Why is everyone trying to put our travel experiences into neat little boxes. Just let me do my own thing. Sometimes, I want to travel like a backpacker (not really), and sometimes, I want 5 star (mostly). But it seems that travel outfitters are trying to put travelers into neat little categories. For instance, read this garbage from some writer:

For years companies like REI Adventures, TrekAmerica and G Adventures have offered more strenuous, less expensive and sometimes shorter trips to entice younger travelers. “Yolo trips are fast-paced and cover a lot of ground,” said Timothy Chan, public relations manager at G Adventures, which created a brand-within-a-brand called Yolo — as in, you only live once — that targets travelers in the 18- to 30-year-old range. “Since they haven’t been on earth as long, they tend to have visited fewer destinations and like to see and experience as much as possible.”

Few companies, if any, however, have gone as far as one that came online in November. It’s called Yomads, as in “young nomads,” and is a consortium of adventure travel operators in Europe and Australia that has dedicated itself exclusively to the 20- to 40-year-old set. They’re so sure of knowing what transition adventure travelers want that once you go over the hill, you can no longer join the trips.

But it gets worse. Look at what this idiot did:

“The people on a trip are definitely key,” said Gareth Turner, a 35-year-old Air Timor manager in Singapore, who once took out an $8,000 loan as a 25-year-old to pay for an outfitted trip to Nepal and some new gear. He said there were a few “age conflicts” being the youngest guy “by decades.” He was quick to add that such conflicts couldn’t possibly outweigh the benefits of going someplace beautiful, remote and otherwise difficult to reach.

Why would anyone take out an $8000 loan for a vacation, and why would they sign up for a group tour if the destination or experience meant so much to them? My opinion is that he was afraid to either travel by himself, or signed up for the wrong type of trip. And I can tell you from personal experience, I have seen way too many 80 years old zip up trails and monuments much faster than pimply twenty somethings. And I also feel that the older traveler offers a richer experience, both with their stories and experiences, as well as their maturity.

The days of taking a one way flight (open jaw) to a foreign land, wandering for weeks or months at a time, is a dream that few people can do anymore. Young people are saddled with college loans, pressure to succeed, and even supporting a young family. Mature adults have the time, but perhaps many no longer have the wanderlust or the physical ability to wander.

I still feel I am somewhere in between. I still do not like big group tours. I prefer to wander with just two or three of us, without a set schedule or itinerary. Each day should be an adventure, even if all we do is forage for food. With the internet, I could always book a hotel for the evening if I felt it was needed. Otherwise, we just walk up to the hotel reception desk, and negotiate a room rate. On the fly, so to speak.

Now, here is something I could do:

Every trip has at least a few days with nothing planned at all to allow time to blog from a cafe or to find a noodle-making class. Perhaps most appealing, the groups are small, 15 people or fewer, and will nearly always include some mix of Europeans, Australians and Americans since all four partners sell the same departures.

But I do not want someone telling me when I should have free time or use the internet. The small group idea, I can live with for only a short period of time, maybe three to five days maximum.

My trip to Chile and Argentina did not even have Argentina on the planning board. Our loosely defined plan was to get to Santiago, and eventually see and drive the length of Chile. We did that for the most part, but not obsessively. We saw and did what we enjoyed, skipped some parts, and were forced to be creative a few times in an unexpected, yet pleasant manner. Buenos Aires, Mendoza and Ushuaia were most enjoyable as well as memorable. This was a travel highlight in my life.

But I also realize that this type of trip is not for everyone, and I can respect that. The point is, do not put us travelers into a neat little box. We do not fit! If you can be happy traveling with a bus load of people for two weeks in China or Europe, go ahead. Or maybe the trip was the bargain of the century! My Mom traveled with groups that way in her later years. And that was fine, for her. But not for me!

I still want to wake up in the morning, and decide over coffee, where I will go, or what I will do. Or maybe do nothing! Is time so precious that every minute of every day should be filled with a group activity or sightseeing? No. Please, just let us be travelers and wanderers in the truest sense of the words. It may only be a figment of our imagination, but that is what keeps us going.

I welcome any and all of your quotes, personal or otherwise. I like even the “corny” ones like, “If you build it, they will come.” When I look for a quote, I really like to see who said it. I seem to like the offbeat characters more than the so-called professionals.

“One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more” Thomas Jefferson

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page” St. Augustine

“The way is not in the sky, the way is in the heart” Buddha

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” Yogi Berra (NY Yankee catcher)

“A man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves” Albert Einstein

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007), American author, from “Cat’s Cradle” (1963)

“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad” George Bernard Shaw

“Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water” W.C. Fields

“He travels the fastest who travels alone” Rudyard Kipling

“Traveling — It leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”

— Ibn Battula (via a dear friend, KS)

“All you’ve got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over.” ~ Tony Wheeler

travel-for-fulfillment.jpg

“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”
– Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), English explorer and author, including of “First Footsteps in East Africa” (1856)

“Travel is like living in a new world, so free, so fresh, so vital, so careless, so unfettered, so full of interest that one grudges being asleep.”
Isabella Bird (1831-1904), English naturalist and author, from a letter to her sister, 1871

“We travel not to escape life — but for life not to escape us.” Anonymous (but very smart)

“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” Mary Ann Radmacher

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” Danny Kaye

“Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.”
– Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990), expatriate British writer best known for his tetralogy of novels, “The Alexandria Quartet” (1957-1960)

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” Gustave Flaubert

“The journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” Tim Cahill (my NEW favorite travel quotation)

“Travel, which was once either a necessity or an adventure, has become very largely a commodity, and from all sides we are persuaded into thinking that it is a social requirement, too.”
– Jan Morris, Welsh author, including of “The Pax Britannica Trilogy” (1968-78)
“If travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness …”
– Pico Iyer, British-American author, from the essay “Why We Travel” on Salon.com (2000)

“A single journey could be viewed as a metaphor for life because it has a beginning, middle and end. The constant traveler, however, finds himself more at peace in the places that he passes through, and in the very act of moving, than where he settles.” Bruce Chatwin, the British travel writer who spent six months touring Patagonia in 1974. (I seem to agree)

“Travel seems to me a splendid lesson in disillusion – chiefly that.”
– D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist and poet, in a letter to Mary Cannan from Tahiti, Aug. 31, 1922

“The gladdest moment in human life me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.” Sir Richard Burton

“I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.” David Attenborough

“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” – Mohammed

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
– Nelson Mandela, from “A Long Walk to Freedom” (1994)

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author, poet and politician

“Travel does not become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” by Martin Rubin

“A traveler has no power, no influence, no known identity. That is why a traveler needs optimism and heart, because without confidence travel is misery.”
– Paul Theroux, from “The Tao of Travel” (2011)

So, these are my travel quotations for 2013. My guess is that 2014 will be even better!!