It's always nice to travel to places where you have been before. You may have some nice memories to relive or some places you just GOT to see again because you loved it so much. You know how to get around, what you want to do and maybe even where your favorite restaurant is. There is less hassle and less research. Then, at some point, you get curious.. You start wondering about different foods, cultures, experiences, natural wonders and sights that you haven't experienced before. You want to see something that's different from what you are used to. You want to see the world from another point of view. You want to broaden your horizon.
People are different, so a unique and exotic place for you might not be what I think of when I want to feed my explorer cravings. We all have different ways of viewing things and different reference points such as what continent we live in, what country we grew up in and where we have traveled to before. Someone from the Philippines might think Norway is the most exotic and unusual place in the same way that I think that Samoa is the most different place I have ever been to (so far :) ).
The picture below is from a beach fale at Manase, on Savai'i in Samoa. We took the local bus to get there which naturally didn't have any schedule and dropped of and picked up people as they needed it. We even stopped 1 hr for the bus driver to get lunch. It was about 3 hrs for a 15 minute drive. There was no electricity in the fale (and no wi-fi) and the food we got was either picked from the trees or fished from the ocean (and it was delicious). I didn't appreciate it enough when I was there, but looking back it was an experience I will never forget. We even bonded with one of the girls running the beach fale who was having boy troubles. I find that funny that half way around the world in a place that seems so far away and so different from Norway where the people have a completely different culture and a way of life, we still aren't that different and we still worry about the same type of things - our relationship with other people.
Do you ever get that feeling of extreme desire to go traveling to explore something new and totally different from what you are used to? I sure do. My great great great grandfather on my dad's side went gold digging in Australia (no, not Kanye West type of gold digging - actually searching for gold) and looking for diamonds in Africa, and my great great great great grandfather on my mom's side emigrated to the US. Sometimes I wonder if there is some kind of explorer gene that runs through my veins..
- thefreebohemian