As I write this, I am in the home stretch of our return trip from South Africa. 26 hours down, just 2 to go…

My fam­ily and I spent the last three weeks sight­see­ing, learn­ing, sun­ning and surf­ing our way through this amaz­ing yet chal­lenged coun­try. We were so very for­tu­nate to join my sis­ter, her South African hus­band and their three won­der­ful kids on this trip. My brother-in-law Mark was a fan­tas­tic tour guide.

Our sched­ule was action packed. We saw pen­guins on the beach, vis­ited the Apartheid Museum, hiked through beau­ti­ful moun­tains, went zip lin­ing over rivers, and rode Ostriches. We went on game dri­ves where we saw lions, rhi­nos, ele­phants, and wilde­beests. We learned a lot about their bro­ken gov­ern­men­tal system.

And yes, I finally surfed my dream wave at Jeffrey’s Bay.

The trip was filled with early morn­ings and late nights as the eleven of us made our way from Cape Town on the Gar­den Route to the Cape of St. Fran­cis, then up to Pre­to­ria, and finally to the Madikwe Game Reserve.
And now, we six Harks are fly­ing home after this once in a life­time experience.

While we were there, Mark intro­duced us to his cousin Kyle. Kyle has built a busi­ness tak­ing cou­ples on nature and self real­iza­tion sails through the waters of Brazil. When he heard of our sched­ule, he said we needed to fit in some “unstruc­tured down time.” This is a con­cept that really res­onates with our family.

We had planned a won­der­ful trip that filled us with fan­tas­tic mem­o­ries and a first rate edu­ca­tion on every­thing from the wild ani­mals of Africa to the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Apartheid.

But it was not a vacation.

As many of you may know, my idea of a vaca­tion usu­ally includes a warm beach, good food, sies­tas, and lots of surf. South Africa was a new and dif­fer­ent type of hol­i­day for us. It was not the type that leaves you rested and reju­ve­nated. It was the type that leaves you amazed, edu­cated, inspired, and grateful.

To those of you out there whose time away from work usu­ally involves a jam-packed sched­ule, my advice is to plan for a rest­ful vaca­tion. Fill your days with unstruc­tured down time. Sleep late, lis­ten to the ocean, read a non-business book. Take a vaca­tion, not a trip.

A real vaca­tion can be so won­der­ful for your health, your fam­ily, and your soul. It can also pro­vide you with great oppor­tu­ni­ties to reflect and create.

For those of you who usu­ally vaca­tion with noth­ing but unstruc­tured down time, try mix­ing it up a bit. Go some­where that is rich in his­tory, beauty, and won­der. Spend time learn­ing about a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, a dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and a dif­fer­ent geog­ra­phy. Chal­lenge your assump­tions and your way of think­ing about the world. Go on a trip.

Trips and vaca­tions are both so good for us.

Yes­ter­day, I was sit­ting with the host of a Dutch B&B in a quant lit­tle vil­lage called Hart­beespoort. This man is prob­a­bly in his 70’s, and has lived a rich life with time spent in sev­eral dif­fer­ent coun­tries. He said that we as a peo­ple have lost our sense of adven­ture, and traded it in for the desire to be safe and in con­trol. He said we all need cold show­ers in our lives in order to wake us up and get us out of our routines.

As we enter our sum­mer sea­son here in the states, what kind of cold shower are you going to take? A trip or a vacation?

Either way, I highly rec­om­mend it for your over­all well-being.

A spe­cial thanks to the Good­ies for such a rich time!

“Cheers,” as they say in SA,

Related posts:

1. I Love a Good Vaca­tion in the Morning

Tags: Down Time, Family, Playing, South Africa, Travel, Vacation

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 10:23 am and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.