I’d never seen anything like it, except maybe on TV when Olympic gymnasts performed floor exercises. Men had gathered to cartwheel around their opponents and scissor-kick over one another’s heads. One shirtless guy swung his legs low behind him to dodge a blow and then did a half-dozen flips before landing on his feet. It happened so fast, I got dizzy just watching.

It was our first day in Salvador, Brazil’s oldest city, formerly the country’s main slave port and home to people who are a blend of African, European, and Native American blood. This genetic pool has blessed many locals with the bodies of lean, muscular dancers and skin as smooth as polished mahogany. I was as captivated by their natural beauty as I was by their skillful performance as a group of about a dozen guys took turns doing capoeira—a cross between martial arts and dancing—on the beach down the street from our guesthouse.

Toes buried in the sand, I closed my eyes and tipped my face up happily to soak up the heat from the Brazilian sun, which was so much more intense than the rays in New York. Moments earlier, Jen and Amanda had walked toward the water to watch the show and to buy coconut water for a buck apiece. Here, as in Rio, you could sip the sweet liquid directly from the coconut via a hole that’s been sliced into one side and fitted with a bendy straw.

“Oi. De onde esta você?” I turned to find a petite woman with skin the color of honey and waist-length hair sprawled on a beach chair behind me.

“Lo siento, yo no hablo portugués. ¿Habla español o inglés?” I’m sorry, I don’t speak Portuguese. Do you speak Spanish or English?

She giggled and turned to say something to another twenty-something woman wearing a white string bikini and a guy with hazel-green eyes, both planted beside her.

“Where…you from?” She tried again.

“New York. Are you from Salvador?” I asked her.

Rather than respond (maybe she didn’t understand?), she gestured for me to join her and her friends. I glanced toward the water to see Jen and Amanda, who were now moving their legs back and forth in an arc while a guy swung his arms in front of his body, instructing them on the basics of capoeira.

Grabbing our day packs, I plopped myself in the sand next to the three Brazilians. The guy offered me a can of Skol, a popular beer, and I felt the fizzy liquid cool my throat as I took a gulp. Since we didn’t speak the same language, we sat there smiling awkwardly at one another between sips, until they gave up on silence and began chattering with each other in Portuguese.

Once again, I was back to feeling like a toddler learning to speak for the first time. While in Peru, I’d picked up enough Spanish to carry on basic conversations, but all of mine were peppered with communication breakdowns. (My first week there, a Peruvian guy who offered to buy me a drink at a bar looked shocked when I tried to say I was embarrassed for mispronouncing his name. That’s when Amanda laughed and said, “Holly, you said embarazada, which means pregnant, not embarrassed!”) I worried I’d make a similar misstep while trying out my Portuguese.

After several minutes spent in silence with me smiling stupidly at the group while they talked, the trio stood up and one of the women pulled me to my feet.

“Hey, Holly, where are you going?” Jen asked as she returned from the capoeira lesson to sprawl out on her towel.

“I don’t know. But I think my new friends want to show me something. Can you watch our stuff?”

“Sure.” Jen shimmied over to grab our bags, and I let the woman lead me away.

If I had been back in New York, I would never have allowed a stranger to drag me off to some unknown locale. But as she pointed to the end of the pier, where a crowd had formed, the mission seemed more like an adventure than a danger. I followed her out to the edge, joining her and the cluster of locals who sat with their legs dangling. Men, women, and kids were chatting wildly, laughing freely, and sipping drinks as they stared at the skyline. The sun looked like an oozing ball of lava, turning from yellow to orange to red as it sank into the ocean and lit the clouds above. The second it disappeared, the crowd erupted into cheers.

They came out here just to watch the sunset. I clapped with energy I didn’t even know I had. When was the last time Elan and I had taken the time to watch the sun set over Manhattan? The cheering faded along with the sun, but the crowd lingered. Some talked excitedly, while others jumped into the water as the clouds clung to the last streaks of light. The two women and the guy I’d been hanging out with were taking turns diving off the pier like kids. Without stopping to think, I got to my feet, took a running start, and jumped off, too.

I pretended that my plunge into the Bay of All Saints had the power to wash away any heaviness I felt from missing Elan. For a moment it was only me, the sky above, and the salt water swirling around me. I let myself sink deeper, briefly losing sense of which way was up and which was down.

When I resurfaced, the first stars were faintly dusting the sky. I glanced over to see that my new friends had already climbed back onto the pier. The girl with the waist-length hair stood scanning the ocean and waved me in once I surfaced.

“It’s okay, I can get up by myself,” I said, floundering on the slippery ladder, the waves pounding at my back. She didn’t understand me and wrapped her hand around my wrist. I braced myself against the wooden planks and let her help me out.

Squeak, slam, crash! After hours of staring at the ceiling, counting backward from a hundred and imagining myself spooning with Elan, sleep had finally overtaken me. That is, until a drunken backpacker stumbled into the room, let the door slam behind her, and then missed a rung on the ladder leading to the bunk above mine. She fell to the floor in a messy heap.

“Are you okay?” I bolted upright, knocking my head on the bed above me. “Ouch!” I howled.

“I’m fine—no worries!” slurred the Australian girl.

She tried crawling into the bunk again, shaking the rickety frame as she collapsed onto the mattress. Within seconds bearlike snores reverberated through the room. I spent the next few hours tossing and turning, my runaway mind bouncing first from whether I’d saved enough to pay my student loans each month to missing my sister’s birthday back home to how I could convince Jen and Amanda to change guesthouses. They still didn’t seem to understand that an insomniac like me could not spend an entire year in noisy dorms.

Sleeping with strangers—or attempting to—was turning me into a walking zombie. Although my friends and I had quietly disagreed about our hostel arrangements, I was beginning to worry that the real issue wasn’t about sleeping at all but rather about wanting to spend our time on the road in very different ways. I didn’t mind having a cocktail now and then, but after exploring the nightlife in Lima, dance clubs in Arequipa, and backpacker bars in Rio, I was starting to worry that my traveling companions wanted to turn our trip into a yearlong spring break. I cringed just thinking about Mellow Yellow in Rio, where I’d curled up on a mattress no thicker than a notebook in a closet-sized room that vibrated with drums and bass from the in-hostel bar just three feet away while the girls were out at the favela party until dawn. Jen and Amanda had been thrilled to stay at Mellow Yellow, but it’d been my idea of Hostel Hell.

Although we’d sworn at one point to share our expectations for on-the-road life before we actually got on the road, somehow we’d never gotten around to it back in New York. It wasn’t until I spent every waking and sleeping minute with Jen and Amanda that I learned how they preferred to spend their daily lives—and night lives. I was scared that they’d merely traded partying in Manhattan for partying on the road, changing their surroundings but not their lifestyle.

Feeling as if I might be acting like a princess or a baby or both, I’d hesitantly tried to tell Jen and Amanda that I didn’t want to stay in party dorms. Once they finally seemed to hear me, they’d looked at me with disappointment.

“Holly, we want to be around other backpackers. How are we supposed to meet people if we’re stuck in some boring hotel?” Amanda had argued.

“Yeah,” Jen had agreed. “Besides, dorms are cheaper and we have to stretch our money.”

They definitely had a point about the money thing—communal rooms could cost as little as $5 each, while a private triple might cost $10 apiece—or more. The difference meant we could afford to stay on the road for twice as long. Did I need to loosen up? Wasn’t traveling as a group all about compromise?

But finally, as the dawn’s early light cast lines on my face through the blinds, I decided that enough was enough. I didn’t want to squander my trip feeling hungover and exhausted. I wanted to feel healthy and free. As I stared up at the ceiling, its cracks amplified in the morning shadows, niggling thoughts morphed into full-blown fears. Had I thrown away a fulfilling career, left the man I loved, and sacrificed my idea of a home all to hang out in backpacker hostels?

Bleary-eyed but suddenly motivated, I climbed out of bed and started loading my quick-dry towel and other belongings into my backpack. My plan was to pack and then read in the common room until Amanda and Jen woke and I could tell them my next move.

“Holly, what are you doing?” Amanda whispered loudly, leaning her head out of the bottom bunk across the room.

I paused before answering, “I’ve got to find someplace quieter where I can sleep—I’m seriously exhausted.”

“Wait, what?” Now it was Jen who bolted upright in the bunk above Amanda’s. “You can’t leave!”

I stopped for a second, surprised. It’s not as if I was cheating on them by taking off with a new group of backpackers—I was just going to sleep in separate quarters. “You know I love you guys, but I’ve tried to tell you…I’m just not down with the wild party dorms. And I don’t want you to change your trip for me. Believe me, it’s nothing personal,” I said, hoisting on my backpack.

“But it is personal, Holly. We’re in this trip together. If you go, we have to come with you,” Amanda said. She placed her bare feet on the wooden floor and fished around for her backpack.

And with that, my two traveling partners loaded their packs, checked out of the hostel with me, and headed for the Old Town section of Salvador.

It was a tense cab ride—I despise conflict and felt guilty for uprooting the girls. But I knew keeping silent wouldn’t benefit the group in the long run. I tried to distract myself by paying extra close attention to the world streaking by outside the window. In the city’s Old Town, cobblestone streets wound around seventeenth-century houses painted in shades of banana yellow and ocean blue. Hundreds of churches stood side by side with terreiros, holy places where worshipers merged the traditions of two religions: Portuguese Christianity and Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. As we passed by so much history, my outburst at the hostel suddenly seemed silly and insignificant compared to the journey I’d agreed take with Jen and Amanda. I had my two friends, and I was traveling the world. What the hell was my problem? I hoped we could find a way to merge my idea of the trip as more of a learning vacation with the girls’ desire for partying and relaxing.

As we walked into Albergue das Laranjeiras Hostel, its dark wooden lobby fashioned like an old ship, I glanced around at the bustling café where travelers were lined up for a buffet breakfast that included yogurt, pastries, cheeses, and sliced mangoes. Instead of a bar, I spotted an open loft above where visitors lounged in hammocks and read guidebooks.

“Is this place okay with you?” I asked. To my relief, they both nodded.

When the man behind the counter said they had only one single and a few dorm spaces left, the girls told me to take my own room and they’d save money by sleeping in the dorms. After that, Amanda and Jen agreed that we’d always try to stay in triples if they were available.

I felt thankful. Money may not buy happiness, but in this case, a few extra bucks could buy sanity. I laid out my sleeping bag in the narrow room, big enough to fit only a single bed but filled with silence, and happily burrowed inside in search of sleep.

By the time Amanda and Jen came knocking at my door, it was nearly evening. I’d slept the entire day away—something I don’t think I’d done since I was eight and had the chicken pox. It had taken only a little rest for me to feel calm again. Hoping things wouldn’t be awkward between the three of us, I asked them to go for a walk. I was itching to explore a new part of town together.

As Amanda, Jen, and I lounged at a table on one of the cobblestoned streets branching off Largo do Pelourinho, I felt as if I’d stepped back in time. A fellow traveler had recommended we check out the pedestrian road lined with bars and restaurants to try vatapá, a yellow stew made with shrimp. Though the cuisine was delicious, it was definitely not diet-friendly: palm oil, coconut, and cashews were all staple ingredients. And to spice it up even more, many dishes came with red peppers so hot, they were guaranteed to make your nose break into a sweat.

We each ordered a different dish and then passed them around so we could sample more flavors. “Hey, I’m sorry about the whole hostel thing. I still feel bad for making us move,” I said, holding out my plate like an olive branch.

“Holly, seriously, don’t worry about it. We love our new place,” Amanda said, spooning some rice onto her dish. “Jen and I just don’t want you to quit the trip and go home. For a few minutes this morning, we were seriously worried you might!”

“I was never going to quit!” I said, again surprised that they’d thought I’d leave for good. “I guess I’m not the best at communicating, and so things just kind of built up in my head. It wasn’t just about the sleeping thing. I’m worried that all the trip is going to turn out to be is partying with backpackers,” I said.

“Hol, that’s not all it’s been and not all the trip will be, I promise,” Jen said. “Look, I know this might sound like an excuse, but being in really social places and going out a lot has kept me from worrying too much about Brian and what’s going to happen when we get back to New York.”

“And I think that we’ve just been trying a little too hard to re-create our postgrad trip through Europe,” Amanda remarked. “Until now, that was the best month of my life.”

“Definitely—we have been treating our South America portion a little like an extended vacation,” Jen added.

“I know, and I don’t want to ruin your good time,” I said. “We should be having fun—that’s the point.” I went on to explain that I knew so many people who would have given their right arm to be without obligations like work and rent and romantic entanglements. “We owe it to ourselves to do more with this time. Sure, we could find a different pub to drink in every night, but what are we learning from that? How are we growing?” I finally was able to say flat out what’d really been bothering me: I wanted to push us beyond the lifestyle that felt most comfortable.

Jen put her hand on my shoulder, “Things are going to change after this leg of the trip, I’m sure of it. Soon we’ll be volunteering in Kenya, where I’m pretty sure we won’t have running water, let alone alcohol or backpacker bars. It’s not going to be easy travel anymore.”

“Yeah, and thank God for that!” said Amanda. “If we drink one more ron y Coca-Cola Light at happy hour, I think I may have to bail on the trip before Holly does. I’m officially done, as of now.”

“Guys, I was never bailing!” I reminded them, laughing. Then, to prove to the girls that I wasn’t totally lame—and that they didn’t need to stop enjoying themselves to appease me—I suggested we head to O Gravinho bar to sample chopps, Brazilian draft beer, and the country’s famous sugarcane liquor, cachaca. They protested a little—but not too much.

As I took a sip of the caipirinha that my friends and I were sharing, my eyes met those of a guy wearing a straw fedora. His skin was paler than ours, and his long legs jutted out from underneath the table across from us. He sat with a Brazilian boy who was wearing a torn T-shirt and looked to be half his age.

“Where are you ladies from?” he called over to us. Jen, Amanda, and I paused for a moment before Amanda answered, “New York.”

“No way, really? I’m from Brooklyn.”

“Me too. I live in Williamsburg. Or I did,” I said, unexpectedly delighted to have stumbled across someone from my neighborhood after almost two months on the road.

“This is Igo.” He gestured to the boy, who was sitting silently beside him. “I’m Sam.”

We all introduced ourselves, and, after asking if he could join us, we pulled the tables together. He turned to Igo and spoke in Portuguese.

“Oi, Igo,” I said, grinning at the teen. He smiled shyly but said nothing. I turned to Sam. “How’d you guys meet?”

“He asked me for money, so I offered to buy him dinner if he practiced Portuguese with me.” Just then, another boy approached the table and pulled on Igo’s arm. Igo said something to Sam in Portuguese before rejoining the band of boys across the street.

“How’d you learn Portuguese?” I asked, impressed. Spanish and French were much more likely languages for Americans to speak.

“Have you heard of capoeira?” he asked, offering me a roasted cashew from the paper cone he was holding.

“I took one class at my gym back in New York,” I said, popping a sweet and salty nut into my mouth. “But we saw guys doing the real deal yesterday on the beach.”

Sam explained that the sport had been started when African slaves tried to disguise intertribal fighting from their masters by playing the drums. “You could say they turned it into a sort of dance,” he said. “I got into training a few years ago in New York and started to pick up Portuguese during my classes.”

Jen asked what Sam did. He told us that he had just taken the bar exam and figured he’d travel for a couple of months before getting a job as a lawyer.

“That’s cool—and really unusual,” said Amanda. “We’ve met tons of Israelis, Brits, and Australians—and a few American women. But we haven’t come across many guys from the States who are taking long trips.”

“Yeah, why do you think that is?” I asked, curious to get his take on the mysterious lack of American males on the road.

Sam took off his hat and ran a hand over his shaved head before responding, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we’re taught that men should be providers. And taking time off to travel means time away from work and therefore making money. Maybe guys are afraid they’ll look lazy if they take an extended vacation.”

I’d never before thought about how reverse sexism and an ingrained sense of responsibility might discourage many guys from hitting the road. Mention famous American travelers, and my mind instantly went to male explorers such as Jack Kerouac, Bill Bryson, and Paul Theroux. But the reality is that most men probably reflect the image I have in my mind of my grandfather: a dedicated provider who spent more than thirty years working in a factory, who saw it his greatest duty to earn enough money to take his kids to the movies on Sundays and to help them pay for college. The only time he traveled abroad was to serve in the army in World War II, and he never wanted to travel again if he could avoid it.

My grandmother, on the other hand, said she would’ve loved to have traveled more, but she’d been far too busy raising four kids and waitressing at night. Now, if the popularity of “girlfriend getaway” trips is any indication, more American women are hitting the road than ever before. Maybe that’s because women are no longer restricted to describing themselves first and foremost as homemakers, wives, and mothers. I wondered if that was a coincidence or if there was a direct connection between a woman’s ability to forge almost any path she chooses and her desire to take the one that leads beyond U.S. borders in order to gain perspective on which direction is right for her.

In this situation, maybe guys really did have it tougher. None of our friends or coworkers had accused Jen, Amanda, or me of shirking our responsibilities as future breadwinners when we shared our travel plans. True, some New York friends had questioned whether we’d be stunting our career growth, and Amanda’s mom had insisted that Amanda would never find The One if she was traveling to a different destination every week, but in general, the close friends in our lives had thrown major support behind our plan. Many had even said they would do the same thing if only they could find friends to travel with them.

I glanced at my friends and then back at Sam. Had the people in his life been as supportive of his journey? I was just about to ask when Sam ordered us another round and answered the unspoken question.

“I think I could only get away with traveling for this long because I’d just finished law school, and people understand you might need to take a break before starting a career,” he said. “I also think some Americans tend to associate vacation with a week of sitting on a beach and travel with partying rather than exploration.”

Considering the jam-packed schedule that most Americans keep, it makes sense that many of them might view vacations as opportunities to escape and unwind rather than explore. And that’s if we actually sneak away during the two weeks we’re allotted. Back home in the city, it was almost a bragging right to be overscheduled. Statements like “I’m just so busy I don’t even have time to sleep,” actually garner respect. I was impressed that Sam had created his own sabbatical of sorts.

Now he had a proposition for us. “I’m going to a capoeira class tomorrow at the Bimba school,” Sam said. “Bimba was a mestre, or master, who helped make capoeira legal again in the 1930s. Do you want to come?”

“We’d love to!” I said, turning to consult Amanda and Jen. That was the kind of stuff I wanted to spend my year on the road doing. “What do you think?”

“Definitely!” they agreed.

Sam became our adopted Lost Boy for the rest of our time in Salvador, accompanying us to capoeira classes that began with beating drums, chanting, and clapping. Because he knew about a lot of local events and could speak the language, he was able to show us a different side of the city than we’d normally have discovered on our own.

“Hey, do you ladies want to go to a soccer game tonight?” Sam asked as we walked out of the capoeira studio one morning, sweaty and sore from a week of training.

“I have to get some writing done,” Amanda said. “But you go ahead.”

Jen and I looked at each other and grinned. Jen had been a soccer player for most of her life, and the Brazilians seemed as passionate about futebol as they did about the annual collective party, Carnaval.

When we arrived at the local stadium later, firecrackers were exploding in the sky. “They shoot them off when someone scores a goal,” Sam explained.

We bought another paper cone of those roasted cashews I found so addictive and a draft beer, all for only about a dollar, and Jen and I linked arms as we staked out a spot on the metal benches. Men made up most of the crowd, so we kind of stuck out. The masses were screaming, stomping their feet, and clapping their hands. Trying to blend in, I echoed the cheers of the guys in front of me, “Porra!” (pronounced boo-ha!).

The men turned around to stare at me with wide eyes and gaping mouths. Sam just laughed. “What?” I asked, thinking my accent must sound ridiculous.

“Holly, that literally means ‘cum,’” he’d said. “You’ll learn a lot of Portuguese at a futebol match, but most of it won’t be for everyday conversation.” My cheeks grew hot and Jen punched me in the arm, delighted I was making a fool of myself.

“I’m not at all embarazada!” I told her, and she laughed again. Just then, a swarm of armed guards carrying riot shields and firearms escorted the refs off the field. “It’s halftime!” Sam said.

“They take their sports seriously,” I noted.

“Things can get pretty violent if a fight breaks out—fans really defend their team,” he said. “It’s not a good idea to wear a local team’s shirt to a match, but wearing a foreign one is guaranteed to start conversation.”

I filed that tidbit of information away in my brain right next to “Never pull out cash in public” and “Don’t drink the tap water.”

My head was pulsing with the beat of the drums that’d kicked off before a whistle signaled the second half. The matches seemed to be as much of a musical event as a sporting event. Sam waved a Brazilian flag he’d bought on the way in, and I let myself get lost in the crowd’s thundering cheers.

It was our final night in Salvador, and our group of four spent it dancing to samba and listening to live music at a street festival. We were sandwiched among revelers as Brazilians grabbed our hands in another show of openness that made me feel at home so far away from my own. Some guy gave me his hat, and I twirled around to the music, melting into the crowd. Jen, Amanda, and I showed off our hip-swiveling maneuvers for one another before two Brazilian women laughed at us gringas and demonstrated moves that appeared to require the absence of any joints in one’s lower body. Part of Bahians’ beauty was in their genes, and I was beginning to think that a sense of rhythm was also inherited.

Bass vibrated through the cobblestone streets, and I felt almost as if I were absorbing the energy from so many people celebrating in that open space. As I danced with Jen, Amanda, and Sam, our clothes sticking to our bodies in the humidity, I knew then it wasn’t partying itself that had been bothering me.

As I was learning from the locals, who seized every opportunity to have fun, dancing and drinking and partying were just some of the many ways to celebrate being alive. While I still didn’t want every night of our trip to be that, I loved doing it when it made me feel more a part of the places we’d come so far to see. Once we got out of the backpacker bars, parties were a way to connect with the locals.

Spending less than two weeks in Salvador had made it easy to believe the poet who called it Terra da Alegria, or Land of Happiness. With a steady lineup of parties culminating in Carnaval, the city felt festive, like Christmas in the tropics, and the people seemed relaxed, as if the only place they had to be was right where they were at that moment.

Of course, our experience in Salvador came after the government prettified the Old Town to make it a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Before the government fixed it up, Pelourinho (which was supposedly home to the first slave market in the New World and actually means “whipping post” in Portuguese) had been awash in poverty, prostitution, and drugs. And the areas surrounding that section were still pretty broken down.

I thought of Igo and the other kids I’d seen begging on the streets. Then I thought of the woman who had taken my hand at the beach to show me the sunset. Maybe their warmth sprang less from happiness in the classic sense of elation or joy and more from their resiliency and a seemingly collective appreciation of the small things such as watching a sunset, drinking a cold beer on the beach, or dancing in the streets.