100 days abroad: What have we learned?

If you ever traipse and wander the world for 100 days with your life partner, you will acquire new, old, and purposely forgotten facts. You will find that 100 days feels like short amount of time but it is also long enough to breathe pure and/or putrid air in 17 countries. It is long enough that you will realize that retaining your belongings while traveling is a war of attrition and you are losing. You will learn that walking with lions in a game park does not cause your heart to thump as harshly in your chest as tracking rhinos in a national park. That burying your nose in a book can make you more aware of your surroundings. That colors during dusk on the African continent seem to be more brilliant than dusk on most every other continent; and that Petra is as beautiful as it is reputed to be.

Petra, Jordan

That hospitality varies greatly between countries; that in Turkey, people will offer you free food, lodging, and even a ride while on the way to save a dolphin; that in Turkish the word for guest includes the idea of people from the gods; that in Malawi, 5 year olds will grab your hand to hold and hug you after following you on your run for a few blocks; that the French can actually be nice to you when you speak French to them; that it is very important to meet a nice French woman when the whole town of Cannes appears to be completely booked because that nice woman, at her full hotel, will call other hotels to find you a room.

Okavango Delta sunset, Botswana

Dub on Turkish Riviera

That extended travel a decade ago in your early twenties is different, and not so different, from extended travel now in your early thirties; that you can get a PHAT Italian villa in Sardinia when your numbers swell to 6 people; that you are actually, and a bit sadly, [INSERT AGE]; that your tolerance for night buses, potentially vermin ridden hostels, late nights out on the street, or other types of physical or mental discomfort has diminished; that you now focus your primary attention on the section of the Lonely Planet's travel guide that details cute cafes and museums instead of drinking and entertainment; that the ubiquity of internet (or more correctly -- an expectation of internet) has complicated travel; that you may still be scribbling notes on ,whatever media is available but that the notes are not to receive your study abroad credits but so that you will remember more than what you have sadly forgotten from extended travel in your early twenties.

View from our Sardinia Villa

That a hippo is the one of the most dangerous animals on the African continent because it is mean and will charge you at 30 miles per hour; that to escape from said ferocious animal, you should find a dead log and jump to either side of it because a hippo has too big a belly and too short of legs to jump over the log and will have to continually run around the log while you jump back and forth. That to escape another danger: bickering with one's partner, you should join a tour group and spend two months with complete strangers. That americans are in the minority in the overland Africa travel scene. That sheer granite cliffs can be found both throughout Zimbabwe and in the French isle of Corsica. Or that both a monkey and a leopard tortoise may excrete upon you if given the opportunity.

Chobe National Park, Botswana

That extended travel with one's partner is an excellent example of a sum being greater than its parts -- you have greater synchronicity to do and see more; and that there are two engines with different preferences to drive you to new experiences, and also to conflict. That the scars of conflict from when Israel took Jerusalem in its entirety can still be seen 66 years later in the form of gun pockmarks on the ancient walls of Jerusalem. Or that sometimes you stop seeing, or at least feeling, or never actually understood the poverty and oppression that you may have passed through.

That old is relative; that the Aya Sophia in Istanbul houses relics claimed to be from Moses 4,000 years ago, that a painting on the Zambezi river, claimed to be "very old" by our rafting guide was "something like 25 years old"; that Zimbabwean cave paintings are believed to be 20,000 -60,000 years old, with no solidity as to where in that range the true dating might alight. That all old works of humanity, whether western or non-western (the Parthenon, the Dome of the Rock, Cave Paintings, Jerusalem's Western Wall, etc.) elicit a reverential feeling -- a common connection to humanity.

Parthenon, Greece

That dental floss is a scarce commodity outside the U.S.; that dental floss can (and did) cost more than an international travel adaptor. That being in a hurry shouldn't be mistaken for efficiency; that efficiency is very desirable while shopping in supermarkets and less desirable during social interaction. Or that the Mediterranean Sea is composed of many seas, including: the Ligurian Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea, the Aegean Sea

Ligurian Sea, Sardinia

That feeling hot can actually feel very different depending on where you are -- in Jordan, you feel as if you are turning into fruit leather and in Malawi, instead, you become a chicken pot pie or some other boiling cauldron of wetness. That reading can lead to complete self-absorption. Or that you don't miss home (U.S.) as much as you thought you would; that you may miss San Francisco more than you thought you would. That you have had the happy misfortune of filling every available moment; that you must guard against logistics comprising a large portion of that time filling. That correcting a mistake is easier to do at the time of the mistake (e.g., on 12/12/12, we were on day 100 but the picture for 12/12/12 is day 99 because we took pictures of day 15 on both days 15 and 16).




That these hundred have been amazing. That you wonder what the next 100 days holds?

Day 99

Happy Day 100