Venturer's Log: Palomino
Backpacking and the rise of the digital nomad
I left New Zealand in early 2016 as a broke, fresh-faced graduate, ready to see the world. I travelled around Europe for a few months before heading to the United Kingdom where my work visa was waiting for me. I then backpacked more of Europe mid-2017, and since then my life has been more or less settled in London.
Obviously, since 2017 the world has changed. TikTok has taken over on social media, and COVID-19 completely changed the way that we think about our work-life balance and I know that I am certainly one of those people who can't really envision working in an office 5 days a week again. And I'm not the only one: The rise of the digital nomad has well and truly occurred. People want to be able to work from anywhere, international companies offer their other offices as ways for their employees to extend their holidays by working abroad for a bit on the end, and co-working spaces are bigger than ever.
However, it also means that backpacking has changed. When I was walking the streets of Cartagena I saw a man sitting on a park bench speaking directly into a go-pro he'd set up on a tripod. In the hostels we've stayed at in Minca and now in Palomino, the social spaces are taken up by people typing on their Macs - even right now it's what I'm doing! But it feels somewhat bizarre and I can't seem to get my head around it.
Obviously I can totally understand the way that people, particularly millennials and Gen-Z, are looking to work more independently, more flexibly, and more internationally. Given the option, I would choose the same. If I was still employed I would love the idea of doing some work while I'm on the road, in order to ensure a pay check coming through each month.
But at the same time, it doesn't really sit right. Spending all day in beautiful countries trying to find stable connection (which is difficult to do in Colombia) and also making sure that you don't overheat, stay hydrated, as well as take the time to explore and enjoy the country / city / area that you are in.
This is supposed to be a travel blog, and obviously that means that I have to plan my days / weeks around the creation of this blog, including thinking about what I want to write about for each entry, and ensuring that Nick is taking photographs that could work for each post. But for me it calls into question, how much of this is a facade? Will I be writing about everything - the good, the bad, and the ugly? On Instagram and TikTok we already know that not everything is real, people only show the highlights of their lives, which means that they are portraying a false sense of what it is like to be there. And my question is: Do they still actually enjoy the travel? Do they still have a sense of wonderment about the world that we exist in? Or do they look at it solely for their content, as a way to get likes and comments and clicks? And if so, what does that mean for travel in the future?
Nowhere more has this been on my mind than Palomino. Our hostel is nice: It has a pool, a bar, some private rooms, some dormitories. And it has an upstairs area which I believe is the social space. This social space is full of people on their laptops. I came up and felt completely out of place - I didn't have the laptop (Nick was using it) and felt like I had to be quiet, needed to find something to preoccupy myself with in a way that wasn't distracting for everyone else. But the whole idea of a hostel is to have somewhere to be that is more social, so you can meet other travellers and enjoy the company of others. If the social space is taken up by people working during the day, how does a traveller who is not working utilise that space to do exactly what it is designed to do?
So maybe hostels in the future will change. Maybe there will be the need for two separate spaces other than the bedrooms - a social space and a co-working space. The social space can be for fun and games and fun, whereas the co-working space will be more serious, quiet, and designed for people to work.
Certainly as someone who is backpacking for the first time post-COVID and in the era of TikTok, I believe it will be an adjustment period. I don't think that the digital nomad lifestyle is going anywhere, nor do I think it should, but I didn't quite realise how much it would have an impact on my frame of mind until now.