You really need to click here for a closer look!

Early on, on this round-the-world trip of ours, Oksana and I had a serious conversation about just dumping all our electronics gear — our laptops, our cameras, all the batteries and chargers; everything but our clothes — and continuing on without it.  It would have probably halved the weight of our bags, but more importantly, it would have freed us from the self-imposed responsibility of sharing everything online.  Believe it or not, the stress associated with posting new stuff to this blog or on Facebook and Twitter can, at times, detract from our trip.  The travel blogger’s dilemma: Any time spent blogging is time not spent traveling…

One of those pieces of electronics that’s been weighing us down is a handheld GPS unit made by Garmin.  Every day — every single day! — we start it up just before we walk out the door and let it track our progress wherever we go.  We selected this particular unit, a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, for its battery life.  Two AA batteries last around 25 hours.  At the end of every day, I save a GPS track.  When I have some spare time in front of the computer, I import them all into Google Earth, write up a brief summary of the day, and then combine everything in Google Maps for our website.

If you’ve been following the site, you know that we post a ton of photos, write something up from time to time, and post a video here and there.  If you’re really paying attention, you also know that we’ve been silently updating other parts of the site with much greater frequency.  (See: Our Recommended Tours page, our travel budget, and our “Where Are We?” page.)  Keeping up with this takes a huge amount of effort and is also a big reason why I haven’t written more blog entries or posted more videos on the site.

To stay motivated, I have to keep reassuring myself how cool it will be to have all this data at the end of our trip.  We’ll be able to dig into our budget and tell you exactly how much money we spent on, say, public restrooms in every country.  We’ll be able to recommend hotels for people traveling to the same destinations.  And we’ll be able to print out a wall-sized map of the world with our GPS track scrawled across it!

That’s what I wanted to show you today.  Google Maps is notoriously finicky about showing maps with huge tracks across them.  To reduce loading time, it usually breaks your map up into multiple pages, but every once in awhile, I’ve noticed that Google Maps displays my map in its entirety.  This time, when I saw all the tracks laid out before me, I made sure to zoom in, screencap everything, and stitch a big map back together in Photoshop.  There are still some problems with it (notice some of the gaps in the tracks — they’re actually there when you zoom in closer, but don’t display at this particular zoom level), but it’s a great representation of just how far we’ve gone in a 16 months or so.

Today, this map is pretty much blowing my mind.  We’ve traveled across the whole freakin’ planet!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (47.5MB)

We really only had one day in Israel, so of course visiting a McDonald’s was high on our list of things to do!  My goal was to go to one of the few kosher restaurants, but they were all closed for Shabbat; we checked.  We lucked out because there was one in the airport and we hit it on the way out, but it didn’t have the infamous “blue arches,” one of the only logo changes McDonald’s has ever approved (supposedly.)

Anyway, we dragged our friend, Michal, to McDonald’s in Tel Aviv with us.  Turned out to be a good thing, as most of the menu was in Hebrew…

Oh, and I think the mic on Oksana’s point-and-shoot is toast.  No idea what happened (raindrop, perhaps?), but this is the second recording where the audio is just horrible.  Good thing we have friends bringing us a brand new Sony TX10 in a few weeks!

Toward the end of our stay in Egypt, we began looking for a way to reach Eastern Europe.  Our plan had always been to start somewhere around Turkey and work our way north.  There were many routes we could take, some of which were easily discarded due to visa costs.  Even so, we looked forward to visiting Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia before entering Russia.

But before all of that, we had to find our way to Turkey.  Overland from Jordan was simply not an option, not with the unrest in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.  We thought for sure we could find a cruise ship or ferry or something out of Israel, but that turned out to be next to impossible.  When all was said and done, we simply purchased a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul.  Simple, but spendy.

Because we lingered in Africa, we were in a rush by the time we got to Israel.  I would have enjoyed having a week or more to visit historical sites like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the Jordan River, but by the time we crossed the border, we had barely 24 hours before our flight out.

Fortunately, our friend, Michal, was living in Tel Aviv and offered to show us around.  We packed quite a bit into that day and a half and, with her there to answer my questions, we learned a lot about the country, too.

We spoke a lot about geopolitics – I was very curious about how Israelis see themselves, how they fit in in the Middle East, and how religion plays a role in their country’s politics.  I’m not going to get into that here.  I know I wouldn’t be able to do our conversations justice, but furthermore, I didn’t get a chance to talk with anyone else.  While very informative, hers was only one Israeli’s opinion.

(more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (22.1MB)

I have to admit that recording this video — even asking to stop at a McDonald’s on the way — felt a little awkward.  I’m self-conscious enough recording videos in a restaurant; doing the same thing with two strangers in the car?  A little odd.  After it was over, though, Tina said I sounded very natural, so maybe it doesn’t come across that bad.

Exercise for the viewer: See if you can spot the continuity error!

Let me ask you a question:  How many times have you read about Jordan in the news?  Thinking back, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Jordan making headlines.  Now, what about the countries that surround it?  Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.  Can you remember a time when one of those countries made international news?  Maybe once or twice?

Most people only know about the Kingdom of Jordan because of Petra, the ruins that played a part in the third Indiana Jones movie.  To be honest, that’s about all I knew of it before we arrived, too.

We ended up sharing a cab ride, from Aqaba to Petra, with an Australian woman a short time after we cleared immigration.  I asked our cab driver how, in such a volatile region, Jordan doesn’t make any waves.  His answer?  “We’re peaceful – the Switzerland of the Middle East!”

Maybe so, but I just did a Google search for “the Switzerland of the Middle East” and the tagline seems to belong to Lebanon.  For some reason.  Huh.

At any rate, Jordan was a very pleasant change from Egypt.  We noticed many differences right away.

(more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (34.7MB)

After a long Big Mac dry spell, we finally made it across Africa and found another country with Golden Arches: Egypt!  We ended up eating at McDonald’s again and again before we left the country if only because we kept stopping in for the AC and vanilla cones!  Egypt is hot in August!

This is the first video we didn’t shoot in the restaurant itself.  I find it ironic that we chose not to because the environment wasn’t conducive to good video, but look at the problems this video has!  The florescent lights in our room wreaked havoc with the image; sorry about that.  We weren’t planning to shoot another review, but when we saw the sandwiches on display in Aswan, I had to try one.  We only had Oksana’s point-and-shoot camera with us, however, and it did a horrible job with the audio.  (Not sure why, either, because we shot practically the whole Ecuadorian Jungle video with that little camera!)  These issues bother me, but I’m trying to remind myself that these McDonald’s videos were never intended to be perfect.  That comforts me somewhat.  It also helps when I think about the mayo that both Oksana and I had stuck to our faces in the first segment…

Speaking of awkward food review moments.  Boy, when you’re on camera, the time between taking a bite and swallowing it so you can talk again seems like an eternity.  I should watch the the Food Network and take notes on how they do it.

I’ve got good news and bad news about Egypt.  Which do you want first?  How ‘bout the bad.

Oksana and I have visited somewhere between 25 and 30 countries so far and it’s safe to say that Egypt is our least favorite so far.  Why the hate?  Because of the hassle.

Our guidebook warned us, a tourist in Tanzania warned us, friends on Twitter warned us, even the guy behind the counter at our hostel in Cairo warned us, but I still couldn’t believe it would be as bad as they said.  It was.  Actually, it was worse.

Listen to me.  If you go to Egypt, you will be hassled, hounded, yelled at, and argued with.  You will be followed, lied to, cheated, and taken advantage of.  The people in Egypt will not leave you alone.  They will do everything in their power to separate you from your money.

There is no escape from it.  At the pyramids of Giza, camel riders will follow you around, pestering you with questions constructed from the seven words of English they’ve memorized:  “You want ride? Camel ride? Hello? Camel ride. Twenty dollars.  Hello? You want camel ride?”

At the temples, Bedouins will step in front of you to get your attention, point out a hieroglyph on the wall, lie about what it represents (“Look! Cleopatra!”), and then hold out their hand for money.

In the Valley of the Kings, “helpful” people standing at the entrance to the tombs will hand you a half-dead flashlight as you enter and then demand money for it when you try to leave, even though you never used it because the whole tomb was lit with florescent lights.

If you’re not a dark-skinned Arab wearing a robe or a turban, you’re a mark.  Egyptians will swarm around you like a cloud of mosquitoes, buzzing in your ears, eventually angering the most patient tourist.

We tried everything we could think of to avoid them; nothing worked.  Sometimes we lost our temper. I’m ashamed to admit that we even swore at a few.  They swore right back.  They know all the worst words, in every language, because they’ve heard them all before from travelers just like us.

We were told again and again that the best thing we could do was ignore them.  Don’t make eye contact, show them your back.  We tried.  It was as simple as ignoring that cloud of mosquitoes and just as effective.
(more…)