Antonia Balazs is a writer and yoga teacher who explores how attention and embodied practices shape the way we live. In this follow-up to her earlier piece on midlife travel, she reflects on what happened when the plan changed – and what that revealed about flexibility, expansion, and the role of home.
Before I left for this trip, I wrote about keeping my world expanding – about choosing experiences that stretch life outward without tipping into overwhelm. I imagined movement, discovery, and a steady sense of forward motion.
What I didn’t fully anticipate was how much that movement would need to soften.
As expected, plans changed. And what emerged was something quieter, but more valuable: that expansion doesn’t come from doing more; it comes from allowing space for experience to land.
The original plan had momentum built into it. Multiple stops, a crossing into Argentina, a sense of covering ground. And for a while, that rhythm held. But gradually, something began to feel off.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a growing sense of moving too quickly – as though the landscape was slipping past the side of a speeding car. We were seeing, but not quite taking in.
So we made a decision that, at the time, felt both practical and slightly radical: we didn’t go to Argentina.
The moment was sealed when we realised we could skip Argentina and go straight to our next stop. The Airbnb we’d booked had availability that fit our dates exactly – in high season, no less. At that point, it wasn’t really a debate.
Valparaíso slowed everything down
Instead of moving on, we stayed. Instead of planning, we followed
Through a friend of a friend, we met a young student who, without any sense of obligation, took us under his wing. Day after day, he showed us the city, and not as a checklist of sights, but as a place to move through, to experience.
What stood out is that we fell into his rhythm and, through him, the rhythm of the place. Everything moved at a slower, more even pace. And gradually, we matched that pace. So different from DC, where there’s always a sense of time running ahead of you, of needing to keep up. Here, nothing felt like it was getting away from us
With that slowing, something else shifted. The trip stopped feeling like something to keep up with and started to feel like something to settle into.
That space, that pause in movement, made room for something I hadn’t named before.
Not expansion in the sense of doing more.
Expansion as depth.
The ability to take something in fully. To let it register.
In another stop, Vicuña, that sense of expansion took a different form
The valley is known for its clear skies and stargazing. We joined a small observatory tour one night. Our guide spoke with a kind of unguarded enthusiasm – the sort that doesn’t diminish with repetition. You could tell he had said these things many times before, and yet the wonder remained intact.
I stood under that vast sky. Through a telescope, I marvelled at the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. I saw Jupiter, its surface detailed and textured, almost within reach. Something shifted again.
It wasn’t information that stayed with me. It was a scale.
A reminder of how much there is to see, to know, to feel – and how rarely we allow ourselves to fully experience it.
That’s what I’m bringing back…
Not just memories of places, but a more flexible way of moving through my own life. A willingness to adjust, to loosen the edges of routine, to respond rather than react when things don’t go to plan.
Travel stretched something outward.
Home is where I can learn to move within that space.
What I took away is this:
Plan, but allow for change.
Hold your routines, but not too tightly.
Let things shift, even at home.
Because the most meaningful parts of life, not just travel, are rarely the ones you map out in advance.
And the real shift isn’t just in going somewhere new.
It’s in how you choose to live when you return.
