Ultimate Day

Today has broken cool, crisp and clear. It is a beautiful "last day" in Vancouver before my departure. I am packed and ready and emotionally numb. I feel like I am about to step on whirling playground ride tomorrow morning because my itinerary is like no travel I have undertaken since 1969 when I undertook one of those too-much-too-fast tours of Europe at age twenty-one. Normally I am a slow traveller. When I went to India, I spent a month in Delhi alone and probably three weeks in Mumbai, but this trip is an African smorgasbord—a sampler that may serve to inspire a return in the future. When I first went to India, I remember thinking that  my month-long visit would be it—that my India itch would be scratched. But I could hardly wait to return when I got back home and I eventually spent another eight months there.

Another novelty about this trip is that it was put together by a travel agent. In the past, I have always done my own planning in the past or been part of a tour group (on two occasions), but this time Valerie, my travel agent, put everything together based on a talk we had one day about what I wanted to do and see. I have done squat in the way of research. Valerie chose all that I will be doing and all my destinations except Essaouira and Agadir, and I explicitly avoided doing any online research into the sites I will be seeing so that everything will enfold as more of an adventure. By avoiding reading about why Valerie chose all the various bush camps I will be in (nine of them), I expect an added sense of excitement and surprise when I get there and discover why we are there (be it a historic site, a people or animals).

When I took the two organized tours I once took, I read the itinerary in terms of understanding the route and what cities we would be visiting, but I purposely avoided reading about why the destinations were chosen and about what we would be doing. Once departed, I developed a passion for a particular pattern of travelling: I loved getting up early and getting right to the day's adventure. My ideal day was rich with stimulation until about 4:00 pm, at which time I loved getting back to the hotel to shower and clean clothes. Then I liked a nice leisurely ninety minutes of relaxation reading, sitting in a bar or café or chatting with fellow travellers before a nice dinner and bed. And the highlight of each evening was then discovering what the agenda was for the next day. It was an awesome way to go to sleep each night, dreaming of what the next would reveal.