Monday, June 12, 2023

Blog Update #216


Welcome to my travel blog..  Unfortunately, you’ll likely be reading it backwards.  It’s posts go from recent to past.  

Before this one and a half month adventure, it had been 9 years since I had taken a bigger trip to where I traveled to Africa for 2 months.  Additionally even earlier on, it’s been 15 years since I embarked on my “Adventura Grande” around the world for one and a half years. Mostly, I felt like my blog would many times be a burden when I’m traveling as it’s surprisingly hard to find the time to update it while being on the road and I only have this little screen on a phone to work with.  At times during my posts, I really wanted to put a disclaimer stating to please excuse any errors as it was simply put together from an IPhone and most of the time while rolling down the road.  As listed in the title above, I’m surprised to reflect that I’ve now updated 216 posts to this blog and covered over 50 countries traveled.  When I started this blog, MySpace was very popular and Facebook was gaining popularity very quickly as well.  At the time of writing here in 2023, I’m probably too far out of the loop on what’s cool other than I have never jumped on the bandwagon in the world of social media much.  Everyone is always taken back when I say that I’ve never used Instagram.  Deep down, I dislike much about what social media has to offer.  It always seems like everyone is simply posting filtered depictions of what would make it seem like everyone has a perfect life full of endless fun.  I can’t imagine how much of a challenge this poses to the followers and especially the younger generations who are finding their way in this crazy world and establishing their own expectations for what to expect and how to be a part of it all.  In relating this thought to my blog, I will assure you this is not anything overly exciting containing filtered pictures portraying a dreamy lifestyle.  It is not something that I put out there to very many people that I have done a travel blog over the years as well.  I mainly use this as a way to document, reflect, share my experiences with people close to my heart, and look back on the adventures I’ve had.  Although many people over the years have expressed that what I have done is incredible to get to this many places, I like to say nothing in this blog is anything more than something that started with hard work, a goal, and an execution of said goal.  Additionally,  most of my travels have involved more moments of being uncomfortable and dirty rather than comfortable and dreamy.  If you were break this entire blog up into total money spent traveling, you might be surprised on how little I spent on average to get to these destinations.  Almost all transportation is public and accommodations are typically a dormitory option.  For a quick example, I have spent less than $50,000 on all of these trips combined taking me to over 50 countries traveling for somewhere around 625 days total.  There have been some more expensive layers that drive this number up some, but on average $50-60 per day is probably on the higher side of these figures.  

One day, sooner than we might prefer, we’re all going to realize that our time left is no longer. I’d like to assume most people have big dreams of the things they’d like to do before this moment comes.  I can assure whoever happens to actually read this message in it’s entirely, a lot of you would not enjoy many of the things I have done below. They were my dreams though and I’m grateful for the fact that I perused and lived them rather than making excuses or reasons to why it couldn’t ever be possible.  If you’ve managed to get this far, my greatest hope is that I might inspire you to act on an adventure of your own.  It really doesn’t require you to be rich or perfect.  Just a goal and a little hard work.

Buen Camino!

Saturday, June 10, 2023

Seville, Spain

Seville is a beautiful city worth the stop.  When we arrived, we decided to take a tour of the city on a horse drawn carriage.  As you will see below, Graydon‘s eyes looked very puffy after only  20 minutes following a horse.  We immediately had to go to the pharmacy to find some Benadryl. 


Best thing I’ve ever been called.









If anyone would like 3000 pictures of random tile work found though-out Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, please feel free to reach out to me directly for my wife’s contact information.









Tangier, Morocco

Although we only spent 1 day in Tangier, I felt that was enough for us.  I hate to pick on Africa, but it is definitely my least favorite continent.  The gaps between the haves and the have nots are so great that you spend the majority of your time telling everyone that you’re not going to buy every souvenir that was ever made.  It was a memorable day but I still wasn’t feeling the vibe of being somewhere completely different as I sometimes thrive on. 

 


I couldn’t help but admire their creative way to support a roof and keep things dry.





Rasheed!




Camel minus his toes.






Tarifa Spain

 I had always been intrigued by how close Europe is located to Africa for some reason.  As we finished up Portugal at the very bottom and we were heading back into Spain, we decided to come to this port town to cross the straight of Gibraltar.  We passed about a thousand windmills on our drive down and it was quite easy to see Africa driving into Tarifa.  Tomorrow we are going to take the ferry into Tangier for a quick adventure around Morocco before we start our path towards Madrid for our flight home in the next few days.






Tarifa is the windsurfing capital of Europe.  These guys were amazing to watch.




Lagos Portugal

If anyone were to ask me for a recommendation to a relaxing place to visit with a lot of things to do, fairly inexpensive, great food, lots of adventure to be had, this would come high on my list.  We had an amazing time here. 














 

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon was a nice stop along our path.  I wasn’t aware that in the 1700’s, they had a massive earthquake that destroyed 85% of the capital city.  The bridge below which looks like the Golden Gate Bridge was built by the same architect.  Here, we said goodbye to Juan and Angelica.  We’re heading south and they’re off to Paris.  Thanks for coming and spending the time.