Travel – Page 13 – GringoPotpourri

Post #100!

This is my 100^th post on GringoPotpourri. Over the past two years, I have tried my best to blog about a variety of topics. Mexico – where I lived for much of that time; California – where I lived before that; and Tennessee – where I live today. Movies – one of my greatest pastimes, particularly during the cold weather months; hiking – another great hobby, and something I hope to write about with increasing frequency in the future; photography – with me in front of the lens as well as behind it; even politics – though politics-lite is perhaps a better way to describe my occasional rants about issues like U.S. intervention in Syria and Sochi as a venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

And I’ve written about travel. I have many passions in life, several of which are mentioned in the paragraph above. Travel, however, is at the top of the list. Many of my Loyal Readers are like-minded travelers. I thank them for continuing to follow my own adventures; several of these readers lead adventure-filled lives themselves. Although not every post I make is about travel, today’s entry is. The post can be enjoyed by anyone – my fellow journeymen to be sure, but also the dreamers and armchair travelers. I beg your pardon for continually plugging my blog across social media, and I thank you all for sticking with me these past two years and 100 posts! Let us raise our imaginary glasses to another two years and 100 more posts!

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Kilimanjaro – A Dream Fulfilled

September is here, and it is my favorite month for hiking. (Runner-up month: April.) Sure, it is still a bit hot for long hikes across the Santa Monica Mountains – my old SoCal stomping ground and home to the 65-mile Backbone Trail – but many higher-elevation peaks are at their most-accessible in this “shoulder season” month. I completed the four-day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in September of 2005. I scaled Lembert Dome and Mount Hoffman – two prominent peaks in Yosemite National Park – in September of 2003. Just one year prior, I bagged the highest peak in the contiguous United States, 14,497-foot Mount Whitney. I have also climbed (hiked) Mount Baldy, the 10,064-foot SoCal landmark, three times, and two of those were in September (2004 and 2011).

But it is my successful climb to the summit marker atop Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro in September, 2010 that I am most proud of. Hiking is one of my great passions, you see, and if I haven’t been able to do as much of it over these past few years as I would have liked, I at least know that I have many years of great hiking memories to choose from. Kilimanjaro is my fondest, and the one I want to tell you more about in the paragraphs below.

Three Countries in Three Weeks

I took my second trip to sub-Saharan African in 2010. The trip was the brainchild of my friend Miles, just one year after our Great Southern African Adventure of 2009. This time we were joined by my friend Mark. Miles and Mark have expensive tastes, and make more money in a week than I make in a year, so they yearned for a pre-planned trip with guide/driver and first rate accommodations. They immediately declined when I suggested a Kilimanjaro add-on, but we compromised on four days in Zanzibar before they returned to the U.S. and I moved on to Moshi, Tanzania.

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Two Months In: Tennessee Livin’

Last December, I flew to the U.S. for an extended Christmas break and spent three weeks with my parents at their eastern Tennessee home. The weeks flew by. Flash forward eight months and one permanent relocation later, and I’ve completed another two months of Tennessee living. Somewhat to my surprise, I like it here.

I live in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, 40 minutes east of Knoxville and roughly mid-way, as the crow flies, between Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. I am in a regional town that is small enough to be safe and quiet but big enough to serve as a feeder town for the dozens of small farm villages in the area. We have a shopping mall, a cinema, a junior college, the requisite Cracker Barrel, and – yes – a Walmart.

Okay so I’m not wild about the fact that there’s a Wally World in my town. It doesn’t really matter. My point is that as long as I’m here I can enjoy everything that a slower pace of life has to offer, while still being able to get out to enjoy myself, whether it’s to the movies or to the hiking trails.

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My (Not Quite) Coast-to-Coast Trip Report

I have been living in Gringolandia for a month now, and the Mexico City chapter of my life is over. This reality only fully set in a few days ago, and I’m filled with mixed emotions. Alas, it is what it is.

My return to the U.S. began in Los Angeles, where I spent a few days running errands – monetary and such – and catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in almost two years. I even made it to the beach! From LA, I cleaned out my storage space, loaded everything onto a U-Haul, and drove cross-country to my new home in eastern Tennessee.

The journey went without incident, but it had some logistical challenges and cost more than I expected. As such, I thought you’d appreciate a brief write-up, Loyal Reader. Hopefully it’ll provide some insight should you ever have to make a similar move yourself.

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My (World) Cup Runneth Over

This is Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The picture was taken by yours truly in March 2011, on a rather hazy day from atop Corcovado Mountain. At that time, the stadium was closed for a three-year renovation in preparation for the mother lode of summertime sporting events: the 2016 Olympic Games and the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

Those of you who know me well will agree that I’m not a big sports fan. About soccer – “football” or “fútbol” as it’s called everywhere else around the world except in the U.S. – I am particularly uninformed. I have attended just four professional soccer games in my life, and two of those were played when I was barely ten by the no-longer-in-existence Chicago Sting – one at the no-longer-in-existence Old Comiskey Park and the other at the no-longer-in-existence Chicago Stadium – and they hardly qualify as a result.

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Interview with a Venezuelan

I have never been to Venezuela, but it is #1 on my travel wish list of places to visit. Azure-blue Caribbean waters. Majestic sand dunes. Soaring Andean peaks. Stilt villages in the middle of South America’s largest lake. Mile-after-endless-mile of dense Amazonian jungle. The world’s tallest waterfall. A seething urban megalopolis that is the final resting place of revolutionary hero Simón Bolívar. All of those places exist in Venezuela. Have you seen the Pixar movie “Up?” Do you remember the bizarre, alien landscape upon which elderly Carl’s house landed on? That rocky landscape – a tepui – is there, too.

The problem is, Venezuela is unsafe. It almost certainly is the most dangerous country in the Americas. Around the time I became interesting in visiting the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the country was several years into its initial presidency with Hugo Chávez, a far-left populist with the United Socialist Party. Venezuela’s security situation went from “fair” to “bad.” In 2007 Chávez attempted to change the constitution so that he, essentially, could be president for life. This referendum was defeated by the narrowest of margins, but in the years that followed, the country’s economic and security situation deteriorated even more, from “bad” to “worse.”

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Holiday Travels – Part Four

This will be my last blog post for awhile. I left Mexico nine days ago to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with family living in the U.S. I am posting this from Memphis, where Christmas will be celebrated, same as last year, with NYE being toasted from Eastern Tennessee. My first stop, however, was Chicago, where I stayed with old friends and attended the wedding of my cousin Jessie. Prior to Jessie’s nuptials, the last time I saw her – or any of my cousins, for that matter – was over 11 years ago! I also visited The Herr, a Facebook friend from the travel world whom I had actually never met face-to-face. Our afternoon of suburban adventures included Gene & Jude’s Hot Dogs, countless brewskis (that’s “beers” to you non-Chicagoans), and sofa time with the world’s friendliest cat, Rusty. I must say, even with the zero-degree temps and subzero wind chill that overtook Chicago during the week of my visit, I rather enjoyed myself. In fact, I had a blast.

Last year I posted a series of “Holiday Travel” entries in which I posted favorite memories from holiday travels over the past dozen or so years – Thanksgiving in Stockholm and Copenhagen (2010); New Year’s Eve in Rome (2008-09); a Smoky Mountain Christmas (2011). Give them a read; they’re fairly short and the writing holds up well.

I thought I’d add one more entry to the series. I was still a corporate drone in 2008; come November I had used up my vacation time for the year. Spending Turkey Day in Europe or Asia was out of the question as a result, but I consulted airline timetables carefully and came up with an itinerary that let me make optimal use of the four-day weekend that was already a guarantee: red-eye flights from LAX to/from Québec City and Montréal!

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Remembering Nelson Mandela

It’s been an interesting couple of months. My October and November were particularly fraught with hassles, some of which were side effects of living in a big city while others were simply bad luck. December, so far, has been looking brighter. The weather has been fabulous, I’m going stateside next week for an entire month, and my end-of-year class schedule has been simultaneously relaxed and productive. This afternoon, however, threw me for a loop. I returned from running some errands, turned on my computer, and learned that one of my personal heroes, Nelson Mandela, had died.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see it coming. Mr. Mandela was plagued with recurring health problems for much of the year. Still, he looked great, and life in post-Apartheid South Africa was good to him. He was 95.

I had the privilege of touring his former home with a friend of mine when we visited South Africa in 2009. Two of his former homes, actually – although only one was resided in by Mandela out of choice. For the former, I’m talking about his house-turned-museum in Soweto, near Johannesburg. For the latter, I’m talking about his tiny prison cell on Robben Island, near Cape Town.

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What Constitutes a Country?

Last week, I posted a bit of fun nostalgia about My Crazy Traveling Friends…Whom I Love. In the opening paragraph, I suggested that I have had to slow down my travel pace so that, for the foreseeable future, my country count will only slowly climb from its current number, 70.

I originally put an asterisk next to that 70, but promptly removed it as I knew the explanation for said asterisk was too lengthy for an already-wordy blog. In other words, I’ve been to 70* countries at last count…but for the sake of travel, just what constitutes a “country,” anyway?

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My Crazy Traveling Friends…Whom I Love

A few years ago I came up with this random travel goal: for my country count to always be at least twice the number as I am years old. I am now 38, and have set foot in 70 countries at last count. I have hardly traveled at all this year, and most of my 2012 travel was to Mexico, so I’m six countries behind my goal as a result.

But it doesn’t matter so much anymore. I don’t feel the hurry-up-and-travel clock ticking the way I once did, and frankly, the exhaustive travel pace that allowed me to visit so many places – most of them over a single eleven-year span – was starting to wear me down. I won’t make it to anymore new countries for the remainder of 2013…and I doubt I’ll hit up any new countries in 2014, either. (The money has finally run out, Loyal Reader, the money has finally run out.) If this makes me sad, I at least take some degree of comfort knowing that I’ve seen more corners of the world than perhaps any of my crazy traveling friends…the majority of whom are no travel slouches themselves.

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