I've been lucky enough to travel to a lot of cool places. One of my very favorites was Australia. I loved it there and would have happily moved there until I found out about all the spiders and venomous snakes. ::shudder:: I spent four weeks down under and have a lot of great memories, but one of the highlights of the trip was something I didn't want to do.
When I went to Australia, I traveled with my parents and my dad did a fair amount of work setting up some of the tours. One of the things he arranged was a camel ride while we were in Alice Springs. I was not looking forward to this and I'm sure I complained about it. Probably a lot.
No one was more surprised than me when it ended up being a lot of fun! Well, once my terror subsided.
You see, camels have an odd gait. I thought I was going to fall off with every step. I was also worried that one of the other camels in the line would bite me. Camels have a reputation as not being the friendliest creatures ever. But once I felt confident that I wasn't going to end up in the hospital, I started enjoying the trip.We traveled through a dried out river bed--and yes, I did worry about a flash flood suddenly swooping down on us and whisking camels away.
The trip ended at a vineyard where we had dinner and tasted wine. Well, my parents did. I'm not much of a wine drinker. Then we got in vans for the trip back to the hotel. They probably didn't want guests on camels after the wine or in the dark.
I try to remember this when it comes to being open to new experiences. Here I'd resisted and groused about the camel trip and it ended up being an awesome time.
