Photographing Every Country in the World, Overland.

Archive for November, 2007

Little Manatee : Extreme Stupidity….

My parents always said about me that during my childhood that I was very intelligent but had no common sense. Well, little has changed. At the second walmart I passed I stopped to go to the bathroom. I walked into the cubicle, locked the door, grabbed some paper, bent to clean the seat….. splash! From my collar, into the toilet bowl went my sunglasses! I stood, mouth agape for what was perhaps 1 second….

Hssssssssssssssssssssssssss! Off went the stupid fucking automatic flush and my sunglasses which I had owned for 2 weeks disappeared! Who is such a dirty bastard that these things are even necessary? What kind of human excrement cannot be bothered to push a lever when finished in the bathroom. Bye bye $20….

What’s that … my sunglasses slid back down into the bowl? They had become lodged into u-bend and popped back out. Now I had a choice, I felt in my pockets for something to poke them out with but all I had was my phone. You wont see where this is going…. :p

I pulled out my phone from my pocket and……………

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Pirate Harbour : Extreme Paranoia…

Back at the Holiday Inn I did the usual move of stealing not only their wifi but getting a zip-lock full of ice for my cooler. I have to stay hydrated and cool!! :p Its so nice to sit by the pool checking your email and enjoying the sun. Next time I’m going for a swim too J Instead I went back to where I saw the sunset and lay there crunching my abs, checking out the babes and watching the pod of dolphins frolicking 30 meters off the shore. I couldn’t get them to come any closer when I jumped in for a swim but my waterproof camera’s battery was dead anyway L I was heading North to the Tampa area now but no one on Couchsurfing seemed to really be interesting, and I didn’t want to sleep in Wal-mart again if I could help it. I looked on the map and saw a place called ‘Pirate Harbour’ which sounded quite interesting so on went the GPS and off I went. Turns out it was a rather uninteresting purpose built village with mooring for boats along every house. Some of the houses were quite nice but of no interest to a adventurous buccaneer such as myself. I decided to have an adventure of my own making and set off along a dirt track through a forest nearby to the Harbour entrance. Had I seen the ‘no trespassing’ signs that were posted I might have turned back but I was determined to get off the damn map for a while….

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Naples : Go west my boy!

We had planned on doing a Victorian Secret fashion shoot at the Everglades but it didn’t happen so we improvised as best we could by the lake (it’s a canal!) for half an hour before I shot off West and further adventures. I think I got about 2 nice shots and the best one is out of focus L Bummer. Well, that is if you don’t mind hair being in focus and not the eyes. Practice, practice….. All I knew is I wanted to head over to the other side of Florida before heading north so that’s what I did. Programmed my GPS to take me west avoiding highways and see what happens. A lot of boring highways is what happened. After a week of hanging out and then camping wasn’t having fun on my own, but this is the life I had chosen and you can’t go back so on I went. I arrived in a posh town called Naples. You can tell its posh since the price of gas was rather insane there. But before I got there my eyes were drawn to a guitar shop which was having a sale and I couldn’t resist going in for a look…..

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Everglades National Park: Hanging out, hassling the animals

Rocky didn’t come back but the crows and other vulture type creatures did, picking their way through the garbage that Miriam had unhelpfully knocked out of the car on her way to the bathroom. I love her dearly but she can be so ditzy sometimes. She promised me eggies in the basket and said she would be making six but despite my attempts to pretend to be asleep had to drag myself up as she struggled with the stove. Listening to her burn to death from an exploding pressurized stove wasn’t really going to be worth the small pleasure of a lie-in. The instructions are written on the side so its not that hard, but then the sheet music for the Mozart Aria she sings so well is freely available and I can’t do that can I?

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Everglades National Park: Alligators, Crododiles *and* sharks! Jump in the water is lovely!

The next morning Miriam was gone! I heard her messing around with the stuff on the table and asked what the hell she was doing!?! But it was the bloody crows attacking our belongings and then cawing very loudly so as to stop me from getting back asleep. It was rather cold in the morning, but I now learned that the firepit was full of wood from the previous campers and my mashmallow addiction could have been fulfilled after all! Blast! We had eggies in the basket for breakfast which is always fun and a skill I have yet to master, but would be better with a non-stick pan Im sure. I bought a single petrol fuel stove which seems to work quite well and I shall have to make some extra soda can stoves too in the near future. This was really my first camping trip too as I only bought the tent on Thursday and had thus far been sleeping in the minivan on the platform. Perhaps I should lose the rear set of seats to make more room or perhaps store them on the roof. Time will tell. …

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Everglades National Park: Gurl! You bess be crazie playing wit tha alig8tors in tha Evaglades! Shiiiiit!

Miriams attempts at rising at 9am to catch her class were in vain and I dragged myself off her couch to wake her about 10 minutes before she was supposed to be there. We used the extra time to pack her things and decided it would be easiest for me to drive her to University and then we could leave as soon as she was done. Why this was a good idea was never explained to me since she lived North and the Everglades were south but I was not willing to bring this up. We set off down the highway when she was finally done, I had used the extra hour to tidy up my predictably messy vehicle but it generally isn’t too untidy most of the time. Perhaps I should buy a guidebook as finding a National Park that takes up about 10% of Florida wasn’t as easy as I imagined, but we browsed a book at a gas station and found it was only another few blocks away. Just after the Wal-mart where I had spent 2 fascinating evenings was the sign so we pulled a quick u-turn and went back to my favourite store for some supplies, Miriam protesting all the way about Capitalism and smashing the state. I advised her to steal some shoes. Wal-mart have prominent signs to say they always prosecute for shop-lifting so thankfully she didn’t delay the trip by getting arrested.

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My Guinness Book of Records application…

A few days before I set off on this silly adventure of mine I applied to the Guinness Book of Records to be the first person to visit every country in the world by land and sea. No flights allowed, I would have to make my way everywhere by the surface. I admit this is rather ambitious but what better way to spend the next few years of my life than traveling, writing, photographing and having fun, as well as the challenge of getting to the more remote places and trying not to back track. How would I get into Saudi Arabia, what about the conflict zones around the world, are some countries only accessible by air…? These were all questions that I pondered as I filled out my application.

I certainly know its possible, but I wondered if it had been done before. I checked the Records Book and found no such entry. I searched the Internet and found lots of very well travelled people but no such attempt. There is a club called the Travelers Century Club whose members have been to more than 10 places in the world, but visits are counted as just landing. If you look on http://www.mosttraveledpeople.com/ there are several millionaires who have flown or sailed all over the place. But travel isn’t about the miles, its about the smiles. I want to meet people, share the pain of 36 hour bus journeys, impossible border crossings, food and sleep deprivation, being seasick and bored. I want my bones to feel every mile and my aching limbs to appreciate every hard won bed bug filled bed. So it was with great joy that I finally received my reply from the Guinness Book of Records….

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Coral Springs : Drinking Coffee and eatting ice cream.

I had a very productive day working on my site and sorting a few things out but nothing really touristy. I was going to leave to the Everglades national park but Miriam decided she wanted to come along as well so I delayed it by a day and we decided to go the following afternoon. She had stuff to work on so I hit the cinema for a celluloid fix and saw ‘The Kingdom’ which was entertaining but ultimately complete pants. As in the dirty underwear sense and not the trousers kind.