Just when you thought it was safe to vacation in the Galapagos

Who:

Me, my husband, and my age-appropriately sharkophobic kids (12 and 9).

What and Where:

A very big and alarming-looking fin spotted on a zodiac excursion just off Isabela Island in the Galapagos, an archipelago 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.  We were visiting the islands aboard the National Geographic Endeavor with Lindblad Expeditions.  It’s a trip every family should take.

The Story:

It’s not really a shark.  It’s actually a delightfully bizarre (and prehistoric) animal called an Ocean Sunfish or Mola mola.  While these docile creatures don’t inspire quite as much sphincter tightening as their toothy cousins, they grow to an average weight of over 2,000 pounds.

To me, this animal looks more like a potato than a fish.  In German, the Ocean Sunfish is sometimes called Schwimmender Kopf , the swimming head.

Here’s a photo of one I took at the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

While we didn’t spot any sharks from the boat that day, we wound up seeing plenty of them in the water when we are snorkeling.  Have you ever heard a kid scream through a snorkel?  But that’s a post for another day.

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A conversation with DIRTY MINDS author Kayt Sukel

Maybe you know her as one of the stalwart partners here at Travel Savvy Mom.  Perhaps you remember her as the woman who championed exotic travel with children by taking her toddler to Jordan. Or maybe you put two and two together and realized she’s the writer who gamely agreed to have an orgasm in an fMRI while researching her book, Dirty Minds:  How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships.

(At the risk of stating the obvious, I’ve provided the above link because I want you to click it and buy her book.)

Here Kayt discusses sex, travel, writing and parenting, though not necessarily in that order.

Besides being a world traveler and a full-time mom, you’re also a busy freelancer.  What does a typical day look like for you?

The best part about freelancing is that there are few typical days (although, admittedly, I do spend a good bit of time in my jammie bottoms furiously typing away on my computer).

One day, I may be researching a story on epigenetics, the next I’ll be heading to Mexico to do some ziplining.  The best part?  As a single Mom, I’m either home in time to meet my kid’s school bus in the afternoon or he’s on the road sharing the adventure.  It’s quite ideal and I’m always learning something new.

Are you ever just too busy to travel?

Yes and no.  Because I’m self-employed, I can take my work with me wherever I go.  So I seldom have to limit traveling full-stop but I don’t always get as much out of it because I’m stuck squatting in the hotel lobby, plying my kid with French fries, as I hook into the free Wi-fi and try to meet my deadlines.  It’s utterly and totally glamorous.

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?  What were your childhood career aspirations?

The truth is, I did always want to be a writer.  I had just been convinced that it was not a viable career option for anyone who wanted to live outside a cardboard box.  I also considered a career as a ballet dancer (too short), a veterinarian (too much cat poop) and Michael Jackson’s wife (please note that this consideration occurred back in the mid-80’s).  But by the time I reached high school, I knew that I loved to write.  So I dabbled with the odd essay in college—but never seriously pursued it because I was independent and mercenary enough to realize that I needed to find a job that would fund my shoe habit.

But after I moved to Europe, I got pregnant right away and didn’t have a full-time gig anymore.  And somehow, someway the writing thing happened.  With a lot of hard work (and a lot of help from some very good writer mentors and friends), I’m still managing to do it without resorting to cardboard or bare feet.

What’s the story behind the book?

After my marriage imploded, I realized that I didn’t know all that much about love.  Considering I was in my mid-30’s, and the mom of this adorable little boy that I adored beyond all reason, it seemed to be a pretty severe gap in my vast fund of general knowledge.  While a divorce might send some to the self-help shelves, I decided to try to learn what I could about love from a scientific perspective.

That quest took me into the labs of some amazing scientists that study all the ways our brains influence romantic love, heartbreak, sex, orgasms, parenting behaviors and even religious devotion.  It also put me in the fMRI scanner for two separate studies so I could experience the research firsthand.  The first of those demonstrated just what my brain does at the point of orgasm.  You might have seen some of that on the internet.  The second, a sexual decision making study, informed me that I’m more interested in a nice steak than in sex with a young man with overly tousled hair.

You’re my second close friend to write a book about sex.  Coincidence or pheromones?

Obviously, you just inspire our wild sides, you sexy thing.  I think it has something to do with your fascination with sunblock.

Sex and family travel…mutually exclusive concepts?  Discuss.

Not if you’re willing to do it in the hotel bathroom.  Or, for some extra kink, out on the balcony.

But in all seriousness (seriously, the above lines are totally serious), I think that travel and science (the particular tack I took to study love and sex in DIRTY MINDS) offer different perspectives on the same fundamental human questions.  For me, both offer me glimpses into what makes us humans tick, something that has piqued my curiosity my entire life.  Through science and travel, I always seem to be gaining new insight into the human condition.  It makes for good cocktail party conversation.  Especially that fMRI orgasm bit.

Tantrums on the road…and in the sky…and on the sea

I have a lot of friends who don’t travel with their kids — well, at least not voluntarily. The reason?  Fear of meltdowns.  Since a vacation is supposed to be enjoyable, I can’t really fault this logic.  We have had our fair share of meltdowns on the road… and in the sky and on the sea. These are the moments every traveling mom dreads.  She would love to just disappear, but instead is forced to try to calm down her howling tot, while simultaneously seeking to make apologetic eye contact with all the adults in the immediate vicinity.

Meltdowns happen no matter what. Isn’t it better in some exotic, far-flung destination than at your local supermarket? Travel is exhausting. Heck, there are moments when I would love to break down crying. Despite it all, my husband and I continue to lug our kids all over and to love (almost) every minute of it.

We laughed about this. Eventually.

A tantrum in China

This lovely memory is from our trip to China with our then two-year-old son. Here we are in our perfect Kodak-moment on the Great Wall of China. This was the tail end of our one-month trip. It was 40˚C/104˚F that day and we were wiped out.

Our son had actually been quite good throughout the trip, but this excursion started out badly. He didn’t want to walk, just to be carried – and only by mommy. When mommy’s arms finally gave out, my husband took him and, well, you see the result. His wails could be heard from one end of the Wall to the other. Nevertheless, we survived it and,  until this day, this is still one of his favorite China pictures.

The only children I saw crying in Japan were my own.

An outburst in Japan

I don’t know what it is about Asia. Here we are a few years later in Kyoto, Japan. Bigger boy, same expression. We had to tear him away from a water fountain at the temple and he was not at all happy. In a country where all of the children seem to have been born perfectly behaved – in our two weeks there, the only crying children I ever saw were my own – we were feeling a wee bit embarrassed.

We have already told our Japanese friends that we will be shipping our children off to them for a cultural exchange so that all this good behaviour will rub off on them.

How do you say, "bad judgment" in Spanish?

Hysterics in Colombia

And, hey, let’s face it. We are often entirely to blame- you know, those “What in the world was I thinking?” moments. On a trip to Colombia, we decided to take a detour to visit the Totumo mud volcano.

All ran pretty smoothly until we slid into the mud. Here I am with our younger son, just turned three, in a volcano of mud that feels like being stuck in a big vat of warm pudding. You float at the top, you can barely move your limbs and, oh yeah, you are also slightly dizzy and nauseous.

Two seconds after this was shot, my little one started wailing at the top of his lungs, eliciting sympathy and soothing words in various languages from our fellow mud-loungers. I was too busy trying to race him up the slippery, mud-covered ladder to properly thank these strangers for their efforts, but I think they understood by my grateful smile.

Seeking comfort in the kindness of strangers is never to be underestimated when you are traveling with small children. Most people have already been through the same with young children and they fully sympathize with what you are going through.

I don’t fault my friends who choose not to travel because of the fear of meltdowns, but I would never stop traveling myself because of a few tough moments on otherwise enjoyable trips. Once the initial trauma dies down, we usually even manage to laugh as a family about our famous breakdowns.

I know the real payback will arrive only when our own kids are old enough to travel with their children. In those helpless moments as their kids are throwing a fit on some holiday, I like to think they will have extra appreciation for mom and dad and what they put us through years ago. Until then, happy travels – meltdowns and all – to all you adventurous travel savvy moms out there!

An easy-to-use, durable and waterproof camera that can handle anything you throw at it

When you are going on a so-called “trip of a lifetime”–as my son and I recently did on our Gap Adventures Galapagos tour–you want to make sure you have the proper camera on hand to capture the memories.  It would be a crying shame to go somewhere so magical and not get a single usable photo.  And, you know, my regular go-to cameras, my iPhone and a 5-year-old Sony digital just didn’t seem up to the task.

So when Olympus offered to loan me their latest Tough camera, the TG-810, I was all too happy to accept.

Key Features

This camera has everything you might want in a durable camera.  It’s waterproof up to 33 feet under.  It’s shockproof–it has an innovative body that can deal with drops from 6.6 feet without issue.  Crushproof, too:  it can take 220 pounds of pressure.  At 14 megapixels, you are going to get high-quality photos.  And it has a built-in GPS, too.

The 5x wide-angle zoom is great for spotting and snapping wildlife.  And the big LCD viewer means you can figure out right away whether or not a photo is any good.  Of course, it also takes movies.

I can honestly say we tested most of these capabilities.  Getting in and out of rocky lagoons for snorkeling meant the camera got knocked around quite a bit.  Okay, maybe more than quite a bit.  Chet wanting to take his own photos meant it got consistently dropped from 3-4 feet.  This thing can definitely take a beating and keep performing.

The Drawbacks

The camera was a godsend for a place like the Galapagos–and all the bumps and humps that came along with it.  But I found that it was very slow to take photos in lower light–a drawback when you are trying to capture sharks 20 feet under the water.  And while it was quite easy to use, I also  found that it took a few tries before I was able to capture moving targets without blur.

Still, even with those caveats, you can’t beat a durable camera that can take its lumps.

A Few Examples

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My favorite souvenirs are the cheap, small, and festive kind

If there’s one thing my mother taught me, it’s that almost anything can be a Christmas ornament.  If you like it, hang it on the tree!  Ornaments make great travel souvenirs because they are small, lightweight, and (usually) inexpensive.

Here are a few seasonal baubles that I happily drag down from the attic every year:

King Henry VIII
We purchased the marrying monarch at Hever Castle, in Kent England.   You can also buy his Yuletide likeness at the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace.

Anne Boleyn
Anne was also purchased at Hever, which was her childhood home.  We could have bought Henry’s other five wives there too, but it seemed somehow tacky.  We traditionally hang her several branches away from Henry.  I think she would want it that way.

The Union Jack flag (shown here being inexplicably stalked by an irate mouse)
I’m pretty sure, though not positive, that we bought this at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  I also bought something there called “The Magnetic Monarchs” for our fridge, only to discover our @#$!!%  fridge wasn’t magnetic.

Little Viking dude
I bought this at the super-cool Vikingeskibsmuseet Roskilde (Viking Ship Museum) in Denmark.  Why is he wearing fishnet stockings?  This and many other Viking secrets are lost to the sands of time.  For the record, I believe I am the only person to ever visit Denmark with children and skip Legoland.

Hand-painted Santa
I almost passed a kidney stone when I saw the price of this exquisite, but tiny hand-painted Santa (approximately the circumference of a Ritz cracker) at the Christmas Market in Aachen on the border of Holland and Belgium.  He cost $50, except, you know, in Euros.  I just sort of belted down another cup of hot mulled wine and pulled out my wallet.