good-bad-ugly

Good, Bad, Ugly: Camping

June 16, 2011 By Danny

Guess what…it’s SUMMER. For us in Florida that means sweltering heat but for most everyone else in the northern hemisphere it means it’s time to head out and enjoy the best that nature has to offer. Everyone has a different style when it comes to the great outdoors but it is hard to find a person who doesn’t love a good camping trip. We did a fair bit of camping in our travels, mostly in Africa where we carried our own camping equipment, and those nights have made for some of our fondest memories.

The Good – We were scared to enter Sudan but once we were about to depart we were sad to see it go. It was here that we made a true “bush camp” for the first time, literally pulling over off the side of the road and pitching our tents wherever we wanted. We sat out each night, sitting in the middle of the Saharan Desert with no one else around, enjoying a nice South African Potjie (Poi-kee) and starring at the most amazing stars we’re likely to ever see in our lives. We were constantly on watch for scorpions (didn’t see a single one) and the four of us went through a full 25 liters of water a day. The first night we slept in the shadow of pyramids and on the final night we readied for our ferry to Egypt. When we we boarded our version of a luxurious Nile Cruise (yup slept out on deck) we hadn’t showered in 4 days…it didn’t matter, we were happy!

The Bad – Just a few weeks before our arrival to Sudan we found ourselves in Ethiopia and unable to find a place to stay. We pulled over at a local hotel and squeezed into the parking lot filled with USAID and UNICEF land rovers and were met by the attendant who told us the hotel was full. Naturally it was the only one for miles. With no other option, he charged us 50% of the standard price and allowed us to ‘camp’ in the conference room. I probably don’t need to point out that the only reason a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Ethiopia needs a conference room is so the aid workers can come together and spend a long day talking about Ethiopians…I digress. We had no option but to camp inside this conference room (a couple of other similar hotels had let us use the parking lot) and made it through a very uncomfortable night on a hard tile floor.

The Ugly – We spent only a few days in Lesotho and they were all wonderful. Upon our arrival at the campsite I asked the attendant if it would rain. In climates such as that the answer is only ever yes or no…and this man told me no. He was wrong. Our final night there the rains started to come. They did not stop. We’d pitched our tent on the high ground but there was so much water that it didn’t matter. Water was coming in from both the ceiling of the tent and the floor and we quickly decided to grab all of our things, ditch the tent, and run for cover. There were rondavels (little round cabins) and we managed to break into one. While we were drying out our things and our bodies and trying to get settled in we saw our tent FLOATING away. That’s how much water there was….so much for no rain!

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. We aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

Good Animal, Bad Animal & Ugly Animal

February 25, 2011 By Danny

There are a lot of animals in the world and we aimed to see all of them. Of course we didn’t but, we seem to have had a lot of animal experiences over our travels. Here are just a few:

The Good

Our first week on the road was an amazing one. Waking up the first morning in Guerro Negro, Mexico, jumping on a boat, and having what is probably the most amazing experience possible with a wild animal was fantastic. The boat tour that we took brought us out into the harbor where the gray whales literally just swam right up to our boat to play with us and allow us to pet them. The newborn calf led his mother and when a second boat stole his attention his mom swam right up so we could continue rubbing her skin. These were wild animals and we never gave them any food. The next few days, further south in La Paz, we took a boat ride around Espiritu Santo where we were visited by (not so nice) pilot whales, a humpback whale, jumping rays and for a finale we snorkeled with some very friendly and playful sea lions.

The Bad

Our trip to the Pantanal saw some practices that we find particularly upsetting. We went fishing for piranhas in the river, a perfectly OK activity and one we’d done just weeks earlier in the Bolivian Amazon, and then returned to the lodge with our catch. Upon our arrival we found the beach littered with caiman (the South American version of the alligator) who were just waiting to eat those fresh piranha…and they were fed, right there on that sandy beach. We consider it a bad practice whenever animals are given the opportunity to link humans with food, the reason we did not go diving with the great white sharks in South Africa. We were also annoyed when bait was tossed into the river for a hawk to come and catch…creating a nice, fake photo opportunity each time that hawk came down to eat.

The Ugly

The whales of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula were wonderful, many of the mammals we encountered in Africa were not quite so accommodating. After spending gobs of money to see the rare mountain gorillas of Uganda, we were more than a bit surprised when our welcoming by these animals was one of dominance by one of the group’s males. The gorilla charged us, actually knocking one of the guides to the ground; it was an authentic experience but more than a touch scary. Runner Up: Also in Africa, one elephant in Kruger National Park just didn’t want us get past him. This elephant just stood in the road, blocking our passing, and when we finally were able to make a run for it, he turned and reared his head….VERY unhappy at our having passed by. Jill wasn’t able to enjoy elephants again, which was problematic because we saw lots more.

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. Every week we aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

Good Beer, Bad Beer & Ugly Beer

February 16, 2011 By Danny

Some beer is great, actually a lot of it is. So good in fact that we dedicated a Foodie Friday to all the different beers we tried while we were in Europe. Beer helped us to become friends with a few Iranians and we became enthralled in Tanzania where our beer options were Safari, Kilimanjaro, Uhuru and Serengeti. We tried a huge variety of beer on our trip, mostly because we wanted to collect a variety of labels, and here’s our good, bad and ugly.

The Good

This one is really difficult to put our finger on. While we were in Cologne, Germany our friends there introduced us to Kölsch and explained to us that by law it has to come from that very region. We were there during the world cup, while Germany was making a run for the championship, and on game day we went to buy some and found the warehouse of a beer aisle at the local supermarket completely cleaned out. The beer is refreshing but really, is every bit as good as those wonderful pilsners we tried while we were in Prague….namely the original Budweiser. We didn’t have any trouble finding that in a local Prague bar and the local version of the familiar ‘black and tan’ was quite frankly amazing. Given that we have friends in both cities, I think we’re going to have to call it a tie. (I’m willing to take my chances that our friend in Munich isn’t reading….she might have a slightly different opinion.)

The Bad

This one goes to Egypt. Many of us have been toasting the changes occurring there recently but the unfortunate truth is that Islamic countries, even secular ones, just don’t understand the concept very well. The local brew was actually OK but it was only memorable in that it was almost impossible to find outside of a tourist restaurant. Wanting to celebrate our completion of the overland Cape Town to Cairo route we struck out again and again. Finally we found a liquor store (we’d been told that the handful in existence were all run by Christians rather than Muslims….I’m not so sure of that) and, giving up on beer, made the switch to liquor. Have you ever heard of Jani Walker Red Lion? I imagine it is pretty similar to motor oil. Runner Up: Every time I go home and visit my parents I’m confronted with a refrigerator filled with Michelob Ultra. How Lance Armstrong, the world’s premier endurance athlete, became associated with a low-carbohydrate beverage is one mystery….how they get away with calling that yellow water beer is another.

The Ugly

The recent purchase of Anheuser Busch by InBev has had many Americans upset that our American beer is being stolen by Europeans. Company number two, behind InBev is South African Brewing Co, based in Johannesburg. (In case your curious, familiar names like Miller and Peroni are SAB labels.) While in Jo’Burg we toured the International Beer Museum (which is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon) and were surprised to learn that our tour entitled us to a taste of traditional African beer. Thankfully it was just a taste and we were later given two pints of real beer, plus a small souvenir glass filled with some more.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Day

February 9, 2011 By Danny

In this first column of ishouldlogoff’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, we aim to answer what our best and worst days of the trip were….We’ve made plenty of memories and these are just some of the ones that standout the most in our heads. We will do our best to “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” a weekly column. but our creative juices are bound to stop flowing sometime.

The Good – Bolivia’s D eath Road. This day was just plan fun, nothing else to describe it. We started the morning in La Paz, one of the world’s highest capital cities. Next up we we strapped ourselves into some pretty impressive gear, hopped on some nice bikes and rode down that mountain all the way to the Amazon just as fast as we wanted. At first we shared the paved road with traffic and then we turned off and onto the older, unpaved, dirt road for the rest of the trip to sea level. We were fed good food, taken care of by a support vehicle, and literally not allowed to worry about a thing…which is probably what made it so fun Runner Up: Taking the boogie board down the class V rapids of Uganda’s Nile River.

The Bad – We had just come down from Kilimanjaro. Our bodies were sore and achy. Our bowel movements weren’t quite right…and we went online. We quickly learned two things we would have rather not known about. The first was that the rather hefty amount of money we had to send to Uganda in order to visit with the Gorillas was being held in limbo by the money transfer people (aka banks) and that our visitation permits had not yet been purchased. The second was that our box that we’d sent home of all the beautiful Zimbabwean statues had arrived home in a very damaged state. The Zimbabwe box was the straw that broke the camel’s back and we felt completely beaten by travel, and by Africa. Of all bad things to happen, in hindsight these weren’t so awful….but we just couldn’t handle it anymore.

The Ugly – That would be the day I almost died in Ethiopia. Nobody ever said e.coli was a nice illness, did they? We didn’t realize it was that bad at the time, hence it wasn’t quite as scary as the 7.2 earthquake from Belize, but it was pretty darn awful. If you didn’t read the original post, you probably want to….and if you did already read it, well then you know why I’m not repeating any of that here!

Good, Bad, Ugly: Camping

Good Animal, Bad Animal & Ugly Animal

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

Good Beer, Bad Beer & Ugly Beer

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Day

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