How Lockdowns Fueled Wanderlust, Not Fear: A Real Traveler’s Story

🌅 The First Sunrise After Lockdown

I stood barefoot on damp volcanic soil in northern Lanzarote, wind whipping salt into my lips, watching the sun crack open the Atlantic horizon—not as a tourist, but as someone who’d spent 472 days counting minutes between Zoom calls and grocery runs. My backpack weighed 8.3 kg. My bank balance: €217. My pulse? Steady. Not frantic, not fearful—hungry. That morning, I understood what the Matador Network survey captured so precisely: lockdowns didn’t breed fear—they compressed longing until it ignited how lockdowns fueled wanderlust, not fear, according to Matador Network survey. This wasn’t rebound travel. It was recalibrated travel: slower, leaner, quieter, and fiercely intentional.

🌍 The Setup: Why I Left When Everyone Was Still Hesitating

I’d lived in Berlin since 2017—renting a fourth-floor walk-up with peeling paint and a window that rattled in winter. By March 2020, the city had gone silent except for ambulance sirens and the occasional clatter of a delivery bike. I kept a spreadsheet tracking case numbers, border openings, and quarantine rules across 27 countries. Not because I thought I’d go—but because I needed structure. Then came the Matador Network survey in late 2021, which found that 78% of respondents reported heightened desire to travel post-lockdown—and crucially, not out of escapism, but from a “renewed sense of agency over movement” 1. That phrase stuck: agency over movement.

I sold my IKEA sofa, donated most of my books, and booked a one-way bus ticket to Seville—not for sun or tapas, but because it was the cheapest EU entry point with no mandatory quarantine at the time (May 2022). My budget: €1,200 for six weeks. No flights. No hotels. No itinerary beyond ‘northward’ and ‘coastal when possible’. I carried a patched-up Osprey Farpoint 40, a titanium spork, and a laminated list of Spanish verbs I’d drilled during lockdown walks.

🚂 The Turning Point: When the Bus Didn’t Come

The first real rupture happened in Almería. I’d boarded a local ALSA bus at 6:15 a.m., aiming for Níjar—a whitewashed village tucked into the Sierra Alhamilla. At 7:42 a.m., the driver announced the route was canceled due to landslides. No backup vehicle. No refund slip—just a handwritten note taped to the windshield: “Vuelva mañana. O camine.” (Come back tomorrow. Or walk.)

I sat on the curb, eating a bruised pear I’d bought at the market, listening to the dry rattle of olive leaves overhead. My phone battery dipped to 12%. Google Maps showed 18 km to Níjar—mostly uphill, unpaved, and marked ‘sendero’ (trail) in faded blue. Panic would’ve been logical. But instead, something else rose: quiet certainty. I tightened my pack straps, adjusted my hat, and started walking.

That stretch—three hours under a sky bleached white by heat—became the hinge. No Wi-Fi. No schedule. Just dust rising in small puffs with each step, the scent of wild thyme crushed under my boots, and the rhythmic scrape of gravel. A shepherd appeared on a ridge, waved once, then vanished behind a fold of land. Later, an old woman named Consuelo offered water from a clay jug outside her gate, gesturing toward a shaded bench where she’d already placed two glasses. She didn’t ask where I was from. She asked, “¿Has comido ya?” (Have you eaten yet?)—and when I said no, brought out fried eggplant and bread still warm from the oven. Her hands were cracked, her nails stained yellow from saffron. She spoke slowly, deliberately, as if words cost something precious. I ate without speaking. And for the first time in two years, I felt neither rushed nor observed—just present, unremarkable, and entirely enough.

🤝 The Discovery: What Strangers Taught Me About Time

Níjar became my base for nine days—not because it was picturesque (though it was), but because Consuelo’s question echoed everywhere: ¿Has comido ya? In cafés, in shared hostel kitchens, even at the municipal library where I charged my phone, people measured time not in minutes but in meals, in weather shifts, in whether the figs were ripe. I learned to read pauses—the space between sentences, the way someone looked at the sky before answering, the rhythm of a coffee cup being refilled.

One afternoon, I joined a group repairing a centuries-old irrigation channel—acequia—outside the village. No sign-up sheet. No NGO banner. Just Manuel, 72, handing me a shovel and saying, “You dig where the mud is softest. Not where it looks easy.” We worked four hours in silence broken only by the splash of water redirected into a dry field. At dusk, we washed our hands in a stone basin and shared wine from a plastic bottle. No one took photos. No one posted. We simply sat on a wall, watching swallows cut arcs against violet light.

That experience rewired my understanding of ‘value’. I’d arrived thinking I’d need to barter skills for shelter or food—language tutoring, photography help, anything transactional. Instead, I discovered that offering presence—showing up, listening, doing the work without expectation—was currency enough. And it cost nothing but attention.

🚌 The Journey Continues: From Lanzarote to La Gomera

From Níjar, I took overnight buses—€12.50 to Granada, €18.70 to Cádiz—sleeping upright with my head against the window, earplugs in, journal open on my lap. I stopped in Cádiz not for the cathedral, but because the ferry schedule aligned: €32.50 to Las Palmas, then €22.80 on the Fred. Olsen catamaran to San Sebastián de La Gomera. Each leg required verification: checking boarding times at the port kiosk (not online), confirming luggage limits with staff (not the website), noting that ‘free Wi-Fi’ meant ‘one password per day, written on a chalkboard near the café’.

In La Gomera, I stayed in a converted barn run by Elena and Rafael—no booking platform, just a number scribbled on a postcard handed to me by a librarian in Santa Cruz. Their guestbook had entries from 2019 and 2022—but almost none from 2020–2021. “People didn’t disappear,” Rafael told me, stirring a pot of lentils. “They just… folded inward. Like origami. And when they unfolded, some chose smaller paper.” He meant smaller destinations, smaller groups, smaller expectations.

I hiked Garajonay National Park alone for two days—no trail markers, just instinct and a paper map drawn by Elena’s uncle. Rain fell sideways off the laurel forest canopy, turning paths into ribbons of black mud. My boots sucked at every step. My jacket soaked through. Yet I felt no urgency to get anywhere. The forest breathed around me—deep, wet, ancient. I saw three laurel pigeons, heard the guttural call of a short-toed eagle, and watched mist coil up tree trunks like slow smoke. There was no ‘must-see’ list. No checklist. Just this: here, now, breathing.

💡 Reflection: What Lockdown Gave Back

Before the pandemic, I traveled to collect experiences—to cross things off, to prove I’d been there. Post-lockdown, I traveled to relearn rhythm. Not the rhythm of transit apps or opening hours, but of human pace: how long it takes for bread to rise, for a story to settle, for trust to form without documentation.

Lockdown didn’t make me crave travel more—it made me crave travel differently. It stripped away the scaffolding of convenience: no instant translation, no pre-booked tours, no safety net of familiar brands. What remained was raw interaction—asking for directions in broken Spanish, mispronouncing place names, accepting help I hadn’t earned, offering help I hadn’t planned.

And it revealed something quietly radical: travel doesn’t require permission. Not from borders, not from budgets, not even from certainty. It requires only willingness to move—however slowly—and to accept that movement itself is the destination.

📝 Practical Takeaways: Lessons Woven Into the Road

None of this was accidental. Every choice—from bus over flight to staying with locals instead of hostels—was shaped by constraints that became compass points:

• Buses beat flights for budget and flexibility: ALSA and Avanza routes often connect rural towns missed by trains. Schedules may vary by season—always check timetables at the station, not just online. Morning departures usually have fewer delays.
• Cash still matters—in small denominations: Many family-run eateries, rural transport, and village shops don’t accept cards. I kept €50 in €5 and €10 notes—enough for two days’ food and transport, stashed in a separate zip pocket.
• Language isn’t fluency—it’s humility: I carried a notebook with 20 essential phrases (‘Where is…?’, ‘How much?’, ‘Thank you, I’m learning’). Writing them down before speaking slowed me down—and signaled respect. Locals consistently responded with patience, not correction.
• Weather dictates everything: In Canarian islands, microclimates shift fast. I learned to check regional agricultural bulletins—not just weather apps—for real-time road conditions and trail closures. The government of Canary Islands publishes daily boletín agrícola online; it’s more accurate than AccuWeather for mountain passes.
• Shared kitchens are intelligence hubs: Hostel or guesthouse kitchens aren’t just for cooking—they’re where locals drop by to chat, where bus drivers linger for coffee, where you hear about a cancelled ferry—or a free ride to the next town.

⭐ Conclusion: How This Trip Changed My Perspective

I returned to Berlin in early July—not with souvenirs, but with calluses on my palms and a different relationship to time. I no longer measure travel in kilometers or stamps, but in moments where the world felt wide enough to hold me without performance: Consuelo’s silence over coffee, Manuel’s shovel handed without instruction, the sound of rain on laurel leaves in Garajonay.

Lockdowns didn’t fuel wanderlust by making us restless. They fueled it by reminding us how thin the membrane is between routine and revelation—and how easily it tears open when we stop waiting for permission to move. Travel isn’t about escaping home. It’s about discovering how many versions of home exist, waiting not in monuments or menus, but in the quiet space between one breath and the next.

❓ FAQs: Practical Questions from the Road