Philippines, Palawan

Lost

My body still hums after the long haul flight and it is trying to adjust to the new country, the new time and the new temperature.  I am waiting in front of the baggage claim belt, as I have numerous times before, waiting for my bags to be spat from the depths of the airport.  Slowly the amount of people around the baggage area starts to thin as everyone rushes off to their final destinations.  I am watching with some trepidation as the number of bags coming up is starting to be few and far between.  A small fear is starting to grow within me, but I push it back down and simply do not acknowledge it. 

I now find myself standing in front of an empty baggage claim belt as it slowly moves around however, I refuse to accept the inevitable because as long as the belt is moving, there is still a chance that something more is going to be spat out; my eyes are willing with all their might for my bag to arrive.  I stand there watching the empty belt as it comes to a halt and take a deep breath as I realise that my bags have not made it to the Philippines.  After finding the relevant airline employee I am basically ignored for about half an hour and I use the last of my energy to remain calm and patient.  Finally the appropriate paperwork is completed with what I can only describe as complete disinterest.  Exhausted, I walk with my shoulders slumped to the next terminal as I now have other plane to catch.

Despite the title of this post, Lost, and my words above this is not about my lost bags for they were merely a trigger for me to realise my true loss, a deep and profound loss that took me some days to overcome.  In truth, I actually felt somewhat liberated to not have my big pack tying me down.  I thought that one day, what an adventure it would be to get on a plane with nothing more than the clothes on my back.

It was into the evening when I had arrived in Puerto Princesa (Puerto) and found the hotel that I intended to stay at.  I showered and struggled to convince my confused body that it was in fact time for sleep.  After a while of rolling this way and that in my bed and a number of deep sighs, I managed to descend into the world of slumber albeit somewhat broken.

The following day I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do because I basically had no clothes, the airlines could not tell me when my bag may be expected and my intention had been to leave Puerto immediately.  With very few options at hand I decided that after purchasing some necessary supplies, I would take this forced stop over as a time to rest and relax.  After all it had been a couple of months since I last had a proper rest.

The thing about slowing down after so much travelling, so many experiences, is that you have time to think; you have time to contemplate; you have time to process; and things have time to catch up with you.

I have often said that the hardest part of travelling is the goodbyes; I have written about it in the past; I have spoken to many people about it; I have developed mechanisms to try and deal with them; and my standard ‘line’ is that while a goodbye is sad I would rather have the goodbye than not have met the person in the first place.  A goodbye means there has been shared experiences, there has been shared time and there has been something of us shared.  Despite all of my goodbyes, despite all of my preparations, despite my mechanisms, what I had left behind caught up with me and I started to account for what it was that I had lost.

I will take a brief interlude here to acknowledge that the word ‘lost’ is quite a strong description and I am not suggesting that I had lost my memories nor the experiences that I had with people but I had lost the ability to simply chat with the person face to face, I had lost the ability for new memories to be made.

Many special people crossed through my mind during my few days in Puerto, many amazing experiences were recalled and all the time I felt the loss very deeply.  I was in a state of melancholy and I started to think about home, was it time to head back to Australia?

Slowly I began to process what it was that I was feeling as a loss.  There is no doubt that I have lost, that I have said goodbye to people who have meant so much to me and that under any other circumstances I would choose to spend more time with them but the reality is I will not see them again.  So the difficult truth is that while I travel I cannot have happiness without loss.  And I say to you – knowing this does not prepare me any better but nor does it discourage me from travelling.

So in the following days my bag arrived safely to Puerto and I was off on the road again.  I met amazing people as soon as I opened myself to it and while in El Nido the simple act of walking down the street (or beach) would most likely result in me bumping into friends and we would spend the morning/afternoon chatting, laughing and just generally enjoying each other’s company.

But a humble thanks

I’ve never managed a good goodbye

As the time approaches

Thoughts become muddled

Scrambling I’ve no hope to explain

I mumble this and that

Wishing for more time

But even with that luxury

What words would come

How do you express

Such deep appreciation

For the time that was spent

For the moments that were shared

Before I left Australia

I had lowered my sail

And just sat on the pond of life

Motionless, vast nothingness around

But now my sail is raised

And again I explore the pond of life

Renewed enthusiasm, renewed vigour

Thanks to strangers who became friends

So to those whom I’ve met

Tho we’ve parted ways

You remain in my mind and heart

For you’ve set me again on my journey

The following photos were taken around the Underground River





The following photo was taken in Honda Bay

The following photos were taken around Port Barton

The view from my bungalow

 

 

The following photos were taken around El Nido

Africa (Part 8)

Tour versus Independent

One of the areas that I have recently been thinking about is the question of organised travel (tours) verses independent travel.  This certainly is not something which is simply answered and ultimately it will depend on a number of factors, but most of all it will come down to the individual.  But for myself I would say that I am firmly in the independent camp.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time on the tour through Africa and it has been amazing to have been able to share it with a group of people.  I openly acknowledge that if I had tried to do something similar independently then I would have seen less than half of what I saw on the tour.  However there are a number of things about the tour that I found draw-backs.  The first and most significant is that I would say to you that I have seen Africa but not experienced it.  What I mean by that is obviously I have been to all of the amazing sights (photos of some of these are below) but with 22 other people it is very difficult to have an intimate one on one experience with locals (although I have managed from time to time have some of these experiences).  In addition we were constantly being told where to go and how to do things, something which I take great pleasure in discovering myself.  On the flip side I would also acknowledge that now I have the confidence to come back to Africa and travel independently and also I know the areas that I liked. 

The other interesting thing about tours is that you obviously have absolutely no control over who will be in your group, something that I was fairly fortunate with as we had good (and interesting) people.  For those that know me well, whatever the group dynamics ended up being was not a huge issue as I am comfortable in my own company and often will (and did) go off alone, I will give one such example below.

So to sum it up, I am very glad that I did the tour but certainly next time I am in Africa, I will travel independently but supplement that travel with much shorter, local tours (say up to 5 days).

Heading Out

As I mentioned above there was a number of times when I would go off to do my own thing and just have a bit of ‘me time’.  One such example was when we were in Namibia.  The afternoon that we arrived at the camp there was an optional activity to go and see some rock carvings, which I chose not to do.  Rather I had decided to go for a walk.  After gathering my supplies, which was basically my camera and water, I started to head out of the camp site.  On the way out I walked past the tour leader and simply said that if I am not back by dark, I will be in that direction and pointed to the north, out into the desert.  He just laughed and said have fun. 

The area that we were staying in was very remote and I felt a certain amount of exhilaration as I headed into the desert, headed into what was unknown for me.  My first target was to climb a hill that was off in the distance.  It was a fairly easy climb although in a couple of spots there was some loose scree which required a bit of extra care.  Once I was up the top I found a rock ledge that I sat on and simply stared across the vast open space and allowed my mind to wander free.

After relaxing at the top of the hill and soaking in the moment, I decided to walk down the back of the hill and then cut across to a dry creek bed.  From there I knew that the creek bed crossed the road which led back into the camp site.  All very easy landmarks to stumble across and therefore little chance of becoming lost.

Walking through the creek bed I was taking much delight in trying to work out all of the different tracks that I could see in the sand, when I came across some easily recognisable ones, those of elephants.  With some excitement I decided to follow the tracks and as I did, there were also some droppings which indicated that they had been here not too long ago.  Following the tracks further took me from the main dry river bed to a secondary channel that was much narrower. 

As I started to walk down this narrow channel with limited visibility I was fascinated to see how my body/emotions reacted to me being in this new situation.  All my senses were heightened, my heart was pounding in my chest and every noise drew my gaze and thorough inspection.  All of this was brought on by the fact that I simply do not know how elephants behave in the wild but I did know that it was not a good idea to startle them.  So I cautiously followed the channel for some distance, tentatively rounding each new turn and pushing myself to go further.  However, after sometime I knew that it I had to turn back as it was going to be dark soon.  While I had not been successful in finding the elephants, on the way back to the camp I did feel a sense of joy, a sense of being alive because I had given it a good go.

The following is just a very limited selection of some of the landscape photos that I have taken... 

Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda

Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda

Fish River Canyon, Namibia

Namibia, General

Namib Desert, Namibia (another time I just walked out into the unknown)

Waterberg Plateau, Namibia

Gweta, Botswana

Lake Malawi, Malawi

Zanzibar, Tanzania

Serengeti, Tanzania

Africa (Part 7)

People

One of the subjects of my photos that I love to take is that of people.  Trying to capture all of the emotion, all of the essence of someone and of the scene is certainly a challenge and can be incredibly rewarding if in fact you succeed.  However, during my time in Africa I have found that I have not taken too many photos of people.  This is driven from a number of reasons but the foremost is that many of the locals simply do not like having their photos taken.  I cannot speak for them as to why this is the case but I can imagine that they do not want to feel like ‘exhibits’.  A feeling which I can appreciate because when we would arrive in a place, it was interesting to watch the 22 of us (tourists) get off the truck and ‘invade’ an area, something which even I felt a little overwhelmed about.  Even if there were circumstances where a photo was appropriate there were times that if we were in a big group, I still did not take it.  I find it difficult to explain why that was the case, just that it was a feeling that I had.

None the less I have taken some photos of people, who gave me their permission but needless to say I have seen 100s of faces that I would have loved to photograph but at the end of the day, not everything is about a photo. 

The following are some of the photos that I have taken.