Travel Expectations vs. Travel Reality – Part 2

Earlier in the week, I wrote about travel expectations and travel reality, and how the real thing often doesn’t live up to what we fantasize about. This can often lead to feeling let down by a destination, an experience, or travel itself.

And, while it’s true that I think we often expect too much, having travel let us down is only one side of the expectations vs. reality coin.

Sure, I’ve been disappointed while abroad. But I’ve also been pleasantly surprised.

I’ve found that there are, in fact, three different ways for expectations and reality to differ when it comes to travel — and they aren’t all bad.

Expecting a lot and getting a little

This is the classic example of building up a destination in our minds so much that the reality of the place or situation has little chance of actually living up to all the hype.

Maybe we are not impressed with the food, the accommodation, or the sense of “authenticity” that we receive. Maybe we fall ill, or get ripped off. Even something so ordinary as a weather forecast has the potential to doom our trip and leave us feeling cheated.

For example, when I studied abroad in New Zealand, two friends and I planned a 10-day trip around the country’s south island. The very first thing we put on our list and booked was a whale watching tour in the coastal town of Kaikoura. In fact, we planned a good portion of the rest of our trip around this adventure (said to be some of the best whale watching in NZ).

Imagine our disappointment, then, when our whale watching morning dawned bright and clear, only to soon be blotted out by dark storm clouds and a threatening wind. Our whale watching tour was cancelled due to an impending gale, and we spent the rest of our day in Kaikoura schlepping between cafes in the rain while we waited for a bus to take us to Christchurch.

We could have let this hiccup in our plans sour the rest of our trip. We could have held it against the quaint, quiet town of Kaikoura. But, instead, we just decided that the whales and the weather could hate on us if they wanted to, and vowed to do even better things later in our trip. We never saw another drop of rain.

Our money from the whale watching tour was refunded back to us, and we used it to book a fixed-wing plane flight between Milford Sound and Queenstown later in our trip. That flight took us over the snow-covered Southern Alps on a gorgeously clear afternoon, and ended up being one of the highlights of my time in New Zealand.

Expecting a little and getting a lot

On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes we approach a destination or travel experience not expecting very much at all. Whether out of sheer pessimism (which I don’t recommend as a shield against being let down by travel) or simply because we don’t know what to expect, we sometimes go into a journey with very low expectations, or perhaps even none at all.

I’ve personally never traveled with low expectations of a place, simply because I don’t think it’s constructive to be all doom and gloom about things in life. I try to look for the positive in most situations, and this holds true in travel, as well

But I have traveled not knowing what to expect from an experience or destination.

I spent a week in China in 2007 with my college marching band. I really had no idea what to expect from China, let alone what to expect of visiting the country as part of a large group.

I knew the cities would be huge, crowded and most likely polluted. I knew that there probably wouldn’t be much English spoken. And I knew of China’s history as a communist nation. But I also knew that China was making leaps and bounds economically. I knew that it was hosting the Olympic Games in less than a year. And I knew that we would likely garner a lot of attention from excited Chinese audiences as we paraded around in our orange and black band uniforms, playing American pop songs.

I went in with no expectations simply because there was no way to reconcile the contrasting things I knew about China into one single expectation — whether good or bad.

I was, therefore, consistently surprised by China. The people were inquisitive and friendly (some too friendly, as I learned while being felt up in a Beijing techno club). The cities I visited (Shanghai and Beijing) were indeed smog-ridden, but were also clean and modern. And, even though government censorship still runs rampant throughout the country, China’s history is on display everywhere, from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall.

Even if I had gone in with low expectations of China (which, many of my fellow bandmates did), I think I would have left the country feeling satisfied. Even as it was, China opened my eyes to a completely different way of living.

Expecting a lot and getting even more

The best scenario of travel expectations not matching up with reality is perhaps also the rarest. This, of course, is when we expect a lot from a destination, and arrive to find that it surpasses even our wildest dreams. I think this is when we fall in love with a country; when we decide we could move there and live out the rest of our days in a blissful stupor.

It was like this for me and New Zealand. Before I visited NZ for the first time in 2005, I had such high hopes for the country. It was my dream destination, and I was prepared for all the amazingness it had to offer.

I probably should have reminded myself more often that I was being silly and naïve, and that I was probably going to be disappointed if I kept anticipating it so highly.

But, the funny thing is, New Zealand met my expectations — and then surpassed them.

The grass was greener, the people friendlier, and the scenery prettier than I could have imagined. Perhaps it was because I was so determined to love the country. Perhaps it was just because New Zealand really is a little paradise in the South Pacific. Who knows. All I know is that NZ stole my heart and all my expectations along with it.

If you haven’t had this experience while traveling yet, I sincerely hope you do.

When high expectations can be surpassed, it sort of makes up for all the other little disappointments along the way.

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Have you ever experienced travel expectations and travel reality not matching up, but with a positive result? If so, what’s your story?

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