Redefining Comfort

Vanuatu. Known for its beautiful diving spots, an active volcano, a drink that can make you hallucinate and, of course, great coffee. These are all claims that drove the safe traveller in me to this location with the promise of a relaxing week filled with diving and duty-free booze filled nights.
However, looking back at the fleeting moments I remember, there was one that stuck with me the most.
In Port Vila, on a tropical day that made the previous nights bad decisions escape from my skin with any form of hydration I had left, I found myself panting in a crammed bus at a horse riding ranch. Once on land, we were greeted with freedom from the leather couches of the bus, the lovely smell that can only be described as every Suburbanite’s worst nightmare (possibly due to the crushed rats I later noted in the stables) as well as paperwork that said if something happens we were fully responsible for it, reminding me of the exact genre of things my basic travel insurer explicitly told me not to do.
After an extremely basic run down while gasping for fresh air, we were taken to our not-so-noble stallions. After explicitly explaining my discomfort of horses and heights, which were just more reasons to back out of my slightly hung-over disaster of a plan, a soaring stallion struts out, defecates, and then eats the same patch of grass- my stallion.
I was already counting down the hands on my watch when I noticed the rainforest enveloped me, coming to life before my eyes. Right in front of me were the biggest beasts with udders I had ever seen and plants that had been pleasantly growing for hundreds of years. All around me was nature the way it was intended to be. And I was lost without having any clue of where I was or who I was at home. Pictures could not describe what I saw in the rainforest (it literally couldn’t because we were told the horses were shy on camera and jumped).
Before I knew it I was saying goodbye to the dead rat, goodbye to the smell and goodbye to any feeling I may have previously had in my butt.
Looking back, I see how satisfying it was to have been taken back to a world before social media, hash tags and travel insurance, and to have been outside of my comfort zone entirely. Because at the end of the day it’s not about the conventional way of doing things that you remember most, it’s the moments you loose yourself and rediscover a whole new person in the culture of the people around you that last a lifetime.