“Weren’t you ever afraid?” So many people have asked this question about our seventeen years traveling and living outside of the U.S. I always say ‘No’. We did visit a couple of dangerous places like South Africa and Brazil.
People have asked how long we traveled, where did we go, how did we do it, and were we ever scared. Ten years, 57 countries, by ourselves, and only once, in China, did we go on a package tour.
After Europe, we didn’t know what we wanted to do. Spreading a map of the world on the table, we thought about going to Africa. A few nights on the internet made us realize that it would be too difficult to travel in Africa with a dog.
Traveling around the world was a lot of fun. But not every experience was. Sometimes a glimpse into another life leaves one feeling sad and helpless. Some of the things we saw were funny, some outrageous, and some shocking. But never boring. And each one opened another little window into another culture.
“How much do you want to pay?” the receptionist asked.
How much do I want to pay? No one had ever asked me before. I wish they had because I would not be staying in cheap hotels if I had a choice.
May I see the room first?
Bang! “What was that?” I said as something hit the canvas roof of our attached tent on the side of our motor home.
It was June in Puerto Vallarta, and the temperature at ten o’clock in the night was still over 95 degrees. We have purchased a television dish and set it up to watch TV while we waited to move on.
Bang! Crash! Another coconut crashed to the ground in our backyard. We had about thirty coconut palm trees in the backyard of our house in Costa Rica and everyone was heavy with nuts in varying degrees of ripeness. A bird, an iguana, or a raccoon could dislodge one and it would hit the ground, bounce and roll away. We were worried about us and also about our little dog Sherman.
We entered Turkey at the end of January and began our tour of the country. The first thing we needed to do was buy some groceries. Ahead was a mall that looked like any mall in the world. We found a place to park and entered to find the grocery store. The first thing I noticed was the store windows covered in red Valentine hearts. Another window had men’s jockey shorts covered in red hearts and red Xs, and risqué red panties with black ribbons and little gold hearts hanging from a bow.
“Where are we?” Ted asked.
“I don’t know.” I answered. We were driving through the large Greek city of Petras, and the road signs were big and legible. However, they were written using Greek letters mixed with English letters. I was completely lost. Finally, he spotted a sign pointing our way out of the city.
