Is Travel worth it

 I read a post over at Sightings Over Sixty that asked the question is Travel is it too much trouble. His answer was yes it is, and I tend to agree, but it is something that I have put behind me at this point. My wife cannot travel due to a number of underlying conditions. In fact, she has trouble leaving the house. So, travelling with my wife is not something that I will be doing soon, but I am hopeful that things will get better and we will again be able to travel.

Part of why travel for seniors is troubling is it is very expensive due to the cost of travel insurance, both medical and cancellation. My last trip was from Vancouver to Edmonton for a Celebration of life for three days. Most Canadians do not know this but the health insurance we have in our home province does not help you if you are hospitalized in another province. We know that if we are travelling to another country we need medical insurance, but many forget that we need it if we travel to another province. Because of COVID I also thought I should have cancellation or trip interruptions insurance. There are a lot of joys in getting older, but there are also drawbacks. One of these is that when you hit 75 the cost of both medical travel and trip cancellation insurance goes up. For my 3-day trip, the insurance cost almost half the cost of the ticket. I was not expecting to pay over $300 for insurance in addition to the ticket.

Travel is worth it but only if you travel with good medical travel insurance, which as I understand goes up as we age, so if my wife gets better and we can travel in a few years, we will have to plan for expensive travel insurance as well as the more expensive flight or other travel costs. Today I am happy not to travel as the pent-up demand, according to the news, is not being met by the industry. I read every day of people waiting for planes, or flights being cancelled. I am torn, I would love to travel now, but I am also happy that I cannot, so I dream and plan our next trip and I am putting money away for it now.

Travel may be an option soon

 Within a year we will be willing to travel more than we do now. COVID will be more understood, and restrictions will start to ease and most importantly, people will be willing to travel.

Whether you want to drive across the country for a few weeks or just visit a neighbouring town for the day, road trips are one of life’s greatest pleasures. Here are a few great resources for finding interesting diversions along the way:

Swimming Holes:  Listings of 1,600 swimming holes in the United States and Canada.

Roadside Attractions:  Put in your route and find wacky roadside stops.

The Outdoor Project:  Maps with great hikes, campgrounds, adventures, and more.

Roadfood.com:  Jan and Michael Stern are probably the most famous of all roadside dining aficionados. Their site, RoadFood.com helps you find casual, affordable local restaurants, cafes, diners, and more featuring regional specialties.

GasBuddy:  An app that helps you find the cheapest nearby gas station.

RoadTrippers: This also is an app, helps you find cool attractions along the way.

There are more options than ever for affordable vacation lodging.

Airbnb  and  VRBO:  Airbnb and VRBO are popular services that enable you to rent apartments, condos, houseboats, tree houses, single-family homes, and even compounds.

You will be amazed to see that all kinds of homes are available in all the remote corners of the world. Best of all, the amount you pay per night is often much less than what a hotel would cost plus you get a kitchen and more sometimes the homes even come with cars or other transportation perks.

Home Exchange:  HomeExchange is a service that matches homeowners for a housing swap. Thousands of people exchange houses every year and love the experiences and connections that are made.

Hostels:  You might think that hostels are just for young, drunken kids. However, hostels are trying to cater to older (and more sophisticated) travellers. Some hostels even offer private rooms and great amenities (if bunk beds aren’t your style). If you are interested, check out: Hostelworld.com.  You can see descriptions, reviews, rankings, and even see availability and make reservations.

In addition to offering you a great place to stay when you travel, Airbnb can also offer you an almost magical way to make money for travel (or whatever). It is easy to list your home on Airbnb as a rental for travellers who will be visiting your community. Depending on where you live, you might just get flooded with interest.

When you are retired, you have a lot more freedom to take advantage of last-minute deals and opportunities.

There are quite a few websites and apps that can help you with these spurs of the moment trips:

Hotel Tonight: Hotel Tonight is an app. They get unsold inventory from hotels for that night and make it available to app users at a big discount.

Kayak.com/explore: Kayak has a feature on their website that lets you see a map of the world and the lowest airfares from your city to anywhere and everywhere.

Intrepid Travel: Intrepid Travel books tours. You can review their last-minute deals.

Groupon: Groupon does all kinds of discounts for many different types of experiences. They also have some last-minute deals.

Lastminute.com: This site focuses mainly on European last-minute deals.

Travelzoo: Travel zoo aims to offer the best deals from the best companies.

Google Flights: Watch out, this can get a little addictive. If you plug in your departure city and dates but leave the destination blank, Google Flights will return a list of the lowest airfares available for you.

 

Bush Fires in Australia

There has been a lot of news lately about the weather in Australia and the devastation caused by the fires, in some states in the country. The danger of wildfires cannot be understated, but the resilience of the Australian people is amazing.

We spent most of our holiday in the high country in the Alpine region north of Melbourne, which as the crow flies is close to the New South Wales Border. When we were there was a fire in New South Wales and a fire near the northern border of Victoria and the fear was that the two fires would merge and create a mega-fire. That did happen and the fire was still burning when we left, but at the time no homes were in danger.

The fire danger and the number of fires were so bad that the government of the state of Victoria declared a state of disaster for the whole state. This was meant to give the government more power and to help reassure people, which I am sure it did. However, it did cause some unintended consequences, one of the edicts under the state of disaster was that all childcare centers would be closed. The idea was that if there was a fire danger parents should be with their children. A good idea, except that many people could not go to work because they had no childcare, so this created economic uncertainty and hardship in areas that were not affected by the fires, but were still under the state of emergency.

Fire Warnings were a part of life where we were staying. In the last week of our visit, it was very smokey, hot, and humid. My daughter and her mate received a number of warnings saying that they should leave now. They joked about the warnings telling us that there were several levels of warnings which started with Act and Watch, which meant do nothing,  then the next level was, “You should leave now” then the warning after that was, “Leave now or you will die”, and the last warning was “You can’t leave, take shelter and hope for the best”. The Australians in the area I was staying had a certain distrust for the government and government overreaction and said they would only leave when they received the third warning. They also said that they believed the government was overreacting to the fire dangers. They explained that in the fires a few years ago, the government did not act quickly enough and a lot of people died. They understood what the government was doing, but they likened the warnings they were receiving to the story of the "boy who cried wolf." They said that many of their friends did not trust the warnings and they were afraid that they might not leave when the needed to leave.

There were two fires close to us, one was, as the crow flies about 50K to the north and one was about 45K to the east. The fire that was to the north, had to climb up the mountain, go through a multi-million-dollar ski resort and then down the mountain to get to us. The area coming up the mountain had also been burned out a few years ago so the fire could not move quickly. My Australian friends and family were very confident that the state would not let the ski resort and the million-dollar homes are destroyed.

The other fire also had to go over a small mountain through two towns and cross a river through the grass to get near us. It was very slow-burning. It was under control within three days of starting.

The biggest cause of the fires appeared to be dry lightning, although watching the press it appeared that arson was the cause of some of the fires. Of the thousands of fires that started when we were there, only about 178 were attributed to people. The police had arrested and charged about 89 people with arson while we were there.

All of Australia was not burning, but because there were fires near Sydney in New South Wales and around Melbourne, which also has a large population, the smoke was a problem for many, including us.

We were affected by the smoke during our stay as it closed down the visibility so we could not see the stunning scenery of the Alpine region we were in, and when we left, we were delayed for three hours at the airport because the smoke made it difficult to fly.

The people of Australia have another month to go before the fire season is over, the wild weather and rain hitting parts of the affected areas are helping, but the danger is still there and will be for a time. I would recommend that if you want to help give to the Australian Red Cross.