Nov 2006

The Story

Australia has become my new frontier to explore. I flew into Brisbane on November 16th and stayed with a couple from couchsurfer.com. It was a great experience to get to know Beni (Australian), a musician and factory worker, and Wencke (German), recent imigrant to Australia, as well as their friend Eva (German) who were so hospitable to let me stay at their apartment for several nights and show me around the city. We tramped through the city, enjoyed some view from several mountains, and highly appreciated the warmth of the Sunshine Coast (just north of Brisbane).

From Brisbane I hitchhiked north intending to go to Hervey Bay but ended up staying with a lady who picked me up that lived in a small beach town just north of the city. As her husband was at sea and her kids with their father, she was happy to have the company and show me around her small town. It is such a pleasant experience to stay with locals and obtain a glimpse of the similarities and differences with my experience of an American lifestyle.

When I arrived in Hervey Bay, a rather dull beach town, I made plans to set out on a four wheel drive excursion to Fraser Island which was right off the coast. Myself and nine other people rented a large jeep and explored the all sand island for a few days. The interior consists of mostly dense forest, with the occasional crystal clear lakes for swimming (Fraser's coast line has sharks and jelly fish that sting), and coast line has become the freeway for getting around on the island. Our group got along quite well, poking fun at each other's nationalities and enjoying our similar interests - a pleasant journey.

After taking an over night bus north I arrived in Airlie Beach, a beautiful but wretchedly touristy town. I took two day cruise into the Whitsunday Islands where were able to enjoy the warm waters of Whitehaven Beach (picture perfect beach) and snorkeled at several of the reefs. The scenery was nice but the company was mediocore; occasionally on group attivities you will get small two's and three's that have been traveling together and prefer to stay in their little group without meeting other people. My bus ticket allows me to ride all the way up the east coast, so I am leaving this morning for Townsville (what a name) to catch a ferry out to Magnetic Island and spend some time in nature, as I haven't really had the chance to do that thus far.

The Reflection

As I have been considering my vocation as a traveler for this time in my life, I have been vexed by some internal struggles with my exposure to other travelers (especially inspired by this over touristy town I am in that seems to be filled with only billboard travel advertisements and practically no locals).

I am confronted by a large backpacker community that prefer bus tours, partying day and night, and prefering only a slight taste of their new environment with no discomfort or risks. I have met a large majority of travelers who often leave a country remarking that they haven't met any locals, besides the bar tenders or tour guides yet had the "best trip" and love "traveling."

I am struggling to understand why I have feelings of disaproval and a lack of respect for their value system and style of travel. It seems the basis of differences is the varying value of embracing hardship and striving for that which is difficult to achieve. Is the difference between the words "tourist" and "traveler" really just a means of priviledging those that value their style of travel of the others? Often there seems to be a consensus of similar tension among those that travel in less convential ways with the camera addicted, bus touring, backpacker bar going, occasionally obnocious, tourist/travelers. Perhaps my frustration stems from the fact there are few people to relate with...

What does it mean to be a traveler? Is a true traveler defined by experiencing the new culture in as many ways as possible? Or rather is the term "true traveler" an individual expression for achieving personal growth in the breadth and depth of travel experiences? We are all tourists, whether or not we pay large sums of money to do preplanned activities that are more about excitement of the senses than experiencing a new land, people, and culture. I have many questions and no time left to finish my thoughts on this tension of traveler vs tourist, the ways power priviledges one term over the other, and how to better respect those of different travel styles choices.

The end
KS

Look in the gallery to find pictures, here is a link:
http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/gallery/users/lost%20again/tags/New%20Zealand/

The Story

Bungee jumping down a gorge with a river 440 below...ya...quite a good thrill. I was surprised that I wasn't really nervous about jumping out off the suspended gondola where you watch others fall to their doom only to be rescued 10 meters above the water by the elastic savior. But it all goes so fast you really don't have a clue what is going on. You are just gasping for breath on the way down shocked at how fast you are falling and then thoroughly relieved when the tension of the bungee chord kicks in and you fly about half way back up. It was a fun experience but I don't know if I will do anything like it again - I can't ethically spend so much money on such experiences for less than a minute of pleasure.

After Queenstown we (my german travel companion and I) took the incredible drove to Milford Sound where we were surrounded by snow capped mountains with waterfalls coming down all sides of the hillside as the snow was melting in the sun. After spending the night there in a hostel we took a cruise around the sound enjoying the view of the steep hillsides meeting the water of the sound. There were dolphins swimming along side of us part of the way and vast water falls filling the sound from the mountains above.

The next day we took about a two hour hike back through a forest to find ourselves at a secluded lake surrounded by jagged mountains all around us - it was one of the most serene places I have been in a long time. We spent a few days driving along the southern portion of the south island which were spent mostly in the car and outside on occasional walks and tourist stops. The further south we got, the weirder we found the people and places to be. For example, there was a sign for a national park that had the skins of several dead animals draped over it and a cows head situated on one of the posts. There was a supposed water fall called "Niagara Falls" and it ended up being nothing more than a small rapid in the water that we went out to see in the pouring rain. When we got to the falls, there was a sign explaining that someone made the falls official on all the maps for the humorous sake of playing off the name's relation to the US's Niagra falls. Another odd site was a man that sat in an old bus that he converted to an invention/trinket/odd-things you-have-never -seen-before tourist site. He sold a few post cards and jewelry but the rest was all for simply observing his nick-nack creations. To give an example, there was a train that goes around the room that has a sticker on it that says "of thought" and a button near the front door that says "press out of curiosity" that causes a little statue to squirt water at you. Both my travel companion and I started getting a little crazy as things in the southern portion of this island just felt odd.

We made our way to Christchurch (largest city on the south island) where Lukas (my traveling friend) flew to Australia and I began work at a hostel here until I leave for Australia on the 16th of November. It has been interesting to live with the family that owns the hostel and experience all their idiosyncrasies and family dynamics. I have met some interesting people here but I mostly hang out with an Irish girl that is staying at the hostel right around the corner. I have loved my time in NZ but am ready to move on to Australia.

The Reflection

This has really been the first time that I have been settled in one location for more than two or three days. It has been nice to be able to slow down, reflect, read, and wander. Something I have always struggled with is pinning down what exactly I "know." What does it mean to "know"? There have been so many times in my life when I supposedly knew something to only find out I had it completely wrong - or perhaps misunderstood. Perhaps there is no wrong way to know, only different ways to know...perhaps better ways of knowing is simply dependent upon individual value systems. I am reading a book called The Man Without Qualities and I often feel I can relate as the main character who lacks defining qualities. I feel quite uncertain about how to perceive the world in which I live. Each time I hear an opinion or perspective, I feel as though there are so many other valid perspectives that could be "logically" argued in the same manner. I state "logically" in quotes because logic has come to be such a relative concept in my mind as I have trouble declaring a right and wrong logic, it simply all depends on value systems (a lot of this is coming back to my earlier reflections).

So...what do I know? I can't really say much of anything to answer this question I have experienced a western education that has taught me a few valid things but do I completely comprehend them...no. There are obviously degrees of knowing which means I have a vague idea about a few things in life but I feel I can't really say anything for certain about them. I could say the color of my shirt is grey, I could say that I am typing on a keyboard right now, sure that is all great and peachy but beyond my physical senses, can true knowledge exist in the mind? Are questions really the answer? (haha I like that one). A quote from the book I am reading goes as such: "So it must be said that if a man [or woman] just starts thinking a bit he [or she] gets into what one might call pretty disorderly company" - Robert Musil.

So how is one suppose to live without knowing a whole lot? Tricky business this living thing; but that's how it goes. All I really have are questions and I am clueless if that itself is a good thing or not - sure some people might say it is, others say it isn't and is there actually a way of proving who is right? Maybe...maybe not. So hopefully travel will continue to give me new questions because after a while some of the usual meaning of life ones get a little tiring to cope with.

conclusion:
And so we change. we breathe new air from new places and see different shades of color in the old places. we feel and we think...or at least try to. and we usually don't know a whole lot about anything except for when we are hungry and when we are lonely. but sometimes we smile while on a stroll at the park and breathe a sigh of relief that our minds still have some room for life's humorous moments. our quiet rooms know us better than our best of friends and the Sunday afternoon silence finally gives us some space to sit. and so it goes that with each sunset comes a new death of ourselves and each morning brings a rebirth of opportunity (...to paraphrase someone famous). and that's how it is, one day, one hour...one moment of a chat with a stranger, one coffee with two sugars, one panting dog waiting to be pet, and a wee bit of everything else thrown in...

Karl

PS - Pictures are coming soon!