Why not ask, does the world need one more bowl of pho? One more piece of duty-free chocolate? One more plate of jerk chicken over peas and rice? Does the world really need any more scenic photos of pristine beaches, soaring mountains, and crystal clear lakes? Does the world need any more adventure stories of driving through a giant crater in the Negev Desert, crunching across Icelandic snow at midnight under the Aurora Borealis, or snorkeling over coral reefs off the shores of Zanzibar?
Well, yeah.
My name is Jared Millet. My wife Lea and I are habitual world travelers. We do our best to leave the United States at least twice a year, and we never go on one trip without already starting to plan the next. We’ve done our share of in-country travel too, straying away from the usual tourist attractions whenever possible and looking for holes-in-the-wall that many people have never heard of. Which doesn’t mean we’d turn our noses up at a chance to raft down the Grand Canyon. We’re definitely going to raft down the Grand Canyon. One of these days.
You learn a lot when you travel (and not just in the “self discovery” sense, though there is that too). You learn little things about how the world works, and how the world can work differently than it does in your home town. You learn that Israel has an unnatural number of roundabouts and not nearly enough gas stations. You learn that, seen from a distance, a black rhino moving at speed can easily be mistaken for an SUV. You learn that the Moroccans didn’t learn anything from the French when it comes to variety of food. And you learn that a person can go for weeks (or months) on three changes of clothes, as long as you have enough socks and underwear and don’t pack any more shoes than you absolutely have to.
Honestly, given everywhere that Lea and I have been, all the thousands of photos we’ve taken, and the sheer number of miles we’ve logged, I feel bad that I haven’t been blogging our adventures for years. It’s never too late to start, and Guatemala is right around the corner. Here goes…
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