I’m buying an airline ticket for the complete tour of the South Pacific. My ticket should cost about $390 which is about what I will get from the Peace Corps as “leave” money. A lot of the volunteers from the second group are traveling together on a package tour. About 20 of them went to Fiji. I couldn’t think of a worst way to go.
(excerpt from Art’s letter written home on November 19th, 1968 from Fasito’outa, Western Samoa)
While drinking our coffee this morning and thinking of our upcoming walking trip to Brittany in just a few days, I suddenly sat up and was reminded of how sharp we will have to be as we set off on this new adventure in France. In a moment of panic I thought “are we going to be able to handle it on our own?” Of course, we have done this all our married life from the days we met in remote Asuncion, Paraguay. We will be fine. But it’s easy to feel like we may have become lazy and a tiny bit helpless after staying home comfortably for many months as we have done this past winter.
“I feel out of practice,” I said to Art.
“I like the adventure of it all…” he replied as he always does. “We won’t be herded in a group to board a train, boat, or a bus. I like that.” He’s been saying this for the 45 years I have known him. Even before we ever met, he felt exactly the same as a 22-year old Peace Corps volunteer about to travel the South Pacific. At 22, he had never traveled internationally until he left for the Peace Corps. I decided he must have been born with a sense of adventure and a strong “travel bug”.
No group trip for us this time. Admittedly there is comfort and security in group travel. We had that experience last October on a 17-day Road Scholar trip to the Balkans visiting five countries by bus.
“It’s an experiment,” I told Art before we left. “Everyone around here does it (meaning our age group) and says they are great.”
“We can try it once…and see how it goes,” Art replied.
We did see much and learned the history of the countries that were formerly Yugoslavia. When it came time to decide how and where to travel this spring, we both said, “let’s not do another group trip for a while.”
When we leave home on Thursday we will rewaken a lifetime of good travel sense to get ourselves first to Paris…easy. Then we find the bus from Charles de Gaulle airport, into the city, check our detailed Paris map to the booked hotel near the Gare Montparnasse for a good night’s rest. We’ll be up the next morning for breakfast and a walk to the Gare Montparnasse. There we find our train to Guingamp which leaves close to noon. Once on board, we shall have to stay alert till we change trains for Paimpol. Getting off in Paimpol there will be a taxi to meet us and take us to Kerbors and our first country hotel.
“We made it,” we will say to one another as we celebrate our arrival in Brittany over a glass of wine. Then we’ll reread the walking notes we have for the next day and the adventure begins.
That is how our walking trips go. For the next six days we will be on our own to wake up, gather our hiking gear and/or pack up so that our suitcase will be transferred to the next hotel. Each day is different. Once on our walk it’s only us with walking notes and a day pack with a picnic and rain gear and extra clothing… or not. It’s always a gamble what to take and whether we’ll be prepared for what we encounter that day along the way.
Navigating the daily hikes you have to stay sharp and alert. My head suddenly fills with French that is familiar but that I hadn’t thought about since my last trip in France. As I walk along I practice phrases in my head of how to ask for things we might need or just to make some friendly comments. I can do that because the French comes back so quickly and my confidence grows each day. I love being out in the world where I can use my dormant language skills. I stay alert to all that is around me thinking of what I must note down in my journal once I’m back at the hotel.
Art likes to carry the walking notes which are protected in a plastic sleeve. He is ahead of me, paying attention and telling me the next landmark we need to be looking for. Then we become a real team. We rely on one another for language, navigating skills, and taking notes of what we want to remember...and, of course, some picture taking. We have done this in Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and France, and loved it.
Once our walk ends on the seventh day in Perros-Guirec, we will catch a train to St. Brieuc and then change trains for Dinan - a medieval village we read about in Rick Steves Brittany guide that is a “must see”. By May 13thwe will be on our way to Paris with one or two train changes along the way before arriving again at the Gare Montparnasse. A taxi will get us to an Airbnb I booked which overlooks the Luxembourg Gardens.
This time Paris will be familiar as we spent 10 days there two years ago. I still have my trusty Metro map which we used daily to get around by subway. What to do in Paris? The city is endlessly wonderful but this time we have already purchased timed tickets to the Louvre. (On our last trip we refused to queue for hours to get in and so we skipped it.) We must have known we’d come back soon.
By the time we board the plane back to the US, my French will be good, and we will have experienced a walk along the Granite Coast of Brittany. As soon as we get home and rest up, we will be booking another walking adventure in England for the fall. I remind myself that it’s easy to lose your sense of adventure in the comfort and routine of home. But, each new experience reminds me that we have always thrived on international travel where we can explore a new part of the world on our own. The difference now is that we don’t take it for granted but are grateful that we are still doing it in our 70’s.
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