someone I had only known a short time and wanted to impress, but I wouldn´t be able to trust them with myself so quickly. That kind of reserve has been impossible and I have had to let my barriers down and let him see the real me.

And you know the funny thing? He hasn´t seem phased in the slightest. And once I realised that, well, everything just got a little easier and I got a little happier with the reality of who I am. I´m sure on my Peru tour I will have moments when normally I´d hide myself way, but maybe this time I will just forgive myself and find that it´s not as important as I thought.