Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Bungees, volcanoes, and aerials

None of these items really warrant a post all on their own, so today you get a hodge-podge of a few things I’ve been meaning to write about recently.

I thought the bungee jump I did in Queenstown was from a pretty high height at 134 meters. That is, until I found out about the one in Macau that garners the title of world’s tallest bungee jump. It’s more than 300 feet taller than the jump I made! Obviously, it’s not a jump I took – I would’ve mentioned a trip to China. J I did take a MUCH bigger leap recently, but it was with a parachute attached to me rather than a bungee cord. I’ll post pictures as soon as I get them.

The islands of Indonesia lie on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” which essentially means that Indonesians experience heaps of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and events like tsunamis that are often a result of said earthquakes. In fact, there was an earthquake in North Sumatra when I was there back in May. Well, the ring of fire has struck again and you’ve probably heard or read by now that there was a volcano eruption a few days ago. The volcano hadn’t erupted in 400 years. Nearly 20,000 people were evacuated, but the good news is that only one person has died (the last time I heard, anyway). The other interesting thing to note is that the volcano is only 40 miles from Medan, the city that I flew into when I first arrived in Indonesia. I can't say I'm disappointed to have missed the eruption!

And finally, Laura sent me a link to one guy's aerial photos awhile back and it was really neat looking through all of them. The photographer is Yann Arthus-Bertrand and he spent five years taking those shots. Laura sent it to me because she thought she'd remembered that I'd been to some of the places featured. As I scrolled through, I thought she was crazy because I wasn't seeing any place that I'd been to, lol, but eventually there were a handful that were familar to me. These include Fraser Island, Australia, Bazaar of Istanbul, Turkey, Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, Varanasi, India, and Los Angeles (although I didn't see the particular shot that Yann had b/c I never left the airport). A couple of my favorite shots are below, all credit to Yann Arthus-Bertrand, of course.
Stockholm, Sweden

Machu Picchu, Peru

Walled city of Dubrovnik, Croatia

What shots do you like? What places would you like to visit after seeing the aerial photos?

1 comment:

  1. woot woot! i got a mention!

    i do want to go to croatia. think i could find some kind of federal grant for mom who want to see the world?

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