Off the Couch and On the Road

It seemed a lifetime later, though it was really only about a year, when I boarded my flight home, with as much anticipation about arriving as I had about leaving. I hadn’t counted on the world being so fascinating, so beautiful and scary, so addictive. In short, I hadn’t expected to love the anarchy of travelling as much as I did. I left a planner and came back a traveller.

As I thought back over the entire year, I realised that the moments that epitomised my trip, that I looked on with fond memories, were ones I could never have captured in photographs, that I couldn’t hand over to a fellow traveller with a phone number and instructions on how to book. When I looked at advertisements in travel agency windows and smiled, saying ‘I’ve been there’, it didn’t so much remind me of looking at the pyramids themselves, for example, as when we all threw ourselves into the Nile on inflatable toys and felt the sun on our faces and the cool water on our feet. Or when I sat next to a praying nun looking up at heavenly art in St Peters Basilica, or viewed sunset over the Greek islands, or saw the majestic Lion rest after a kill on the Masai Mara.

Surprising then, that I settled into life fairly quickly after arriving back in Sydney. I found myself a great job in PR in the tourism industry, and worked on getting the new house and a few other things on my list.

There was a second list though – 4W-driving through the Australian outback, trekking Maccu Pichu and the Grand Canyon, Irish pubs, the famous Trans-Mongolian railway, Michaelangelo’s David, the streets of Prague and the city of New York…true, I wouldn’t be able to do them in a year, but I would try for a lifetime.

-Sarah

Ok, just to make sure you understand the background of my experience with dates and times – I am quite good with a diary, a calendar, a mobile alarm and lots of people reminding me about appointments. I really am. But when your travelling, dates, days, times and details don’t take such a prevalence to things like where you are, what you’re experiencing, and where the closest coffee shop is. At the end of the day, I haven’t been all that great with dates over the past year, purely because I haven’t needed to be.

So when the sister and I woke up that final day at the exact same moment and looked at each other, I already knew what she was going to say. It had something to do with realising that her flight back to Sydney was that night, and not the following night as we had planned (well, planned is a very loose term, let’s use the word assumed instead).

We hightailed it back to Vancouver and just got her fed and packed, a taxi waiting outside, and then she was gone, and I was there eating a kebab with pepsi and biding my time until my flight the next morning. And that was it. I was going home.

-Sarah

The countdown had begun to the end of my RTW trip, and I mentally prepared myself by repeating the words ‘house’, ‘job’ and ‘credit card debt’ until I felt comfortable enough that I didn’t shudder. It had gone by so fast that I couldn’t believe it was almost at an end. And I didn’t want it to end with tired feet and a Starbucks smile pastered on my face. I wanted to come home rosy pink from the snow-chilled wind with a inner glow of exuberance from my travels. So we decided, before we caught our flight home, to head over to Vancouver Island for a week and get our rosy cheeks and inner glow up to scratch.

My Starbucks customer, Steve, told me the travelling through the islands on the ferry was the ‘most spectacularly beautiful thing’ he’s ever seen. He must have travelled to Vancouver Island on a perfect summers day , maybe even the same day the photographers from all the travel brochures went. They might have even bumped into each other on the ferry, smiling with a ‘great day, eh?’ as they passed each other. Because I can tell you, our ferry trip included some stunning grey water, rain, grey clouds and grey mist. Reminded me of Scotland. The 4.5hr journey brought us to Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, which really did remind me of Scotland, cobblestones and all.

Victoria was a very small city, no skyscrapers or endless rows of office blocks, and there was only one undercover mall. There were quirky cafes, independant cinemas and lots of second-hand bookstores, all in all very European.

Of course, because of the weather, the wildlife watching cruise we booked was cancelled until our third day – so we made do with walks around the harbour and through the city, stopping regularly for coffee, afternoon naps and snacks, eventually making it down to the ‘Prince of Whales’ wildlife cruise operators the following day after walking to James Bay and up to the coastal lighthouse for a view across Haro Strait.

The ‘cruise’ was really a jetboat hosting 6 passengers (5 of us Australian) and the speed, bumps and turns made it a ride in itself. But we did see wildlife and had some fantastic scenic views of the forests, inlets and caves along the coastline of Vancouver Island. We saw seals, elephant seals, harbour seals, sea lions, the American bald eagle and lots of birds, stunning coastline with the Olympic Mountains of Washington State, USA in the distance as well as the beautiful, rough currents and smooth waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

It was, in a word, amazing. We came back frozen to the bone and were served a hot chocolate and an apology by our captain for not seeing any Orca whales (we hadn’t expected to, it was the wrong season) despite this area having the most abundant numbers of Orcas in the world. We thawed out with some McDonald’s and had a very early night with a book.

The following few days we took some more walks, had an incident where a wild doormouse tried to attack us for the chips we were carrying, visited the historical ‘Craigdarroch Castle’ house and the wax museum (not as good as London’s, of course, but a lot cheaper and good for a touristy afternoon), watched a movie and spent lots of time reading and drinking coffee.

We were so relaxed, we didn’t even need to try to obtain the rosy cheeks and inner glow. It all came naturally.

-Sarah