A confession…

So I have a confession to make.  At times I’ve done things that I regret.  I haven’t necessarily done them intentionally but in hindsight I realise that I could have handled a situation in a better way.  Sometimes, randomly, past occurrences like this pop up in my brain and I think about them for a few days.  I’m not sure why, but here’s one that’s been on my mind for the last few days.

Earlier this year I went to New Zealand for 10 days.  I spent a couple of days in Auckland by myself and then joined up with a Contiki tour for the remainder of the time.  Our first day on the Contiki tour saw us sitting on a bus for a few hours and then rocking up to the Bay of Islands which is north of Auckland.

As you can imagine on the first day on a tour with 50 other people, I was a little nervous and unsure what to expect.  Luckily I immediately met some really nice people (I was sitting next to the on the bus) and we got along fine.  One of the people was Shari from Brisbane in Australia and the other was Jeff from Canda.

When we arrived at the Bay of Islands we were given the oppurtunity to either chill-out and have a look around, or alternatively do a bit of para-sailing. I was super keen for para-sailing and Jeff and Shari came along too.  Neither Shari or I had done it before however Jeff mentioned that he’d done it once and, whilst it could be seen as a bit of an adventure sport, it is actually amazingly tame and is a bit boring if you go up by yourself as you end up just sitting around for 10 minutes or so.

Despite that, we were still keen so we jumped on the boat with 4 other people.  Luckily the para-sailing was tandem, which meant we wouldn’t be bored up top but unfortunately there was an odd number of us.

When it came to launch time the guys on the boat paired us up and asked us who wanted to go solo.  Our previous conversation with Jeff completely slipped my mind and he ended up being the one to go up by himself whilst I went upa fter him with Shari.  It was only about 5 minutes in, when we were floating up looking at the view, that I remembered what Jeff had said.  He had specifically mentioned that going solo was boring for him and that it would be much better to go up with someone else!

I felt quite bad after that, but never actually apologised to Jeff.  I think I might have said something off-hand but realistically it would’ve been better if he’d got to go up with someone else.

Anyhow – that’s the end of the story.  Chances are some other “regret” will pop up at some stage and I’ll try and remember to write about it here.  In the meantime, if you ever get the chance to go para-sailing then give it a whirl.  It is definitely not scary and if you’re in the Bay of Islands, or some place similar, you get some spectacular views.

From New Zealand