UK Photos & Pano-palooza #2

Hi all! Laura and I are recovering from three weeks of traveling with our families in Italy (just kidding, fams… we had a wonderful time and miss you already!), and we’re hard at work getting our blog and photo albums up-to-date. We finally have ALL of our United Kingdom photos uploaded and captioned (because we know each and every one of you goes through every single photo slideshow we post on the blog… hah!). :)

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Down to the Wire on the Fringe

Sometimes I wonder if my anal-retentive, slightly OCD, plan-focused, like-to-have-things-just-so tendencies, paired with Laura’s Italian “assertiveness” (let’s call it that) and her strong aversion to being made to feel like a sucker (she would make a pretty convincing Israeli :), might be a dangerous combination. The percentage of times that Laura and I have slept in the first room offered to us in hotels around the world is embarrassingly – or impressively – low. We’re never too proud to request an upgrade or ask for a different room if the one they’ve given us doesn’t meet our (admittedly unrealistic) standards. Sometimes, though, our determination to make things happen works out for the best, and the universe rewards us. At least, that’s how we like to look at it.

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Pano-palooza!

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I thought it might be fun to share some of the panoramic photographs I’ve stitched together over the last seven months. Adobe Photoshop’s Photomerge feature makes this incredibly easy; it hurts my brain thinking about how they automatically match up the photos, align and skew them to fit together, do color correction and white balancing, and all that fancy stuff. However they do it, some of resulting photos are pretty cool. Enjoy!

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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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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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Tashi Delek, Bhutan!

After a successful but exhausting trek up to Chomolhari base camp, we were happy to spend our last few days in Bhutan doing more of a cultural tour. Most of the trekkers left immediately after the trek (since they’d done their cultural visits beforehand), but a few – Pete, Bernard, and Jennifer – joined us for a few days in Thimphu, the capital “city” of Bhutan (population 60,000), and Punakha. We enjoyed having a chance to get to know them a bit better since we weren’t able to trek with them. We were also totally blown away by the thoughtfulness and intelligence of our main guide, Tsewang, and we were thankful to have a chance to see Bhutan through his eyes before we left.

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