Day 17: The Things We See

Today is a photo prompt: Something I never would have seen if I'd stayed home. 

There are, of course, endless things I never would have seen if I'd stayed home, and that goes for living abroad, or just travel. Thinking about this prompt, it occurs to me that I'm really a "look at things" kind of a traveller. I like a good adventure, now and again, but the ideal of travel, to me, isn't about bungee jumpingk or abseiling, or kayaking wild rapids. When I go somewhere new, what I really want is to stuff as many new, interesting images into my brain as possible.

This picture came straight to mind. On our trip to Tasmania, which was a full-on experience of adding amazing images to my mental slideshow, I was dead-set on seeing a wombat in the wild. My obsession with wombats, since arriving in Australia is well-documented. I find them far superior to the more famous Aussie animals, and joke that they need to hire the koala's PR person. We'd I'd been stalking them in a national park for, I'm not going to lie, at least an hour and a half, while Partner-in-Crime sat in the car. Not finding any, I sadly gave up, and we got on the road to go back to our hotel. Buuuuut ... on the way out of the park, we spotted one! We got out to take a closer look, and sat nearby for awhile, a handful of other tourists doing the same. And then, across the street, another one. All total, I think we saw about half a dozen, just grazing away, doing their business. They were completely unperturbed by us humans. I have another picture of P-i-C about 3 feet from one.

They were every bit as cute and sweet as I'd imagined, and even if I never happen upon another one in the wild, I'll treasure this picture forever.