It’s been the road trip of a lifetime. We’re talking roughly 5,400 kilometers (that’s about 3,350 miles for all you Americans out there). Which translates into sixty-four total hours of driving. By far the longest road trip I’ve ever done. And probably the longest road trip I will ever do. But I’m not committing to that. You really never know.
I think my body was ready to break down for a bit because I got sick two hours away from getting to Brisbane. I woke up at the campground in Noosa with a sore throat and body aches and things just went down hill from there. We were supposed to spend one more day in Noosa before heading back to Brisbane but I just couldn’t make it. My friend Alex was understanding enough to drive me back to Brisbane that same day.
So what did I learn from this experience? I would say a fair few things.
The first is that you don’t need a car to get to some really cool places. You just need some friends with some cars. It’s not that I’m meeting people and making friends with them just because they have cars. I’m trying to meet people and learn from them. But it’s amazing where you can get to without a car if you’re willing to talk to people and keep your plans open.
Secondly, everything takes longer than you plan on it taking when you’re on a roadtrip. When we decided to go to Cape York we said it would take us a week to get there and back. Maybe a week and a half tops. It took us three weeks. You find beautiful places and you spend a few days. Cars breakdown and you have to repair them in the scorching heat in the middle of a Woolworths car park in a small fishing town. You just lose track of time. Any schedule you have just trash it. You aren’t going to follow it. I promise you.
Third, living out of someones car that isn’t yours is a cause for a lot of frustration. As I’ve gotten older I’ve become more organized (a fact that my sister and my mother would be quite happy with). And when you live out of somebody’s car you can’t exactly tell them to get their act together. It’s amazing where you can go without a car but at the same time you sacrifice a lot. You have to live on someone elses terms. You have to adapt to their level of organization. You have to adapt to their schedule. You have to adapt to them as a person. And sometimes that isn’t very fun.
Four, I learned that I like a little more structure and that I prefer the freedom of traveling by myself. When you’re in a group of 6 (and eventually it got up to 12) it’s difficult to make decisions on what to do and where to go. I will admit at first I was frustrated because I wanted to move a lot faster. And it seemed that everyone else was pleased with moving a lot slower. It’s hard to voice these concerns without seeming like a little bitch.
It can be difficult to manage everyone’s personalities in a large group too. Thankfully we had a good group of guys and girls that were aware enough to keep the energy positive and drama free. We only had one problem and that was resolved eventually. But even so, it can be a bit of work keeping things that way. When you are by yourself or with a small group that drama is not even possible or at least it is less likely to appear. And maintenance of the social environment doesn’t seem like that much of an effort.
It really was the adventure of a lifetime. I never would have imagined making it to where I made it. No shot. And I’m proud of how open minded I was to just jump in the car with a person I met two weeks prior and join in a group of people I didn’t even know.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. I think we got extremely lucky because of the people that were involved. It just takes one person to upset the balance of the group. But I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I understand how lucky we got here.