An Unsolved Murder, a Canceled Wedding and the Truth You Can’t Un-Hear
Solita
Nikki Vargas shares how a solo trip to Iguazu National Park catalyzed her decision to cancel her wedding and pivot toward travel writing as a tool for self-discovery rather than avoidance. Years later, she channeled that same
Key takeaways
- Nikki Vargas canceled her wedding after a solo trip to Iguazu National Park where she screamed out loud that she did not want to get married
- She transitioned from using travel as an avoidance mechanism to using it as a deliberate tool for self-discovery and emotional honesty
Main topics
- Solo travel and self-discovery
- Canceling a wedding and personal course correction
Notable quotes
I screamed this guttural feral scream of I don't want to get married.
Conclusion
The episode demonstrates how intentional solo travel can unlock profound personal clarity, turning avoidance
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it, and the man they suspected wore a badge. You Speaker 5 (0:15) never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform. Speaker 2 (0:20) And you can get access to all episodes 100 % ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today. Speaker 8 (0:38) The World Cup is over, but if you caught the soccer bug and aren't sure what to do now, check out our podcast, Big Kick Energy. I'm Cameron Dicker, the kicker from the Los Angeles Chargers, and I'm here with Timmy Tillman, current LAFC star player. So, we know a little something about kicking balls. Each week, we'll tackle things like who's winning the Premier League this year? What do you think is harder, scoring a penalty kick or scoring a field goal? Join us each week for a quick chat with your soccer-loving bros about the best sport in the world. Soccer. Just don't tell my coaches I said that. Listen to Big Kick Energy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 6 (1:13) What would change if you stopped letting money stress run your life, sis? I'm Mandy Money, host of Brown Ambition, the podcast. And right now, I'm taking you through my six-part Money Reboot series. This is your chance to hit reset. break the debt cycle, get honest about where your money's going, build a savings plan that actually sticks, and start making financial choices that support the life you want, not just the bills you have. Because wealth building is not about being perfect. It's about having a plan, knowing your numbers, and making your next move with confidence with a community that cares like we do on Brown Ambition. Each episode gives you practical steps, real talk, and the motivation to stop putting your financial goals on hold. So if you've been saying, I'll get serious about money next month, this is your sign. Start now. Listen to Brown Ambition. That's Brown Ambition. and begin your money reboot today. Listen to Brown Ambition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:14) I believe that whoever was in that room and did that was a murderer. A Speaker 1 (2:19) new podcast series, Fault Line Haditha, tells the story of a shocking crime and a cover-up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps. Speaker 8 (2:27) If you've got five players and you offer immunity to four, you better be right about the fifth. Because if you're not, then you've just given immunity to your color. Speaker 1 (2:35) Listen to Fault Line Haditha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (2:44) I'm Mimi Brown, and every day on Front Page Podcast, I help you make sense of the stories shaping our world. Each day, I break down the biggest headlines. Canada's trade fight with the U.S. just escalated again, and Americans could feel it in their wallets. And when a story deserves a deeper conversation, I'll sit down with experts, newsmakers, and thought leaders to help you better understand the issue behind the headlines. Listen to Front Page from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (3:17) I never understood what had happened. I only knew two things. One was that I was an annoying teenager and my parents were like trying to haul me off to Colombia. And at the time, this was way before I wanted to spend all my time in Colombia. At that time, it was like tantamount to the biggest punishment. And so my dad had reached out to Adita. And then I think about a week or so. Before I was due to fly down there and spend the summer with her, she emailed my dad, don't send Nicole down here. And that was it. Wow. And then she was found dead a few days later. And so when I became a journalist and they have budgets to, you know, send you to places and to cover stories, I knew I wanted to sort of figure out, wait a minute, what happened there? Like, who was Aditha? What was the story? And how do I, as sort of this, you know, trying to embrace my Colombian heritage and now I'm down here telling the story, how do I grapple with that and this peace treaty? and the lack of justice there. Speaker 3 (4:33) This is Solita, stories of what really happens when you travel alone. The beautiful, the messy, and the moments where you say yes and surprise yourself. I'm your host, Julie Pinheiro. Speaker 3 (4:49) What happens when solo travel unlocks your ability to hear yourself? It lets you hear a voice that for years you drowned out with other people's plans for you. Can you ever unhear that voice? Do you have to keep going back on the road just to hear it again? And can you point that clarity at the part of your identity that you've always doubted? And what happens when that clarity turns a trip back to your home country into a full-blown murder investigation? This episode, I'm talking to Nikki Vargas. the founder of the travel magazine Unearthed Women, an associate editorial director at Travel and Leisure, and living proof that once you learn to listen to yourself, there's no telling where that voice will take you. I want to start with a trip that you're perhaps best known for, which is a solo trip that you took before your wedding. Can you tell me about that trip and what happened on it? Speaker 4 (5:51) Sure. So I ran away from my wedding about a week and a half or so beforehand. Wow. Which was very dramatic. And I had wrapped it up in this idea of... I want to be a travel writer. And that was what I was really aiming to do at the time. And to everybody sort of in my life, I had said, I need to go to Argentina in pursuit of a story. And while that was true, I was reporting on a story in Buenos Aires, on the cafe culture in Palermo. I also saw it as an opportunity to sort of get a last breath of fresh air before I walked down the aisle. And at that point in time, being sort of like mid-20s, I was really using travel as a tool of avoidance. And so I wasn't sitting with the emotions I had around my upcoming wedding. I wasn't being honest with myself. I wasn't confronting myself. And I was using travel as sort of this defense to avoid myself, avoid the decisions I had made in New York, avoid sort of this upcoming very adult decision. And when I went to Buenos Aires, it was the first time that I really confronted myself in that period of time and really allowed myself to sort of sit with uncomfortable emotions. And I had met someone in Buenos Aires who on a whim had suggested I go to Iguazu National Park. And he was editing photos of the waterfalls and he had just gotten back and he said, you have to go. And so I booked a last minute flight. It was like a half an hour flight or something to Iguazu National Park. I left all my things at the hostel in Buenos Aires. I just took a backpack and Speaker 3 (7:41) it was Speaker 4 (7:41) for like a one day turn. Oh, wow. I got there late. I stayed in a hostel. And then the next morning I woke up early, took a bus and went to Iguazu National Park. And I was by myself and it was very quiet. I was walking through this park and I asked myself. quite literally out loud what is it you have to say because I had been steamrolling myself for months at that point and I had sort of reached like the very last stop before I had to go back to New York and get married and I screamed this guttural feral scream of I don't want to get married wow It wasn't like I thought about that reaction. It was just like the floodgates came out and I screamed it. And it was so wild that I stopped walking. And I was kind of like, it was very like, whoa, okay, where did that come from? And this Speaker 3 (8:37) was the first time you had ever said these words to yourself? Speaker 4 (8:39) Ever, ever. Because I had been waiting for months at that point to sort of get over it. You know, everybody kept saying cold feet. Cold feet, cold feet. You're going to pull it together the day of. This is normal. This is what it is. And I really bought into that narrative. And I really believed that this is what every bride goes through. You know, they pull it all together the day of and then it's happily ever after. So you Speaker 3 (9:05) were really doubting yourself. Speaker 4 (9:07) I was really doubting myself. And after I screamed that, it was sort of like this gauntlet had been thrown down. And there was really no coming back from that. Speaker 3 (9:16) Wow. Yeah. So what's it like when you get on the flight to come back to New York? Speaker 4 (9:21) Oh, my gosh. It was tough. It was really tough. It was a mix of dread because I knew that I was going to detonate a bomb in my life. The financial fallout, the emotional fallout, the letting people down. But there was also this feeling of defiance that was really beautiful, that was sort of born in the jungles of Iguazu, where it was this realization that. Speaker 4 (9:48) I was done lying to myself. And I write in the book and it's something that I really stand by. It was this epiphany that if I can course correct right now, I can become the woman that I know I can become. And I can have the life that I know I can get to. But it has to happen now. I have to course correct. Because if I just marry this man and go down this route and stay in this career. One year is going to turn into five into 10 and I won't recognize myself. And it just felt very clear to me that as much as it would hurt people, I had to flip my life upside down to take it back. Speaker 3 (10:24) What do you think you tapped into in that moment when it all came rushing out? Speaker 4 (10:28) Just this feeling of not speaking like out loud what I was feeling. And like the most I can liken it to is. You know that feeling when you're like in a room with people, like maybe like back in the day when you were in a classroom and you knew the answer to a question and you're like, I know the answer, like call on me. And you're not called on and you feel that kind of answer bubbling in and you're like, I need to say this. Yeah. It was like that 10 times over and within myself that it was just bubbling, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. And I was just suppressing, suppressing, suppressing. And so I really believe. That the way it exploded out of me and how feral that felt, I think, is a direct response to how frustrated I was feeling and probably how much I wasn't addressing that. It Speaker 3 (11:20) sounds like on this trip, you unlocked this ability to hear yourself. Speaker 4 (11:26) Yeah. Did Speaker 3 (11:27) you feel like that was a tool that you had moving forward now? Speaker 4 (11:31) Yes. That. And I will die on this hill. I think the beauty of solo travel is the ability to press pause on your reality, step outside of it, and really be alone with yourself and your thoughts. And whatever that brings up for you is really important to sort of grapple with, deal with, listen to. And at that point in time, when I had that moment, And I was able to carry that forward. I never let go of that lesson. Travel very much shifted for me at that point as instead of being a tool of avoidance, a tool of sort of almost like dual identity, like I'm this one person in New York, like, you know, engaged about to get married and out here on this other wild version. Once I had that moment, it was like everything gelled and travel instead became a tool of self-discovery, a tool of. honestly, more positivity because I think I was sort of weaponizing travel in a way that was like, let me ignore what I had done over here. And that always stuck with me. What happened in Iguazu, what happened on that trip to Argentina, and how it allowed me to really be honest with myself in a brutal way that created cataclysmic change in my life, that lesson always stayed with me, that this is what travel can offer you. which is the ability to just stop and be alone with yourself if you let it. If you let it. If you let it. Speaker 3 (13:03) It's really interesting because in this story, you turn that towards your relationship. But then afterwards, there's sort of this capacity to turn it towards other things in your life. Speaker 4 (13:13) Yeah. Speaker 3 (13:13) And I'm curious when it came into play when you started to turn it on your own cultural heritage. Speaker 4 (13:19) Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, so I'm Colombian. I was born in Bogota and I immigrated here very young. And I have always grappled with the idea that I don't look Colombian enough. I don't sound like Sofia Vergara. You know, I don't dance like Shakira. None of us do. I know, none of us do. But I feel like there was always this image of what a Colombian woman looks like. And I felt like I never... fit that mold. And especially when I was like in high school and sort of in my like formative years, there was this real duality of like, I am Colombian. I come from this country that I don't know much about because my parents very early on, they made a decision to acclimate. And so even like with Spanish, like my father didn't speak Spanish to me growing up. I had to study Spanish in school like everyone else. And the only sort of glimmers of Colombia was like in food and music and like the telenovelas my grandma would watch. And that was kind of the extent of my connection to Colombian culture. And so it was really hard for me to claim that heritage as my own because it felt in some ways like a farce. It felt like. Who am I to say I'm Colombian when I have such limited knowledge of being Colombian and of Colombia as a country and as a culture? And also I'm growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. But it wasn't until I went to Colombia as