What the hell is this City girl doing going to the Jungle???
When I was younger I was a dancer. I tried with all my heart to be athletic. But I couldn’t jump very high, so volleyball was out. I didn’t run well, or fast, so soccer, and track events were out. My hand-eye co-ordination was also not stellar, so baseball had me striking out, all day long. The only thing I could do well, was ice skate. And for some reason I was an amazing goaltender. I had done it. I had found my sport, I would play goalie on a hockey team. That was until my mother shared this one important bit of information with me: I WOULD HAVE TO WEAR A JOCK. My brothers, and their friends wore jocks. I was a young lady, I would NOT wear a jock, hockey skates fine, but the jock was out of the question. As was my flash in the pan sports career.
I was very much a girl, from that day on I stuck with the things I knew. Dance.
That was until at eighteen I met a guy, who had grown up on skis. He told me, as did his father; “to be a part of this family you must learn to ski.” So, at the age of twenty, first winter post baby, my father in law, put me on skis for the very first time, and pushed me down a mountain. Well, he didn’t exactly push me, more like snow plowed with me on a bunny hill.
But it felt like a mountain, and he was behind me, and I felt like I was being pushed. I was scared shitless, even though I knew I was in capable, talented, and knowledgeable hands. He had been a ski instructor in Austria for God’s sake. He had taught thousands of people to ski, my husband being one of them, and he was amazing at the sport. With this in my mind I semi-relaxed into it. And I was elated to learn that I could do it! It was the first sport, thanks to years of dancing, that I picked it up quickly, and became super good at it, and fell in love. With the boy, and the sport. A double whammy for me!
Since then, any sort of “adventure trip” I’ve ever taken has been with my adventure leader, Yannick. I’ve not done one single thing that wasn’t in a city, without him. It has now been forty-seven years that I’ve not gone on a solo adventure trip.
NOT A ONE.
Yet, here I sit, all packed up for a trip that I’m taking with my middle daughter, to the jungle…ALL BY OURSELVES.
No Yannick.
No father-in-law.
Just me, Dominique, and all the wild critters they have there. Thanks so much Billy, (my hairdresser) for recommending I google what insects, reptiles et al they have there…in this case, the ignorance is bliss thing would have been a much better way to live.
I have no idea what possessed me to book a trip to a place with cockroaches the size of my head, and boa constrictors…last minute??? Since it was literally a few days ago, there is nothing I can do now, can’t cancel, I’ll lose all my money, to the jungle. So off I go, just my daughter, and me. I even put us in our own bungalows, it’s not like we can snuggle one another when we hear something foreign wandering around our room. Nope Dominique will be in her bungalow, and I will be in mine…and there’s no cell service, so it’s not as though we can text the other to come over, if we get scared. Which is not recommended by them anyway, you’re only supposed to leave your room in the middle of the night for an extreme emergency. Due to all the critters, not all of them friendly, as it turns out that roam the jungle, at night.
Cool.
Awesome.
I’m so excited for my seven day, yoga, juice, detox retreat, now…
What the hell was this city girl thinking booking this sort of retreat?? A few short hours ago, I was buying adorable Gucci Princetown slippers, and tonight I’m packing headlamps, and emergency whistles.
Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…
