Make Your Dream a Reality

Matt Green’s celebratory cake (see below)

In my first post for the year (Welcome to 2012), I mentioned that many people have found ways to indulge their love of travel, often for extended periods of time, and that if you are prepared to make the commitment and sacrifice, you too can travel sooner rather than later. What I didn't include in that post, however, were links to some of the many blogs and websites from these travellers. So today, I have decided to address that omission.

All the travellers highlighted have embarked on amazing personal journey's that often defy logic, logistics, money, and maybe even common sense. But as I also wrote in that entry:

“You will … encounter naysayers, sceptics, and critics who will argue that the world is filled with dangers lurking around every corner – as if watching an hour of the evening news doesn’t reinforce that time and time again.

Then there are others who argue that you need to knuckle down and focus on finding a life partner, or family, or career, or homebuilding, or making a fortune, or [add your own inner nagging voice].”

The intrepid travellers noted below, have all chosen to ignore the critics and live their dreams.

The World on Wheels…

Bearing the tag line: An ongoing adventure of travel and living while using a wheelchair, Tim and Darryl Musik’s website is a detailed record of the father and son’s travels across America and further afield. Tim has been disabled from birth. Darryl is his father and caregiver. Together they have embarked on journeys to Austria, Belgium, Dominican Republic, England, France/Monaco, Germany, Ireland, Mexico and throughout the United States.

Filled with numerous images and short, high quality videos, The World on Wheels is always positive, uplifting, and insightful. And it shows that confinement to a wheelchair is no excuse for staying home, when there is a world of wonders waiting to be discovered and experienced.

Feel The Earth…

Someone else who is exploring ‘the world on wheels’ is Keiichi Iwasaki. In April 2001, the Japanese national, then aged 28 decided to ride his bicycle across Japan. He had just 160 yen (around $2) in his pocket. His plan was to perform magic tricks wherever the opportunity presented itself, and to pay for his bike ride as he went. Keiichi not only completed his ride across Japan, but he enjoyed it so much he caught a ferry to South Korea and kept going. Ten years, thousands of miles and dozens of countries later, according to this September 2011 report on the National Geographic website, Keiichi is still riding – and still paying his way by performing magic tricks.

Along the way he has been robbed by pirates; arrested in India; nearly died after being attacked by a rabid dog in Tibet, and narrowly escaped marriage in Nepal! But he has also climbed both Mont Blanc and Mount Everest; used a rowboat to travel from the source of the Ganges River in India to the sea (a distance of over 800 miles), and also rowed across the Caspian Sea just because he wanted to see “…how big Caspian sea is?” It took him 25 days.

Dervla Murphy...

Irish author Dervla Murphy has written over twenty travel books, many documenting the details of her journeys by bicycle across an incredible range of countries. In 1963, at the age of 32, Dervla embarked on her first major bike ride – from Dunkirk, France to India, and wrote her first book Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, about that ride. Still travelling at 80, she recently published her latest book, The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba.

But why ride when you can walk?

The Longest Way…

German born, Christoph Rehage set out on November 9th, 2007 – his 26th birthday – to walk from the Chinese capital Beijing to Bad Nenndorf in Germany. One year and 4600+ kilometres later he ended his walk – still in China – at Urümqi, a couple hundred kilometres shy of the border with Kyrgyzstan. Although he didn’t complete his walk, Cristoph (who now studies in Berlin), writes that “…getting as far as I got was an experience for which I am very grateful.”

His website, The Longest Way, documents his walk in great detail, with this time lapse film of the journey receiving over a million hits.

I’m Just Walkin’ (USA)…

Someone who did complete his walk across America was Matt Green, who walked from Rockaway Beach, Long Island, to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, crossing New York state, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and finally Oregon. After roughly five months, 3,000 miles, and 1500 blog entries, Matt said:

“A couple years ago I started a walking group called Hey, I’m Walkin’ Here! in New York City, and my love for walking really blossomed over the course of our adventures. Moving through the world at three miles an hour, you can fully take in your surroundings. There’s nothing separating you from your environment. You notice things that go completely undetected by people zooming by in cars. It’s such a rich experience: you can see, hear, and smell everything around you, and even touch and taste things if you feel like it.”

Having completed his walk across America, Matt began 2012 with the goal of walking every street across the five boroughs of New York City. As you would expect, he is documenting this challenge on his website I’m Just Walkin’ (NYC)…

Want more? Check out this list of people who have also walked across the United States.

Going Slowly...

Tara Alan & Tyler Kellen set up Going Slowly in February 2008, to document their bicycle tour around the world. That epic ride may be over – but the website acts as a permanent scrapbook of their many adventures together.

Without Wings…

Also going slowly are Anna Rice and Alex Hayton. Anna and Alex are currently undertaking a year long round the world journey by rail, road, ship and whatever other forms of transport they can arrange – short of flying. They have decided to embrace the concept of slow travel with all its joys and challenges, aiming to eat and sleep locally, and travel with as small a carbon footprint as possible.

Ok, I know I have chosen some pretty extreme examples, and I don’t expect you to walk or ride in the footsteps of the people mentioned. But the point of this entry is to push home the message that anything is possible if you are prepared to make the commitment and sacrifice to see your travel dreams come to fruition.

Folks, if it was easy – everyone would be doing it!

It isn’t easy, but as the examples above show, it is doable. So remember…

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My Dream Vacation

~ So here’s a question for you.

If you had $100,000 and six months to spend it on your dream vacation, where would you go, and what would you do?

And just so you know: No, I don’t have a spare one hundred grand, either for you or myself, but I did think it would be an interesting intellectual exercise to fantasize about my dream vacation for a couple of hours (yes, I know, I do have too much time on my hands). Oh, and just for the record, I am not an intellectual!

Alright… I’ll go first. Let me see…

First up, starting from here (here being Adelaide, Australia), I would travel by merchant ship to the USA, island hopping my way across the Pacific Ocean. Stops along the way would include New Zealand, Tahiti, and Mexico, before disembarking in San Francisco.

From San Francisco, armed with a copy of Jamie Jensen’s Road Trip USA I would begin my long dreamed about road trip across the United States – first down the Pacific coast to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Tucson, Arizona catching up with relatives along the way (making sure I visited Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon of course).

Most serious road trip enthusiasts dream about driving the length of the famed Route 66 at least once in their lives, and I’m no exception. From Tucson, it wouldn’t be to hard to head north again and join Route 66 at Flagstaff. However, being a ‘completist’ (is that even a real word?), if I was going to drive Route 66, I would have to head back to LA and start the journey proper from there.

Now those of you familiar with the song, Route 66, will immediately realize that would be doing it all wrong. According to the song, Route 66 “Winds from Chicago to LA,” but do I really want to fly or drive all the way to Chicago, just so I can spend several weeks singing the lines of the song every mile along the route in the proper order they were written?

Of course, you are right. Am I a completist or aren’t I?

Ok, so I’d fly to Chicago and drive Route 66 north to south (or to be more precise – north to south-west), and make sure I have lots of great adventures along the way. Unfortunately, that means I am back where I started – sort of. I now have to get from LA to New York City. I could fly, but where’s the fun in that? So after resting my numb bum in Los Angeles for a few days, it’s back into the hire car for the long drive across the American south and up the east coast to New York.

After spending a couple of weeks in New York City, it’s on to the Republic of Ireland – via Niagara Falls and Canada. Well, why not?

Now, relax. I don’t mean to bore you with every stop along the way, so here in some sort of order is the rest of my fantasy vacation: From Ireland I would go to England, France, Spain, and Morocco. The north African leg of my trip also takes in Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. From there it’s on to Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands. Now it’s time to rug up and head north into Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. By train we cross the Russian steppes to Mongolia and China. We’re on the homeward stretch now. Just a few more countries left (Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand) before finally setting down in Darwin, Australia.

From Darwin I would drive back to Adelaide the ‘long way’. That is, via Kakadu, Alice Springs, Mount Isa, Brisbane, and then down along east coast passing through Sydney, Melbourne, and finally on to Adelaide.

Whew, that is a sum total of 33 countries in six months, and more miles than I care to think about.

Is it possible? Would $100,000 be enough?

Hey, what do I know? This is a fantasy vacation after all. A pipe dream. A flight of the imagination. A meditation on the possible – or if you insist, the impossible. But who knows? Maybe, just maybe, if I can’t do the whole trip I can do parts of it. Maybe I don’t have to complete the whole journey in six months. What if I only do the ocean voyage and the road trip? That would be a good start in anyone’s book – wouldn’t it? I can always tackle other parts of the journey later.

So what does your dream vacation involve?

Don’t hold back. Let your imagination run wild, and let me know via the comments section below. Alternatively, you could write a longer piece and send it to me. With your permission I might republish it here as part of my blog.

Go on, share the dream.

Cruise Ship Vacations: Do Your Research First

~ Anita Dunham-Potter, the travel columnist for Tripso, posted a story recently called, Noisy Carnival Ship Ruins Family Cruise which recounts a cruise ship voyage that did not live up to the expectations of the family taking it.

The Moscoes boarded the Carnival Valor for a cruise to the Caribbean. Having saved for years, the family chose Carnival because of its reputation for family-friendly cruising.

Now if you’ve read my previous post about taking a slow boat to China (or elsewhere) you can imagine that cruising on the Carnival Valor is about as far removed from the experience of freighter travel as you could possibly get. After all, the Valor has 1,487 staterooms for the high paying clientele on board. In fact the Carnival Valor has a passenger capacity of 2,974, so it’s probably no surprise the Moscoes had problems with the noise level on the ship.

The basis of their complaint is that at approximately 9 p.m. each night, the ship’s entertainers would perform their musical acts in the atrium. Unfortunately for the Moscoes, their stateroom happened to be in close proximity to the ship’s 12-story open atrium.

After numerous complaints both onboard the ship, and after they had returned home, the Moscoes were compensated a total of $900 in onboard credit (while still aboard), and an additional $500 was given to them to be redeemed on a future cruise.

The lesson here is to do thorough research before you book your cruise. A visit to the Carnival website provides pretty much everything you need to know about their ships before you book with the cruise line.

For example, you can see the Carnival Valor’s deck plans here. While you may not be expert enough to know exactly how these plans translate into the real thing, that is, into a massive steel plated ship of 110,000 tons, with 13 decks and a crew of 1,180, you should be able to get an sense of the layout of the ship, and an idea of just where the potentially noisiest rooms are located.

As Anita writes in her article, “…there is no such thing as a quiet cruise ship. They vibrate, drop anchor, have crew noise, thumping music, but more often than not the worst noise offenders are fellow passengers oblivious to keeping quiet in the vicinity of staterooms.”

If in doubt – ask. Ask your booking agent exactly were the high traffic areas are. Especially areas like atriums, onboard music venues and nightclubs, pool decks, games rooms, service centres and more.

Read Anita’s full article here...

Read more about the Carnival Valor here…

IMAGE: Courtesy of Carnival website…

Take a Slow Boat To…

~ Ever heard the expression, Taking a slow boat to China?

Well, guess what? You can still catch a slow boat to China. Or to New York, London, Piraeus (Greece), and even Sydney, or to any number of other working ports around the world. And I’m not talking about using luxury cruise ships either. I’m talking about utilising the sea lanes of the world to reach your destination by travelling on a merchant ship.

Yes, Ripley, believe it or not, many merchant ships have paying passengers aboard who prefer taking that form of travel rather than fly, drive, or by ocean liner.

However, sailing on a merchant ship is not for everyone. Here are some issues to consider before you elect to travel via this method:

• All freighter companies have age restrictions which exclude children under 5 years of age, and most set a maximum age limit of 75-80 years.
• Few merchant ships have lifts, which means passengers must be fit and healthy enough to negotiate many flights of stairs each day.
• Merchant ships are working ships – not holidays at sea. Apart from television and movies, they may also include a small swimming pool; an exercise room with not much more than table tennis, stationary bike, and a few weights; a small library of well read books; and that’s about it.
• This form of travel is much cheaper than sailing with a cruise line, but more expensive than flying.
• Your time in a foreign port is severely restricted – sometimes as little as eight to twelve hours.
• Most merchant ships carry as few as six paying passengers and generally no more than twelve. This makes for a very small and potentially intimate group of fellow passengers.
• If you prefer the anonymity of large crowds (or the crowded decks of an 800 passenger cruise ship), freighter travel may not be for you.
• If you find it hard to relax on an quiet deck in a comfortable chair with a good book, freighter travel may not be for you.
• If you have difficulty keeping yourself amused, and active, freighter travel may not be for you.

The Benefits of Freighter Travel
Given these (and other) restrictions, why would anyone choose to travel on a working cargo ship? I’m glad you asked. Let’s look at the benefits of freighter travel.

• The informality. Passengers are not required to dress up for meals. Men can leave their ties, and ladies their cocktail dresses at home.
• Freighters do not offer any pre-planned activities like cruise ships do, and mealtimes are the only daily structure. This means…
• You have time to relax on an uncrowded deck in a comfortable deck chair with a good book.
• You can sit in quiet contemplation and watch the ocean roll by for as long as you wish.
• Freighter passengers enjoy extended contact with officers and crew.
• Most freighters are liberal with bridge visitation, and unrestricted bridge visits are not uncommon.
• With ships carrying only 2 to 12 passengers, lasting friendships are often formed between passengers and officers.

Types of Freighters
There are several types of merchant ships you might consider travelling with.

Container Ships: The most popular method of transporting goods by sea is the container ship. Container ships can be loaded and unloaded very quickly. One of the disadvantages of this, as far as passengers are concerned, is that the fast loading and unloading of containers means that time ashore is usually quite limited. The ship would rarely spend more than 24 hours in port - often less in a very efficient container terminal.

General Cargo Ships: These are ships that transport cargo that will not fit into containers, such as large machinery, sheets of metal, timber, agricultural exports etc. The slower loading and unloading of general cargo - also known as break bulk - means that general cargo ships usually spend much longer in port than container ships - making them an excellent choice for passengers who wish to spend as much time ashore as possible.

Bulk Carriers: These ships transport 'loose' cargo, such as coal, mineral ores, phosphates and grain in holds below deck. Again, like general cargo ships, bulk carriers tend to spend longer times in port loading and unloading.

Other types of merchant shipping includes 'Roll on - Roll off' ships; Mail and Supply ships; and other smaller craft.

Some helpful websites to get you started:
For answers to almost everything you need to know visit:
The excellent FAQ at Freighter Trips…
...and read about the origins of the phrase Slow Boat to China…