Traveler's Tale
‘Do you think it’s a sign of early dementia?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing dismally. I’d been confronted with irrefutable evidence of several recent acts of absent-mindedness – my own – and these had startled me.
My sister, an experienced traveller, laughed. ‘Oh, no,’ she said soothingly. ‘That’s quite normal after you’ve been travelling overseas. It takes a few days to get over it!’
I was thankful for her words. My devoted spouse [DS] and I had just returned from a short holiday in the green and pleasant North Island of New Zealand. It was our first overseas trip together and our first experience of a guided bus tour rather than our usual DIY holiday. I don’t know what I had imagined it would be like, but from the moment of settling in to our Wellington Hotel, the surprises and challenges began.
The first surprise was the luxurious accommodation and the astonishing restaurant buffet at our hotel. Our normal breakfast is a fairly Spartan affair, but here, silver covered containers offering an array of hot breakfast foods gleamed appealingly. All thought of disciplined eating vanished as we lingered, enjoying the indulgence of choosing. Such plenitude would be offered us at each of our several resting places.
Among those who were to be our fellow bus travellers, at least for the first stage of our journey, was a lively group of Canadian women, each of them having had breast cancer, none of them young, and all of them having competed as a team in a recent Brisbane dragon-boat race for breast cancer survivors. They were so bright, so determined to extract every possible moment of richness from their travels that they were an inspiration to the rest of us in our flagging moments.
Our tour guide, a young Australian woman, was a model of courtesy, patience and good humour. She attended to seemingly endless detail on behalf of us, her flock. We had anticipated that she would provide information and perhaps some direction, but it seemed she took care of everything – luggage removal, hotel room numbers, keys, time reminders and constant counting of heads to make sure no-one was left behind anywhere. It was a novel experience to be so mothered.
One of our challenges was the need to rise at 5.30 am each morning, being fully dressed and made up for the day by 7.00 am and ready for pleasant socialising with our fellow travellers from breakfast to dinner at night. This was a little different from our usual more solitary and less formal life pattern, but DS and I soon got the hang of it. At times, however, I found it more than a little taxing not only to be constantly ready for friendly conversation but also to know how to remain reserved without seeming to be aloof. Occasionally I yearned for a little solitude and I surmised that others might, too. Studies with rats show that too much interaction with too many others in a confined space leads to strange withdrawal behaviours. I bore that in mind.
When actually travelling in the bus, I had time to think about our fellow travellers. It was somewhat sobering to be among other older couples, to notice how tired they looked as they slumped into their seats and to realise we probably looked the same to them. I noticed I was not the only one to doze occasionally. It was hard to remain awake on a long trip. Watching sheep and cows grazing in endless verdant pastures is not the last word in excitement. And it’s hard to resist the lulling effect of a cosy, warm atmosphere and the gentle throbbing of a touring bus. Giving in to the pleasure of drowsiness and sleeping sitting up with head drooping forward became irresistible. DS watched interestedly to see if I would perhaps fall off my seat. . .
As with other visitors to the North Island of New Zealand, we toured the hills and city of windy, wet Wellington, we gazed at the stately splendour of Mt Ruapehu and Lake Taupo, we met smiling, generously proportioned Maoris and watched them do the Haka in delicately sulphur-scented Rotorua; we got stiff necks gazing at glow-worms in Waitomo caves, we winced at the painful history of the Treaty of Waitangi set on the shores of the beautiful Bay of Islands, and we finished with a tour of Auckland and its fine museum. I’m sure we put on weight with all that eating and I’m sure we didn’t run it off with endless scouring through souvenir shops trying to find suitable mementos for our nearest and dearest. But we did everything.
Our return home was only slightly marred by an abrupt Customs official whose courtesy failed momentarily in his arduous task. Jet lag took a couple of days to pass, as already indicated, and settling back to domestic routine a few more. DS and I, looking at the photos of our journey, marvelled at how much we actually saw and did in 10 hectic days. Now we have the best of both worlds – rich memories of faraway places to delight the mind and the comforts of home to satisfy the heart.