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EST

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Biggest, Highest, Furthest, Grandest… It is amazing to me the claims made everywhere about their local geography.  Nasca has Cerro Blanco which they claim to be the world’s tallest sand dune at about 1400 meters.  Namibia claims the same, too, with a dune in Sousevlei at 900 meters.  I looked up tallest sand dune on Wikipedia and it just gets more confusing.  Try determining the biggest or grandest canyon.  We can all agree that Everest is the tallest mountain yet in Hawaii they will tell you that the Big Island is just that because they are counting from its base at the bottom of the ocean!  It seems like a book is needed to chronicle the true ESTs of the world objectively and completely.  National Geographic measured Cotahausi Canyon in Peru and named it as the deepest in world at about 160 meters deeper than the previous holder – the nearby Colca Canyon.  But China and the Himalayas claim to have canyons that are deeper.  Given our technology and coverage of this planet, can’t we come up with common definitions and agree on the true ESTs?

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Weight of the World

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

It is very easy for me to hear about a tragedy somewhere in the world and not get too affected.  Those sorry saps on over-crowded ferries in Indonesia, for instance.  I don’t think I am too different from you in this respect.  Maybe it is just a survival skill especially important in these times where tragic news reaches us in hours if not minutes from the time of the tragedy.  But as the world gets smaller for me and I get to meet people in these distant lands, tragedies are not so easy to ignore.  They are becoming more personal.  This morning I woke to read that a major cyclone has hit Mozambique.  It had a direct hit on Vilanculos.  This is where I spent the first few days of my world adventure (I think the blog entry talking about it is called Huff and Puff).  Benguerua Island is just offshore from Vilanculous and so far there has been no communication from them.  Maybe the Marlin Lodge was able to evacuate?  That still leaves the 2000 residents who live in palm frond huts.  Another major cyclone is near Madagascar and expected to hit the same area.  Today, I am definitely thinking about the friends I made in Mozambique and just hoping that they are safe.  This is going to get a lot more difficult to bear when I make friends in Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Iran… you know, the places where all the major tragedies play out…

Country List

Saturday, May 27th, 2006
After reading a lot about the world over the years, researching many places to go in the past few months and talking to many travelers, I have come up with the following list of countries to see during my around the ... [Continue reading this entry]