A huge glossy book of a catalog arrived in the mail today. It was for International Expeditions, a travel company I used many years ago, once for a family trip to Belize, and once on a pharmacology trip to the Amazon. I realized that the trips are to all the places I have been- amazing! Central and South America, Africa.
What stunned me was the luxuriousness of adventure travel right now. There are vessels with huge air conditioned suites, known chefs, perfect white tablecloths and jacuzzis in the bathrooms.
Around the turn of this last century (I love to say that!), when I was still teaching, my best friend and I took off for ten days each year to go to Central and South America. The Galapagos, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, The Pantanal, more Peru.. It was such adventure! We cobbled together the trips on a shoestring and it was fantastic just getting there. Small boats driving against giant waves, tiny four seater airplanes, dug out canoes, horseback treks, lots of hiking. We were never in a huge group of other tourists (except in the case of the pharmacy folks with their huge suitcases). We quickly learned that we could hire just the stuff we needed such as the person to help us navigate the Ecuadoran airport during a coup, or the boatman to take us upriver to a biological station or the guide in just a loin cloth to take us on a long and hot hike to see Harpy Eagles. These were not your luxury digs! Not your packaged tour.
The Galapagos boat was spare, 12 passengers, and our room was tiny and cramped. No A/C, but on the back balcony was a wonderful seal lounging about every day.
The lodges where we stayed were always primitive and they always made us so happy. Could we ever forget the bumping around every night of the sally lightfoot crabs that lived under our beds? Or the howler monkeys in Peru who serenaded us nightly as we wrapped up in our bed nets far from any internet. We would not trade those fabulous bathrooms on the upscale tourist boats for the lively experience of having to shoo away a pink toed tarantula from the out house seat, or a tapir from the restaurant. Who could forget a huge cliff thick with every colored parrot? Who could forget happening upon a shaman while hiking alone and it turned out that he wanted to wash my hair? And I let him.
We were hot most of the time as we hiked everywhere in these places. On a trail in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, our first trip together, the guide suddenly stopped, and the two of us stood stock still and we smelled the faint odor of cat! Who could forget such an experience? Or swimming in a black lagoon, totally alone..
We have so many memories that would be impossible if you were in a large guided group. On a horseback ride in the Pantanal with cowboys, a caiman rose up and bit one of the cowboys on the foot. My travel companion (diagnostician manqué) tended to the wound and we were able to get medical help. It could have been me!
No one I know does anything like this anymore (except for one person, Chelsea). These are great memories, better than any things we might have bought or acquired. But these kinds of old things are not so available anymore. It seems that folks need to have their fancy bathrooms, their A/C and their internet. Pink dolphins in the sunset are not a priority.
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