Experience, travel – these are as education in themselves. — Euripides

Reluctant to crawl out of bed after an exhausting week of Spanish, another dorm mate and energetic Aussie, Dan, wouldn’t take no for an answer and insists that I join him and four other girls for dinner. After a few seconds of contemplating this, I am out of bed, half dressed, and ready to go. Deciding that my self-imposed curfew can be lifted since the weekend is the only break from classes that I receive and my attempt to be unsocial by being focused like a laser is also causing me to become the weird smelly kid in the hostel, I give in quite easily. Ok, well we all know that’s not true, because pretty much every backpacker has some type of rockin smell permeating from them, whether it’s their bag full of unwashed clothes, a half-eaten pollo plate from two-days ago that was being saved for later, or the typical amount of shame for being gringo’d from earlier in the day, the smells of life on the road are an adventure in and of themselves.

