If You Got Two Roundtrip Tickets To Anywhere In the World, Who and Where?
When given tickets to anywhere in the world, the list almost becomes overwhelming. There is no shortage of places I have yet to see in my 23 years & 364 days on Earth. To really sit down and have to choose one place seems almost daunting and each choice is filled with a whole barrage of new questions. For instance, the beauty of flying to Europe is that everything is within close proximity. You could easily fly into Rome and take a train to all the other areas of Italy not to mention France, Germany, Spain, etc. Furthermore, some regions of the world are not common tourist locations, and therefore I think pretty much off limits. (Not a lot of people show slides of their visits into the diamond mines of the Congo, or its inhabiting, deep jungles.) So in order to narrow down my decision making progress, I've given myself some guidelines that I'd have to abide by. I suppose this is all too logical and sort of takes out the romance of a random visit to a far and distant land, yet I am probably incapable of making such a grand decision on my own. That's a blog by itself.
1. I must choose a place that is my primary target, no constant country hopping. Where I go is where I'll spend my time.
2. It must be a place that is financially reasonable. I don't have a million dollars to spend on hotels and private tours.
3. It is a place I can only spend about week at... just like if it were some realistic contest I won from a radio station or something.
So after careful deliberation and doing some research online, I think I have choosen my location, and it's probably not surprising to a lot of people. I think I'd like to go to New Zealand.
I understand that it's very cliché and I'd most likely be stuck on a plane with a bunch of Lord of the Rings nuts and other looky loos who are just adding to the boom of tourism hitting the little islands in the Pacific Ocean. Except that it appears to be the most stunning place on Earth and anyone's whose been there tells you that it is magnificent without any inch of hyperbole. From rolling mountains to glorious fields to tropical paradise on the beach, it has everything. It seems like some sort of natural Eutopia, a place where time forgot.
It's easy to logically defend my answer. Any place I can drive to is ridiculous. No matter how inconvenient, I have to choose a place that is seperating my body from it with an ocean. I am also confident that I will eventually reach Europe, and based on my taste in women, probably marry someone whose family hails from various regions in South America. Hell, I hope to go on a safari one day. See the pyramids or go to a busy orient metropolis. I know that I will get to Puerto Rico and see the Arecibo Dish (followed by what I would guess would be 6 months of regretting not becoming a scientist).
But this is a whim, this is a fantasy. This is to go to same place that I'd give my heart to go to, if my heart only could communicate with my brain. And I think for me that place is New Zealand. If the pictures you google when googling the islands aren't enough, allow me to share this anecdote with you:
I remember reading this article in National Geographic in a Kaiser waiting room about these caves on the south island, north of Invercargill where you row a canoe into these gullies at night. Once there you lay motionless for about twenty minutes and soon the night sky is light with a million stars... except it isn't stars. You have floated down into one of the strongest collections of fireflies and other illuminating bugs in the world. They dance around you and make a virtual cave around the boats with luminescent ferver. That experience alone seems like it'd be worth the trip. The rush of nature around you. That beauty. Imagine laying in that canoe silent, in the dark, for twenty minutes. That anticipation. What would cross my mind?
Whenever I am alone in nature I tend to reflect back on my past, but never on the negative. (A nice change from my everyday reflections) I have very vivid memories of being a child and running home from school on a Friday. The sky as clear and blue as it was thousands of years ago. No fear, no stress... wild excitment and a stomach filled with butterflies for nothing more than to be alive. It is a great memory that has no age nor time attached to it. Perhaps that's why I love it so much. It never seems to date itself. Laying in the dark of that gully, hearing the sounds of a endless life beside me, literally on the other side of the world... I'd want to know if I'd dream of the same things.
That seems worthy of a free plane ride, even if it is 14 hours.
1. I must choose a place that is my primary target, no constant country hopping. Where I go is where I'll spend my time.
2. It must be a place that is financially reasonable. I don't have a million dollars to spend on hotels and private tours.
3. It is a place I can only spend about week at... just like if it were some realistic contest I won from a radio station or something.
So after careful deliberation and doing some research online, I think I have choosen my location, and it's probably not surprising to a lot of people. I think I'd like to go to New Zealand.
I understand that it's very cliché and I'd most likely be stuck on a plane with a bunch of Lord of the Rings nuts and other looky loos who are just adding to the boom of tourism hitting the little islands in the Pacific Ocean. Except that it appears to be the most stunning place on Earth and anyone's whose been there tells you that it is magnificent without any inch of hyperbole. From rolling mountains to glorious fields to tropical paradise on the beach, it has everything. It seems like some sort of natural Eutopia, a place where time forgot.
It's easy to logically defend my answer. Any place I can drive to is ridiculous. No matter how inconvenient, I have to choose a place that is seperating my body from it with an ocean. I am also confident that I will eventually reach Europe, and based on my taste in women, probably marry someone whose family hails from various regions in South America. Hell, I hope to go on a safari one day. See the pyramids or go to a busy orient metropolis. I know that I will get to Puerto Rico and see the Arecibo Dish (followed by what I would guess would be 6 months of regretting not becoming a scientist).
But this is a whim, this is a fantasy. This is to go to same place that I'd give my heart to go to, if my heart only could communicate with my brain. And I think for me that place is New Zealand. If the pictures you google when googling the islands aren't enough, allow me to share this anecdote with you:
I remember reading this article in National Geographic in a Kaiser waiting room about these caves on the south island, north of Invercargill where you row a canoe into these gullies at night. Once there you lay motionless for about twenty minutes and soon the night sky is light with a million stars... except it isn't stars. You have floated down into one of the strongest collections of fireflies and other illuminating bugs in the world. They dance around you and make a virtual cave around the boats with luminescent ferver. That experience alone seems like it'd be worth the trip. The rush of nature around you. That beauty. Imagine laying in that canoe silent, in the dark, for twenty minutes. That anticipation. What would cross my mind?
Whenever I am alone in nature I tend to reflect back on my past, but never on the negative. (A nice change from my everyday reflections) I have very vivid memories of being a child and running home from school on a Friday. The sky as clear and blue as it was thousands of years ago. No fear, no stress... wild excitment and a stomach filled with butterflies for nothing more than to be alive. It is a great memory that has no age nor time attached to it. Perhaps that's why I love it so much. It never seems to date itself. Laying in the dark of that gully, hearing the sounds of a endless life beside me, literally on the other side of the world... I'd want to know if I'd dream of the same things.
That seems worthy of a free plane ride, even if it is 14 hours.