Climb for Colombia!

Please visit www.ClimbForColombia.com for more info!


We are now two weeks away from the start of the climb. I have done my part and now I need your help!

This adventure has double motivation. From one side its the adventure and experience and from the other its spreading the good name of Colombia and helping less fortunate kids in Colombia.

As I have mentioned below the climb is being 100% paid by me and thus 100% of the donations will go to the charities below.

To make a donation please CLICK HERE for spanish to english directions. 

The Charities: 

Fundacion del Quemado (Foundation for [a person with] Burns)

www.FundacionDelQuemado.org

Facebook Page

Fundacion del Quemado was founded 17 years ago with the goal of developing a non-profit foundation for the aesthetic, psychological and social rehabilitation of kids in Colombia who have suffered burns to their bodies. The Escobar family has been collaborating with this foundation for over 10 years. Earlier this year my younger brother suffered severe burns to his hands in a car crash so as a family we have experienced what it means to need medical services related to burns.

Donations to Fundacion del Quemado will be used for medical equipment (like this equipment purchased in early July) and operations.

Presentation Fundacion Del Quemado

 

Operacion Sonrisa (Operation Smiles)

www.OperacionSonrisa.org.co

Facebook Page

Operation Smiles is a non for profit foundation that specializes in correcting facial deformation of the lip and palate specifically with the intent of helping the individual talk normally. They have been operating in Colombia since 1988 and since 1994 under global Operation Smile foundation. In 2012 Operacion Sonrisa has performed more than 3,100 operations and it in entire history more than 21,000 operations.

Donations to Operacion Sonrisas will be predominantly used for surgical procedures.

Presentation Operacion Sonrisa

To make a donation please CLICK HERE for spanish to english directions. Then please send and email to Andres@ClimbForCololmbia.com to indicate your donation amount and to which foundation it was sent. If you don't send me an email I will not be notified of the donation. If you would not like your name on the donor list please let me know as well.

All donations over $30 will receive a letter from the respective charity for tax purposes.

The Climb: 

Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain on the African Continent and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres or 19,341 feet above sea level!

"The Kilimanjaro National Park shows that only 41% of trekkers actually reach the Uhuru summit with the majority turning around at Gilman’s Point, 300 metres (980 feet) short of Uhuru, or Stella Point, 200 (660 feet) meters short of Uhuru. Kilimanjaro is often underestimated because it can be walked and is not a technical climb. However, many mountaineers consider Kilimanjaro very physically demanding."

The expedition company selected is www.PeakPlanet.com. All the flights, and the expeditional  is booked and all the gear has been purchased!

There are several routes to the peak of Kilimanjaro, our expedition will take the Shira Route which is one of the less traveled and most scenic routes. The expedition will last 8 days and has between 50 and 60 hours of on your feet hiking and around 33miles/53km.

Almost the Last Adventure....

One week ago the struggle was to make it out alive! Here I am today, thankful to be alive and thankful for everything God has given me!

As some of you may know I am in the process of training for a charity climb up Kilimanjaro.... Here is my 3rd training hike....

Start of the hike....

A two-day desert-mountain training hike took several drastic turns for the worse! What should have been a simple 30 minute hike up and down the base of a mountain to get a better look at a route, left us unable to safely come back down to where we had left our backpacks with all our supplies and emergency gear.

No way we were making it back down this way...

From the 1,600m peak, I was told by the 50-year-old Monk who lives in a cave on the mountain, it would only take 5 hours to hike down to the base of the mountain along a different route that would be safe to descend.

1,600 meters.

Not an issue when it's 7am and you have food and six liters of water. It does become an issue when it's 120*F and it actually takes 28 hours and you soon run out of water. We spent 13 hours without water or food and an additional 15 hours drinking the minimum to keep our mouths from feeling like we had had a cup of superglue and sand shoved down our throats; because that how it felt the whole time! Dehydration and extreme exhaustion quickly set in; every step was a struggle to maintain any sort of composure and I was constantly out of breath regardless of how slow we were moving!

Father resting under the sun after I tied the sole of his shoe back on using his shoe lace. The sole had had completely fallen of.

It was impossible to walk more than ten minutes without collapsing under the sun onto the hot desert floor to regain the strength to even stand up again and try to take another step. After laying on the floor to rest it would take me 10 second after I sat up to regain my bearing, like 20 seconds with my head at waist level and then another 20 seconds before I would take a step and not fall over from being dizzy!

Half way down. From here it took another 10hr of hiking and an overnight rest.

Ultimately, I was rescued by a search and rescue party of two Jeeps that the father had run into when he raced ahead to get help. The Egyptian search and rescue helicopter making final preparations to take off just minutes after they found me.

After over six liters of re-hydration liquids and a visit to the hospital for an IV, blood, urine, EKG, and ultrasound test, along with a head CT scan, the doctors confirmed there would be a full recovery!

The longest 28 hours of my life! Amen!

AEGS

Gilf Kibir expedition; sneak peak.

Hello hello...  ok i know I have been falling back big time on posting fotos... Have a back log of the East Africa trip, Lebanon, London, a few random desert trip and the Gilf.... :-/ Hope to catch up soon!

Waddi Hamra, the Red valley. Located on the north side of the Gilf Kibir plateau close to the boarder of Libya and Sudan.The sand and rocks in this valley are red due to the iron oxide in them. The other side of the valley is much more red and less orange.Part of a 10 day, 2,400km desert trip of 4 jeeps along with 3 support vehicles and 5 military escorts for security.

The Foggini Mestekawi Cave, one of the worlds most spectacular examples of prehistoric cave carvings and paintings. Located on the south side of the Gilf Kibir plateau close to the boarder of Libya and Sudan.
Discovered in 2003 it contains over 1,000 individual figures dating back to more than 11,000 years. Mind blowing is the depiction of animals like buffaloes, giraffes, octopus, ostriches and other unidentifiable animals that 11,000 years ago lived in what today is one of the driest and most inhospitable place in the world.The climax of a 10 day, 2,400km desert tripof 4 jeeps along with 3 support vehicles and 5 military escorts for security.

Check back soon for a full report!

1st night camping. Due to some delays we did not make it too far out into the desert. Close to a military check point, that's why we have cell phone service.

London sneak peak!

Took advantage of an unexpected 4 day holiday in Egypt to fly over to London!

Click for larger version.

Shark Teeth Fossil Moto ride...

Hello! 1st real post of 2013... and its going to be a quicky!

Was an interesting weekend... Original plan was to go on an unofficial company/work department desert trip but due to some complications it got cancelled, backup plan was to go climb Mt. Sinai/St. Catherine Mountain in the Sinai Peninsula... But then Thursday night Dave called me up to see if I was up for a overnight camping trip on the bikes with some others in 4x4s.... Sounds like a plan. I can basically go climb St. Catherine any weekend alone, but I cant go out into the desert on the motorcycle alone; to risky even with the satellite phone.

The Jeep sad because she was not going to get to play in the sand! [Note how clean the Jeep is.. For the work trip... Before that with all the rain it was more of a brown color! :) ]

All loaded up in Dave's truck!

Its been more than a month since I have gone on a proper motorcycle trip (due to all the travel, so its not that bad)... But I really have missed the desert and the bike! In this trip we went to a familiar area but took a different and very beautiful path.

Mid trip... Up on an escarpment after playing in those dunes for a while.

The next place we stopped at is what made this trip extra memorable! Steve took us to the side of a mountain where he has found lots of shark teeth fossils in the past. Yup, that's right, shark teeth in the desert. In one of my previous blog entries; mid post I talk about a visit to a whale cemetery. In short the whole desert use to be underwater and that's why there are shells, whale and other marine fossils!

I must admit, Steve found almost all of these fossils... It was Steve, Phill and me looking for shark teeth for like 45 min and the record ended up being 12, 0, 2. Steve has more practice then we had! I was in my moto gear with knee pads and elbow pads... After a while of not finding anything I was crawling almost kissing the ground... Steve was just walking slightly bent! 

After a long day of riding we made it to camp!

For dinner Sarah cooked a delicious chicken curry! (Mark was missing in action with back pain, may have been a good thing for the cooking part) 

Once the sun set the temperature dropped quickly... It was in the low 40's *F/4+ *C... I really did not want to make my tent so I just slept outside... Good thing I brought my winter sleeping bag that is rated for 0*F Never got cold... But I did sleep right next to the fire, more for amusement then for warmth.

After sun rise we had a really really good breakfast! Lets just say it was better than my everyday cereal and better then on the weekends when I make eggs!! Thanks Steve and Pam!

Sausage and bacon imported from the UK, beans, mushrooms, bread and fried eggs!

The rest of the crew headed out for a few more hours of playing in the desert and Dave and I headed back towards Cairo...

Great weekend!

Hello from 2013!

Hello from 2013!

2012 ended with a bang and 2013 started just how I would have liked!

For the Christmas holidays I was fortunate enough to go on a 11 day safari from Dar el Salaam in Tanzania, though Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe; ending at the magnificent Victoria Falls!

The 1st weekend of 2013 I took advantage of a 4 day weekend we had in Egypt for Coptic Christmas and I hopped over to Lebanon!

But with all that time off comes a lot of make up work at the office... Hope to post pics in the next week or so... 

Here is one picture from Zambia to make you hungry for more!

Happy New Year!!!!

UAE, Dubai & Abu Dhabi....

"Last months I took advantage of a long weekend to go see Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and visit three Colombian friends who had just recently moved to the UAE.... 

Dubai is a great modern city and I would say one of its major attractions is its no cost spared architecture. While it does have some cultural aspects people go just to see the city... and that's just what I did.

The other interesting aspect of the UAE is the desert which I have heard is beautiful. But with a limited amount of time and having spent a lot of time in the desert in Egypt i skipped out on that part...

Lets start off with Dubai.

Probably the most recent iconic building in Dubai is the Burj Khalifa. Which to this day is the tallest man made structure in the world at 829 meters/ 2,722 feet. For comparison the Empire state building is just 381 meters/ 1,454 ft... The Burj Khalifa is more then twice as high!

Something I found interesting was that while I was doing the course to get my sky diving license one of the requirements is to do emergency procedure jump from 3,000 ft. Basically you jump out of the plane and have to immediately pull your main parachute. If even the slightest thing goes wrong you have to cut away the main and pull your reserve parachute. The exercise is meant just as practice in case you ever have to ditch the plane soon after take off... The point is that the building is just a little shorter then that emergency jump height.

Here is the view from the platform at just 451 meters.

The other buildings that are also high look miniature!

At night there is a really cool water show.

The Burj Khalifa is very impressive when looking at the numbers.... Dont get me wrong, when you see it in person it is impressive as well, and you can tell its super tall. The thing is that because its thin it does not have that monstrous big square presence that a building like the Sears/Willis tower has....

One of the world famous shopping malls is The Mall of The Emirates. Its most famous attraction is Ski Dubai which is the silver portion of the building you see below.

The mall also has a massive aquarium that offers scuba diving

 Some pretty cool water fountains...

...And even airplanes...

Click below for the full post and lots of more pictures!

Here Sharky Sharky... Video of Cage Diving with Great White Sharks!

If you go to Cape Town, South Africa one of the things you must do is to go Cage Diving with Great White Sharks.... and that exactly what I did...

In Oct/Nov this year we had a nice extra long religious holiday in Egypt so I added a few extra days and a good dose of adrenalin and had a fantastic 10 day trip along the coast of South Africa with my buddy Kevin who is a Trans Oceanic Yacht (sail boat) Captain ... A few days in Cape Town and then the rest doing a camping road trip along the coast!

When I first told my buddy Kevin I was going down to Cape Town his first reply was: We have to go free diving with the Great White Sharks! I generally take a lot of risks in my activities, but you see there is a method to my madness. All the risks are what I call "Calculated Risks". I do my research on how to prevent, deal with and overcome any problem I may face. Based on that i make a decision..... But free diving with Great White Sharks, there just is no calculation to do. Yes GWS are not interested in eating humans, but they may make a mistake, or it might just be having a bad day... So I declined the opportunity to free dive with GWS!

You must be asking yourself why would anyone want to free dive with GWS... Maybe you are not but anyways... Both Kevin and I are watermen, we enjoy the ocean.... The problem is that the method of chumming to attract GWS can have a negative long term affect on the behavior of sharks which may lead to them more often mistakenly attaching humans.... I agree... Actually on our trip we had a very unfortunate accident. One of the big sharks got tangled around its body/gills in the bait line/rope (fish heads on a rope, no hook). The crew acted fast and cut the line and the shark untangled itself and went on its way. But I am sure it was a traumatic event for the shark. I wont publish those pictured.... Good news is a little while after the shark passed by and was fine.

Be sure to click full screen!

On our particular trip we saw like 14 or 15 different GWS according to the marine biologist who was part of the shark diving company. Of those sharks 5 of them were 4.5 meters/15 feet long. For reference in the video thats the size of the cage we were in, and bigger then the wheel base of a Ford Excursion!!!

Hope you liked the pictures and video! Soon I will be posting the other videos and pics from Bungee Jumping, Rock Climbing, Kiteboarding and a lot of other activities from this trip to South Africa!

Burj Al Arab... The only "7 star hotel" in the world....

Last months I took advantage of a long weekend to go see Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and visit three Colombian friends who had just recently moved to the UAE.... Later ill post the whole story and pics of the visit. Today I will focus on The Burj Al Arab hotel.

Dubai is a great modern city and I would say one of its major attractions is its no cost spared architecture.

The Burj Al Arab is a prime example; commonly described as the only 7 star hotel in the world. While a 7 star rating does not really exist... From what I saw, and from what I have heard from friends who have stayed there, its hard to imagine how it could get more luxurious!

As much as I would have like to experienced staying over a night... The least expansive room for one of the nights I was in Dubai was $1,800... Pretty cheap compared to $18,000 for their top room!

So Jonathan and I settled for visiting the hotel and paying the three digit USD minimum spend at its SkyView bar.... Of course you cant just walk up the hotel and ask for a beer. You have to make reservations and provide information to clear a 7 point security check. Ok, I kid about the security check, but you do need a reservation.

The hotel is located 280 meters off shore on a man made island that is connected by a bridge to the main land, at the gate they politely ask for your reservation, its verifies and then they allow you to proceed.

Of course we were driven to the hotel due to the UAE's zero tolerance on drinking and driving!
They are serious, as per the US State Departments web site "Persons arrested for drinking and driving are often jailed for many days as they await a court hearing. Penalties may include hefty jail sentences, fines, and, for Muslims (even those holding U.S. citizenship), lashings."

The hotel is meant to resemble the sail of a dhow which is the traditional sail boat of the region. The main surface you see in the above pictures is actually made of a sail like material.

Outside the hotel we were greeted by 3 of the hotels white Rolls Royce Phantoms, just 3 of the armada they have. Then we were greeted and welcomed to the hotel.

Lets just say Jonathan and I did not make a bee line for the bar... We took some time to see the areas of the hotel that we could at that time since we were arriving at 10pm.

You enter the lobby and are presented by a cascade of dancing fountains flanked on both sides by enormous fish tanks.

The highlight is the atrium!

More pics in the full post!