Rick Steves
Before I gad done any consistent traveling, I had thought that youth hostels were just run-down hotels. They loom precariously beneath even the shadiest one-star hotel in any travel book, and offer suspiciously cheap prices for room and board. I remember having visions of roach motels, with a heavy emphasis on the roaches.
So that was the impression that stood out in my mind as my childhood friend Orion and I sat at the Gandia bus station, trying to figure out where to stay that night. We had flown into Madrid a week ago, managing to find reasonable pensiones in Madrid, Sevilla, and Granada. I was getting edgy, though, as my travel budget seemed to be thinning and the only hotels with vacancies in Gandia were out of my price range. Which left the dreaded youth hostel.
We decided to bite the bullet and got into a cab. With my limited Spanish capabilities, I had a short conversation with the driver, who said that the hostel was actually in a nearby town called Piles. We didn’t have much choice, and as he drove us through remote rows of citrus and olive trees my disappointment grew. I heard Orion grumbling in the back seat about staying in an abandoned farm house.
After about twenty minutes, we rolled into a ghost town. Spare, whitewashed houses lined the deserted streets, softening the sun’s glare but barren of life. Storefronts were obscured by locked sheet-metal gates, and restaurant signs lazily swayed in the sea breeze. Empty driveways lacked cars, empty sidewalks lacked pedestrians, even empty trees lacked birds. The charm of the town hadn’t left with its inhabitants though, and its relaxed, winding alleys mellowed our minds.
A concrete driveway ramped up from the street, and our taxi driver told me that the blocky white building behind it was the hostel. Large stenciled stick figures on its walls engaged in various sports, an indication of what lay within. Orion and I collected our bags, paid the driver, and hustled up the walk.
The scent of sunscreen was the first thing I noticed upon stepping through the French doors, followed by the inevitable whiff of bathroom cleanser. A receptionist perched reading behind a white formica counter, while two flickering security monitors gave split angles of the lounge’s lone ceiling fan.
The receptionist slowly looked up with a visibly irritated glance and said curtly, “Yes?”
After digging out our money belts to pay, we were shown up to the spacious and sunny second floor, through the vacant lounge and to our shared dorm room. Wooden framed bunks were pushed up against the walls, and a few occupants were still snoring off their hangovers in the mid-afternoon doldrums. One of the chubbier lumps stirred, sat up and grinned at us groggily.
He introduced himself as Peter while sliding on a pair of rimmed glasses. He had arrived a few days ago and was on his way up the coast to Barcelona. But as he talked in his thick Austrian accent, my attention was fully drawn to the five-pronged white mark spanning his right breast.
“What the hell is that?” I blurted, tactful as ever.
I had caught him in mid-sentence, and he jerked his head around to see what I was referring to. Orion laughed and pointed at Peter’s chest, and he covered it in mock embarrassment. Then he began:
“I vas lying on ze beach vhen I fell asleep viss my hand on my chest,” he recalled, fitting his right hand perfectly over the blotch.
“Didn’t you wear sunscreen?” Orion asked.
“It doesn’t really matta afta three houas.”
After taking an obligatory picture with Peter and his badge, we walked downstairs, through a set of oversized glass doors — and on to one of the most beautiful expanses of shoreline I had ever seen. Sugary sand compressed under my feet and between my toes, subdued waves gently licked at the beach’s edge, and bits of sun sparkled across the sea’s heaving spine. The ambient splash and hiss of the breaking tides drowned out all other sound, except for occasional wind-carried murmurs from the few sun-baked hostelers.
We sat and talked to the diverse group for a while, trading stories of the road.
Jed was a hippie kid from Northern California who had a broken wire in his braces. He had made the mistake of play-fighting with a group of models one night at the beach in Barcelona. One of the especially attractive ones, he explained, was a female kickboxing champ. His lip was almost fully healed, but the damage to his braces was permanent. It was painful for him to smile, but he couldn’t help but laugh with us.
Then there was Sadie, a spunky blond girl from Canada. I had always pictured Canada as a snow-covered wasteland with Mounties and some decent hockey players, but Sadie made a hard case about the wildness of Canucks and their parties, and furiously cooked up more stories to one-up anyone else’s offerings.
As we sat on the stone seawall and talked, I found myself surprised at how interesting, intelligent, and open these people were. We were all in the same situation, and related to each other fully about the range of ludicrous experiences we had. As varied as our personalities were, a sturdy concept threaded us together: our love of travel and discovery.
Some discoveries were more grotesque than others. Ben was an Australian who had spent the last few months knee-deep in Southeast Asia. Apart from the expected sightseeing, he had been brought to a shooting range in Vietnam. He had spent ten U.S. dollars to fire an assault rifle at a target, an extravagant price in those parts. Then the range owners offered to up the ante.
“It sounds brutal,” said Ben, “but how many times in your life do you get the chance to fire a grenade launcher at a live cow?”
The conversation continued like this for hours, as shadows lengthened and dimmed. Hostel transients ducked in and out of our circle, tossing in morsels about other hostels, cities, restaurants, and sights. We segued to dinner, the upstairs lounge, and finally back on the sand.
Eventually it was only Jed, Sadie, Orion, and me chatting, our volume rising as bottles of sangria were passed around.
At a lull in our talk, Sadie suggested that we go for a night swim. The deserted beach was dimly lit by the lights inside the hostel, and the waves offered relief from the day’s humidity that lingered still. The four of us changed into bathing suits, and reconvened on the shore.
Sadie was an attractive, charismatic girl, and through our splashings and other flirtations in the radiant moonlight, she carefully found ways to make each one of us melt for her. I was fascinated by both her silhouette and her boisterousness, and I could tell by Jed and Orion’s glinty eyes that they were captivated, too.
When Sadie ran inside to use the bathroom, the three of us jabbered about how amazing she was and tottered in and out of the surf, tipsily throwing a frisbee. The moon hung bright and full over our heads, and we whooped in its luminous glory.
Half an hour later, the primal spirit was fading, and we wondered why Sadie was taking so long. We stumbled up the beach, through the glass doors, up the stairs, and mischievously pushed open her door.
She was gone.
It wasn’t until the following morning that Orion realized his Platinum credit card was missing from his wallet, left in his cargo shorts during our swim. We had buried our money belts in with our filthy clothes, and in those hurried 40 minutes Sadie either hadn’t had enough time to dig, or was too repulsed.
It was a small matter to cancel the card, and after a few more days of sopping up sunrays, Orion and I made on our way up the coast to Valencia, Jed tagging along to see if he could find an English-speaking dentist. We spent the train ride laughing about the characters we had met in Piles, a bit disappointed at leaving that melting pot but anxious to see what the rest of our trip would produce. My first hostel experience had been educational, to put it mildly, and I was sure I would never think about youth hostels the same way again. Or beautiful travelers.
A recent graduate from Rutgers University, Jasper Liao is an aspiring writer with a degree in journalism. Increasingly nomadic, he has lived in Europe and South America, and recently taught ESL in China. Jasper plans to establish a base in Boston, but will never stop long enough for his passport to get dusty.
Copyright 2007 Pearson Venture Group