I have never subscribed to the concept “it is better to travel than to arrive”, unless it was a long trek to walk to my mountain several days away in the Himalaya. Modern travel whizzes us around the globe in hermetically sealed aircraft, arriving in a different time zone often exhausted and dehydrated. Our circadian clocks are out of kilter and we have no sense of our environment in terms of culture, language, climate, customs. Certainly air travel has opened up the world to us, but if we don’t take some time to adjust to our new surroundings then our destination could remain “closed” to us.

Arriving in Malaga in Andalucia is a relatively short “whiz”, just a 2.5 hours flight, but from door to door it’s been more like 8 hours with all the inherent parking, check ins, security, kids kicking the back of my seat, baggage control and pickup and taxi ride.

Checked into our hotel, now need to adjust our biorhythms to Spain, Tapas, Flamenco, Picasso, Sunshine ….. only one way we know how; find a nice square, a good bar/cafe, a glass of local beer for me and a cafe con lech for Dr C, a local newspaper, put the shades on and …… relax…..

And finally, for those of you wondering about the title of this post, it’s from a comment by Dr Timothy Leary in 1967 speaking to a gathering of 30,000 Hippies in San Francisco:

“Turn on” meant go inside yourself to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. [Drugs were one way to accomplish this end.] “Tune in” meant interact harmoniously with the world around you, be mindful – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. “Drop out” suggested an active, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. “Drop Out” also meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily his explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean “Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity”.

 However, it’s a wonderful way of directing a mindful approach to travels, even at our advanced age.

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Categories: Philosophy, Travel

Tags: malaga, Spain, technology, Timothy Leary, travel technology