During the last two weeks of October every minute took 15 minutes, and every hour took 6 hours. At least, that’s what it felt like.
I was doing my last tour of the season, two weeks from Madrid to Barcelona with a group of nine super cool travellers from Australia, Canada and the UK. From the mojitos of Taco way in Tarifa, to getting our hands dirty cooking paella in Valencia, we had a great time and lots of laughs together.
It’s not that I don’t love my job (I do) but the last tour of the season just always seems to drag on forever.
While in Tarifa in this particular tour I met up with a colleague of mine. She was also doing her last tour for the season and she said to me “does the last tour of the year always feel this long?” Sorry my dear, it does.
Now that the last tour is over and I have had time to reflect, I can’t believe that three years of leading tours for Intrepid Travel in Spain, Italy, Portugal and France (when I have to) have already flown by. It only seems like yesterday that I was leaving my already displaced life to join a life on the road.
On the road again. Vietnam. 2013.
When I started this job I said to myself that I was going to stay for two years, no matter how terrible it was.
I had been doing the typical Gen Y thing of changing jobs when I got tired of the last – although to be fair, a lot of the times I changed due to moving cities and taking extended time off for travelling. I guess before the days of Intrepid, I hadn’t quite found a way where I could combine some kind of work with travel, and I was determined to have a job on my CV for longer than two years. Two years of tour leading passed, and I signed up for a third. Three years have passed, so what now?
This year was probably my easiest and hardest year as a Tour Leader.
I worked mostly in Spain and Portugal this year (aside from one tour from Barcelona to Rome via France tour earlier in the season) but due to health problems I opted to stay working in Spain for various reasons – ease of eating gluten free, being close to “home”, being able to go back to the doctor when I needed to as I would pass through the relevant cities on my tours.
As I was doing the Spain and Portugal tours over and over again, by the end I could do them blindfolded. Perhaps I was even a little TOO confident. But confident or not, that made the tours easy.
Beautiful Ronda, one city I have visited again, and again, and again. And I love it.
However, having to deal with people day in and day out when I was not feeling 100%, or even sometimes 50%, was not cool. I learnt to pull back from my groups, giving them more free time and spending more time doing things for me.
But even with more free time to myself, I wasn’t travelling and doing things for enjoyment. I travelling because I had to earn a living somehow, and some days were a struggle. Some tours I felt like aside from doing the things I had to do with my group, and of course, eating, I was just sleeping. So yes, it was both the easiest and hardest year all in one.
But aside from being a year that was either easy or hard, it was a year of many other things.
It was a year of new friends – both passengers from my tours, colleagues, and people I met on my travels around Spain, a year of new restaurant discoveries, and it was a year of funny situations like when I got told off by a German man for apparently pushing in the queue for the tram in Lisbon, and for leading my group astray by encouraging them to do the same thing.
It was a year where I got hate mail from a restaurateur for leaving him a justifiably bad review on TripAdvisor – he hoped that when I wake up in the mirror each morning I see nothing but mediocrity. It was a year of thinking, forward thinking, and new plans. It was a year where the strangest thing a person has ever done on my tour happened – unfortunately I can’t tell you in public or I might not have a job anymore.
It was a year of visiting my favourite Spanish cities over and over again, falling in love with Portugal even more, giggles with friends over beers and gin and tonics. But at the end, is has been a year of change (more on that to come).
Gin and tonics or cans of beer while on a pedal boat on the River Guadalupe, as the case may be…
So will I be back to Intrepid next year?
Probably-almost-definitely-yes. This job is addictive. Like a drug. It’s not even about living in Europe or about the job itself. It’s about being constantly on the road, the excitement of no two days being the same, living an independent work life outside of an office.
It’s hard to explain unless you have done it before. It’s more than a job, it’s a lifestyle choice. This job consumes you, sometimes in a bad way but mostly in a positive way that is hard to describe.
But for now, cheers to a great 2014 season, and let’s see what 2015 has in store.
How has your 2014 been so far? Have you made any great changes or discoveries? Hit me up in the comments below.
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Terri @ Little Wanderings says
Congratulations on three years! I travelled with Intrepid in South-East Asia and G Adventures in Central America, and have always found myself imagining what life as a tour leader would be like. I love reading your blog and getting a little peek into that world! 🙂
Cyra says
Thanks Terri 🙂 The trips in SE Asia are supposed to be really good – I have only been to Jordan and Cuba as a tourist with Intrepid. It is an interesting life…haha. Mostly good. Sometimes bad. Anyhow, it’s an experience. Glad you like it 🙂