EXPLORA....and the art of travel
Explora is an enterprise founded to encourage a new attitude towards travel, which widens one's world and deepens understanding about self. This one month adventure shared between father and son was simply a once in a lifetime explora experience.....that will be forever in our memories and hearts.
Each stop in our South American journey was an adventure unto itself. The incredibly wide variety of discovery, climate, geography, vegetation, wildlife, people, customs and food are mindboggling! We will be forever grateful to Jim Adams of Travel Experts in Raleigh and Rebecca Segarra of Ladatco Tours in Miami who partnered with us to plan, arrange and execute a flawless one month adventure. They even ordered perfect weather in each locale! They are consummate professionals in explora and you can bet we will use them again and again in our continuing quest to explore remote parts of the world. Muchas gracias Jim and Rebecca.
In our massive world, explora provides extraordinary opportunities to meet marvelous people and to become fast friends through shared adventures. At the end of our month it is wonderful to be able to put faces, personalities and human spirits with each venue....... our extraordinarily bright guide Ramiro in Cuzco and Machu Picchu; the six members of the Pickunka family from California at Reserva Amazonica; Marcella, our gracious hostess at Explora Lodge in Torres del Paine, Patagonia; our dear Aussie friends Andy and Sheree who we met on the Chile-Argentina lake crossing and with whom we became inseperable in Argentina...skiing together at Catedral in Bariloche and doing the tango and eatting 36 ounce steaks in Buenos Aires; Evelyn Hoter and Marcelo, two of the finest and dearest human beings you can ever know who have truly created in Peuma Hue Estancia a place of dreams, Chris the horse whisperer whose spell over the horses at Peuma Hue was magical; Carlos Barros our 33 year old guide at Iguazu who is mastering English through night classes after leading explorations all day and whose energy, warmth and spirit were enlivening; Evelyn whose love of Rio was transferred to us in six hours; Hugo and Cristobal our Amazon river boat guides whose vast knowledge was shared with 32 guests through their fluency in four languages; and finally our Amazon amours Michelle, Sandro and Patrizia whose infectious good humors and adventuresome spirits were magnetic. Quite simply, we all became afficionados of our new world and of each other! Our lives are richer for taking new paths with each of them.
For both of us discovery took on vast new meanings...........
of the natural beauty around us, of the fragility of the environment, of self, of son, of father, of family lore, of new customs, of vast and subtle differences in the people of South America;
of good fortune and its broad definitions depending on your perspective and circumstances;
of the remote.....and how it reminds us of all that is important and unknown to us in the world, and in ourselves and in those closest to us;
of a new world that is still possible for the discerning traveler in the remote;
of exhuberant places to feel free and take time just to be;
of places with poetic works that mark moments of splendor in the rite of travel;
that adventures and experiences are things in life that have permanence and can never be taken away from you;
that widening understanding is far more important than overburdening the mind with information;
that it is better to travel with an illusion than to arrive;
that exploration is always a simultaneous journey inwards and outwards....it responds to a profound and joyful desire of leisure;
that every day life gives you what you need if you just open you eyes, ears, mind and heart.
Charlie & Clark Witzleben, alias Carlos & Tito
July 19 - August 17, 2006
posted by cwitzleben @ 6:30 AM
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