Trip of a Lifetime - Conclusion (Part 2 of 2)

 COMPANIONS

The final section of this blog will introduce you to our trip companions. 

When the trip started in Jerusalem there were seven of us, plus our guide. The seven of us were six Americans and an Australian.

Nazeeh, who goes by Naz, was our guide for our week in Israel. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. He speaks four languages fluently. He shifted easily between Hebrew, Arabic, and English. He also leads tours for Indonesians who come to Israel. Naz used to be a teacher, and he loved the teaching part of teaching, but the rest of teaching wasn't his cup of tea. So he went back to school for a masters degree in tour guiding, and started that ten years ago. He started with G Adventures six years ago, and he is very pleased with them as a company. The tourism industry was hit hard, and he wasn't able to lead any tours for two years. Our tour was his first in two years, and he was greeted very enthusiastically by the familiar people on his regular tour stops. He's very friendly, has a warm smile, speaks in a wonderful baritone voice, and is incredibly knowledgable about the area.

Two of our companions were Ken and Chris. Ken is a general practice physician in Australia, where he has spent most of his life. Chris works in Long Island, New York in finance. Ken and Chris met six years ago on a G Adventures tour, and have been touring the world on tours ever since. It seemed like there isn't a place on earth they haven't seen. Ken has been on 30 G Adventures tours, and Chris has been on 25! When I asked if they had ever been to Antarctica, both said yes, and Ken said twice! Ken would always add extra walking to our extensive walking days, and he's always ready for more exploration. Chris is the one who saved me a lot of aggravation by loaning me her SD card reader for my computer, or else I wouldn't have been able to transfer my photos from my camera every day. 

Tim and Julie are also avid travelers. Both are now retired from careers at the University of Kansas and beyond. Tim spent his career as an accounting professor, and Julie was a Psychologist and instructor at KU until she turned to private practice. Tim has a great, dry sense of humor, and he loves puns. They are living in Los Angeles now, when they aren't traveling the world. Their packing game is on point, traveling with nothing more than they need, and they need very little. They are avid hikers, and they walked up the trails that mom and I chose to ascend on horse carriage, donkey, and golf cart. They made really good time! Most of the hikers in our group clocked 24,000 steps up canyon trails, and it wasn't easy walking. Throughout our trip Julie was on the lookout for a tea pot, because their young grandkids love having tea parties. When mom and I walked into a gift shop Julie was already there, and a salesman was pressing her hard to buy an $1800 antique silver tea pot (a little more than the Fisher Price model that works just fine), and she was trying to escape so she tried getting him to sell to us instead, but mom and I were too quick for that, wanting only to buy postcard stamps they didn'thave, and we left her behind as quickly as possible. Sorry, Julie!

Mary Anne, from Dallas, TX, was a solo traveler, as she often is. Like the others in our group, she has also traveled the world, and she is also retired. She spent her career in early childhood education, and she spent seventeen years of that career as the educational director for Barney And Friends! One of her stories about traveling abroad as a main contributor to the Barney show was hilarious. Through her work with the Barney program she had many travel opportunities to help set up Barney in foreign markets. At one stop she was introduced as the creator of Barney, but she was in a foreign country, being introduced in a foreign language she didn't understand, so she had no way of knowing the mistake, after being celebtated by high level dignitaries. Later it came to light, but it was too late to undo the expectations and misunderstanding. Mary Anne is the one who introduced mom and I to the tiny toilet paper roll, a tip I'll travel with for the rest of my life.

The final two travelers in week one were these two:

The woman on the left is Ethel, from Morton Grove, Illinois. She spent her career in Human Resources at a company in Skokie, Illinois. She's a woman of simple needs, a generous spirit, and an outgoing and friendly personality. She can strike up a conversation with ANYONE, learn all about them in a few minutes, and sometimes even gets their address so she can follow up with a greeting card. And boy is she a good sport! She braved 11 hours in an airport in Munich due to a missed connecting flight, she walked for miles and miles on a hip that's causing her quite a lot of aggravation, she washed her clothes several times in several hotel bathroom sinks, she rode to the top of a mountain on a donkey, she endured an email scam that hacked her account and sent a request for money to all of her contacts, she couldn't get money out of the ATMs because she accidentally forgot her debit card, and she almost never complained. She does, however, apologize several dozen times every day, for inconveniences she is in no way responsible for. She's the easiest travel companion I can imagine, and I've been looking forward to this trip with her for over 30 years. Absolutely everything about this trip with her was perfect.

The woman on the right is me! After reading these blog posts you don't need me to elaborate any further on that.

For our second week we crossed the border between Israel and Jordan, meeting up with a new guide, Monteser, and six new tour companions. These six companions were four Brits and two Canucks. We heard that sometimes when a well-established group of tourists meets up with a brand new group of disconnected tourists, it's very hard for the new group to blend with the established group. This wasn't the case at all with the 13 of us. We all blended really well, and I was so pleased with everyone we met in our two groups.

Week two was less about religious sights, and more about adventure and ancient ruins.

Monteser, who offered to let us call him Monty to make things easier, is a life-long Jordanian. He was very kind and knowledgeable, and you can tell he really loves Jordan. When he talked about the special places we visited his face would light up, like a parent's face lights up when they're talking proudly about their child.  He was especially enamored with Wadi Rum, and he says Petra is always fantastic, even though he's been there hundreds and hundreds of times.

The first two travel companions I'll introduce you to are Ron and Joyce, two trauma nurses from Toronto. Ron has spent the past five years putting away 20% of his income, so that he could take off an entire year to travel. This is a program managed by the hospital where they work, and he's going to really do it up. He came to our Jordan tour from his week at the World's Fair in Dubai. Regrettably, Ron's boyfriend couldn't take a year off to travel with him, so Kevin travels the world with Ron as a laminated photo. In the first photo you see happy Ron and Kevin, when they're experiencing wonderful things together. In the second  you see grumpy Ron and Kevin, for times when they miss a flight, encounter rude tourists, or have bad service at a restaurant. 

Traveling with Ron, and often mistaken for his wife, is B. Joyce Palmer. I don't know why we always say her full name, but it's a thing. Joyce is also a trauma nurse, and a Canadian, so she is twice nice. (Ron is a nurse and Canadian, too, but he's more snarky, and far less likely to apologize for things that aren't his fault the way my mom and Joyce do.) See the beer she's holding? She stole it! Okay, actually she went to pay for it and the woman behind the counter said the bill had already been paid, but none of us ever paid for her beer, so she got her beer for free. I'm not sure Joyce will ever sleep again, knowing that she got away with free beer. Joyce looks super sweet, and she is, but she's also hilarious. They spent quite a lot of free time in search of karaoke establishments so Joyce could belt out some tunes to unsuspecting Jordanians. They also spent some time re-enacting a scene from Lawrence of Arabia in the desert where it was filmed. Like the original movie scene, Joyce's scene was epic.

The next couple you'll meet are Barb and Dave, who live in London. Dave spent his career in Human Resources, which made my mother crack up when she found out, but they didn't compare careers after the realization. Dave is a very sweet guy, who made his wife quite proud when he drank two beers very quickly before we headed from the bar to dinner. (He had been nursing them for quite a long time, so it looked like they were going to go to waste, but he made sure that didn't happen. Barb saw his accomplishment and cheered, "Oh, well done, dear!") Barb spent her career in the schools as a guidance counselor and classroom assistant for kids with special needs. She's incredibly kind, and SO friendly. She has survived three different types of cancer, which makes her a medical curiosity without much precedent, and she is determined to live an incredible life. She certainly did that on this trip!

That's Dave and his second happy hour beer. "Well done, Dave!"

Barb experiencing a donkey ride. She didn't love it, but she looked quite natural and quite happy up there!

The final couple are Tim and Jackie, also retired and living in London. Jackie is a retired archaeologist, and Tim will be retired at the end of this month, but I can't remember what he's been doing with his career. I DO know that he's a fanatic for Sheffield Football (soccer, for my American readers), despite what sounds like a long history of disappointment. Mom had mentioned that the Chicago Cubs owners, the Rickets, were poised to buy the Chelsea team. He doesn't know much about the Chicago Cubs, and I didn't bother him with the "Oh, you think YOUR team has a long history of loss!?" conversation. As an interesting aside, while looking up which English soccer team the Rickets were going to buy just now, I saw in the news today it was revealed that the Rickets will not continue their bid to buy the Chelsea Football Club. As it turns out, Joe Rickets (father of the would-be owner) made anti-Muslim comments two years ago, and the Chelsea fans are not okay with that. They've staged protests, so the Rickets family withdrew their bid. Good for you, Chelsea fans! Anyway, that's irrelevant to the conversation because Sheffield isn't Chelsea. So back to Tim and Jackie, who couldn't have been lovelier people or a better couple, and they were celebrating their 25th anniversary during this trip (but I'm not supposed to tell anyone).

Here they are, looking like bedouins.

Here they are looking like a proper British couple.

And this concludes the final post in this "Trip of a Lifetime" series. Thanks for joining us for this incomparable adventure! I hope all of you have an opportunity to have a vacation as incredible as the one we just experienced.