I had seen it in movies. I had heard the stories. Nothing prepares you.
You walk out of your hotel during the day and it feels like a busy city, almost ordinary. Heat rising off the pavement. Tourists with coffees. Traffic humming along. Then night falls… and the place transforms into something that feels almost fictional. Lights everywhere. Screens taller than buildings. Music spilling onto sidewalks. It’s the USA on steroids. Bigger. Louder. Brighter.
We went because Def Leppard was playing. My ultimate favourite band. Standing in that crowd, singing every word, I had one of those surreal moments where you step outside yourself and think, am I really here?
A helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, looking down at something so vast and ancient it makes you feel microscopic. Fremont Street downtown, old Vegas, where the lights and noise and humanity blend into something I still struggle to describe.
And the casinos. Slot machines everywhere. In the hotels. Along the walkways. Even at the airport. Smoke in the air. Carpets that never end. Hotels connected by bridges and underground tunnels like a city within a city. It’s a sensory overload that leaves you wide-eyed and slightly stunned.
It’s not somewhere I need to return to often. But as a bucket list adventure, it delivered.
Years ago, long before we emigrated, our family made a decision. We would prioritise experiences over things. Over gifts. Over accumulating more stuff. That choice has quietly shaped everything since.
When we left South Africa and started again in the USA, we arrived with ten suitcases. No furniture. No excess. Just us. Experiences became the thread that stitched our new life together. The trips. The concerts. The spontaneous weekends away. The memories that no shipping container could have carried.
Vegas reminded me why we chose this path.
Emigration is hard. It stretches you in ways you don’t expect. It asks you to leave comfort behind and step into uncertainty. But it also opens doors to moments you once only imagined.
These are the stories our kids will tell one day. Not what we owned. Not what we bought. Where we went. What we felt. Who we were becoming in the process.
That’s the real jackpot. And it has nothing to do with slot machines.
