How do you continue to make travel a part of your life after coming home from an extended trip?
I’ve been pondering this, since going from 24/7 travel back to a 9-5 with four weeks’ leave is a big change.
One way we won’t be doing it is by hosting Couchsurfers. We just don’t have the space anymore. We no longer have a spare room. Our lounge is tiny and our current furniture set consists of four separate pieces, not a standard couch (we do have them arranged together but they wouldn’t be any good to sleep on). Our floor is tiled not carpeted, so sleeping on the floor here is not an option.
I’ll be honest: I also feel like I might be done with Couchsurfing for awhile. It was fun hosting, it was intense, and I struggled to say no to people. We also had a few memorable experiences as surfers. But I feel like we’ve done our dash, got out what we put in (to be honest I feel we put in more than we got out, because there are way too many surfers and not enough hosts, and it’s worsening every day). Maybe I’ll revisit this later on but for now we’re enjoying our privacy. And of course, we’d happily find a way to accommodate anyone who’s hosted us.
I will keep reading travel blogs to get my fix, however, and am thinking about starting an occasional Q&A series in which I interview other RTW bloggers. And of course, I’ll be keeping an eye out for good travel deals.
We’re thinking Australia should be our next destination (I’ve only been to Sydney, while T has only really passed through Sydney enroute to areas like Bundaberg to visit family). The Great Barrier Reef isn’t getting any younger, you know. And a good friend of mine has just decamped to Sydney – the first of us to marry a foreigner and move overseas permanently.
I’ve also always wanted to go to Niue, another reasonably close to home destination. And while it’s unlikely, should any deals to Spain, Japan or Hong Kong crop up that we could make work with our budget and schedules, I’ll be all over those.
We’ve both seen most of New Zealand, and I feel about travel much as I do about restaurants – for most places, once is enough. There are just too many other / new options to bother going back to the same place twice. That said, I really love the areas just north of Auckland, and am happy to revisit them often as they are close by.
It going to be hard for us to get away at all, though, since we we’re back to working almost opposing schedules. I’m Monday-Friday, he usually has mid-week days off. I’m sure we can wrangle the occasional weekend off – it’ll just mean less income because those are prime sales days for him. One thing I wouldn’t mind doing this year is the Tongariro Crossing – eight hours seems a bloody long time to walk but I bet we can do it faster, and the scenery needs no further description.
