monagustafsonaffinito   CONVERSATIONS

It took two-and-a-half plus days to unscramble the mess I made of my MacBook Air by migrating the huge contents of my Mac Book. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s OK.  Just know that I created a disaster shortly after my return from Australia/New Zealand. which left me without segments of my financial records, and all my travel photos. Well, they were finally recovered, but all of them in quadruplicate, so back to the bright and helpful tech folks. Finally that hazardous project was complete and I had my photos back in appropriate singlets, but all the work I had done organizing and labeling them was lost.

Finally I had two full days after Christmas to reorganize and relabel them. So now I’m ready to share some of my iconic experiences.

Let’s start with the sort-of -negative that ended in a kind-of-positive experience. It was the result of a rare occurrence: Holland America Line goofed up. We had paid for an excursion to learn about the Maori in New Zealand, but were put on the wrong bus. So we spent time riding, and riding, and riding, occasionally stopping for photo ops. And there were some lovely opportunities.

But we kept waiting for the Maori experience, until Doug figured it out, noticing all the folks on the bus carrying cameras with exceedingly long lenses. We were on a bird-watching expedition. Pretty dull compared to what we’d expected, until we arrived at the destination where we had a surprise view of hundreds of Australian Gannets. Not what we would have chosen, but a serendipitously interesting experience.

p.s., Holland America reps met us as we got off the bus, apologizing, and explaining that they had tried to catch up with us to get us to the right bus, but were not successful. And they did reimburse us our payment for the Maori expedition.

Now, two relevant photos.

We should have noticed the side of the bus when we got on. But we were trusting that the driver actually looked at the tickets before welcoming us on. Lesson learned. We’ll be more careful in the future.

And then there was the positive experience. The Australian Gannets.

Australian Gannets

Now that my head is on straight, and my photos in order. I’ll plan to share a few more in the next few days once I re-adapt to the cold and snow of Minnesota after the relative warmth and clear roads & sidewalks of Williamsburg. Ouch!

So, to all of us, I wish a New Year better than we dared hope for.