Take the bad with the good

Never blame any day in your life. Good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, and the worst days give you a lesson. ― Sukhraj S. Dhillon

We realized that our blogs show a skewed perspective of our favorite moments that occur during our lives on the road.  However, interwoven with those moments are hot and dusty days, power outages, cold showers, limited food offerings, ATMs that don’t have any money in them, etc.  We stepped into this adventure prepared to accept the lowlights and the experience they will bring.  The moments when we feel like we are part of the fabric of life among the locals are appreciated as much, if not more, than those when we enter the bubble of familiar food and comfort in our Hilton oases.  We chose to do this extended trip, rather than a series of special vacations, with this reality in mind.  The hardships that inevitably come into play are memorable and character building.  And we both agree that Shia and Liam are stepping up to every challenge.

Lowlights

Shia-

• S. America – Welcoming committee of Uruguayan bed bugs or something of the like.  Those bites took so long to go away and led to 5 nights where we preferred sleeping on a tile floor to risking another round of bites.
• Africa – Not being able to rescue the lone baby wildebeest & our last day in the desert with heat exhaustion, mild dehydration, and a general state of frustration with so much sand and sun.

Liam-

• S. America – I second the bed bug mention, and getting my hat stolen in the night while I slept on the bus.  It must have fallen in the walkway and lots of people were getting on and off, but it was so sad to see my treasured souvenir gone.
• Africa – Too many early morning starts – 5:15 game drives, 4:45 breakdown of camp to go hike a dune before sunrise, etc.

Heidi

• S. America – Seeing my face in the mirror after getting back to our place after the visit to the hospital for getting kicked with a crampon.  This was the first time I saw my injury and I had hoped it was less severe than what I saw.  Then I wanted some solitude in a hot shower to get my emotions in check and there wasn’t any hot water.  The straw that broke the camels back…
• Africa – A series of unfortunate of events where boat or vehicle drivers didn’t stop for cool critters, culminating with passing a leopard resting beside the road, viewed by those on the other side of the truck, at 45 mph.  (Seems petty, but I know we have been close and so many others have seen them, I really want to see one too!)

Chad

• Brazilian Visa adventures –  Day 1: Arriving after 24+ hour straight travel to Montevideo we optimistically tried to go straight to the Brazilian Consulate to get a visa.  We were told that with weekends and holidays, 9 days just wasn’t enough time to process our request.  We would later have two more trips to the Consulate in Buenos Aires to get it completed, which also required visiting the ATM 6 times to get enough local currency to pay for it. Bureaucracy can be very frustrating…but it was a distant memory by the time we got to Rio.
• Kampala, Uganda – Being one of my favorites last time…I was disappointed to see the trash and congestion in Kampala. Uganda has grown significantly since 2002, sadly the infrastructure has not.  However, the people are still great.