We went on safari several times in Africa. A budding wildlife photographer, Danny kept trying to get a photo that would describe why a zebra has stripes. Everytime we saw them clumped together in a group he would try from various angles, repositioning the car, leaning around me, etc.. to get the perfect picture. Needless to say we have hundreds of zebra photos!
Archives for August 2010
Diarrhea + Ethiopia = Worst Day Ever
A fellow traveler once told us a story of wetting herself on an Indian train for fear of losing her seat and all her belongings. Another traveler recounted a tale of two horrendous days on a bus, stopping the driver every hour to relieve himself. He was later diagnosed with cholera.
This is that type of story, the type that takes time to be able to tell; to see the humor in what was both extremely dangerous and embarrassing all at the same time. This is the kind of thing that happens to all of us on the road, the memories we loathe and relish at the same time, but can almost never ever talk about. It has taken me a few months, but this is my travel illness story.
Disclaimer: This story should is long and should not be read by anyone with an affinity for plant life, or over any meal.
During a brief excursion to the eastern Ethiopian city of Harar, Jill and I hired a local guide who we invited to eat with us after our tour. We asked him to chose a very authentic restaurant. To order, Jill walked to the front of the shop and actually select the cut of meat right off the actual slab of meat. As she ordered, I held the table and ordered 5 cent beers. The men sitting next to me offered me some of their meal, uncooked beef, I politely declined and opted instead to share a drink.
Several hours later I felt a rumble in my tummy. This is nothing uncommon in Africa, especially not in Ethiopia, and I went running (but with clenched cheeks) all the way back to the hotel. Jill, in close pursuit, saw the humor in the situation and laughed as I paused periodically to ensure no ‘leakage.’ To be fair, this sort of moment isn’t exactly infrequent on the road. We made it back to the room safely and as I flushed the toilet I became aware of two realities: both the water and the electricity were out of service. TIA, I thought, this is Africa.
Over the next few hours things got much worse and I went far beyond the usual roto router pipe cleaning. At first I only went to the bathroom once or twice, nothing major, but then I crawled into bed and simply could not get out from under the covers. I was shivering and thrashing about so violently that my body was actually getting ‘air’ off the mattress, enough to make both Michael Jordan and Ron Jeremy jealous. As luck would have it, we had left most of our belongings, including antibiotics and our assortment of fever reducers and stomach drugs, in Addis Ababa with friends, figuring we wouldn’t need much more than a change of clothes for the two day trip to Harar. All I had to do was make it through the night- we were already booked for a bus back to Addis Ababa the next morning at 5 a.m. We both decided that unless the fever didn’t break, which it did soon thereafter, we would avoid the local hospital and seek help back in Addis.
Intermittent utilities are not all that uncommon in Africa, especially away from the capital cities and we had been warned about the possibility by the front desk upon check-in. By all accounts it hadn’t been lunch with the guide that made me sick (Jill was perfectly fine), rather some undercooked chicken from the night before that I hadn’t been able to see. That’s right, the electricity was out.
Somehow I managed to drink some Sprite and water and rather quickly the high fever subsided and I was left with only some awful diarrhea. Eventually I was able to get out of bed and spend two minutes out of every 20 on the can. A good thing for sure as ‘getting it out’ is generally viewed as progress in these sorts of things and ‘getting it out’ somewhere other than your own bed is generally viewed as success. By these simple measures I was suddenly a very successful man; but success, like all things, wanes with time. I was feeling much better though, and it was clear the worst of it was over. The fever had largely broken, I wasn’t shaking violently, and I managed to send Jill against her protests to feed a few hyenas.
By the time Jill returned to the hotel an hour later, power had returned and we were in the daily 2 hour window of running water which allowed her run a few laps up and down the hall with a 20 gallon bucket of water to “force flush” the toilet. Ahhh, good times. Eventually she went to sleep but I did not. I was awake and in and out of the bathroom about every 5-10 minutes and even with a ‘full bucket,’ water was still in limited supply and I actually had to ration my flushes, eventually settling on a ratio of 2-3 bathroom trips to one flush. Thanks to the returned electricity I was able to occupy myself while in the bathroom by playing ‘wack-a-mole’ with cockroaches when they came within striking distance. We had actually chosen one of the nicer places in town, it had a front desk and even a restaurant. This was one of the most expensive places in town….and government run as well.
It was a restless night but eventually it was time to get to the bus. I changed into the only fresh set of clothes I had with me before spending another 20 minutes making sure the pipes were clear. Feeling confident, we headed out down the ‘main’ street to the departure point. Luckily we had purchased tickets for the nice bus, we did that even before I got sick, and it had a bathroom. I just had to make it the 20 minutes to the bus and I was in the clear.
As we were walking, my previous success began to wane. At first I thought it was nothing but then the familiar rumble in my stomach got strong and the fart that I thought I was having quickly grew legs. As I dropped my pants the stream of water continued to flow unabated, as if Lake Meade was suddenly freed of the Hoover Dam. It was a powerful force of nature destroying all plant life in its path…..in this case some nice grasses planted as the road’s median. Luckily there was enough darkness to hide me, practically naked, from the runner enjoying his morning jog a mere 30 meters away. My success was gone, my internal housing bubble had burst, and I had foreclosed on any amount of pride I had managed to collect for myself.
We made it to the bus a few, very short and red-faced minutes later. I climbed on and went straight for the bathroom. Locked. Ethiopia strikes again. It was as though I was 14 and I was turned down by a girl for the 8th grade dance. Part of me knew I would survive but it felt like the end of the world as I knew it. Instead of praising love’s sweet sorrows however, my body was so physically exhausted and drained that, miraculously, I fell asleep.
I was doing much better though, able to last several hours between each rest stop. At lunch I found that I was thankful for having already had so much practice with squat toilets, having an easier time ‘aiming’ at the squatter despite the fact that I was aiming in sheer darkness. At one of several ‘side of the road’ bathroom breaks however, I took a little too long and it was Jill, clearly the hero of this story, (she handled the hand-laundry with us back in Addis with me sound asleep) who managed to stop the bus and have it wait for me to finish. I was already walking back to the bus but was moving a bit slower than might have been expected.
The reason for that slow movement was actually our first bathroom break from the bus. Another ‘side of the road’ with a cliff-side replacing the the usual privacy of trees and rocks, I walked from the bus as far as I could, knowing that I’d be having the same Number 1 as everyone else….just out the wrong end. As the flood gates opened, I inched myself forward, away from the carnage behind me until I could not ‘inch’ anymore as a thorn bush had completely engulfed my pants and underwear from all sides.
For the remaining 6 hours of the ride, I sat with burs piercing my butt….because I clearly hadn’t had a bad enough day as it was. I’m not sure exactly how that ending of this story becomes a moral, but I’m pretty sure the moral is in there somewhere.
Foodie Friday: Kumpir
Imagine a stuffed baked potato with everything you can imagine inside of it: cream cheese, real cheese, bacon bits, whatever else you want to put in. Now imagine a hot dog with all the fixins: relish, ketchup, onions, chili sauce, and the list keeps going. Take your hot dog, remove the bun, and put it inside the potato.
I’ve just described what might be the American version of the Kumpir.
There are a few differences obviously but the general pictures is of a baked potato stuffed with all the goodness you can imagine. Start with your potato wrapped in foil, cut one side and open it up. Next whip shredded cheese and butter into the potato within the potato’s skin. Now add whatever else you can imagine being cooked in a Mediterranean kitchen. Our options were as follows: Yogurt sauce, beet sauce, chili sauce, peas, couscous, chopped hot dog, corn, pickles, black olives, green olives, shredded chicken, potato salad, and the list goes on. Once you’re done making choices go ahead and add some ketchup or mayonnaise and enjoy with a spoon.
Since you’re curious here is what each of us had in ours:
Me – Everything but beet sauce, olives, and chicken.
Jillian – Chili Sauce, corn, pickles, green olives, couscous, shredded chicken (unorthodox) and that’s about it. She refused, understandably, to put potato salad on a potato. (which was interestingly referred to as American Salad)
To all friends and family, this has the potential of becoming a staple of our future Fourth of July celebrations. That is if Jill lets me, of course. Editors Note: Jill says no.
iPhone Applications on the Road
Everyone on the Internet has come up with their list of the most important iPhone applications and travel bloggers are no exception. We have come to completely depend on our iTouch for everything from a quick check of the email when we can find free WiFi to portable storage and use of all of our guidebooks which we have in PDF form. As much as I may dislike the way in which Apple controls its products, these are good projects whose power and portability add dramatically to our ability to log-in and log-off that much quicker.
The applications below are ordered from most important to least, obviously skipping over many (Facebook, Gmail, Tweetdeck,Kayak, etc) that we have and use but really aren’t quite that special. The one thing all of these below applications have in common is that they all work offline.
Travel Guides:
PDF Reader: With this application we are able to store our guidebooks on our iTouch and call on their data with a few swipes of the thumb. In South America one big book carried us all the way through the continent but no other region we’ve visited has had that sort of geographical travel guide available to us. Without this application we would literally be carting around 2-4 guidebooks at any given time and they would probably be all outdated.
Encyclopedia: This is probably the best tool of all. The entire Wikipedia database at my fingertips, off line, no connection needed. The nearly 2.5GB file contains only English and no pictures but otherwise it is no different than using Wikipedia itself. We can figure out where we’ve seen that actor before, read the mythologies of the Nazca lines while flying overhead, and study up on quantum mechanics from the train. More information than we know what to do with for only $9, which makes it the most expensive application we have by about $8 but it is worth every cent and even includes a donation to the Wikipedia foundation.
Factbook: No, not Facebook. This is the entire CIA World Factbook available off line and at my fingertips. With this we have an instant idea what the transportation issues are going to be, any transnational border disputes we need to be aware of, and what waterborne diseases we need to be careful about.
Currency: We used a free currency application but finally switched to a paid version when we realized a number of places we’re going to in the next 4 months weren’t listed. These applications download spot exchange rates when you connect and are available off line for you to do conversions when necessary. If we were only traveling to a handful of places we might not need this but sometimes we switch currencies multiple times a week and keeping track of all those rates can be extremely frustrating.
SkyGazer: A map of the stars, which matches easily to what you can actually see above you. It also comes complete with all mythologies and you can fast forward and rewind to any second in the future or history. As we fell asleep in the Kalahari listening to lions we were gazing out our tent at the constellation Leo and while watching the sand in the Sahara I found myself admiring Scorpio. For $3 this is the sort of thing that ‘makes me happy’ but there is a free version called ‘Planets’ that works quite nicely as well.
Tripwolf: This is one of many online apps that provide us with an additional bit of destination information. Many of the most popular destinations have additional ‘paid’ guides but all the free ones contain information that can help us plan what we want to do. We have to online to download a guide but it is fully functional offline. Much of Tripwolf’s information is supplied by Footprint Books.
News Applications: There are a million, most don’t work offline. We’ve found the AP application to be the fastest to load when online and easiest to use offline of all the major news apps. We also like the NY Times application even if it is a bit slower and slightly less customizable.
World Nomads Language Guides: We were in a Kenyan market and were trying to negotiate with local women who spoke only Swahili. With the exchange rate around 80 shillings to the dollar, 10 fingers just weren’t enough for the numbers we needed to express. I suppose I could have opened up the calculator and typed in the number but the Maasai were far more impressed when I stated my price, verbally, at 1,600 shillings, in Swahili.
Hierapolis and Pamukkale
One part natural wonder, one part thermal bath, one part ancient roman ruins that’s the recipe for Hierapolis and Pamukkale. Built in an area of significant thermal activity, I can only imagine what ancient people’s thought when they arrived at the site. Huge fields of cotton looking calcium deposits formed by mineral rich thermal water, Pamukkale is an impressive natural wonder even today. Like something out of ancient mythology, the pools look like hot springs in a cloud from the ruins of Heirapolis situated above. It’s not hard to imagine the pantheon of Roman Gods soaking in the pools. The ruins themselves are still actively being excavated and unlike Ephesus they have hardly been rebuilt. If Disney created an Ancient Roman water theme park, this is what it would look like.
Although you’re no longer allowed to swim in the actual calcium pools, they’ve done a really good job creating artificial thermal pools on site which give you the feeling of swimming in a cloud. Shallow and warm from the thermal spring water that flows down the hillside, the pools themselves are sort of surreal. Or maybe that was just the itsy, bitsy florescent speedo bathing suits being worn by a ridiculous number of former USSR citizens. Ahem. Like I said, thankfully the water was cloudy and the formations are bright white- harshly reflecting the sun.
Thankfully there were fewer fluorescent man bikini’s in the antique pool. Having damed the thermal spring at Hierapolis at its source atop the mountain, in the middle of the ruins,the ministry of tourism has created a surreal little ancient feeling swimming pool. See I told you it was like Disney. Complete with pieces of fallen columns and buildings, bushes overflowing with fragrant flowers and lined with palm trees the pool felt like a secret oasis of the roman empire. The pool itself was warm (about 90ºF) and fizzy, due to the high mineral content. After an hour and a half of lounging on the columns, swimming over the ruins feeling like roman royalty we got out. Ok actually, they were closing otherwise I could have spent more time pretending to be Esther Williams bathing in hot seltzer water.
The ruins themselves aren’t as impressive as Ephesus mainly because they haven’t been restored and are still actively being excavated. Using your imagination at this site is easy, you already feel like you’re in an ancient castle in the clouds. Although most of the site is in ruins, the theater however is rather intact. It is absolutely magnificent and well worth the steep hike up. Much of the decoration remains in good condition, including architectural designs in the choral area and statues on the stage. Between this theater and the library of Ephesus it’s clear there was a lot of money coming through Asia Minor to Rome.
If you go: Most tourists come only on a day trip, but we spent a very pleasant night in Pamukkale village. The archaeological site is open all night as are the artificial pools of Pamukkale, but the ancient pool closes in the evening. Like other sites in Turkey the entrance fees are steep and the ancient pool is additional. Sunset from the artificial pools at the top was magnificent and we highly recommend sticking around or not heading up to the site until the evening. Bring sunglasses as the glare from the white calcium formations is harsh. Unless you are a huge history buff you don’t need a guide for Heirapolis, the site is enjoyable on its own. Buses connect Pamukkale to all nearby sites (Feithye, Selcuk, Bodrum, etc) with almost hourly service.
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