Disappointments, when the only plan is fun

One big thing I learned from this particular trip was how to deal with disappointments in scheduling, especially when making plans on the fly. For the majority of my vacationing career, my mom planned our vacations down to the hour, it seemed. We'd have a pre-planned driving route, most of our hotel reservations made, and a good sense of the various places and tourist attractions we'd be stopping at along the way.

However.

Backpacking doesn't really work that way. The best plan you can make is to get your air plane ticket, read a bunch of books about the place you'll be visiting, pick someplace to start and have a good attitude. Seriously, I'd been in Australia for about 4 days before I really even knew where Ash and I would be spending most of our time. We did all of our activity arrangements through a place called Budget Oz Travel, one of the maaaaany travel agencies geared towards backpackers, meaning they specialize in getting you the cheapest price for whatever you're wanting to do. These places are also great resources for first-time backpackers, and can let you know when prices for various services are good, average, or really high.

So, for about $900 each, Ash and I got ourselves on-off bus tickets from Sydney to Cairns, 2 nights in hostels, a 3 day, 2 night boat trip on the Whitsundays, and a 3 day, 2 night self-guided 4WD tour of Fraser Island...Not too shabby. We just had to fork in extra money for a few other hostels, food and other funzies along the way. However, when planning with Lauren, our helpful travel agent at Budget Oz, she left us several days at the end of our trip to plan whatever we wanted. She recommended talking to other backpackers and getting some of their recommendations as for what we should do up in Queensland...And she also recommended that we wait to get our airline tickets back to Sydney until just before we left, as ticket prices were sure to go down...

With those last couple of days on our backpacking extravaganza, Ash and I decided to take the overnight bus up to Cairns, rent a car and drive into the Tablelands for 2 nights (which, by the way, no backpackers recommended to us...we just decided to go...), then drive to Port Douglas, be there for the Sunday markets. We'd then catch planes on Sunday night, me to Alice Springs to do a really fast, one day tour of Ulururu, and Ash back home to start her work week. That plan worked until we got into the Tablelands and we decided it would be a good idea to buy our plane tickets (this was Thursday afternoon and we were hoping to fly on Sunday night). Well, the prices fairy was not on our side of the planet that day - all the airline tickets were double what we were expecting, especially for a one-way ticket. We quickly realize that we'd have to cut our trip short by a day, cancel our second night in our ultra-amazing spa hotel and I would definitely not be going out to Ulururu.

Now, I know my own process for dealing with disappointment is to be really, REALLY disappointed for about 30 minutes, and then I'll end up figuring out all these cheesy positives for why it's a good thing I've been disappointed. Ash's way of dealing with disappointment was similar, which was definitely a good thing, and roughly 1.5 hours after figuring out that all our perfectly laid-out plans weren't going to work out, we were happily on our way to plan B...or by that time in the trip, plan D or E.

All in all, I have to say that I actually really enjoy this manner of traveling - it's a lot less hectic time of planning prior to when you leave your home, and you have more of an opportunity to talk to other travelers and get their opinion for where you should go, and where you should avoid. It's honestly more relaxing, I think, because you can discover and explore new things about where you are traveling at a more manageable pace.

However.

I would never, EVER travel this way with kids under the age of 13. Period.

God bless parents who travel with children.