Here’s another Blog Questions Challenge. This week, it’s all about Travel Adventures!

Here are the questions…

Silliest Souvenir

In 2014 me and my wife went to Costa Rica. We did a lot of travel-by-bus to various excusions and destinations across the country. During those bus rides, I (for whatever reason) witnessed an unusual amount of machete-based chopping of vegetation and general plant-related growth on the sides of the rural roads we traveled down. Now this might not be unusual for Costa Rica, but it was for me as a tourist. So naturally, I wanted to get a machete as a souvenir. At the time of purchasing it, I never considered what it would look like, trying to get a huge machete back through customs at the airport…

State-side, we got to security and that’s when I remembered my cargo. Sure enough, going through security I was asked to come with them to a back room as they had some questions for me. I thought for sure it was because of the machete. But nope! They were interested in a different souvenir of mine. We had also purchased a “rain stick”, which is effectively just a hollow wooden tube filled with small beads. They were really curious (and slightly concerend) about what all those little beads were inside the stick. After a brief explanation though they were satisfied and I was on my way once more. Not even a single mention of the machete. Hah!

Teleport for a Day Trip

Mt. Otemanu

That’s me in Bora Bora circa 2016. There’s a very non-zero chance that I was thinking about climbing that mountain in this exact moment (in addition to just posing for a super-cool sunset pic). If I could teleport to one place for a day to do something, it wound be here, to hike Bora Bora’s Mount Otemanu. Afterwards, I’d just chill on the beach with a nice beverage and watch the sun set, much like I did in 2016. 🏝️ 🌅

Weirdest Food

In 2013, I went on my first international trip ever. So where does one go on their first trip out of the country? Africa of course! Me and my wife went to South Africa—first to Cape Town and then to Kruger National Park for some safari-ing. To this day (and I’ve done a fair bit of travel since), I would still say it’s my favorite trip I’ve ever done. One night, while dining out in the city-center of Cape Town, we ordered what I remember as some sort of “exotic meat sampler”. On the resulting plate, we tried a number of interesting South African-native game including Kudu, Crocodile, Springbok and if I’m remembering fully, Zebra. All I really remember about that experience beyond what I tried was that Kudu was delicious, and I was not into the croc.

Memorable Wrong Turn

Look, my wife is the (trip) planner of the two of us, and she is amazing at it. What this means is that our trips are always fantastic, we get into a TON of fun activities, and we rarely encounter anything you might consider a “wrong turn”. That said, this particlar question made me think of two distinct wrong-turn-esque events…

Once, while driving somewhere in Germany we witnessed this little car in front of us try to make too sharp of a turn on a highway on-ramp and completely spin out—like a 360° spin. It was wild, and quite scary to witness. A “wrong turn” for that individual to say the least.
The most memorable “wrong turn” for me however occurred when me and my wife were trying to drive back from the national park in Sintra, Portugal to where we were staying in Lisbon. We exited the park into what I imagine was the old-town part of Sintra and ended up on some very tiny streets with extremely narrow passage ways between the buildings and walls of the town. At one point, my wife had to get out of the car and help me narrowly traverse one particularly tight corridor. Our rental was a pretty small car too. Luckily, we made it out without a scratch, literally!

Thanks for reading!