Lifestyle travel. It’s all about the experience!

Rustic, handcrafted village bread

When you travel, do you care more about convenience or experience?

You may find it difficult to answer this since when it comes to travel arrangements, the convenience factor influences departure times, flight duration, connections, seat number and more.   However, here is a situation that really brought home to me the essence of lifestyle travel …

I was staying at a rented property in a small Mexican fishing village for five weeks.  I did not rent a vehicle as I really wanted to experience something different to home, where the car rules even for local shopping trips, I’m ashamed to admit!  I enjoyed my daily walk to the village which entailed a steep descent down about 100 steps and downward sloping dusty side-streets.  The uphill journey home was somewhat less enjoyable, though, especially in the extreme heat, but I countered my tendency to consider taxis with the thought that I was being kind to my heart … and my waist.  It wasn’t always easy, but it sure was good for me!

After a week, I started to yearn for fresh, local bread. but I hadn’t seen a bakery.  It turned out there was a village baker, tucked in a side street and working from his home, but he didn’t open every day and when he did (at 10am!) he was sold out by 11am!  There were two  Tortilleria churning out tortillas by the thousands.  But I wanted bread.  When I mentioned my yearning for bread to a new North-American friend, she kindly offered to get me some in the morning so I didn’t have to walk “all that way” to the village.

The light went on!  I realized that for my friend, buying a loaf of bread was about convenience.  For me, though, it wasn’t just about bread.  I was seeking a total lifestyle experience – walking to the village, queueing with locals for a loaf of delicious, home-baked bread, all the while taking in the aromas, colours, shapes and sizes, surroundings, sounds and language.  A very different experience to buying a loaf from a supermarket.

Wherever I am in the world, I always try to incorporate this type of experience into my travels and relish every opportunity to explore village hardware stores, food shops, street markets and … bakeries.  One can learn a great deal about a culture simply by simulating their lifestyle for an hour, a day, a week or more.

Taking this thought a little further, I wonder why I did not seek to explore the experience so readily available at the village Tortilleria. After all, that is a very Mexican experience.  I can only think that my preference for wheat over corn had something to do with it.  After all, bread is a critical ingredient in an Italian’s diet!

When you live like a local, you add something valuable to your portfolio that will never depend on market conditions … experience.