‘You wouldn’t consider dropping in unannounced to someone’s house, eating their food, using their facilities, leaving your trash for them to clean up and not even introducing yourself! So why do so many tourists act in this manner?’
This was the question posed to me by an Australian Aboriginal elder. He was right of course but I’d never thought of tourism in that light…
A decade later, his throw-away statement would change my life; setting me on a path that would really take me places.
Let your Passion Take you Places
I love to paddle and I really don’t care what craft! Give me one blade or two, flat water or white; I’ll be happy as Larry so long as he water’s warm and I’m in the wilds. Although dive travel, surf travel and ski travel have ben ‘a thing’ for decades, SUP travel is a relatively new phenomenon. Part of the challenge is transportation of boards, which tend to exceed maximum checked baggage dimensions. Inflatable SUPs are an obvious answer if your desire is to avoid touristy places where boards can be rented. My objective is to break virgin waterways and use my board to get to people and places that would otherwise be inaccessible. Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Vanuatu, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Mozambique, Botswana, New Zealand… the destinations are being checked off, but I’m finding my Bucket List keeps growing!
Journeys of Discovery
In 2015, I established SUP Wilderness Adventures and led our first expedition to Komodo National Park (Indonesia). At the time, my desire was simply to paddle but I was in for a rude surprise…
Even though Komodo is one of the most remote locations on the planet and we’d sailed to uninhabited isles, the amount of oceanic waste we saw left me feeling uneasy.
After a week of SUP pleasure, we turned our backs on the problem and jetted away as if it wasn’t our worry.
We’d got what we wanted: a fantastic holiday paddling with giant mantas, chasing dragons and swimming with turtles. What we offered in return was waste to be disposed of, greenhouse gases from our transport and no help to the host community. There and then, I committed to making a change!
