Mid-life Crisis Travel

A few years ago I was 39, divorced, my dog had died, and I had not yet started the busy travel schedule that I now love.  Needless to say I was just a bit depressed.  I was the one guest of a self-pity party, held in the privacy of my own home.  I had been thinking about getting away, taking some great trip.  Why not start at the top of the bucket list?  What would be the first item on the list?  For me there was no doubt that would be an African safari. The problem is that Africa is a huge continent with so many great safari locations, so the hard part was where and with whom?  For the last couple of years I had been half hardly researching locations and companies; it gave me something to do and made me feel better just to think maybe. 

On a particularly lonely Thanksgiving holiday I decided to “JUST DO IT” so I picked up the Thompson Safari catalog for 2007 to see what they had around my birthday.   Their classic safari was timed perfectly and also included some of the great wonders of the world: The Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Crater and Olduvi George.   I also added the Zanzibar extension.  If I am going to fly half way around the world I better make it worth it and see all I can.  Just the name Zanzibar evokes dreams of exotic travel in old colonial locations, where people actually sit on a veranda carved from exotic tropical woods with fans slowly turning above as they drink something cold with mint leaves while looking out on an old stone town with narrow streets, surrounded by palm trees that filter views of a sparkling blue ocean.  I called Thompson to see if they had space on this tour that was less than four months away and they did.  Normally they were booked nine or ten months in advance so this must be a sign.  Right?  I called my Dad because this is always something he has wanted to do also and told him I was doing this, he and Mom were welcome to come but not to worry I was going no matter what.  He hung up, talked to Mom and called me back in less than an hour to say they were in.  I wonder if that conversation went something like this, “Karen is going on safari and I have always wanted to do that too, so how about going with her?”  Or if it was more like this, “Karen is going on safari and there is no way I want her gallivanting around Africa by herself so we are going too.”  Either way, they went with me and it was nice to have them along. 

I spent many days reading over my National Audubon Society Field Guide of African Animals and at least a month piling up items on my coffee table that I did not want to forget.  We were only allowed one soft sided duffel bag that weighted no more than 33 pounds so planning the right wardrobe was quite difficult.  After packing, weighing, packing, and weighing again I was ready to go!  I flew direct from Seattle to Amsterdam where I met up with my parents and the three of us flew from Amsterdam direct to Kilimanjaro International Airport.  KIA is located in between Moshi and Arusha in northern Tanzania and is just at the foot of the great Kilimanjaro, the roof of Africa, the highest mountain in all of Africa.  I was excited to get to see this legendary mountain, but we arrived in the dark and immediately drove west and were so far from it the rest of the trip that I never did see it.  I flew 10,000 miles and never saw the greatest mountain in Africa. 

I walked from the plane onto the roll up stairway and I was greeted by a warm African night and the most wonderful sweet smell that turned out to be a mixture of blooming trees and burning wood.  I felt like I was coming home to a place I had never been! 

If I write one blog post on the entire trip you will be reading for days, or sound asleep in minutes, so I will break this up into the different locations that we visited…more to come…

Iceland

I look forward to the Travelzoo top 20 to be delivered every Wednesday during lunch.  My co-workers around the lunch table are not excited about all the good deals that I share with them as I am reading the list.  Most of them think I am a bit crazy and they might be right, but at least I am crazy with some really cool passport stamps!!

 Late last year on a non-descript Wednesday afternoon Travelzoo published a bargain trip to Iceland.  It caught my attention but as usual I put it aside thinking I have too many trips planned already.  This deal stayed in my head.  I kept thinking how cool that would be to see Iceland, but Iceland in January or February??  Sure, why not.  Maybe I would even be lucky enough to see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights).  How could I pass up round trip airfare, direct from Seattle to Reykjavik, 2 nights in a hotel and an afternoon soaking in the Blue Lagoon for only $499?  The more I thought about it the more I realized it was too cheap not to go!!  It would cost me more to stay home than to go to Iceland, well… not really but it sounds good, so I booked it and added an extra night.  As is the plight of every single traveler around the world, I paid more for single occupancy but even so, air fare and 3 night’s hotel came to $700, still cheaper than going to Anchorage. 

I knew absolutely nothing about Iceland so I put the word out on Facebook for suggestion on what to see and do.  Everyone who has visited or lived there has really liked it so I got a lot of great suggestions.  In my research I found tour companies who provided very affordable tours on great big tour coaches.  All I could think of is being stuffed in a coach with 100 strangers while we were herded like cattle in, out and about.  UGH!  That sounded terrible.  Then I came across Superjeep.is with the Range Rover Defender big as day right on the front page!!  I was sold right there.  The Defender is the best safari vehicle on the planet and I would do anything to relive the safari days in East Africa so I booked a Golden Circle Tour and a Northern Lights Tour with Superjeep. 

The holidays came and went and in early February I hopped the plane to Iceland.  It was a 7 hour flight up and over the Arctic Circle, typical boring flight until we were over Greenland and the Northern Lights made an appearance!!  How cool to see them from 35,000 feet, they were just out the window.  In order to see them better I covered my head and window with my wrap so I could block out the interior lights.  They glowed green and moved ever so slowly, in fact, they moved so slowly that I did not see the motion; I just realized they were all of a sudden in a different pattern.  Then a few minutes later they were gone.  I wondered if some villager in the blackness that was Greenland below was looking up at the same green glowing river.

Blue Lagoon

I arrived early in the morning before the sun came up and caught a bus to the hotel in Reykjavik.  It was dark so I saw nothing of the land during the 40 minute drive between the airport in Keflavik and Reykjavik.  I arrived at the hotel just as the sun was coming up to a gray winter morning.  I had time for a short nap before I had to catch a bus for the Blue Lagoon; a huge geothermal pool and spa.  By the time I arrived it was snowing and blowing sideways, so the walk (really a half run/trot while trying not to slip on the ice) from the door to the pool in my bare feet and swimsuit was a bit cold.  Down the stairs as quick as possible into the warm water, ahhhhhhh, soaking in the warm water while keeping my back to the wind that was trying to sandblast me with snow.  There is only so much you can do by yourself in a hot pool.  There were not too many people there, which was nice, but it was quite boring just floating around by myself.  At one point I had floated so far from the entrance and the weather had closed in even more limiting my visibility so that I could see no other person or the building.  Typically I would prefer that type of serenity but for some reason this freaked me out a bit so I made my way back closer to the entrance.   I was now very tired, from the combination of the all night flight and the hot Jacuzzi type water so I went in and caught the bus back to the hotel.  I was sound asleep by 8 PM. 

The next morning I had scheduled the Golden Circle Tour with Superjeep.  The driver picked me up and off we went.  I had the pleasure of being grouped with three ladies from the UK.  It had snowed all night so we were driving through snow that was 12 or 18 inches deep, there was no way some large motor coach would have traveled thought this snow.  We spent 8 or 9 hours hearing great stories about Icelandic history and folklore and seeing beautiful scenery.  Superjeep dropped me at the hotel for some dinner and picked me up about two hours later for the Northern Lights hunt.  Off we went in another wonderful Range Rover Defender that was so high I had to hop up on the running board to get in.  There was a group of 4 or 5 other vehicles in the caravan and our guide was very knowledgeable about the aurora.  We did not see any lights that night but it was not for lack of trying, those Superjeep guys took us all around and were very informative and entertaining.

The next morning I had a South Coast Tour scheduled with Superjeep so again they picked me up at the hotel and we headed south.  This time there was a British couple with me.  I love traveling with Brits!  They have a reputation for being stuffy but I find that once you get to know them a bit, they warm right up and are great fun plus they are not obnoxious like some of my fellow countrymen can be.  This turned out to be the greatest day!  It was one of those gray northern winter days, with that eerie northern winter light that I find very comforting, for a short time.  Too long and I would need a sanity check trip to the Caribbean for some sun but for a few days it is a nice experience.   We saw more beautiful snow covered county, drove out to a glacier, saw the location of the Eyjafjallajökull  (No I can’t pronounce that, I tried but was laughed at) Volcano that had halted European air traffic almost a year ago.  I really loved the tranquil snow covered farms with colorful homes, barns and outbuildings.  They were so serene, covered in a perfect blanket of snow.  I would like to return in the summer to see the same farms with fluffy white sheep in deep green fields.  We made it almost to Vik that day and had lunch on the greatest rocky beach with pebbles as smooth as a baby’s tush and giant block shaped basalt cliffs that jutted out into the angry ocean with big rolling breaking waves. 

Back at the hotel, I only had time for dinner again plus adding a few more layers to my winter wardrobe, before Superjeep picked me up for tonight’s Northern Lights tour.  This time we had 7 or 8 vehicles in the caravan but our guide was the leader of the group so we felt privileged to be the head of the pack.  We traversed some dark mountain road in a blinding snow storm with drifts 2 or 3 feet deep along the road.  We went through some really scary spots and a couple of times I thought we might slide right off the road but I was never scared.  These guys are professionals when it comes to driving in adverse conditions!!  I told our driver I could tell this was not his first blizzard and he quipped back with a grin, “This is not a blizzard.”  After some really exciting 4-wheeling through the “non-blizzard” we came to the Thingvillar National Park, site of the first national government in 930 AD.  There the Northern Lights made their appearance.  They were not large but they were clear and bright, plus we saw one small show of a reddish color which they said was pretty rare.  I tried to take photos with my cheap camera but they did not turn out.  Thankfully the guides had great cameras and they shared their photos with us on Facebook.  I could have stood there all night (with something warm to drink) and watched.  I am sure the locals get tired of the lights; it might be annoying to have them shining bright in the bedroom window when you are trying to sleep. 

I found Iceland to have a magical feeling about it.  They have a rich history with a lot of folklore and wonderful stories full of trolls and fairies.  The people are warm and friendly and the country has a volcanic beauty that reminded me a lot of Adak, Alaska.  I did not want to leave, not unusual for me, I could have stayed for a week and taken a different tour with Superjeep every day!  I plan to go back sometime in the summer to see the land without a blanket of snow.  In a perfect world I would be able to have our Superjeep driver pick me up at the airport and escort me on a personal 10 day tour completely around the country on the ring road; showing me his lovely home, introducing me to the friendly people, and experiencing the beautiful culture.  Hmmmm wonder what that would cost???

S.C.U.B.A.



Gather up the gear, make sure I have everything:  mask, BCD (Buoyancy Control Device, basically a vest that you put air in or take it out so you can simply hover in the water), regulator so I can breathe, wet suit, booties, fins, dive computer, and anti-fog for the mask.  Schlep it all down to the boat where a tank and weights will be waiting.  Load gear, attach BCD to tank, put the proper amount of weight into my BCD (12 – 14 pounds), and store the rest of the gear under the seat.  The sun is hot, the air is humid and I am sweating from carrying all that gear.  The other divers also get organized while the dive crew gets the boat underway.  We motor out 5 to 30 minutes depending upon what site the crew has decided to dive.  The breeze caused by the movement of the boat feels nice as it cools me.  A few minutes before we get to the site all divers start to gear up.  The crew ties the boat off to the correct buoy as the divers put on wet suits (if needed), spray the mask with anti-fog and rinse it off, put dive computer on my wrist, sit on the bench and put arms into the BCD, clip on and tighten up the BCD, grab fins and mask. Stand up. Easier said than done, that tank is heavy. The boat is swaying and the tank pulls you backward, hold on.  Shuffle toward the stern of the boat, put on mask, then put fins on one at a time while the free

Yellowhead Jawfish

hand holds on to the boat so I don’t fall in with only one fin on.  Check air, is it on?  Breathe into the reg while looking at air gage to make sure.  Press the inflator button to put air into the BCD.  Hold mask with one hand and place the other hand on the front of the BCD, stand right on the edge of the boat and take one big step into the ocean.  SPLASH!  Oh, that cool water feels so good.  The air in the BCD makes me pop right up and float on the surface.  I put one hand on my head to motion to the crew I am fine.  One of them hands me my camera and I kick away from the boat.Waiting on the surface is no fun if there is any chop or wave action on the water so I prefer to descend and wait for the group on the bottom.  Hold up the inflation tube on the BCD and press the deflator button to let all the air out of the BCD, exhale, relax, I start to slowly descend.  As I descend I look around because often the first one to descend will see sharks or turtles that will flee as more divers get into the water.  Hold my nose and blow gently to clear my ears as I descend.  I have to do this about 5 or 6 times as I go down 25 or 30 feet.  As I get deeper, I begin to fall faster and faster so before I reach the bottom I add a little air to the BCD so I can become neutrally buoyant and hover with the greatest of ease.  While I wait for everyone else I look around.  I watch the sandy bottom for Yellowhead Jawfish poking their thumb sized pale yellow heads and milky white bodies out of their hole in the sand.  Their hole is surrounded by small dead chunks of coral and I don't know if that is for stability or decoration or both.  They bob in and out of the hole as if to check out the huge creatures descending into their small territory.   I look around the small coral heads for juvenile fish swimming in and out of the tiny coral fingers or small creatures hiding in holes beneath and in between the coral.

Spotted Moray Eel

Giant Anemone

Once we are all gathered on the bottom we follow the dive master on his “tour” of the dive site.  Just a small movement of my fin propels me slowly forward; it is like flying in slow motion while feeling weightless and relaxed.  It is so quiet; all I hear is my breath inhaling through the regulator, the glub, glub of bubbles as I exhale, and the constant yet quietly subtle clicking sounds of the coral.  I try to breathe small shallow breaths so as not to change my delicate buoyancy.  A deep breath will make me rise and a deep exhale will make me fall.  I use these breaths to maneuver over, around and down through the coral reefs.  There are large clusters of all different types of coral living together in what looks like a large impenetrable clump but upon closer look the coral group is like Swiss cheese with holes that fish, eels, crab, and lobster occupy.  It is like a high-rise condo complex where the Moray Eel and Octopus live on the ground floor next door to the Giant Anemone whose colorful arms are home to the ¼ inch long, appropriately named, Squat Anemone Shrimp.  Higher in the community you will find a small arrow crab hiding in a crevice or a

Juvenile Yellowtail Damslefish

large Caribbean Lobster with his long antennae extending out from his lair.  Towards the top you will see timidly darting in and out of the young coral stems a juvenile Yellowtail Damselfish;    Parrotfish will patrol the coral head looking for a good spot of coral to bite off and chew up.  I hear the crunch as they scrape the coral with their hard, beak-like mouth.  I swim slowly and watch for movement or something that has an odd shape or slightly different color to it, this is often a

give-away for some creature who is trying to camouflage himself within the reef.  I take my small flashlight out of its pocket and shine it into the deeper holes; you just never know when you will be face to gills with a big lipped Grouper or a reddish Squirrelfish with huge eyes hiding in the dark.  Often these peeks into the dark under belly of the

Juvenile Drum Fish

coral reef are rewarded with a close up of a juvenile or adult drum fish.  The juvenile drum fish is one of the most unusually shaped fish out there with a long flamboyant dorsal and tail fin that looks like one fin going two directions.  They seem hyperactive as they constantly and erratically swim in a loose figure eight pattern.  This constant movement makes them hard to photograph but predictable since you know they will be back around soon.   When swimming over and around coral it is very important not to kick the coral so I try to stay high enough that my fins don't contact the coral at any time.

Pederson Cleaner Shrimp

Being this high all the time is no good because you miss a lot of wonderful small creatures, like the corkscrew anemone with Shirley Temple-like curls or the purple spotted, transparent Pederson Cleaner Shrimp.   I am now in the habit of swimming with my head much lower than my feet and if I see something interesting I go in head first with my feet in the air.  If other divers look around and see bright yellow fins sticking out of a coral head, that would be me looking at something interesting.

All during the dive we find interesting fish and creatures and we have fun showing each other what we found.  Many of the more popular animals have hand signals so we can tell another diver there is a shark over there (hand at forehead standing up like a fin) or a sting ray on the other side of the boat (flying motion with the arms).  During the whole dive I must keep an eye on my air consumption gage and the bottom time reading on my computer.  When the dive master tells us it is time to surface or I am low on bottom time or air, I must begin to surface.  I start to take deeper breaths, I hold up my BCD inflator hose and I release all the air from it.  This begins the slow assent.  I keep an eye on the depth reading on my computer as I make my way up the water column.  I must go slowly, too fast and my computer starts to beep and flash an arrow with the word “slow” in it.  If I start to ascend too quickly I simply exhale very deeply to slow my assent.   At 15 feet I must do a safety stop for 3 minutes.  This gives my body extra time to release any nitrogen that has built up from breathing compressed gas.   As I breathe in and out I rise and fall, up and down, up and down.  The trick is to breathe very shallow so I just hang in one spot.  Some divers are really good at this, it looks like they are just “standing” in the water, hands clasped together barely looking at their depth gage.  Me, on the other hand, I tend to float as if I am lying on my stomach with my feet a bit higher than my head and my eyes constantly on my gauge; not too elegant but it works.  When I surface, I swim to the back of the boat.  The captain or dive master is there waiting.  I hand up my camera, I take off each fin and hand it up one at a time then crawl up the ladder.  That feeling of weightlessness goes away the second that tank is out of the water.   It is hard to climb the ladder with all that extra weight on.  I shuffle back to the bench and sit down with the tank back in its holder, take off the BCD that is still attached to the tank, take off my mask, wipe off the snot that tends to drain out of your
nose during the dive and then…”What was that green fish you pointed at?” or “Did you see the huge turtle toward the end of the dive?”  We then spend the next 35 minutes talking about that dive and what we saw before we suit up and do it all over again. 

Invasion of the Caribbean

Tourists? Pirates? Aliens?  Hungry Real Estate Agents?  No, something much more dangerous!!  They are unmistakable, the elegant spines and colorful stripes cause them to stand out in any saltwater tank and expose the location of their lair within the coral reef as you swim past.  The Lionfish is a member of the Scorpion fish family and is native to the South Pacific, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.  How could something so graceful and appealing be more dangerous than invading tourists or thieving pirates?  This very aggressive, voracious, and poisonous predator has almost no natural enemies in the Caribbean.  They can quickly devour all of the smaller reef fish within their home territory and they reproduce at lightning speed; the female will lay from 15,000-40,000 eggs per month.   Left unchecked they can do irreparable damage to the Caribbean eco system. 

How did they get so far from home?  It has been documented that six Lionfish escaped when an aquarium was destroyed during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and many people also assume there have been some released into the wild by individual owners. 

I started diving in the Caribbean in 2008 and it was rare to see a Lionfish at that time.  In the last year it has become common place to see multiple Lionfish on every dive we do.   Many popular dive locations have begun to try to control the Lionfish population by encouraging local dive masters to take part in a contest to see who can spear and bring back the most Lionfish within a specific time period in return for prizes.  It is not easy to spear them; the Lionfish can move fast and hide in small places.  After they present their catch many dive masters will take the fish home and fry them up for dinner.  The poison is located only at the tip of the spines so once the spines have been removed there is no danger and the tender, mild white meat is quite delicious.   One dive master in Cayman Brac was quite the Lionfish hunter and he would clean them on the boat after our dive.  He showed us the enlarged liver of his catch and told us that most of the Lionfish he catches have this enlarged fatty live from eating too much. 

Larger fish such as Grouper and sharks are beginning to learn that Lionfish can be a tasty treat but I have not seen any predation on live Lionfish.  These predators will follow divers in areas where Lionfish are hunted regularly in order to eat the dead fish that are left behind or to steal them from the end of the spear.   Hopefully these fish and other larger predators will soon learn to hunt Lionfish on their own.

Just a few weeks ago in Freeport Grand Bahama I saw a Lionfish cookbook and I have heard talk of restaurants wanting to add it to their menu.  The problem with this is there is no easy way to commercially harvest Lionfish.  The labor intensive way they must be caught will mean they will be a limited and expensive menu item. 

I am sure it is too late to completely eradicate Lionfish from the Caribbean but hopefully the ecosystem can eventually adapt and until then we can work to keep their numbers in check.