I heard the travel bug was going around and all the cool kids were doing it when I stumbled upon my gateway travel drug of Mexico. Since that first trip at age ten, I’ve upped my dosage to high adrenaline, adventure travel to Alaska, Cuba, and Patagonia. However, that’s not to say that I’m not also known to do slow, cultural tourism in places like Spain and Kauai to get my travel fix too.
As a thirty-something going on forty-something travel addict with decades of trips, tours, adventures, good times, and good stories under my belt, I have built up a tolerance for:
- Sleeping just about anywhere, anytime, and on any mode of transportation
- Communicating through hand gestures, smiles, and a great game of impromptu pictionary
- Going to the bathroom in all sorts of stalls, troughs, holes, WCs, and johns and figuring out how to flush them if they flush
- Losing my way back to my hostel, campsite, or other accommodation
I know there are others out there, like me, that have “homes” or better said temporary laundry stops between nomadic journeys that look a lot like mine with:
- Multiple shelves of guide books, maps, and pamphlets
- Another suitcase or backpack half-packed or quite honestly never unpacked
- A junk drawer or jar of various currencies from around the world
- Well-traveled flip flops and hiking boots with stories of their own
- A very worn money-belt holding a passport and visas as an eternal travelogue that is if the dozens of journals spilling out of the closet or storage facility don’t capture all the good stories and good times
I’m not going to sugar coat it; I jones for a fix of travel, which to me is adventure. It is a challenge, which provides adrenaline, new learnings, and so much more. It is like being a kid again; everything is new, special, for the first time. Unlike having to listen to a teacher’s, your parents’, or babysitter’s guidelines like real childhood, as an adult traveler you go forth and explore in a kid-like, first day of school wanderlust of your new environment without those guidelines.
Although for some, this out of your comfort zone would be stressful. And, I admit, it can be sometimes for me as well. However, it is the triumph of each new situation, encounter, language, meal, dance, or neighborhood that is so fulfilling.
Are you addicted to travel? Do you present similar high tolerances as well as habits as I? Please share your signs of addiction to travel with a comment or two.
As always, stay up-to-date on more travel stories from this travel addict by connecting with me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube.
Here’s to more good times and good stories.