Not long a ago, a family member told me that he didn't need to travel, because he 'has the internet'.
I didn't know how to respond at the time, except to blink back tears and tell him it pained me to hear something like that.
Just now, as I prepare to leave for my next (brief, but hey it's something!) trip, this time to Houston, Texas, his words really hit me. I can't imagine ever saying something like that, but at the same time, before I started travelling, maybe I could have said the same myself.
I didn't know what the big deal was about travelling myself until my first night in Belize. It didn't take long for me to fall in love with the warm air, relaxed atmosphere, the Caribbean sea lapping at the sand just feet away from where we were sitting in outdoor swings enjoying our dinner. My very first night in Central America, I knew I had the travel bug, big time.
How can I convey that to someone who's never left Ontario?
How can I try to explain that feeling of peace, and excitement? Or even explain the feeling of terror I felt when snorkelling in Western Australia and I came up to find my snorkel team gone, back to the boat already, and I was all alone in very choppy water. That SUCKED, but I would never take it back. Especially because, just a few hours later, I swam right over a whale shark, one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever layed eyes on.
I want to tell him about me, Sarah, and Alanna drunkenly climbing the Flamingo sign over and over again in Vegas. About sitting in Central Park, reading a book under a tree while waiting for Mateo to meet me after work. About the time I got so drunk in Cuba I thought it was 3AM, not PM. Or even tell him about the time I had sex on the beach in Caye Caulker, under a palm tree, the water just inches away. I can't possibly find the words to explain the feeling of the water when I jumped into the crisp 'Garden of Eden' in the middle of Kings Canyon in Australia, or what it was like to sleep in a swag in the middle of the Outback.
I look at photos of places other people have been, and I feel this tugging in my heart and think I WANT TO GO THERE. The photo is not enough - how can it be? The internet is a great tool to show us where we should go, but to think of it as a substitute boggles me. Every thing I do, every day, is to get me somewhere else. My travel plans change all the time, due to change in finances, or other circumstances, but they only change. They don't go away. I WILL make it to Thailand one day. I will go live in Spain for a while. I will go to Morocco. And Mexico. And Peru. And England. And Rome...and... EVERYWHERE.
Or I will die trying, that's for sure.
