An ode to CouchSurfing

Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, if you’re reading this, you should probably stop now.

Really, you’re not going to like what my roommate and I did last weekend.

I know you’re still reading this post because my warning has piqued your curiosity, but really, I can’t imagine this will make you any more comfortable with the way I travel. 

We found a stranger on the internet.

We asked if he had an open couch or two.

We let him pick us up from the airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca (Majorca in English) at 11 o’clock at night. 

We stayed at his house for two days and let him feed us fajitas and serve us wine.

And it was awesome.

CouchSurfing is awesome. 

Nice and literal. Source

Does what we did sound incredibly, you’re-just-asking-to-get-murdered-with-an-ice-pick crazy? Absolutely. But sometimes when traveling, you have to take risks to reap rewards.

CouchSurfing is a social network that links travelers with hosts willing to let them stay for free, assuming the freeloaders will offer some sort of cultural insight in return. It’s a way for footloose nomads to meet other like-minded souls.

As far as I know, there are no background checks, no official verifications that the person you’re staying with or the person who’s staying at your house didn’t just get off a train after chopping someone up with an axe. But perhaps that’s the allure of it all: meeting someone completely new, with nothing to go off of except for an internet profile that can either be sincere or entirely fabricated. 

This could be your host. Source

As it turns out, Samuel, our host, had a sincere profile, and to our knowledge, he hasn’t murdered anyone with an axe or an ice pick. 

That's Samuel on the left, of course.

He was ridiculously gracious. Ridiculously gracious. As I mentioned, he picked us up from the airport late at night even though he had to work in the morning (he’s a lawyer).

He opened his home to the fullest degree possible, allowing us to hang around by ourselves while he was at work.

He left coffee mugs, coffee and a giant breakfast muffin on the counter on our first morning there.

He drove us around the beautiful Balearic Island of Mallorca and waited patiently as we took way too many nonsensical photos of trees, signs, sunsets and ourselves from more flattering angles. 

I believe this is the town of Valldemosa.

Valldemosa

We stopped at a lookout point to catch this sunset.

Portals Vells cove

Portals Vells cove

He answered a mountain of “how do you say that in Spanish?” questions from us (he spoke impeccable English).

He took us to his workplace on a Saturday so that we could print off our bus tickets because he didn’t have a printer at home.

He took us to the most amazing, traditional Mallorquin (the adjective describing people and things of Mallorca) restaurant that looked exactly like what I would expect from a Spanish grandmother’s home. They (Restaurant Hostal Ca’N Marió) served the best food I’ve had in Europe, no doubt. 

Frito mallorquin, a typical dish made of meat, liver, blood, potatoes, onion, red pepper and tomato. It was fantastic. We also had wonderful stuffed eggplant, but we don't have a photo.

Arroz brut, a rice dish similar to paella but with broth, and green peppers with lemon, which is apparently typical of Mallorca.

Entrance to the restaurant.

Then, he tried to not let us pay for dinner.

That, my friends, is the epitome of CouchSurfing.

We, two young American women, came to stay at his house, and he treated us like platonic, longtime friends. No funny business. No shameless attempts to snag a foreign girlfriend.

I’ve travelled around a decent amount for someone my age. I’ve stayed in lots of great hostels and a fair share of rotten ones.

I’ve been to London, Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Sevilla, Florence, Munich and a ton of other amazing, straight-off-a-travel show places.

But one of my best travel experiences thus far in my life was in Mallorca, a charming plot of land off the eastern shore of Spain.  

View Larger Map  

And it was great because we hung out with Spaniards. Speaking Spanish. Doing things that real people who live on the island do. And that’s what I’ve wanted this whole whirlwind year in Spain to be all about. 

So, maybe, somewhere else in the bowels of the interwebz, you’ll find a cautionary tale about a CouchSurfing host wielding an axe. I can’t imagine there’s nothing bad out there about the experience.

But keep in mind that if you don’t go out on a limb, you’ll never reach the fruit.

And “adventure is what happens when you just did something stupid” (Professor Bernie).

And lastly: “Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise it would be called sure-thing-taking.” – Tim McMahon   

Profound, eh?

Here’s to that proverbial limb. 

Un saludo, 

Teresa

Also, as a sidenote, anyone who tells you to avoid Mallorca in winter is a fool.

The harbor in Palma de Mallorca.