Travel

“What’s a Beaver Tail?”

All eyes looked to me for the answer. We stood beside a huge ice sculpture; it was one of many at the Festival du Voyageur, a ten-day celebration of Canada’s fur-trading past and of Winnipeg’s French community. I had gone almost every year as a child, but this was the first time I’d been in Winnipeg in February for a long time. The temperature registered a frigid -31 degrees Celsius, and that was without windchill. My hometown is infamous for being one of the coldest cities in the world, often challenging its residents with a solid few weeks of -40 and below every January and February. We are hearty folk, us Winnipeggers, and we’re damn proud of it. There’s something about the cold that invigorates us, that makes us push out our chests and breathe in deep, as if to prove that we can take it.

There’s a time in most adolescent lives when everything starts to change, when the things you did last week now seemed juvenile. We all become misfits for some brief, difficult years, lured by the different and the dangerous. We become obsessed with something with the zeal that only teenagers possess, purposefully ostracize ourselves from the adults in our lives. Some kids turn to music. Some kids turn to drugs and alcohol. My obsession became the world itself.

There are dozens of resources that can help you prepare for an impending holiday, whether a quick trip or a much longer vacation. If you are organized, the night before you leave can (hopefully) be a relaxing one. But what about at the end of your holiday or stay in a particular place? What should you do before you go home, or before you move on to another destination?

I thought of this, months ago, while planning to leave Tel Aviv. Leaving a place isn’t as simple as just packing everything up and heading to the airport. Here, then, are some of the steps I personally take in order to prepare for the journey onwards, or in some cases, home.

The man leaned in close, his face next to mine. I could smell his breath, a mixture of tobacco and a pungent, unidentifiable spice. His arms were stained slightly indigo from the traditional robes he wore. He was a Tuareg, a true “Blue Man” of the Sahara. Though he was only in his mid-fifties, his face bore the wrinkles of a lifetime spent in the unforgiving sun.

“C’est trés difficile,” he said to me, and I nodded. We were sitting by the fire under the desert sky of the Moroccan Sahara, and he was helping me to untangle the necklaces I wore around my neck. I had bought the strands of colourful glass beads in the souks of Marrakesh only days earlier, and he worked quickly and carefully to free me from their knots.

“Captain?” I tried to make my whisper heard above the ocean’s many sighs and groans. He stirred, his eyes finally opening. He was seasick, too. When the captain’s seasick, you know it’s bad. “I think we’ve changed speeds.”

He came on deck to check the dials.

“Yes, we did, thank you for waking me,” he yawned once, stretching his arms out over his head. “We’re just sailing into a squall.”

Do you know what they say about people who love the colour red? They’re impulsive, outgoing, aggressive at times. They have a strong zest for life. They tend to be extremely optimistic, but hate monotony and crave change. They are passionate and strong, full of vigour. They are restless. They can be too quick in their decision-making; one might call them rash, hasty. They are determined to get all they can out of life.