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.

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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.
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The great thing about traveling around the world for a year without a plan is that you can make it us as you go.  On our first night in South Africa, I found myself flipping through a National Geographic that was left on a coffee table at our backpackers.  There was a feature on the Okavango Delta, with beautiful photos of elephants pushing through marshy waters at sunset.  That’s something I’d like to see, I thought.

The Okavango Delta is in Botswana, huh?  Oh, and hey, look at the map!  Botswana is right next door to South Africa!  That’s pretty much exactly how we decided to go.

For a country right next door to South Africa, Botswana is very much a different place.  Parts of it matched up exactly with my preconceptions of what an African country would be like (the bus system, the sounds of the spoken languages) and some of it surprised me (3G cellular service, safety.)

A few days before we were set to leave South Africa, we met a couple Canadian girls in Pretoria that were volunteering in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, for a few months (Hi, Brandy! Hi, Angela!)  They offered to let us stay with them at their volunteer house for a couple nights, which was awesome for a number of reasons, not least of which being that we had a couple unofficial guides that had already figured out many of the ins and outs of Botswana society.  Their initial help with things like the bus rank were invaluable.

The Bus Rank

When we saw the bus rank for the first time, I thought, now we’re in Africa!

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The audio isn’t great in this one — we found ourselves in a McDonald’s that was packed full of screaming kids — but I think you can still understand what we’re saying. I suppose we could have recorded another McDonald’s session; we were in South Africa for over a month, after all. But honestly it takes a lot of effort (and a sort of public performance bravado we have to psych ourselves up for) to whip out a video camera and talk about what you’re eating with people all around you. Once we’ve got it “in the can,” we’re much less likely to go for “take 2!”

A couple mistakes I noticed in editing:

1) The McRoyale isn’t a renamed DOUBLE Quarter Pounder, it’s a renamed DELUXE Quarter Pounder. (Big diff, I know.)

2) I say that the BBQ sauce on the McFeast is the same that’s on the McRib in the States. That may or may not be true, but I wish I hadn’t referred to it as “BBQ sauce,” but rather “Braai sauce.” I didn’t see the burger box copy until later:

BRING ON THE BRAAI
The summer’s always here with the two quarter pounds of pure beef and the unique taste combination of smokey South African Braai sauce and tangy mayo.
Let the good times roll.

I want to make sure I do a “Thoughts on…” post for every country we visit, but I’ve fallen way behind.  While traveling, I try to jot these things down as they occur to me, usually on my iPhone.  I still have all my notes for every country, but I wrote down Uruguay’s way back in April.  They’re not as fresh in my mind as they were back then.

Still, let’s try to catch up a bit:

Landscape

We only visited coastal areas in Uruguay – Montevideo, Punta del Este, Punta del Diablo, and Cabo Polonio – so I didn’t get to see much inland, but what I did see reminded me strongly of North Carolina.

Most of the roads between cites were two-lane blacktop and the view from the bus window was of nothing but flat farmland.  On the red dirt roads to Cabo Polonio, the view was split between farms and groves of pine trees.  Out on the highways, they even had the occasional John Deer dealership, complete with tractors and harvesting equipment lined up for display.

The beaches were uncannily like the Outer Banks, too.  The same color sand, the same tall dunes, the same tall beach grass.  I even spotted some sea fleas in the surf.  Aside from the occasional penguin or sea lion carcass washed up on the shore and the rocky point, everything on the beach was so familiar that the first thing I did when I got back to civilization (i.e., internet access) was look up the latitude for Cabo Polonio.  Sure enough, it was at almost the exact same level as Nags Nead, NC, just in the southern hemisphere instead of the north.  Makes sense that things were so similar: Same position on the globe, same Atlantic Ocean joining them together.

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Alright, I finally get to remove the “‡” next to Uruguay!

We had fun eating at McDonald’s in Uruguay, but to tell the truth, I was more excited to continue eating the Angus Premium burgers we’d discovered in Argentina.  McUruguay had a great name for a burger, however. The “McBacon” sounded like mana from heaven, but it was nothing to write home about (still worth making a podcast about, however!)  I didn’t realize this after the first bite (so it isn’t on camera), but there are actually two hamburger patties in the McBacon which means it’s just a Bacon Double Cheeseburger.

You may notice some audio problems with this clip.  That’s because we were eating outside and the microphone picked up some wind noise.  Strange thing was, every time the wind buffeted the mic, the auto leveler would drop the audio gain for a long time thereafter.  I tried to bring the levels back in line a bit, but it’s still noticeable.  Always use the mic muff outdoors; lesson learned.

Finally, at another Uruguayan McDonald’s in Montevideo, we discovered a small twist on the soft serve vanilla cones.  The ice cream was the same, but the cone was made of Oreos!  Wasn’t worth breaking out the camera and trying to edit it in, but it was worth eating!

(The “‡” meaning: “Countries I have visited and have NOT eaten at a McDonald’s, but ones which I plan to revisit within the next WEEK(!!) and remedy that situation.”)

US
Canada
Mexico
Costa rica
Venezuela
Ecuador
Peru
Bolivia
Argentina
Chile
St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Puerto Rico, US Territory
Russia
Australia
Uruguay
Netherlands *
England *
Cuba –
Colombia †

* Just in the airport
– Countries I have visited in which there are no McDonald’s
† Countries I have visited and have NOT eaten at a McDonald’s