Life is Good Or Maybe Travel is Good

Today I sat in a dentist office and traveled to the Caribbean, Asia, and all over Europe.  Of course I was reading T&L magazine, but it is so well written with beautiful pictures and information about these places that one can imagine themselves actually there.  In France and Italy the prices for a simple, clean room cost about five hundred dollars or is  euros a more accurate term?  If I ever do get to go to Paris and see the sights I think I should plan on hiking and starving. Surely, I could afford a little french bread and some cheeses to sustain me for my journey.

I think of all the places I've been.  Puerto Rico with all its beautiful sandy beaches and green, blue sea. The lighthouses, palm trees, and humidity all give the feel of truly tropical awayness.  The throngs of people on the small island have a way of bringing you back to reality around the time you begin to savor the moistness landing heavily on your skin.

Chile, South America, One of the most beautiful places in the world.  It has diversity of climate due to its length of body.  The part of Chile I know is wild, barren, and majestic all at once.  They have a lot of the same bugs, plants, and birds as we do, only twice as big.  I saw bumblebees bigger than a quarter.  They have a kind of bird that looks identical to our killdeer but about as big as a seagull.  The lupines are just like the ones we have in Idaho but twice as big.  The whole countryside is big and green and wide.  Lots of sheep dotting the hillsides and real cowboys wearing sombreros, riding their horses in and around the sheep herding them. They whistle their own signals the dogs understand while they work in tandem. If you drive farther south you find beautiful glacial waters, a color of which is hard to describe.  It's the best blue, green color on earth. Picture that next to purple lupines and you feel you've died and gone to heaven. This part of Chile is also windy, dry, and dirty. It is a land of extremes.


I've been to Mexico and Alaska as well.  Both with my husband.  We were in Mexico together on a Bible School tour before we were married.  Mexico was were I fell in love.  I had a picture taken next to a heart shaped cactus. We rode on buses packed with bodies just for the experience.  We drank Orange Fanta from glass bottles. He sang love songs to me on the back of a train car as we rode across the canyon. 

Alaska was much like Chile in beauty but a completely different experience due to our way of travel.  We were aboard a cruise ship on our trip to Alaska.  I enjoyed it but my favorite part of the cruise was when our feet touched land at the ports.  I wanted to lay flat against the good solid earth and kiss it.  I didn't though.  I knew that would look a little extreme and didn't figure people would understand  the sight of a thirty-something stoutish female kissing the ground.

Travel.  I didn't realize I liked it so much.  It can be experienced in a dentist office of all places.  I was amazed at the feeling of having been there.  It was a get away five minutes from my house.  Who knew?  Here, I was dreading the hour and a half wait while my son got his tooth fixed, and it turned into a full, blown, relaxing vacation. And guess how much they charged for this experience?  Let's just say it was a fraction of what it would've cost to travel to those places in real life. Literally. Expensive.