The shadows are deep in our olive grove; a terraced hillside to the front of our expat home in Greece’s Peloponnese. Spring’s knee-high emerald grasses - now toasted brown by the Mediterranean sun — crackle with each footstep. Even the smallest of creatures, insects and geckos, contribute to the early morning concerto as they scurry from the sounds of my approach into the undergrowth. The flutter of birds, startled by my presence, add a bit of tempo as they scatter to distant branches.

The percussion section comes to life when one of the few remaining colorful wooden fishing boats, kaikis, as they are called here, sets forth or returns to one of the two harbors we can see from our home. Each boat’s motor has such a distinct ‘rut-a-tut-tut’ rhythm that we’ve come to know so well we can tell whose boat is passing simply by the notes it plays.

The ocean orchestra expands by midday when the shrill notes of pleasure boat engines announce the arrival of the tourist-operated craft. These are new notes in our summer songbook as it wasn’t that many years ago that a single pleasure craft off our shores was the talk of the village. This summer yachts, sailboats, jet skis, and speed boats have discovered this part of the Messinian Bay

Measured waves against the shore turn the sea’s song into an evening lullaby. Yet, summer nights often come alive when a band sets up on the beach or outside a village cafe. The sound of the powerful loudspeaker-enhanced music rocks through the night, often lasting until it is time for partygoers to return home and prepare to start a new workday.

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Mourning doves, with their acoustically complex ‘coo-OOO-woo-woo-woo’ songs are my favorite vocalists. Their names come from their mournful sound, heard in the early morning and evening. Legend tells us these feathered songsters may be spirits who watch over us. We first heard their mesmerizing song more than a dozen years ago on our first visit to Crete’s southern coast. I still am transported back to that remote, but magical, setting each time I hear them sing.

In recent years the songs of summer in this once rather-undiscovered area known as the Mani, have expanded as more and more sun- and sea-enthusiasts are discovering our many beaches. Their songs are joyous with high alto notes of children’s laughter and shouts, balanced by the low-pitched baritone of adult conversations.

Some of our more recent songs of summer haven’t necessarily been popular tunes. As the demand for tourist accommodations and homes in the area have increased, construction has added percussion section that often plays repetitively and without melody. In an area where the ground is stone and the buildings are made of stone; you’d need to be ‘stone deaf’ (pun intended) to miss these songs. The seemingly endless, tuneless melody produced by churning cement trucks, combines with boulders tumbling from dump trucks, and is often punctuated by a head-rattling crash - think, cymbals - when drills the size of tree trunks tackle stone hillsides.

If a single summer song could be made Greece’s National Anthem, I would nominate the song of the cicada. It starts playing without fanfare about the third week of June. One day you simply realize those minuscule mariachis have struck up their band once again, and the atmosphere seems to sizzle with sound. We know then that summer has officially begun.

A few months later, we wake one day and realize it is quiet outside. The cicadas have silenced their maracas. The rains have returned and soften the toasted grasses. The beaches have emptied. There’s not a pleasure boat to be heard.

It is then, no matter what the calendar may tell us, that we know summer is over.

Its songs have ended.

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The good news - again according to Google - is that I am ‘young old’ as opposed to ‘old, old’ which I will become in a few years, if I am lucky enough to get there.

I kicked off my next trip around the sun last Thursday by sipping a double cappuccino at a beach cafe a short walk from our expat home in Greece. There, at a table and chairs tucked into the shade of an almiriki (tamarisk) tree, we could sink our toes in the sand as if we were children again. Or dare I believe there is such a thing as a second childhood and we’ve reached it?

My travel outfit was an old tank top, raveled cutoffs, and worn-but-comfortable flipflops.

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That evening we dined on hamburgers while listening to easy jazz in a favorite bar of ours in a neighboring village. We sipped chilled Greek white wine, as we discussed the travel and adventures that might be a part of my next journey around the sun.

I mention the mode of dress and settings to dispel those stereotypes of a 73-year-old celebrating a birthday. I can assure you it was not with a shot glass of Metamucil (a fiber supplement) and nodding off in a front porch rocking chair.

I think of birthdays as a good reason to travel or at least to ponder its possibilities. So, for fun I did an internet search of ‘old age travel’ thinking I’d find some great temptations. Instead, I found that unnamed ‘travel experts’ have defined and divided it into three categories:

Beginning with the “Go-Go’ Years, ages 60 -70, as when seniors are healthy, energetic and up (physically and mentally) for bigger trips. The ‘Slow Go’ Years, ages 70 - 80, are defined by fewer and shorter trips, cruises and tours. The ‘No Go’ Years are 80+ when health and financial changes can limit or put an end to travel.

While my husband and I fall into the second age classification, we are actually looking forward to longer, more mentally stimulating, perhaps more physically demanding trips. My future travels list includes glamping in a remote desert camp somewhere in Morocco, Jordan or Oman, cruising Egypt’s Nile and the Mekong in Viet Nam. Joel, a couple years older than me, has cruising and exploring the South Pacific and Asia high on his list. Each will require a bit more stamina but guarantee a bit more stimulation.

We were actually among the younger passengers on our most recent cruise; a journey that spanned both the month of December and the Indian Ocean. Sailing from Cape Town, South Africa to Singapore, we visited some yet-to-be-developed destinations along the way. Excursions came with warnings for personal safety in a few places and possible physical discomfort due to lack of infrastructure in others. But that didn’t deter the majority of us ‘old’ passengers who explored with gusto - among them were five, aged 90 years or older.

One 90-year-old with whom we became friends, told us that he had already booked two more future cruises. He added, ‘Otherwise, we’d just be sitting at home waiting to die! And who wants to do that?’

As I view our world from Seat 73, I find we are luckily surrounded by a number of vibrant seniors who are not dwelling on age (and its potential limitations) as they pursue travel dreams. Two months ago, a 63-year-old expat friend in Greece completed a personal pilgrimage to Nepal where she hiked high into the Himalayan Mountains to attend a spiritual retreat.

A British friend in his late 60’s just hiked Sri Lanka’s famed Pekoe Trail through tea plantations and forests of the central plains of that country, fulfilling a long-time travel dream.

Friends in Washington State, a 70-something couple, have resumed car camping adventures in the Pacific Northwest. After setting up and enjoying their campsites, they sleep at night on a bed made in the back of their SUV.

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Yet the fact remains, that - no matter how comfortable I am in ‘Seat 73’, or how inspired by friends or how raring to go I might be - time is marching on and taking travel opportunities with it. The time to get going is definitely now!

‘Are you old yet?’ asked a friend in a Facebook birthday greeting.

I don’t think so but then maybe French novelist, Jules Renard, said it best:

‘It’s not how old you are. It’s how you are old.’

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Entertainment, viewed in black and white, was broadcast on three networks if you were lucky enough to have a television.

In a high school classroom we were taught how to communicate in written form - beyond printing and cursive writing - by mastering a typewriter keyboard. We painted out errors with a white fluid and changed ribbons when the ink ran out.

As young professionals we were introduced to an array of ‘cutting edge’ communication tools including ‘fax’ machines and shoe box sized mobile phones. We were dragged kicking and screaming across the Digital Divide and ultimately mastered those intimidating office creatures called computers

And you know? I recall getting along just fine without today’s 24/7 internet. We got by without the instabrain called AI, without texting, video calling, and communication tools worn on our wrists or as eye glasses.

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So I’d have never thought back then that we would now be feeling so adrift finding ourselves untethered from technology.

Perhaps it is because it is not by choice, but by circumstances, that we find ourselves floundering in our technology-dependent expat world as result of our Greek wifi and internet provider. . .simply put, not providing.

In our village, news, emergency alerts and municipal announcements are posted on Facebook. Doctors appointments and repairmen are scheduled on WhatsApp. We schedule get-togethers with friends using FB messenger. And on rare occasion we call each other using our mobile phones.

A foreshadowing of unntethering began back in February when we lost wifi and internet for a few hours a day. It wasn’t all that unusual an occurance in this sparcely populated area of the Peloponnese that we call home. We blamed it on the winter storms. When the outages became more frequent, and of longer duration, despite the weather’s improvement, we blamed it on spring’s tourist influx being too much for the network.

Now officially summer and we have no wifi, no internet other than that we can access using our 5G mobile data - with a connection strength ranging from zero- to two- bars -- to keep us minimally tethered to the world as we’ve come to know it.

Our attempts to re-tether would make for reality television comedy.The current provider’s chat help line greeted me warmly in English asked how it could help, read my message, then told me to call back and hung up on me.

So desperate were we at that point we hopped on the Starlink bandwagon after a half dozen friends here sang its praises. Apparently we weren’t the only ones. But Starlink sent the wrong equipment back in April and it had to be returned before I could order new. Starlink then advised buying the equipment locally. Although the order was placed more than a month ago, the retailer, a large technology company with outlets throughout Greece, reports its Starlink orders are so backlogged they can’t even guesstimate when it might arrive.

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Our area’s two tech professionals who do the antenna and router installation are also backlogged. One, though, has said he will come as soon as he can and will try to resusitate the system we have and keep it on life support until new systems arrive. We’ve quit asking ‘when?’

So we drift. We haul our weighty decade-old laptop to a taverna every so often and use their internet to get necessary business transactions and communication out of the way. Writing lengthy, newsy emails to friends has been severely curtailed. Internet surfing has ceased to be a pasttime. My writing, like this piece, is done on my mobile using my index finger.

On the flip side, I’ve read more books, paperbacks to be sure, in the last couple months than I have in times when internet was available. And I’ve quit watching mind-numbing movies on You Tube.

We wrote a few close family and friends in the States back in early May telling them we might be hard to reach without wifi calling. One friend and one family member haven’t yet read that message which makes me wonder if staying tethered might not be as important as I had believed it to be

Perhaps untethering isn’t so bad. Nor is being adrift.

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Finifugal is a new word to me this spring despite it being an old one in the lexicon world. It describes someone who is averse to endings, one who doesn’t like their finality. Trying it on for size, I found it fit me perfectly. With roots in Latin, it basically means ‘fleeing from the end’.

So here I am a travel enthusiast with a lengthy list of places I’d like to see before my travel days are behind me. But I really hate the finality of leaving places that have wrapped me in their magic during a short visit.

It makes for a conflicted traveler. I want to go but I want to stay.

Experts say that it is a perfectly normal human response, this desire to prolong experiences that bring us joy. And travel certainly brings me joy.

As a younger traveler the partings with places didn’t seem so final, so permanent. ‘We’ll come back one day!’ one or the other of us would declare, softening the departure with a promise of return.

Nowadays, the realities of our advancing ages, and the uncertainties of the geopolitical world have made us realize that ‘returning one day’ could be nothing more than wishful thinking. It has made us savor the moments of our journeys with a new intensity, a hint of finality in each experience.

Admittedly, not every trip has brought out the finifugal in me. We’ve been to a number of places that are likely ‘one and done’ - glad we went and glad to move on.

But the ‘finifugal places’ far outnumber them. They are the ones where I my heart constricts as the train glides out of the station, or as the taxi pulls away from the hotel.

There is no set pattern to what evokes such a finifugal response to a place. Maybe it is the setting or the people with whom we’ve interacted. It might be something as simple as a bakery where we’ve breakfasted, a bookstore that has tempted with a dozen or more titles, or a corner bar Happy Hour.

Maybe it is because we arrived without expectations and were simply gobsmacked by the richness of the experience.

While you may not be a traveler who is prone to such a response to the end of your journeys, I suspect you’ve experienced finifugal. It may have hit when reading that book you didn’t want to end or lingering over a meal that left your taste buds tingling.

Maybe it struck you during a visit with special people in your life. Or on an ordinary day that was so pleasant that you wished it could have lasted forever.

Finifugal. It’s a good word. One of my favorite aversions.

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It was a weekday morning and the Peloponnese seaport city of Kalamata was coming to life as those of us in the sidewalk cafe sipped our preferred variations of morning coffee.

I was alone, sipping my cappucino, eavesdropping without guilt on the conversation of these obviously long-time friends. Guiltfree because even with two years of Duolingo under my belt, I understood only a word or two of their rapid-fire chatter. It was their banter and comraderie that drew me in and held me, not their tales.

I finished my coffee. I had errands to do.

Yet, I lingered. . .

Staying just a wee bit longer wasn’t going to make a difference in accomplishing the tasks I’d assigned myself. One thing Greek life has taught us is that ‘to do’ lists aren’t quickly shortened no matter how seriously they are addressed.

Greek life has also encouraged us to let life linger, just as I was doing. Lingering just long enough to enjoy the moment; capturing those experiences, conversations, people and places that otherwise could so easily could slip past us without notice.

We began our expat adventure a decade ago by soaking up such moments. Yet, almost imperceptably as the years have passed, the newness of this adopted world and the moments it offers have been replaced by the routines and responsibilities of everyday living.

So now, just like a Google map, we are ‘recentering’ ourselves from focusing on reaching the end of the to do list and instead we are lingering as we make our way through it.

For us it is a matter of recapturing the extraordinary moments found in the most ordinary of days. Yet countless studies and related articles assure us that there are mental and physical health benefts to lingering as well.

Among the benefits of moving from constant urgency (getting the ‘to do’ list done) to mindful presence (lingering), include lowering stress and anxiety and therefore cortisol levels. Regular periods of slowness can help lower blood pressure and resting heart rate.

What we are realizing is that lingering is simply flat out enjoyable! And by lingering just a bit longer at some random point in time each day, we haven’t in the least compromised accomplishing required tasks.

Our lingering has allowed basking in morning sunlight as it comes over the hill, watching it highlight newly forming olives. We’ve paused to follow the movements of a dragonfly on a Queen Anne’s lace bloom.

We’ve stopped and watched a shephard dog leading its flock through a nearby village. We’ve extended work time in the garden and grove to include some ‘sitting time’ to enjoy our efforts.

Basically, by letting life linger, it seems much like we are slow traveling through expat life. We’re making memories out of moments that might otherwise have escaped us had we not allowed ourselves to linger just a wee bit longer.

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We had a wild and crazy moment during our trip to France nearly two decades ago - we splurged on drinks in the Negresco Hotel’s iconic lobby bar. It must have cost $10 or $12 a glass back then. At the time, that was simply outrageous!

It was certainly a cheaper way to get a look inside Nice’s legendary waterfront hotel than booking a room. But neither of us forgot that brief foray into opulence; the one during which we vowed that ‘someday’ we would stay there.

Last month we made good on that promised indulgence. We spent three sumptuous nights there as part of our rail trip through the Riviera. And I can unabashedly say it was even better than we had envisioned it that long-ago night in the bar.

‘No need to rush, we’ve got all the time in the world’, was our somewhat flippant youthful attitude toward that ‘someday’ travel list back then.

Nowadays when talking about future travel we ask: ‘If Not Now, When?’

The decades between our drink and our stay have passed with lightning speed. We’ve become septuagenarians in what seems a blink of an eye. Our ‘future travels’ timeline isn’t as infinite sounding as it once was. It is time we make good on those ‘someday’ promises to ourselves: a few more trips, longer cruises, stretching our comfort zones a bit further and indulging in a bit more luxury. Guilt free.

Yet, we’ve still pause and consider the ‘cost vs. the experience’ before selecting an indulgence like flying business class vs. economy or staying in a 5-star hotel vs. a 3-star.

We can thank credit cards with perks designed for travelers for easing us into a different travel mindset. By using the credit card on everyday expenses (and paying it off monthly) we accrue enough points and/or airmiles to book more indulgent travel experiences.

Maybe, however, seeking more luxury and comfort — a more comfortable bed, a bigger room, a lay flat airline seat — as 70-something travelers, isn’t so much an indulgence as an accommodation. It is a response to those subtle messages from our bodies — creaks and groans when standing up after a long flight or a night spent on a hard mattress, for example — reminding us that while our travel spirit is still strong our stamina isn’t what it used to be.

Racking up five miles a day on the pedometer by exploring a new destination is reason for us to celebrate these days. There was a time, however, that was barely our half-way mark for a day’s outing. Nowadays instead of scoring steps, we look forward to lazing away an afternoon in our hotel room, perhaps reading a new book, napping, or simply soaking up the ambiance of the place. We think of the experience as being somewhat indulgent, although our younger traveler selves would have rolled our eyes at the thought.

If Not Now, When?

We can thank Hillel the Elder, a sage and a scholar whose life spanned the end of the first century BCE and the start of the new century BC for coining the maxim that has become a mantra around our house: ‘If not now, when?’

Hillel provided the mantra, but it was Dan Haylett, a writer and retirement coach, that gave further credence to our new way of thinking about travel indulgences. In his recent Substack article, ‘Your 12 Good Years’ Haylett doesn’t focus on life span statistics but on the number of good years one might have left and ways to spend them. Citing data from the Office for National Statistics, he says that the average healthy, active 60-year-old has 12-15 good years ahead of them before their mobility, energy, and independence start to decline.

He encourages retirees to live intentionally while they are still physically and mentally able whether it be traveling or trying out a new adventure. He points out that a dollar spent at age 65 for memories made is worth more than it is at 85 when you could be too frail to use it.

That works for us! We are well into that dozen or so good years. It is certainly time to allow ourselves a few travel indulgences while we are still able to enjoy (and remember) them! It is okay, maybe even prudent, to quit waiting for ‘the right time’ in some not-guaranteed-future.

To access our room (which we’d booked on hotel points) at the Negresco, we walked past that charming Bar 1913, where the seed for our stay was planted so long ago. Wine is now priced at 20 - 22 euros a glass. That price, however, was more indulgence than we could enjoy. We happily sipped French wine at a nearby neighborhood bar for the Happy Hour price of four euros a glass.

And while sipping that wine, we again vowed we’d be back one day, ‘soon’.

After all, ‘If not now, when?’

In fact, they didn’t come close.

In its heyday — those years before World War II — the legendary Le Tren Bleu, the Blue Train, would start in Calais, on the English Channel and make its way south to the French Riviera. Its well-to-do passengers slept in luxurious dark blue, gold trimmed sleeper cars and dined on five-course haute cuisine served in its dining car. The manifest in those gilded days often included the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Coco Chanel, Winston Churchill, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Somerset Maugham.

In contrast, the regional trains on which we traveled from Genoa, Italy to Nice France, were not chic. But then, they aren’t designed for luxe or long-distance travel. These trains are work horses, arriving and departing frequently, transporting commuters between home and work and tourists, like us, to and from one sun-drenched city to another. Frequently seats were not assigned, tickets were not checked (nor did we need to validate them), none had dining cars, nor wifi.

While it wasn’t haute travel, you couldn’t beat the ticket prices. Our trip from Monte Carlo to Nice at 5.90 euro ($6.70US) each was a virtual scenic tour along the villa-studded coastline overlooking the Ligurian Sea. A taxi between the two cities would have been 90 euros. We found that while train tickets were inexpensive, the taxi fares to and from stations and hotels reduced the cost savings. We paid 20 euros ($22.83US) taxi fare to the Monte Carlo station and 25 euros ($28.54US) to the hotel from the Nice station.

The Realities of Train Travel

Nothing activates our travel itch, though, like standing on the platform — binario in Italian and le quai, in French — awaiting the arrival of the train that will carry us to a new, or some old-favorite destination. There’s a nervous excitement as we double check our tickets to make sure the train number matches the number on the signs announcing the departing train.

We quickly were reminded that it was not only important to be on the correct platform, but to be in the right place on the platform as well because you have no idea where the train will actually stop. We’d arrived early at the Monte Carlo train station, but our Nice-bound train zipped past us, coming to a stop some distance away. Enough distance that we jogged to reach it before its minutes-long stop ended.

There is a definite sense of accomplishment to not only finding the right train and getting on it, but in purchasing a ticket, as well. Many of the stations from which we traveled had self-service ticket machines. We found the ones in France particularly challenging as, if they worked — and many didn’t — there was no option to switch to an English language screen.

The tiny train stop from which we departed Menton, the French town famous for its Fete du Citron, had a two-tracks, one eastbound and one westbound. It looked so simple, but this tiny whistle-stop provided the setting for a madcap ticket-buying adventure that could have been a comedy skit had it not upended our patience.

The human-staffed ticket counter was closed. “Monte Carlo?” we asked a uniformed station employee as made our way to the self-service machine. Shaking his head, he pointed to the machine on the other side of the tracks. Following the aim of his finger, we hauled our suitcases and backpacks down a flight of stairs, under the train tracks and up another flight of stairs to reach the correct machine and tracks.

But. . .that machine wasn’t working. Another employee, frustrated with his attempts to reset it, was actually taking it apart. After several minutes he sent us back to the first ticket machine. This time Joel stayed with the bags, I raced down the flight of stairs, under the tracks and up the first flight of stairs. . .

Back at that first machine a kind French lady helped me navigate the several screens that led to the promised tickets and payment. After my credit card didn’t work, the machine spewed back the cash payment I’d made and no tickets were issued.

Ah, bon?! Really?!

The Kind Lady shrugged her shoulders and pointed to the machine across the tracks from where I’d come. This one didn’t work. That one was being torn apart. But down that flight of stairs I raced, under the tracks and back up the second flight of stairs. . .again. Joel watched the bags, my race between platforms and the tracks for signs of an approaching train.

By now two things had happened: first, we’d missed the train we’d planned to be on. Thankfully regional trains are frequent. And that first employee we’d encountered was now stationed at the disemboweled ticket machine with a mobile device in hand and a ticket-producing contraption belted to him. “Your train is in three minutes,” he said, as he started tapping on his mobile.

As the next train was coming to a stop, he ripped two tickets from somewhere near his waistline. With them in hand, we dashed for the nearest car.

The Riviera by Rail

We’d flown to Milan’s Malpensa airport from Athens, and returned to Greece from Nice, France. Our ground travel was by rail. Upon arrival in Italy, we’d taken the hour-long Malpensa Express train that links the airport to Milan’s Centrale station. There we boarded a train to Genoa.

From Genoa we traveled to Ventimiglia, Italy near the Italian/France border where we changed trains for the final short journey to Menton, France. Italian police boarded the train here and did a random check of documents - we were among those whose identification was checked. Our tickets weren’t.

Another regional train took us from Menton to Monte Carlo and another to Nice. Admittedly, our nine-day adventure was a taster-sized sample of the Riviera, but it was a good introduction to navigating train travel in that region.

‘Riviera’ literally means coastline in Italian with the Cote d’Azur being used to describe the French Riviera. While the region has no defined borders, it is generally thought of as stretching from Cannes, France to La Spezia, Italy.

Back in the late 18th century the French Riviera was a popular destination for the British upper class seeking restorative health getaways. But the railway is credited with transforming it into the posh vacation destination that it remains as today.

Our travel by train wasn’t as romantic as it sounded when we were planning the trip. We had many flights of stairs and long platforms to navigate. It was doable with carryon-sized suitcases and small backpacks. Thankfully we are still able to carry, hoist, drag and lift suitcases and jog as needed. As noted above, automated ticket machines were far more frustrating than we’d anticipated, made more so by malfunctions and lack of support staff.

But you know what? We’d do it again in a minute. And we probably will.

Sometimes the romance simply outweighs the reality!

A few blocks in the opposite direction one can visit Christopher Columbus’s house. Well, technically it is the 18th century rebuild where his home stood. He played as a child on the ground we now trod as tourists.

Paganini, born in 1782, came along a few centuries after Columbus’s birth in 1451. Both are famous sons of this port city on the Ligurian Sea.

The city - Genoa, in English, and Genova in Italian - was a vibrant, powerful maritime republic from the 11th century until 1727. Even though 16,000 of its buildings were completely destroyed or severely damaged in World War II bombings, there remain magnificent structures throughout the city that have withstood the centuries. Each seems to have a story to tell.

Take our hotel, for example:

If only the walls could talk, we say, as we make our way to our room at the Bristol Palace. This 1905 art nouveau hotel welcomed the rich and famous as guests before being taken over by Nazi troops to serve as their command post during World War II.

Among the famous pre- and post-war guests was Alfred Hitchcock who stayed twice while filming movies here. It is believed that the hotel’s magnificent marble elliptical stairway was the inspiration for his film, ‘Vertigo’.

Had we not taken this trip to Genoa, Italy, I can say with certainty, that I wouldn’t have researched Paganini’s contributions to the musical world, nor to the bombing of this city during WWII.

But travel has opened our eyes to so many places in the world that are just a bit off the mainstream tourist map yet they are teeming with history. I find that we are enjoying places like Genoa with its historical gems even more than the overtouristed destinations like Rome and Venice.

One of our favorite glimpses into history was at its Mercato Orientale. It was named for being near the city’s eastern gate, porta orientale. Operating in the same city center location as when it opened more than a century ago, it continues to offer residents a selection of fish, meat, produce and fruit.

Our stay in Genoa is part of a trip we are making along the Ligurian Sea. Traveling by train, we’ll be visiting Menton, France, Monte Carlo, Monaco, and Nice, France before flying back to Greece and our expat home there.

One of the reasons we moved to Europe was to learn more about its countries and their histories through travel.

I don’t think I realized at the time how addictive that can be. The more we learn, the more we want to know; the more we explore, the more we want to go.

To be honest, the older we get, the easier it is to pootle when we set out to explore a travel destination. Those younger and those more hellbent on seeing everything, might describe us as dawdling (being slow and wasting time) but I beg to differ.

We think pootling is just another form of slow travel, visiting fewer places, making deeper connections with the people, and doing it at your own leisurely pace.

While it may sound lackadaisical to those who need travel timelines and check lists, we find it both invigorating and stimulating. It reinforces our independence as we aren’t relying on tours and guides to determine what we are able to do, and what we should see. There really is a sense of freedom in setting off on your own. And it certainly helps keep the mind active, for as freeing as it is to set off without real purpose, you still must be able to find your way back to your accommodation!

As we sailed across the Indian Ocean in December - from Cape Town, South Africa to Singapore -- the heat and humidity in several ports of call encouraged pootling. One could work up a sweat just waiting for a shuttle bus to take us from the ship to the port’s entry to set off on our explorations.

The downside to pootling is that you most likely will miss the tourist sites. On the plus side are all the real sights you will see along your uncharted route. Such was our experience in Male, the capital of the Maldives.

The Maldives, an island nation made up of 26 atolls about 400 kilometers southwest of India, is famous for its pristine beaches, coral reefs and clear water. Many of our fellow passengers couldn’t resist the temptation to join beach escapades to such postcard perfect spots as Dhonveli, and Adaaran Vadoo.

What called out to us were the bustling streets of Male, the political, cultural and economic hub of the nation. We wanted to see everyday life.

Setting off early to beat the heat - and before the tourism folks arrived with maps - primed us for pootling. Our mobile phones didn’t work on shore so there was no sneaking a peak at GPS or mobile maps either. (I should note that we do research our destinations prior to setting out - we never set off without some basic knowledge of the places where we choose to pootle.)

And not all of our cruise ports of call allowed for pootling. We had far too many safety warnings before arriving in Durban, South Africa to have ventured off on our own. In Columbo, Sri Lanka, we did set off but quickly found it was impossible to walk a block without someone approaching us, introducing themselves as a banker, a real estate agent, or other professional title who offered to show us their city so that we wouldn’t be bothered by tourist touts.

In Male we logged several tourist-tout-free miles rambling through the city past schools, shops, restaurants, garages and grocery stores. We inched along narrow sidewalks that fronted clothing and hardware stores, we stepped around the customers waiting at fast food windows, and we shopped in a small basement level grocery store. There wasn’t a tourist shop to be found. It was our favorite kind of tour!

When you have no particular sight in mind, everything becomes something to see. Such as the two signs, pictured above and below, that caught our attention and imaginations.

Those who know me in our Greek village as the crazy cat woman who carries cat food in her purse to feed hungry street cats, can probably imagine how I reacted to this sign. I immediately assumed it was against feeding street cats. I’ve learned since our visit that last year the city had a campaign against abusing street cats, so perhaps this meant not to poison them.

The sidewalks widened as we returned to the sea and walked along parks with sandy beaches.

Sidewalks disappeared as we arrived at the commercial waterfront, home to stunning produce and fish markets. We made our way beside and between parked trucks, and cars, stepping around and over piles of produce to watch the loading and unloading of products.

The tender taking us back to the ship was full of happy cruisers. Some had sunbathed on spectacular beaches. Others had taken bus tours. And at least two of us had been perfecting our travel pootling.

Thanks for joining us on our Male pootle. And welcome to all our new subscribers!!

Deplaning at the modest mid-20th century Cape Town airport, after two flights and 14 hours, we were ready for the new travel adventures ahead.

The arrival corridors were papered with banners welcoming participants to the G20 Conference that had just concluded here in South Africa’s second largest city. A ceiling to floor mural of a smiling South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, beamed at us as we entered the Immigration area.

The enthusiastic welcome messages left me a bit unsettled having just read that the U.S. boycotted that gathering and that the US president had not invited South Africa’s participation in next year’s summit to be held in Florida.

My adventure enthusiasm went further into a stall as we approached the Immigration officer; a man so large that he seemed to fill the booth in which he was stationed. He didn’t have that welcoming smile like the president pictured on the banner. Matter of fact, he had no smile at all as he watched us approach with our American passports in hand.

He held us in that emotionless stare as he methodically reached for a bottle of water and chugged a few swallows. Then he took Joel’s passport.

‘What brings you here?’ he asked in that no-nonsense tone used by immigration officers world-wide. ‘How long are you staying?’

Joel answered that he was catching a cruise ship, staying two nights. The officer flipped the pages, stamped the passport and Joel stepped out of sight around the booth.

The officer then turned his no-nonsense stare on me and began flipping the pages of my passport. And I, the self-proclaimed savvy traveler, blurted, ‘Me, too!’ before he could open his mouth. He just looked at me - one of those moment-too-long stares that could have gone either way — and then a big smile crinkled his face, he started laughing and said,

‘That’s okay, mama, we won’t leave you behind!’

My passport was stamped, and we were on our way. . .or so we thought.

Exiting the terminal where the directional signs said, ‘Transportation’ we were a bit taken back to find there was no taxi queue. In fact, there wasn’t a taxi to be seen. We walked further from the terminal and still there were no taxis. Just as we’d decided to go back inside, buy a SIM card and call the hotel for an airport transfer, from across the drive a man approached us.

‘Heading to town? I can take you,’ he announced, reaching for the two large bags we had with us and starting towards his van. And as every traveler knows, sometimes there are moments you just don’t question. Off we went.

We learned during our ride, that our driver’s name was Mark. He and his brother operate two van-sized taxis. They are also tour guides. We got a sample of his tour on our way to the hotel as he pointed out the hospital where Dr. Christian Bernard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. That was after we’d passed the Khayelitsha, settlement opened in 1983 to house 1,500 resettled Western Cape residents in four villages. Now the community of corrugated metal homes (the size of storage sheds in our world) stretched as far as we could see across the landscape. It is home to 2.4 million in 22 separate settlements.

As we drove along Nelson Mandela Boulevard, Mark pointed out that sections of the downtown area were closed to vehicles because the city was turning on its Christmas lights that night and the streets would be filled with people. Yet, he got us to the hotel in record time for far less than the hotel shuttle would have charged.

As we said goodbye, he leaned over to me, and with a big toothless grin he, asked, ‘Mama, is everybody in Greece as tiny as you?’ His smile was beautiful, but four upper front teeth were missing.

We were to be called ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ several times during our stay in Cape Town. (‘This way papa,’ the waiter would say as he led us to the table.) We’ve learned that both words are used with respect and endearment when addressing elders, particularly in the Zulu culture.

We had insight into Mark’s missing teeth while attending one of the cruise ship lectures on South Africa. That was when we learned of the ‘Passion Gap or the Cape Flats Smile’ a South African body modification trend. Young men remove their upper front teeth as a fashion, status, or identity statement. It is a significant cultural marker in the Cape Coloured community.

‘Coloured’ is a recognized - non-derogatory - classification of ethnicity in South Africa and refers to mixed racial ancestry. The classification emerged during the colonial period involving Khoisan, African and European linage.

I’ve labeled our cruise ‘a voyage of discovery’ as it took us outside our norms and several times outside our comfort zones. Our time in Cape Town certainly did. I know our cultural upbringing will never allow us to easily use the word, coloured, and we’ll never understand why anyone would want to remove their front teeth.

But we’ll always smile at the memory of that time we became a mama and a papa in South Africa.

Some 6,336 nautical miles and three weeks from Cape Town, South Africa from where we departed, we’re nearing Singapore where our cruise ends.

And Christmas has arrived. Actually, since not long after we boarded, our floating home has been decked out for the season. Far more elaborate than anything I put up at home, I am thinking this might be a new ‘no muss, no fuss’ way ‘to do’ the season.

Yesterday was spent in Phuket, Thailand. We hired a taxi and headed to an area called, ‘the old town’. The first time we visited, now, some forty years ago - also at Christmastime - the ‘old town’ was ‘the town’.

That long ago Christmas Eve we dined on Yorkshire pudding and roast beef. Later that night a young, thin Thai fellow, dressed in a Santa suit, sporting a lopsided cotton beard, handed out candy canes with an enthusiastic, ‘Ho, Ho, Ho! And that was about it for Christmas. This visit there were signs of the holidays everywhere.

Back then we rode tuk-tuks, those sputtering three-wheeled, open-air vehicles that whisked us in and out of traffic on two-laned roads.

This visit we rode in an air-conditioned SUV taxi with video monitors keeping track of the congested roads, now four-lanes. When we talked about our first visit, our young driver, Sin, pointed out, ‘I not even here, when you come last time!’ And he explained tuk tuks are no longer allowed on most roads nowadays.

As we set sail for Malaysia, we realized the new Phuket cruise port on Cape Panwa, isn’t far from the resort where we stayed on that long ago trip. We were delighted to see the Cape Panwa House, where we’d eaten several dinners still on the beach overlookng the sea.

Today on a solo whirlwind tour of Penang, Malaysia, we stopped for morning cappucinos at the iconic, Eastern and Oriental Hotel. This grand dame of hospitality has been welcoming guests for 140 years. She was barely 100, the last time walked through her front doors.

While chatting with a clerk in the hotel gift shop, about the cruise and how much we enjoyed the city, Joel added that we’d last visited 40 years ago.

‘Forty years!’ she exclaimed, ‘Why you wait so long to come back?’

It was an excellent question and one we’d been asking ourselves all morning.

As we left, I called out, ‘See you next winter!’

And you know? She just might ~ we certainly can’t wait another 40 years!

It is as if we are sailing through time.

I didn’t appreciate this ocean and all the countries to which it is a gateway before this ‘voyage of discovery’ as I am now calling our cruise. We will have moved forward six time zones when our journey is done and will have barely touched upon all the diverse worlds it connects.

The Indian Ocean is the third largest in the world at 26,469,900 square miles. It’s waters include the Andaman, Arabian Flores, Java and Red Seas as well as the Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Mozambique Channel, Persian Gulf and the Great Australian Bight.

Since leaving Cape Town 14 days ago, we’ve traveled just under 5,000 nautical miles. The distances between ports of call are significant; something difficult to imagine until you’ve spent multiple days at sea. It is taking four days simply to get from our last stop Mauritius to the Maldives (our next stop).

At noon each sea day the captain’s announcement includes the location of the nearest land, sometimes hundreds of nautical miles away other times surprisingly close. Invariably it is some island we’ve never heard of and are not able to spot with the naked eye.

Unlike the early day explorers who were at the mercy of the winds and waves, our ship can travel up to 18 knots, propelled by two diesel electric motors and four Warsilla engines. It is guided by radar and everyone on board who chooses to be in touch with the rest of the world can do so thanks to Starlink.

Ship crew members makes sure that our travel days, called sea days, are filled with enrichment and learning, health improvement, and exercise opportunities. Evenings are filled with social gatherings and enterinment. However it is easy to spend hours doing nothing more than savoring the sea on which we are traveling.

When sailing through time, as we are, the journey is as amazing as the destination.

It is as if we are sailing through time.

I didn’t appreciate this ocean and all the countries to which it is a gateway before this ‘voyage of discovery’ as I am now calling our cruise. We will have moved forward six time zones when our journey is done and will have barely touched upon all the diverse worlds it connects.

The Indian Ocean is the third largest in the world at 26,469,900 square miles. It’s waters include the Andaman, Arabian Flores, Java and Red Seas as well as the Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Mozambique Channel, Persian Gulf and the Great Australian Bight.

Since leaving Cape Town 14 days ago, we’ve traveled just under 5,000 nautical miles. The distances between ports of call are significant; something difficult to imagine until you’ve spent multiple days at sea. It is taking four days simply to get from our last stop Mauritius to the Maldives (our next stop).

At noon each sea day the captain’s announcement includes the location of the nearest land, sometimes hundreds of nautical miles away other times surprisingly close. Invariably it is some island we’ve never heard of and are not able to spot with the naked eye.

Unlike the early day explorers who were at the mercy of the winds and waves, our ship can travel up to 18 knots, propelled by two diesel electric motors and four Warsilla engines. It is guided by radar and everyone on board who chooses to be in touch with the rest of the world can do so thanks to Starlink.

Ship crew members makes sure that our travel days, called sea days, are filled with enrichment and learning, health improvement, and exercise opportunities. Evenings are filled with social gatherings and enterinment. However it is easy to spend hours doing nothing more than savoring the sea on which we are traveling.

When sailing through time, as we are, the journey is as amazing as the destination.

The sea now caressing our floating home is nothing like the one that bounced us out of Cape Town’s harbor and a few hours later, around the Cape of Good Hope. We clearly understood why early day explorer Bartolomeu Diaz in 1488 named it the Cape of Storms.

Rogue waves, ocean currents and violent storms over the centuries have sent more than 3,000 ships to the bottom of the sea off the coast of South Africa. The way our 30,000 ton ship was bounced about, one couldn’t but help reflect on those brave souls who traveled this trecherous stretch of sea aboard tiny wooden sailing ships; once the only route linking the east and west in this part of the world.

We’ve not explored this part of the Southern Hemisphere before. Admittedly, one can’t claim to be exploring when aboard a cruise ship that provides an appetizer-sized taste of a country, but it is serving as a realtime introduction to cultures and places vastly different from those with which we are familiar.

Our ports of call are separated by such expansive distances that we are spending several days at sea to travel between them. These sea days provide a time to process all that we’ve seen along the way.

The sea days are also giving me time to explore this new writing platform, Substack. And a chance to practice writing on a mobile device (I miss my keyboard, truth be told). But this, like the cruise, is taking me out of my comfort zone.

And that is a good thing.

Most notably the silver-hued olive groves amongst which we live in rural Greece.

The shimmering silver announces autumn’s arrival as well as that of the much-needed rainfall it brings with it. Greece, known for its gorgeous Mediterranean sun, has in recent years experienced unusually long, hot, dry summers in which that gorgeous sun has dried the earth and withered all things growing in it. Olives, shriveled from the harsh summer weather, experience a rebirth when the autumn winds blow in rainstorms. The fruit begins to plump as the trees’ dark green leaves flip themselves over, their undersides catching raindrops and revealing a distinct silver hue.

Autumn’s silver season is often reflected in both the sea and sky as well as the acres of olive groves.

The rain-plumped Koroneiki olives - the best for oil — are beaten, shaken and raked from the branches by harvesters. While hand-held tools have become mechanized the harvest techniques remain labor intensive, varying little from that done in decades past.

Local olive presses running late into the night are churning out the rich, emerald-colored oil, for which our area, Kalamata, is famous.

A decade ago, when we purchased our home on a hillside in Greece’s rural Peloponnese, we became olive growers. The Stone House on the Hill, as our home is called, was built on a 17-tree olive grove. What we knew about olive cultivation at the time could have fit into one of those raindrops pictured above.

We know a lot more than we did but still consider ourselves novices. For that reason, we hire those who are skilled in the pruning and harvest to direct us and those of our friends who volunteer to help with the autumn harvest.

Harvest in our area, which is known as the Mani, in the southwestern Peloponnese, begins in mid- to late- October. As olives ripen at higher elevations, the harvest operations move to higher groves that seem to hang from the hillsides of the Taygetos Mountain range. By late December, sometimes early January, harvests are completed for another year.

We’ve come to think of the olive groves as announcing the seasonal changes in our adopted world. Winter’s groves are stark - the trees pruned back to skeletons as part of the harvest process. Spring wildflowers appear in February carpeting the groves with a patchwork of primary colors, yellow, red, purple, blue and white. By the end of June cicadas fill the groves with what I call their symphonic song of summer. Blooms have withered; groves have been trimmed to prevent fire danger leaving the earthtones of barren soil and rocky terrain.

When we began our expat adventure it was because we wanted to experience the Mediterranean lifestyle. Visiting Greece for a matter of weeks simply didn’t seem enough. We wanted to spend a season, perhaps many seasons.

Amazingly the seasons have slipped past with what feels like increasing speed with each passing year. We’ve had a base in Greece for nearly a dozen years now!

Olive harvest and other expat experiences have been topics on our blog, TravelnWrite, ever since we embarked on this adventure. Many of our readers have asked for more tales. There are certainly many to tell, but we don’t want to wear out our welcome in the inboxes of our subscribers. So, I’ve hopped on the Substack bandwagon and will be writing stories here that differ from those on the blog.

Just like TravelnWrite, access to my articles on Substack is free of charge and so are the so called ‘subscriptions’ (signing up to receive the articles in your inboxes). Simply fill in your email address and receive these pieces when they are published. The blog can be accessed by clicking the link above and here my work is found at Jackie Humphries Smith.

Wherever you choose to spend time with us - know that we do appreciate it!

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