Nobody believes me when I say that the 80 days thing is a coincidence. But it is.
We leave the day after Isabel's last exam and return the day before the first full day of school. 80 days.
Actually from take off to touch down at Winnipeg International is 79 days and 20 hours, but door to door from our house... precisely 80 days.

And a bit about the backstory. In 1993 after three years in veterinary practice Lorraine and I quit our jobs and backpacked around the world for eight months, doing everything from living in a cave in Greece (a very nice cave mind you) to camel trekking across the Rajastani desert to celebrating Christmas in Hong Kong to island hopping in Thailand to volcano climbing in Indonesia to living with a family in Samoa to... well, the list does go on and on. Everyone said, "Wow, that was the trip of a lifetime!" To which we responded, "Nooo! It can't be the only time we do that! It just can't be." We swore we would do something similar again when we had kids. It's 22 years later. Isabel is 13. Alexander is 10.
It's time.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Day 51 You Are Wrong About Africa

Probably. I shouldn't make unfair assumptions though. Perhaps you knew all this already. So let's say "I was wrong about Africa". It is larger than I thought. It still has more wild spaces left than I thought. It is safer than I thought. It is happier than I thought. It is healthier than I thought. It is more diverse than I thought. It is more vibrant than I thought. It is more prosperous than I thought. And it is even more beautiful than I thought and I was expecting it to be very beautiful.

Africa has shredded my favorite travel shirt, indelibly stained my pants, driven soil so deep into the dermis of my heels (wore flip flops almost all the time) that a week of scrubbing hasn't removed it and, most distressingly of all, destroyed a camera lens, but I love it. I really love it.

We fly to Istanbul tonight, but for now I still have another hour to sit on the balcony and look out across beautiful  Cape Town at Table Mountain. If there is a better view I have yet to find it.

The photos do not relate to the post, but are just of signs seen along the way in Africa that didn't make it onto previous posts.

No comments:

Post a Comment