AdventureWomen^®

One of my favorite memories from my New Zealand trip was “mustering” sheep. During our local farm stay, we went with the farmer to check on the flocks. His mode of transportation was an old VW bus. While we were chugging and bumping through the green fields of the farm, we ran across 2 lambs that had been separated from their mom. The lambs were scared and the mom was wandering off in another field. We used the VW bus to round up the mom and herd her toward her lambs. Every now and then the mom would fall over on her side. She was too wooly to get up on her own. We would pile out of the bus, upright the mom, and continue to herd her in the right direction. Eventually mom and the lambs were reunited and everyone was happy. We had a great time speeding around the fields in the VW bus and all felt a sense of accomplishment when the little family was reunited.

My favorite quote from the trip was from one of the women as she donned a wetsuit in preparation for our dolphin swim. She came out of the dressing room with her wetsuit barely on, extra leg material and arm material dangling from her feet and hands, and exclaimed to our guide, “I believe you overestimated my height and underestimated my girth!” We all, including her, laughed until it hurt. What a great sport she was!

- Lori Booth, New Zealand’s Spectacular South Island, 2006

Speaking of wetsuits…, one of the funniest moments on our 2009 Papua New Guinea and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef adventure last April was our snorkeling excursion on the Barrier Reef off Cairns. Since it was jellyfish season, we were required to wear full wet suits to avoid getting stung. It’s always embarrassing to try putting on a wetsuit, but even more funny was that we all looked like “Smurfs” in our full regalia (except for one smart woman, Gayle Hagins, who didn’t finish dressing until after the picture was taken)!

Probably the most endearing time was when we got to hold “Frank,” both individually and together as a group. Frank was a friendly and cuddly koala bear, and it was amusing to watch everyone talk baby talk to him! We also got to visit with and hold some baby rescue kangaroos, or joeys, whose mothers had been hit by cars or killed in other ways.

-  Susan L. Eckert, President of AdventureWomen, Inc.