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The UpBeat is a section in the Citizen where readers can submit their own feel-good stories. This was submitted by Audrey Letouzé and Griff Mercer.
Backpacking for 11 months in 15 countries with our nine-year-old son Eric made for memorable moments.
Was the nadir the night before we visited Machu Picchu, the glorious Peru world heritage site, and slept in a hotel next to an all-night disco? Eric was bleary eyed and cranky the next day. Or was it travelling by minibus in Bolivia when he had the misfortune of being ill? He threw up out the open window, taking care of the problem in a hurry. My observant husband Griff could open any vehicle window in milliseconds, while I mastered the art of hauling out a plastic baggie.
Surprisingly, our most memorable moments travelling with Eric were more mundane. We were away for his Grade 4 year, and doing school work was a daily struggle. My charming son developed an aggravating whine when we hauled out the provincial curriculum. With only one backpack each, we couldn’t carry large manuals. We resorted to small workbooks, and to keep paper to a minimum, kept documents on our laptop computer. Because we often travelled by bus or train, a smartphone loaded with study materials was essential. Used-up transportation tickets worked well as scrap paper.
Still, the complaining continued. Griff and I adjusted our thinking on the subject. Like us, Eric was travelling in foreign countries, eating new foods, walking for hours every day and sleeping in strange beds. We felt a little bad for him but he also had to study.
“We have to make learning more interesting,” I told my husband when the whining became too much.
With our encouragement, Eric began to pick up a bit of the regional languages, learning to say “hello” in Spanish, Khmer and Mandarin. He learned finance by counting currency in countries such as Argentina and Uruguay. He studied geography by helping us with trip planning.
Museums were also sources of fun facts. Eric especially enjoyed visiting the Museo Pumapungo in Cuenca, Ecuador. The display of the Shuar indigenous society’s shrunken heads was fascinating for a nine year-old. Volunteering on a family farm in Japan showed him how food was grown. A chance meeting with a group of school children in Thailand reminded him that school attendance was an international thing.
We also tried to make Eric’s daily studies more comfortable. A hammock, when available, became his favourite place to crack the books.
Although it’s appealing to think about the positives of travel, we can’t help consider the harder parts, too. Having visited more than 50 countries in our lifetimes, Griff and I had the opportunity to reflect on the challenges of backpacking trips.
Here are insights into a few more things, beyond travelling with a child, that make life on the road bumpy.
The first time we headed out on a year-long trip was B.E., Before Eric. That was when Griff and I were newlyweds. Preparing for our recent trip with a child required even more planning. We packed up and rented out our home, organized our finances, arranged for jobs to come back to, bought insurance, set up Eric’s schooling and more. It was a lot of work.
We started in August of last year with a one-month camping trip to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. We then spent four months in South America, five months in Asia, and our last month in Europe. The payback of all our preparation was having the luxury of spending more time in each destination and experiencing remarkable adventures as a family.
Griff Mercer (L), Audrey Letouzé and their nine-year-old son Eric hiking on Machu Picchu in 2015. (Photo provided)
We generally did not reserve rooms ahead of time. Seeing the accommodations with our own eyes often made their shortcomings apparent. Sadly, spending more on a room is not a guarantee you will have a good night’s rest. Our earplugs and eye masks were always on the ready. As a general rule, we didn’t expect to sleep as well as we do at home.
Another issue was exposure to cigarette smoke. As non-smokers, we hate inhaling second-hand smoke, especially when travelling with our son. In many countries, we shared buses and restaurants with smokers. On a hiking trip in the fabulous Tiger Leaping Gorge in China, the room below us was rented to chain-smokers, and smoke seeped up through the cracks in the floor boards. This was not the breath-taking experience we were hoping for.
Finding food posed challenges. Ordering a healthy, locally authentic meal was influenced by language barriers and our travel budget. We wanted food from places that appeared to adhere to basic food safety standards. Sometimes there was no running water anywhere, no cleaning products and no refrigeration. We often turned a blind eye to obvious deficiencies.
The search to find a restaurant seemed at times never-ending. For this reason, we carried our own bowls and basic cutlery. We made our own breakfast of oatmeal, fruit and coffee, and some light meals when we were too tired to find a café or street vendor. Despite the fact that we did our best to eat hygienically, we were hit with a few bouts of illness … likely food-related.
Given that we chose to travel independently and had only booked our outgoing flight, we had the ultimate freedom we desired. On the down side, a lack of structure came with ongoing hours of planning, comparison shopping and scheduling. Hurray for our electronic devices, including two phones and a small laptop. Surprisingly, we had access to Wi-Fi in some very remote areas, but often the service was painfully slow.
Our efficiency was even more hampered because we used a virtual private network to protect our information when we did our banking or made purchases online. This slowed down the computing speed. The virtual private network allowed us to visit censored websites (like Google or Facebook) while in China, but not every time.
One of our favourite references for planning our destinations and outings was downloading digital guidebooks on all of our devices so we wouldn’t need to carry them along with us. Perhaps we still looked like visitors, but it wasn’t because we walked the streets with a guidebook in hand.
Even with the negatives, being on the road with only our backpacks was incredibly rewarding. We could travel at our own pace, be flexible, and pick out our favourite activities as we went. We were open to the unexpected. In our overly scheduled world, what can be better than having the freedom to live out your passions?
Eric completed Grade 4 while traveling and is now readjusting to regular school. Griff and I are back at work, appreciating the security of our daily routines. We made it home and best yet, did it together as a family.
查看原文...
Backpacking for 11 months in 15 countries with our nine-year-old son Eric made for memorable moments.
Was the nadir the night before we visited Machu Picchu, the glorious Peru world heritage site, and slept in a hotel next to an all-night disco? Eric was bleary eyed and cranky the next day. Or was it travelling by minibus in Bolivia when he had the misfortune of being ill? He threw up out the open window, taking care of the problem in a hurry. My observant husband Griff could open any vehicle window in milliseconds, while I mastered the art of hauling out a plastic baggie.
Surprisingly, our most memorable moments travelling with Eric were more mundane. We were away for his Grade 4 year, and doing school work was a daily struggle. My charming son developed an aggravating whine when we hauled out the provincial curriculum. With only one backpack each, we couldn’t carry large manuals. We resorted to small workbooks, and to keep paper to a minimum, kept documents on our laptop computer. Because we often travelled by bus or train, a smartphone loaded with study materials was essential. Used-up transportation tickets worked well as scrap paper.
Still, the complaining continued. Griff and I adjusted our thinking on the subject. Like us, Eric was travelling in foreign countries, eating new foods, walking for hours every day and sleeping in strange beds. We felt a little bad for him but he also had to study.
“We have to make learning more interesting,” I told my husband when the whining became too much.
With our encouragement, Eric began to pick up a bit of the regional languages, learning to say “hello” in Spanish, Khmer and Mandarin. He learned finance by counting currency in countries such as Argentina and Uruguay. He studied geography by helping us with trip planning.
Museums were also sources of fun facts. Eric especially enjoyed visiting the Museo Pumapungo in Cuenca, Ecuador. The display of the Shuar indigenous society’s shrunken heads was fascinating for a nine year-old. Volunteering on a family farm in Japan showed him how food was grown. A chance meeting with a group of school children in Thailand reminded him that school attendance was an international thing.
We also tried to make Eric’s daily studies more comfortable. A hammock, when available, became his favourite place to crack the books.
Although it’s appealing to think about the positives of travel, we can’t help consider the harder parts, too. Having visited more than 50 countries in our lifetimes, Griff and I had the opportunity to reflect on the challenges of backpacking trips.
Here are insights into a few more things, beyond travelling with a child, that make life on the road bumpy.
The first time we headed out on a year-long trip was B.E., Before Eric. That was when Griff and I were newlyweds. Preparing for our recent trip with a child required even more planning. We packed up and rented out our home, organized our finances, arranged for jobs to come back to, bought insurance, set up Eric’s schooling and more. It was a lot of work.
We started in August of last year with a one-month camping trip to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. We then spent four months in South America, five months in Asia, and our last month in Europe. The payback of all our preparation was having the luxury of spending more time in each destination and experiencing remarkable adventures as a family.
Griff Mercer (L), Audrey Letouzé and their nine-year-old son Eric hiking on Machu Picchu in 2015. (Photo provided)
We generally did not reserve rooms ahead of time. Seeing the accommodations with our own eyes often made their shortcomings apparent. Sadly, spending more on a room is not a guarantee you will have a good night’s rest. Our earplugs and eye masks were always on the ready. As a general rule, we didn’t expect to sleep as well as we do at home.
Another issue was exposure to cigarette smoke. As non-smokers, we hate inhaling second-hand smoke, especially when travelling with our son. In many countries, we shared buses and restaurants with smokers. On a hiking trip in the fabulous Tiger Leaping Gorge in China, the room below us was rented to chain-smokers, and smoke seeped up through the cracks in the floor boards. This was not the breath-taking experience we were hoping for.
Finding food posed challenges. Ordering a healthy, locally authentic meal was influenced by language barriers and our travel budget. We wanted food from places that appeared to adhere to basic food safety standards. Sometimes there was no running water anywhere, no cleaning products and no refrigeration. We often turned a blind eye to obvious deficiencies.
The search to find a restaurant seemed at times never-ending. For this reason, we carried our own bowls and basic cutlery. We made our own breakfast of oatmeal, fruit and coffee, and some light meals when we were too tired to find a café or street vendor. Despite the fact that we did our best to eat hygienically, we were hit with a few bouts of illness … likely food-related.
Given that we chose to travel independently and had only booked our outgoing flight, we had the ultimate freedom we desired. On the down side, a lack of structure came with ongoing hours of planning, comparison shopping and scheduling. Hurray for our electronic devices, including two phones and a small laptop. Surprisingly, we had access to Wi-Fi in some very remote areas, but often the service was painfully slow.
Our efficiency was even more hampered because we used a virtual private network to protect our information when we did our banking or made purchases online. This slowed down the computing speed. The virtual private network allowed us to visit censored websites (like Google or Facebook) while in China, but not every time.
One of our favourite references for planning our destinations and outings was downloading digital guidebooks on all of our devices so we wouldn’t need to carry them along with us. Perhaps we still looked like visitors, but it wasn’t because we walked the streets with a guidebook in hand.
Even with the negatives, being on the road with only our backpacks was incredibly rewarding. We could travel at our own pace, be flexible, and pick out our favourite activities as we went. We were open to the unexpected. In our overly scheduled world, what can be better than having the freedom to live out your passions?
Eric completed Grade 4 while traveling and is now readjusting to regular school. Griff and I are back at work, appreciating the security of our daily routines. We made it home and best yet, did it together as a family.
查看原文...
