Opinion
I don’t recommend cracking your ribs while overseas, but it did me good
Brian Johnston
Travel writerI’m just a few days into my South American journey when I trip over an unexpectedly placed kerb stone in Montevideo, stagger across the road like a comic actor in a silent movie, and fall flat on the far side, my face narrowly missing the fender of a parked car.
One minute I’m enjoying the streetscape, the next I have several cracked ribs, a bleeding knee, and a left leg and arm that soon show lurid bruises.
You never think this will be you, but of course it will be, some day.Credit: iStock
Most dented is my ego. Isn’t falling over something that happens to old people? And what are those two nice locals doing asking me if I’m OK as if I actually am an old person?
And no, I’m not OK, but fortunately I’m on the start of a cruise between Buenos Aires and Santiago and, if you have to recover from a battered body, a cruise ship is a good place to be. I won’t have to haul suitcases, find food or clamber into trains on this trip.
For the next two weeks I take it easy, gingerly shuffling between stateroom, restaurant and bar, groaning like a walrus and earning the alarm and assistance of the delightful crew. It’s not really the way to see Patagonia, but better than being in a Uruguayan hospital.
I wouldn’t recommend cracking ribs while overseas but, in a way, it did me good. It focused the thoughts that had been jiggling in the back of my mind for a while.
A feeling that my travels have slowed, and my energy isn’t what it used to be. A realisation that I’m now happy to skip a cathedral or museum in favour of sitting in the sun. I’m also watching parents become no longer mobile or able to travel as they used to.
You never think this will be you, but of course it will be, some day. I hope so. If there’s not something wrong with you in old age, then you’re dead, as a cruise passenger tells me over a cocktail.
Credit: Jamie Brown
She’s a little unsympathetic about the cracked ribs, I think, but then she’s 20 years older than me, and has who-knows-what ailments.
So you know what? Even if I’m feeling tired, I’m going to peek into the next cathedral that comes along. And while I might have cracked ribs, I still hobble off my ship in Ushuaia for a stickybeak.
My cracked ribs have shown me I’m not the eternally youthful traveller I think I am. As I age, I’ll have to adapt, and slow down, and travel differently. But it teaches me this: seize the day.
You never know how long your good fortune is going to last, so get out there while you can. Don’t put it off until a tomorrow that might never come – or, when it does, leaves you unfit for the challenge.
Here’s what I still want to do. I want to hike a Swiss mountain, I want to see the wildebeest migration in East Africa and follow the Silk Road through Central Asia. I’ve never been to Tibet or Timbuktu or Tashkent, and I shall renew my efforts to get there.
One minute I could be well, the next minute not. Or maybe un-wellness will slowly creep upon me, until I realise it too late. So I’m going to keep on travelling. Seize the day might be a trite slogan, until the day you crack your ribs in Uruguay.
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