Why you should travel with no expectations
Expectations are a funny thing. If you have high expectations of a place and it doesn’t live up to it, you leave feeling like you’ve been gypped (or at least I do!). If you have low expectations of a place often you’ll leave feeling like it was amazing.
Often though, we find the best expectations to have when you are heading somewhere is none. Don’t expect anything amazing, or anything bad, and you just learn to appreciate what is there when you do arrive. Not expecting anything often makes you appreciate the simpler things in life, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
We’ve had so many experiences where people have raved about a place and we’ve arrived, stayed and left feeling like it was totally overrated, and also the exact opposite too. Ultimately your experience is dependent on so many factors, and relying on what someone else tells you should be taken with a grain of salt, at best.
What affects your experience?
Number of people there
There’s some truly epic camp grounds in Australia, and if you are lucky to get some of them to yourself, you’ll probably have a much better experience than if you arrive to half of the towns population camping out for the weekend.
Of course, there’s good and bad company and you often run into people on the road who are truly amazing and you can have a great time, but for the most part we much prefer being on our own.
We’ve always loved visiting Broome, but last year, when it was one of the busiest on records, I left feeling so deflated. The usual calm, relaxing and enjoyable Broome was flipped on its head and you couldn’t do anything without having thousands of others nearby.
Of course, you can head out to the more remote parts and you get away from the crowds, but I was totally turned off by what we saw in Broome. Next time we’ll just go straight to Pender Bay, or James Price Point.
The weather
If there is one thing that will make or break your stay somewhere, its the weather. Temperature is one thing, but its the wind and rain that will make the biggest difference.
Whilst its nice to have some rain, when you are travelling and it doesn’t stop for 5 days, with howling wind and the sun never showing its face things get old real fast, no matter where you are.
We’ve just recently come back from Horrocks, which is a truly stunning part of WA, but I can tell you during the week that we stayed it was probably one of the most unpleasant places to camp out. We barely had a handful of hours where the wind dropped below 35km/h, and it just howled and howled.
This is particularly the case when you camp on the coast, as the weather is so critical to what you can do, and what you enjoy.
We’ve often got imagines in our heads of places that we’ve seen online, or even been to in the past, and when you arrive to have the entire stay blow its head off, it can be pretty disappointing.
The attitude of staff on any given day
I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to do customer service in any travel related niche, and a huge hats off to those who do it, day in and day out.
I’ve dealt with some pretty average, and downright rude staff in our travels, and it can put you off ever visiting a place again. Those that serve travellers are people too, and have their own lives, and own issues. Whilst its not an excuse, you wouldn’t find me doing customer service, as I simply wouldn’t have the patience or the skills to do it.
Wildlife experiences
There’s something about the amazing wildlife that we have in Australia that always gets us excited. Sarah and I love to look for anything that moves, and we’ve got some pretty beautiful things. On our last trip up north we managed to see a huge Bungarra Lizard in the sun for some time, and we’ve had Donkey’s walk through our camp, whistling kites sit nearby and even seen a few snakes on our travels.
Soak it up, but don’t expect too much
We’ve found the best way to travel is not to expect anything; just roll with the punches, enjoy the freedom and the amazing little things that pop up your way, and deal with anything that doesn’t go your way.
How do you like to travel? Have you learnt to expect nothing, and soak it up as it comes?
