Perpetual wanderlust has led to various circuits of the globe for Pam Jones, but her next overseas trip will be one of her most significant ever.
I'm happily married, but faced with the prospect of going solo this month: I'll be travelling abroad alone for the first time in almost 20 years.
A travel conference in Orlando beckons and I'm excited about the opportunities it will represent, but will travelling alone be part of the fun or a little bit strange?
It's years since I boarded my first plane ever to embark on an exchange trip to Brazil, first doing a short hop from Dunedin to Auckland (I cried the whole way) before boarding Aerolineas Argentinas for a year in South Amercia, aged 18.
Later I returned with my friend to backpack through other parts of the continent, and some of our escapades were hair-raising, not least of all the eyeballings staff at various consulates gave us as we lined up to get visas to travel to each subsequent country.
For my Orlando trip, I was surprised to discover the American Consulate required a face to face interview (and fingerprinting) with me in Auckland before they would issue me with a journalist's visa.
It meant an overnight trip there and I was struck by how strange it felt to be flying by myself instead of with my husband and three children. I realised that as well as meaning extra people to watch out for, travelling as a party of five provided a safety net of people to return the favour for me.
If I got lost (my phone has no Google Maps), who would help me find my way? If I was mugged down a dark alleyway, who would even know?
Suddenly it seemed harder to pack just my own passport than for my family of five.
As mothers, we spend so much of our time looking out for our children that we sometimes feel disoriented when they're away from us, moments of panic seizing us sometimes as we rack our brains to remember where all of our children are, occasional pangs of guilt as we enjoy an evening away.
But now my children are 13, 15 and 17 and of course independent enough to cope without me for periods of time.
When my husband and I went to Western Australia for 10 days last year on our first trip away without children for longer than a weekend, things back home were a breeze. Having worked hard to raise relaxed, resilient children, it should be viewed as a success (I suppose) to have returned home to find out they hadn't really missed us at all.
On the Auckland airport bus after my consular interview was completed, I felt an odd mix of independence and being out at sea as I pondered this new era.
I enjoyed the high spirits of our bus driver, too, who sang loudly to songs on the radio the whole time and reminded me of the troupes of musicians that used to board buses in Ecuador to entertain with their percussion and panpipes.
As with the buskers in London's underground, the South American audience was happy to throw in a few coins for the accompanying round of the hat, their music a day-brightening jolt of culture we were privileged to be part of.
Why don't more people sing on buses? Music doesn't need to be rehearsed and it doesn't need expensive equipment. So I saw in my twenties when a bar-full of Brazilians launched into an impromptu performance during a trip to the island of Morro de Sao Paulo, samba-loving mulattos (of mixed ancestry)
jumping to tables and drumming with cutlery on glasses in a show just like those wonderful Nike and Coca Cola ads that screen before the football World Cup.
But it wasn't all glory.
The backpackers on Auckland's airport bus reminded me of my friend and I trotting around the globe but I knew the traffic system in New Zealand was easier to navigate than the one in South America.
Many trips between major cities involved 24 hours of bus travel on rudimentary gravel roads, sometimes without air conditioning and often with smokers seated at the back.
In Bolivia, our backpacks were stamped indelibly with a nautical flavour when they were put in the baggage compartment alongside holed, plastic crates of raw fish, the smelly liquid they sat in sloshing around the whole compartment the entire trip; it took weeks of scrubbing and airing to get rid of the residue and smell.
On the way to the Iguacu Falls, our carefully packed lunches became a feast for crowds of cockroaches when we absent-mindedly put our bags of food on the bus floor, our resulting shrieks providing entertainment aplenty for the others on the bus.
And on the climb to Machu Picchu, I felt like something off an episode of "World's Most Dangerous Roads'', battling vertigo as I forced myself to look away from the stomach-churning cliff only inches away from the wheels of our minibus as it lurched from one corner to the next.
Britain and Europe could be a bit lively too. Those on London's transport system learn to always look away when presented with fellow travellers who rant in ways that make you think they're about to stab someone (anyone who has used London's tube and bus system knows what I'm talking about), and
in foreign-speaking countries there is always the reality of the disadvantage that not being able to speak the native language or knowing the lie of the land presents.
I once foolishly ended up in a situation where I had to hotfoot it through a forest-like park in the dark to reach my backpacker accommodation on the other side in Prague, in the Czech Republic. I remember mistakenly straying into similarly silly areas on a deserted port in Santos, Brazil and the backstreets
of Glasgow. What was I thinking? How could I have extricated myself from any unsavoury situation that might have struck me? I was just lucky, I guess, and can count such indiscretions on one hand, becoming more and more streetwise with each successive trip.
What I learned from all this travelling was the muster of strength I had inside me and an appreciation of cultures all across the world. It sounds corny to say travel broadens the mind but it's so true. If more people would practise the tolerance and patience required during overseas travels and observe
(but not judge) the hardships and differences of other cultures, they would be better placed to appreciate the freedom, cleanliness, beauty and opportunity our antipodean home provides.
(I also learned how much everyone overseas loves New Zealanders. This was illustrated strikingly during my first Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) in Edinburgh, when my friend and I decided to wing it and stay up all night without booking any accommodation, hoping we might get invited to an all-night party
to get us off the streets. We did, the hospitality of the Scottish being such that we decided to spend the next New Year's Eve there too, loving the spirit and fierceness of the Scots and how they considered New Zealanders cousins of sorts.)
So. Next up is Orlando, Florida, where I'll spend several days touring the region and five attending the IPW travel and trade conference to hear about opportunities for travel in the United States.
Other than two weeks in Hawaii, it's my first trip to the States and so will no doubt fill me with new experiences. But it's also going to be a nice reminder of all that I've learned on my other journeys to arrive at 45.
Of course it would be nice to have the husband and kids in tow for a week in Florida. But that's not what the trip is about, so I'll live it up regardless. I can't wait.
- Pam Jones will be attending the United States' largest annual travel and trade conference, IPW, in Orlando from May 30 to June 3, with the assistance of IPW, New Zealand's International Advisory Committee and Air New Zealand.
