Skipping School With a Purpose
My mother never missed a day of school well into her teens, and later, as a respectable mom herself – as well as a Girl Scout leader and substitute teacher – she certainly never considered taking us kids out of school for travel, no matter how educational it might be. That, she rightly believed, is what school field trips, winter break, and summer are for. I got a lot of my mom’s genes, but I didn’t get that one. So if you’re a teacher, principal or truant officer (do they still have these?) please skip the next paragraph. Because this is a confession.
Sorry/not sorry
As a travel journalist (the best job in the entire world), I had several opportunities to take my school-age kids along. We had rules, of course: no missing important projects, and pre-assigned homework delivered on time and so on. The world became one big geography/ science/ history lesson, with authentic sensory experiences and interactions with people of different cultures that even YouTube can’t deliver. Fast-forward to now, and these two little people have evolved into global citizens with advanced degrees and a respect for the vast world beyond our own.
Pink dolphins
There was that week, deep in the primitive jungles of Venezuela, when Sarah dove into the Rio Orinoco to swim with the pink Amazon dolphins. Our indigenous guide from the Warao Indian tribe took us by canoe to meet the basket and hammock artisans in his stilt house village, where we bonded with some sweet kids and their moms. As an adult, Sarah has felt at home working among remote and primitive tribes of West Africa.
Blue-footed boobies & lava lizards
Christopher, the budding environmental scientist, paid as much attention to naturalists’ lectures as he did to the blue-footed boobies, sea lions, and lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands, where he personally met Lonesome George, the last remaining descendent of Charles Darwin’s Pinta Island tortoises (subspecies Geochelone nigra Abingdon). Lonesome George has since passed away.
Reality check
The thing that National Geographic documentaries and taking your kids to remote destinations have in common is that reality happens. You see and experience stuff they don’t put into the travel brochures. For example, as our charming translator/guide follows Sarah into the river of pink dolphins, he calls to me over his shoulder: “there are piranha in here, but nothing to worry about.” The ocelot kitten he told her was cuddly – well, not so much. And Christopher’s most poignant moment in the Galapagos happened when he lay beside a baby sea lion in a shallow tidal pool as (the naturalist explained) it struggled to survive the realities of natural selection.
Roles are reversed
Chris was devastated when I was unable to take him along on safari at Mala Mala Game Reserve in South Africa where, coincidentally, a National Geographic documentary was being filmed. I promised him that if he graduated from high school with straight A’s I’d take him there. He did, and to my great remorse, I still haven’t fulfilled that promise. Now the roles are reversed. As I write this, Sarah has invited me to camp on a mountaintop with her to watch the once-in-a-lifetime full eclipse of the sun. And as you read this, I’m heading to the primitive South Pacific islands of Vanuatu, where Chris is taking me to stand at the precipice of one of the most spectacular erupting volcanoes on the planet. Watch these pages in November for the full story.