It's official

I just booked my flight out of the country yesterday. Some good jockeying of rewards points and frequent flyer miles have earned me a flight from Newark to Cape Town on June 25th. Actually, I'll be flying to Amsterdam and stopping over for 24 hours. I'm planning on visiting Jaques in A-dam, perhaps a day of seeing some sights a decent dinner and a couch will materialize. Then I am off to Africa. I plan on spending a day or two in Cape Town to acclimate to the time difference and potential culture shock. From there I'm planning on hitting Hermanus for some cage diving with Great Whites and whale watching before I make my way to Johannesburg. Wow this thing is getting more and more real as the days go by. Now I am working on getting out of my apartment with my total security deposit.

The trip is getting closer...And Leon's getting Larger!

It has been a nutty few weeks, life is getting crazier and the reality is starting to set in as my trip transitions from an abstract concept to a more tangible form. I got my vaccinations today (Hep A, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Polio and Japanese Encephalitis skipped the Rabies series) 2 sub-cutaneous in the left shoulder and 3 intra-muscular in the right shoulder. I feel like I can pitch 9 innings left handed. My right arm is dead.

Switching to a consumer driven health plan and increasing my contribution to my flex-spending account is paying-off as no plan pays for Yellow Fever and Japanese Encephalitis vaccines. It should do me well when it comes to the anti-malarials later. My goal now is to spend as much of my health benefits before I head out. Anyone need anything while I'm out? A dental cleaning? colonoscopy? anything?

So it's hashing out like this: I'll be skipping Europe and heading from NY to South Africa. I'm planning on the beginning of June. I have applied for a position volunteering for 5 weeks in a wildlife park tracking top-level predators for a conservation program (freakin cool huh). I know Israel will be in the itinerary but I still need to speak with my family and friends. I'd love to crash with them to experience the real deal. South East Asia will come afterward, I'm debating whether to stop in India, Nepal and the area en-route, but I’ll be in the region during monsoon season. I'll have to nail that down shortly. Thailand is looking like a good entry point. I'd like to visit Karoly (my college roommate) in South Korea and I can't imagine missing Japan. Eventually I'd like to work my way through Indonesia and Malaysia and end up in Australia. The Great Barrier Reef is not negotiable, it's been my dream since 3-4th grade. I am planning on meeting Andrea (a friend from grad school) down under for a serious diving expedition. In fact I'd like to dive, with Great Whites in South Africa (or Austrailia as Andrea wants to as well), in the Red Sea, and throughout Malaysia and Indonesia. I've never been diving outside of the Americas I only know the South Pacific from the pictures I've seen in diving magazine since teenage-hood, I can't wait. I am not sure how I'd like to get back to the US. I figure I can figure that one out on the road, there are tons of options. Did you know that you can apply for a crew position on a yacht to move rich peoples boats from one part of the world to another? Hmm perhaps.

So here are some basic trip goals:

• Stay away from things I can do another time like Paris
• Spend most of my time in lesser developed areas (nothing crazy or not enjoyable) the dollar sucks right now and you can live like a king in Asia
• Leave my comfort zone; eat new things, get the green apple splatters, figure out the hole in the ground with the two foot prints on either side. I want this to be a very visceral experience (there goes that word visceral again. I've accomplished creating buzzwords outside of work. If I start writing about the Value Proposition of this trip, you have my permission to sucker punch me in the head)
• Stay long enough in at least one place to integrate into the culture. Learn basic language ("hello", "good-bye", "beer”,” That hole in the ground is the toilet!?!?")
• Get a job. I'm not sure if this will be possible, but it would be a neat way to integrate. Perhaps a kibbutz in Israel. A diving instructor gig would rock. Plus how awesome would it be to make some scratch to supplement the trip
• Help, volunteer, give my time, my skills something to someone, someplace something that needs it. If I can't work for money, I still want to work for principle (or principal, maybe I'll teach)
• Go on the cheap. Not that I am a cheap-skate but go with the understanding that the more you spend the more likely you are to insolate yourself from what you went to experience

Well, I've got a lot of work left to do. This is like a second full time job. And right about now my full-time job has become 2 full-time jobs. I've worked 3 of the past 5 weekends and just got back from Dallas yesterday finding the time isn't easy. I'll post more shortly. (Actually I won't post this blog until everything is 100% and I yell Geronimo. I am writing these pre-departure posts for historical prospective for those of you who will choose to follow me after I tell you.)