I… Had a Meltdown… in Africa

When I first started writing this post, my plan was to unload for a while about the difficulties we had with lodging, service, and general infrastructure after our Kilimanjaro climb in Tanzania, and about how I basically had a minor meltdown as a result. Those of you who know our good friend and travel partner Christi may have already heard a bit from her about my travel weariness (or more specifically, my lack of patience with the developing world), and I still hate thinking that my inability to deal with some of the primitive infrastructure in Tanzania had a negative impact on her experience of seeing Africa for the first time. I was going to write about all that, and how I’ve gained more perspective on the experience now, and all the meaningful things I’ve learned about myself, blah, blah, blah.

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Game Driving in Tanzania

Well, we finally got through all of our game drive photos from Tanzania and posted the best ones in our Game Drives – Part 1 and Game Drives – Part 2 photo albums. We took something like 500+ photos in only three days of driving around the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater national parks in Tanzania, but we still feel a little bad that the best-of albums are so big. We were lucky enough to see a ton of animals, though, so we felt like we had to share at least one or two photos of each of them. :)

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Kili Videos!

At the risk of Kili overkill (over-kili?), we thought we’d share a few of the short videos Laura shot during our trek. The first video (1:23) was taken on Day 2, after we arrived at Shira 2 Camp. You’ll notice that we seem pretty happy – the sun is shining, our breath sounds are normal, life is pretty good…

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Pole, Pole Up to Uhuru

Since our summit blog post gave away the punch line, I guess you all know that we made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro (the highest point in Africa), but the fun is always in the details, so I thought I’d share a few of the highlights from our trek up the mountain. We’ve also uploaded photos from the trek in our Kilimanjaro – Part 1 and Kilimanjaro – Part 2 albums.

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28 Things I Learned While Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

Hi everyone! Dustin is working on a detailed play-by-play of our incredible trek up Kili (with pictures!) and should have it up sometime soon, but in the mean time, I thought I’d share some of the things I learned while climbing the big mountain.

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We Made It!

We’ll have many more details to share soon (the poor little internet here at L’Oasis Lodge in Arusha is slower than AOL dial-up circa 1995), but we wanted to let everyone know that Christi, Laura and I made it to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro yesterday!! Below is a photo of the three of us and our guides at the summit.

Dustin, Laura, Christi, Evans, and Hallelujah at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro (Uhuru)

Will There Be Blog?

Almost six months ago, Laura kicked off our world travel blog with her sublimely titled There Will Be Blog entry. Given that it’s been more than six weeks since we flew from Thailand to Egypt to meet my brother for our Jewels of the Nile tour (also known as the Total Temple Torture Tour), and given that you, our patient readers, haven’t read word one about anything that’s happened on our trip since then (except for us surprising Ginny and Mark at their wedding in Currituck, NC), a reasonable question might be: will there be blog?

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