July 19 - 20: Outbound: Seattle-Vancouver-London-Amman
July 21 - 24: Amman to Sharm el Sheikh by way of Dead Sea, Aqaba
July 24 - 30: Sinai desert trek
July 31: Dahab
August 1: Ferry to Hurghada, transit to Nile
August 2 -8: Make way up Nile
August 9 -11: Cairo
August 12 - 17: Tangier
August 18 - 21: Istanbul
August 21: Budapest
August 22: Split
August 24: London
August 26: Return: London-Vancouver-Seattle

Big Trip '09: Planned Route

Big Trip '09: Planned Route

As we started talking to our guides, it turned out that a full trans-Sinai trek was out of the question given time constraints and the heat, but we will have seven or eight days in Jebel El Tih, which will probably be plenty.

In addition to the trek in Sinai, we’re planning to spend about a week on the Nile in Egypt, making our way from Aswan or Luxor back up to Cairo, with a minimum of advance planning. We’re hoping to use small boats and just go as far as we feel like on any given day.

The problem came in when looking at time off and travel plans. It seemed to make sense for Anna and I to use some of the frequent flier miles I had piled up, but when looking at mileage redemption costs, it was nearly the same to book a round trip ticket to Cairo as it was to book a OneWorld mileage award good for a total of 20,000 miles with up to 16 stops on any combination of OneWorld carriers.

Well, we’d be crazy not to do that, and at least stop at a few more places, right? Right. Initially the plan was to go all the way around the world, but the right itinerary eluded us, as we would burn up a ton of miles just to connect through Tokyo or Hong Kong.

Instead we settled on starting in Jordan, heading down to Egypt and meeting Luke and Lars for two weeks in the Sinai and on the Nile, then a hop over to Morocco, possibly a ferry across the Strait of Gibralter for a day in southern Spain, and then back to east for Turkey, Croatia, a night in Budapest, and a couple of days in London to see friends. All told: 19,000 air miles traveled, and 40 days in a total of 8 countries. Considerably more distance and time than I was originally expecting… but it should be a pretty fantastic experience.

After breakfast, we took a group photo with our support staff and dealt somewhat ungracefully with the tipping situation. That was more complicated and awkward than it should have been, but we were so exhausted that it was hard to work up any real angst over it. In the end, our guide probably made more than he should have and our porters less, but it just wasn’t practical to sort out.

We got on the trail a little after 9am and continued the descent we had started the day before. It was somewhat slow going, mostly due to exhaustion and general soreness, but it wasn’t a difficult stretch by any means. After an hour or two the trail changed from steep dirt and rocks to more gradual paths and it became clear that we were getting close.

On the whole, the trip was fantastic. I can highly recommend BootsnAll Travel, who put the trip together for us. Other than some minor snafus, the logistics of everything from airport transfers to equipment rental went really smoothly, and Donovan at BootsnAll was a great help in planning the trip.

For those considering Kilimanjaro, I would definitely recommend the Lemosho route, as it has wonderful changes of scenery and is really a pleasure to climb. Nine days was perhaps a bit much, but the chance to camp at Lava Tower was really worth it, and I have to think that extra day of acclimation made our summit day, as difficult as it was, somewhat easier.

We knew we had more than 4,000 vertical feet to climb, and that our goal was to be at the summit by sunrise, around 6:00am. While there were other people on the path doing the same thing we were, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as the trails we had been on the past few days — largely because only tourists and guides make the summit trek, so there were no porters jogging past us as we practiced pole pole and tried to pace ourselves for the long trip to the top.

After an hour or two, the air was noticeably thinner, and colder. The whole Kilimanjaro expedition had been marked by the phenomenon of being too cold at rest and too warm when actively hiking, and the summit trip was no exception. Every 30 minutes or so we’d stop for a quick break, only to find that we were really, really cold. But within minutes of starting to climb again, I would be simply roasting in my gear and would have to open my my shell to get some cool air.

The hike to the summit, like everything else on Kilimanjaro, seemed to go on forever. By 3 or 4 in the morning we had really settled into a trudging routine, making slow but steady progress. It was around this time that my heart/lung issue started to become irksome. Doctors tell me that about 30% of my blood regurgitates into my left atrium when my left ventricle goes to pump blood out to the body, so my body gets less blood and therefore less oxygen than it would like. Combined with altitude, that means deeper breaths, which I had been taking the entire time with no ill effect.

However, the air at 17,000+ feet is really, really cold. I found that I could breath through my balaclava / muffler and get warmer air, but it felt too restrictive, so every few breaths I would have to take a big gulp of pure mountain air… which was really, really cold, and which started to really irritate my throat and lungs before very long.

No matter, we were mostly there and I wasn’t about to stop at that point. So we kept trudging, until finally, around 5:10am, we got to what seemed like it must be the summit: the path leveled out and we found ourselves on relatively flat ground with a wonderful view. Unfortunately, this was not actually the summit, but Peter assured us that we had only another half hour or so to go, so we somewhat reluctantly continued our slow progress.

That last half hour or 40 minutes was really, really evil. The terrain was only moderately hilly, but it was at 19,000 feet and God only knows what temperature, so it was really very difficult. This last bit, too, seemed to go on forever. We’d crest a small rise only to see another small rise in the (near) distance.

And then, after 8 days of hard work to get to the summit and about 15 minutes to enjoy it, we started down again. Luke commented that he felt better the moment we started walking down; for me, it took a little while longer to feel any kind of breath coming back.

Another thing they don’t tell you in advance about Kilimanjaro is that the trail down from the summit is different than the trail up. Whereas the trail up is a grueling path with lots of switchbacks and a relentless angle, the trail down is a grueling path with fewer switchbacks and an incredibly steep angle. Hikers know that downhill can be more difficult than uphill, and this proved that point. For the next three hours we half-ran, half-slid down this crazy trail as we descended 4,000 feet in probably 3-4 miles of trail. And, yes, this too seemed to go on forever.

By this time I had developed a nasty cough from scorching my lungs with deep breaths of freezing air and I was finding it really hard to proceed. But, unlike going up the mountain where you can conceivably give up in the face of difficulty, going down was a foregone conclusion. We got back to Barfu camp around 9:30am, nine and a half hours after starting our ascent to the summit. But the day wasn’t over: we still needed to descend to our next stop at Mweka camp, another 5,000 feet below Barfu.

We finally reached Mweka in the early afternoon, covered in mud and dirt and thoroughly exhausted. Peter did say that we could continue all the way to Mweka gate and be back in Moshi by evening (showers! beds!), but Luke wisely demurred. That had been a long enough day, and one more night in horrendously dirty clothes and a tent wasn’t going to make any difference at all. We called it a day after a quick dinner and got to sleep early.

The wall itself was another example of the sheer scale of the mountain. The path went on, and on, and on. Every time it seemed like we had to be near the top, a switchback would reveal another hundred vertical feet to go. And, of course, we were constantly being passed by porters for other camps, so it was an exercise in patience and the now-familiar pole pole. While most of the wall was an endless series of switchbacks, there were occasional bits that required the use of all fours to clamber up to the next section.

But first we had to get to Barfu, which was no easy task. There were still a lot of people on the trail, and the path was another one of Kilimanjaro’s reminders of scale. Simply endless climbs followed by endless descents followed by endless climbs. While it was only a few hours, it was at increasingly high altitude and after a week on hiking, so it proved to be fairly exhausting.

So Lava Tower was a unique treat for us, a chance to acclimate at 15,000 feet at a camp that very few people see. The hike to get there was only 3-4 hours, but we found that the increase from Moir hut’s 13,500 feet to Lava Tower’s 15,000 feet really made a difference. The hike wasn’t all that difficult, but it was definitely time for pole pole (slowly, slowly). The air at Lava Tower was noticeably thinner than a Moir Hut, and we were pretty exhausted when we arrived.

We woke at Lava Tower on the morning of day five, with temperatures still very very low. After a quick breakfast, we started the hike down to Barranco camp, which is at a mere 13,000 feet. That hike was pretty quick, maybe two hours. It was a fairly steep downhill, which is always a bit tough and jarring on the body, but it felt good to not be climbing for once.

And then a funny thing happened. As we were walking back to camp, it started to hail. Within minutes, the hail was absolutely pounding down on us, which wouldn’t have been so bad except it made the paths fairly slippery. As luck would have it, we were just passing the Barranco hut, where park ranger types live to keep an eye on things. Our porters ushered us into the hut and we sat down to wait out the hailstorm. The two guys stationed at the hut had limited English, and my Swahili was limited to “hot water”, “trail”, and “big tree,” but it was still an enjoyable diversion. Like many other people in Tanzania, they did ask about Barrack Obama and whether he had a chance against Hillary Clinton.

Somewhere in the dawning adventure, we got distracted from the whole altitude thing and found ourselves scrambling up a promising looking ridge maybe 300 feet above the lava flows we had been walking on. It was somewhat tough going, but it was challenging and doable enough to be thoroughly addictive. About an hour after leaving camp, we finally reached the top of a cliff face that had a fantastic view.

We did see one slide-like feature that looked like it descended gradually to the lava flows we had climbed up from. So we headed that way. Point the second: when you’re a little worried and decide to take an alternate route down, it is smart to look for landmarks to help find the route. We ended up overshooting our intended spot and found ourselves in a dry stream bed. Hmmf. Well, that might do. So we started walking towards camp… until it became obvious that we were coming up on a (now-dry) waterfall. And still the rain was picking up, a matter of some concern.

So we changed our plan for the third time, heading out to another slide about a quarter of a mile away. This merely required walking on a heavily tilted hillside covered with slippery slate-type rocks above a sheer cliff in a light rain. But we did finally find the new alternate route down, and we even made it back to camp with minutes to spare before tea time.

We finally sat down to a remarkably tasty and generous dinner. We knew that we would have a cook along with us, but we had no idea of either the quantity or quality of the food we’d see. Luke and I had been prepared to subsist entirely on the massive amounts of beef jerky, trail mix, and other snacks that we had brought. The first night’s dinner, which included an appetizer of popcorn and tea followed by cucumber soup (yum!) and potatoes, was our first indication that perhaps we had overpacked on the snack front.

After dinner it started getting dark around 7pm, and we headed off to sleep. As tough as the first day had been, I knew that it was only going to get more challenging.

They have really outdone themselves with the new boarding process. Not content with the old, obnoxious A/B/C groups, the fiends have actually come up with something more complicated and annoying. Not only do the old A/B/C groups still exist, but each one is split in two — you can be in A (1-30), A (31-60), B (1-30), B (31-60), or C (1-30). Ah, but it gets better. Each of the two subgroups has a separate line, but of course with those small lounges, they have to reuse space, so you can’t line up for B (31-60) until A (31-60) has boarded.

You can tell whether you are supposed to have already boarded, be waiting in line, or be milling about waiting for the privilege of getting in line by little rotating signs that convert each of the two staging lines from A to B to C. So, once A (1-30) has boarded and they are working on A (31-60), the sign at the head of A (1-30) rotates so it is now B (1-30). Yes, seriously.

It gets even better. Each line is further divided into groups of five (1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and so on). And you are actually supposed to look at your ticket and find your group of five in your subsection of your section. In most airports, these signs are in the middle of the two staging lines, so on one side you have 16-20 and on the other side 46-50. So there are huge lines surrounded by people milling about who can’t line up yet, and you’re supposed to go wedge yourself into the middle of an existing line.

There are all sorts of things wrong with this. Foremost, in American culture at least, lines have social significance. It feels weird to go to an existing line and insert yourself towards the front, even if that’s where the signs and instructions indicate that that’s the thing to do.

Second, the process is so complex that most people in line don’t understand it. They see other people charging to the front and figure “hey, it’s a free for all”. And passengers who don’t speak English are utterly befuddled. The result is lots of milling and confusion and inadvertent cutting in line, standing in the wrong line, and so on.

Third, the way the two-sided 1-5, 6-10, etc, signs work, most new travelers don’t understand that there is a back side to the sign, and that if they are in, say, B (31-60) and B (1-30) is loading from the side closest to them, they need to dodge through the loading people to get to the other side where their sub-sub-queue is located.

The first time I went through this, I figured it was an attempt at efficiency gone horribly wrong. Surely some well-meaning person who had never flown before had come up with an utopian vision of how boarding could work, if only everyone were psychic and willing to spend a lot of time studying.

However, after I went through the new process a few more times, I became convinced that it is a brilliant but diabolical ploy conceived by an evil genius. Traveling is stressful enough, especially for infrequent travelers. And these are the people the scheme targets! They have no idea what’s going on, they see people cutting in line, and they think that Mom, Dad, and Junior have to be separated in line (and therefore on the plane) because their boarding passes have different numbers. And even frequent travelers have to cut in line and push through crowds. Everyone ends up angry and feeling socially awkward!

There are people out there devoted to making life a little better for other people. But, when you think about it, that’s easy. Smile at people, respond genuinely to casual questions, hold doors for people, and so on. But it takes real genius, and probably a great deal of energy, to take a process that already made people terribly unhappy and turn it into a living hell that makes people miserable. Southwest has a devious and evil person on their hands. And you just have to admire that kind of sheer sociopathy, even if it sucks to be at their mercy.

The software has evolved, too, and is now all fancy, with XML-based configuration and an iPhone web interface that serves as a decent remote control. I’ve got it set up to run any number of zones, each of which can contain any number of fixtures, and zones can either run independent programs or follow each other in various ways (for instance, it looks cool when the spotlights follow the washes by about 2 seconds, and rotated about 30 degrees through RGB space).

LED-based fixtures are really a godsend to hobbyists — this same lighting project would have been doable years ago using traditional fixtures, but the expense involved in constantly replacing bulbs, in addition to higher initial cost, would have made it a very pricey hobby indeed. LED fixtures are cheaper up front — I got my last batch of four Colorsplash Jr’s for $35 each — and will, in all likelihood, last forever.

DMX, on the other hand, is really not an ideal home automation protocol. You’d think that 24 bit color (8 bits each for RGB) would be enough, but either the hardware in all of my lights is limited to less than 8 bits of resolution, or the human eye really can tell the difference between 0×01 and 0×02, especially in reds. On top of that, each fixture has its own means of defining color controls and mapping them to DMX channels, so software abstraction is needed to turn an RGB value into appropriate commands, and then one fixture’s idea of R,G,B=192,192,0 is much different than another’s. All of the fixtures I’m working with are RGB based. For architectural or interior design purposes, this stuff would make a lot more sense as Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) rather than Red, Green, Blue.

The real answer is for someone to design LED-based interior lights that run on an HSV color model and use something like Zigbee to communicate, so all they’d need was a power cable and perhaps some rudimentary configuration. That’s bound to happen at some point, but for now I’m happy with my homebrew and software intensive solution. Next up: Slimserver integration to set lighting scenes based on what music is playing, and audio input to allow for subtle tweaking of light patterns based on music. Oh, and fog machine control. You’ve gotta have fog, right?