Good morning Seldom:
What a way to wake up on a Saturday morning! Thoroughly enjoyed reading through your Grand Canyon trek.
On unlikely extreme outdoor sports participants:
Taking a chance on a new-to-the-sport participant (and RVnet alumnus) was 'm sure greatly appreciated. I always remember my expeditions into the Mosquito Coast, of remote Honduras. I had clients that paid exorbitant quantities of money to accompany me on 100 to 230 kilometer treks or kayaking expeditions along coastal and flatland jungle. To give you some idea of this region's physical setting, the British Special Air Services (SAS) do some jungle training in Belize (a region also referred to at times as the Mosquito Coast) because of the region's unusually brutal setting.
My expeditions along "The Coast" entailed walking from sunset to sunrise (in the black of night, lit often and only by the hundreds of acres of illuminated plankton flashing like lightning just off the shoreline, or by the moon) along completely uninhabited shoreline, crossing rivers cutting beaches by floating across, with 60~80 LB backpacks using various techniques, and much more...vetting individuals who wanted to participate was daunting. Some of the most unlikely participants fell into my lap (like a 64 year old retired Swiss home-maker; extreme adventurers from Australia (one of which had to be operated on DURING my expedition for appendicitis, after his expedition partner and I carries him more than 20 kilometers to a village with no electricity, with a Missionary med clinic, on a stretcher I fashioned from jungle materials!); 70 year old neuroscientist (and I who paddled, via sea kayak, more than 720 kilometers of the Caribbean coast, and up and down jungle rivers, from Honduras to Nicaragua (we were the first ever to do this in a sea kayak; a second expedition some years later: a 2000 coastal expedition led by a French duo, followed my sea kayaking expedition by internet and my book, attempted to do the same but with a twist: he paddled the *entire* Central America Isthmus {I was their section adviser on the Honduras/Nicaragua Caribbean leg, where they were attacked by a band of once Sandinista guerrillas armed with AK-47s firing at them off-shore, they encamped & living in a remote part of RAAN Nicaragua, they posing as border officials); and had to, on another of my expeditions, perform surgery (with a medical doctor on my expedition thank God, on a woman in a remote jungle village with a pregnancy gone wrong, during a near hurricane, at 2:15 AM, after paddling 1.6 hours down a raging river in a mahogany dugout canoe in the dark, with 2 flashlights secured to the bow as "headlights", to get to her...
These experiences both the participant and "teacher/mentor" never ever forget!
I never "lost..." a "client"
In photo 0763 appears to be an abandoned (destroyed or absconded) Africanized bee colony (common name in North America: killer bees) ?
Cheers,
Silver-
