What enticed me? The idea of being plunked into a strange place, having to figure it out, needing to trust strangers, and discover the culture and the people, in a very hands-on way. Although we can bring blackberries, laptops, etc., to keep in touch with family, friends and business, it is considered cheating to use them as tools for the competition. Instead, we have to rely on our own resourcefulness and the helpful information from talking with local people wherever we go. The competition is organized so that each time we arrive in a new place, all of the participants will be given the same long list of “scavenges” – activities to see and experience the place – and snap a photo doing it. Think the Frommer’s or Fodor’s list of top things to do in a place – except that you can’t plan in advance and you can’t rely on guidebooks. Each scavenge is assigned a point value. At the end of the trip, the team which accumulated the most points is crowned the winner. The prize is the opportunity to go next time - for free. Examples of scavenges from previous years include: find the early morning Fish Market in Tokyo that sells bluefin sushi tuna at dawn, attend a Greek Orthodox Easter Midnight Mass at the Athens cathedral for the once-a-year ceremony, or swim with a bull shark in Singapore’s underwater world. The scavenges also include volunteer work with global organizations like Doctors without Borders and Save the Children, working on building schools, etc. –and the community service aspect is a significant part of the program. Apparently there are far more scavenges than anyone could finish in the amount of time spent in a given place. That’s a good thing – if you have been to the place before and have seen and done many of the top “to do” experiences– you can dip down further into the list to avoid repeating doing things you’ve already done.
How did I find out about this? I learned about it from my dear friend Sally, who does free-lance travel writing. Sally and I were infected by the same travel bug decades ago. We went to summer school in Switzerland together when we were 14 years old, made pretend we were French during several Eurailpass trip summers, and have travelled with our husbands for forever. Sally had received an email pitching the trip and she forwarded it to me with the teaser subject line, “Do you want to be my partner?” I sure did! But, then she decided her schedule didn’t allow it, which left me very excited about the idea, but partnerless. About the same time, my son Alex realized that his unused vacation time at work was piling up and he faced a three week use-it-or-lose-it excess for 2009. Perfect!! Both of us love foreign travel (he MIGHT have inherited that from me) and this sounded like a fantastic way to explore the world together.
The hitch was – and to some degree still is – we don’t know much about the trip organizers. Google searches pulled up several travel publications which reported stories about previous Global Scavenger Hunts. But, the information was recycled from press releases. Seeking personal references, we talked with previous Scavenger Hunt travellers (very satisfied customers, of course), who raved about their experiences.
The irony is not lost on me that our first step on this trip is that we must trust the strangers who are organizing this trip.