Having now returned from the Galapagos I realize I could have done the trip much more cheaply. It isn’t the kind of trip that needs business class seats and top accommodations. It was after all, an eco-tour.

Nevertheless, it was nice to start the journey in Quito at the Patio Andaluz. The former convent has been lovingly transformed into a first class hotel.

I won’t dwell much on my stay there as there is too much to cover about the islands and it’ll be hard enough to keep your attention. Two things about the city are worth mentioning. At an altitude of around 9000 feet or 3000 meters the city enjoys eternal fall weather. It was cool yet sunny during the day and chilly at night which is perfect for a guy like me that has too much insulation covering his bones.

The other item worth pointing out about Quito is the large collection of colonial Spanish architecture. I’m told that there are more buildings from the 1600s, built by Spain, than there are in Bogota but I have yet to go there and verify this fact. It’s a very nice city to stroll around in.

Before leaving we took a quick drive to the equator, or what they told us was the equator. I’m sure I’ve passed the imaginary line a hundred times in my travels but it was kind of cool to think you were standing on it.

One of the things which may or may not be true about the equator is that you are lighter when standing on the center of the earth. Well, as you can see in this picture this is either a fact or my eight year-old is going to have a future in women’s basketball.

Being in the globalization business, I couldn’t help but to ask our tour guide what the minimum wage in Ecuador was. His answer of $250 per month didn’t surprise me. What did was his added response that the president is trying to install a $4000 per month maximum wage. That’s such a socialist policy that it borderlines communism. Apparently, the president of Ecuador is good friends with the leader of Venezuela which explains a lot. I couldn’t help but think of a quote I had just read in The Voyage of the Beagle which was written all the way back in the 1830s.

Charles Darwin – “And when the old bloody-minded tyrant is gone to his long account, Paraguay will be torn by revolutions, violent in proportion to the previous unnatural calm. That country will have to learn, like every other South American state that a republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principals of justice and honour.”

I’ve enjoyed reading his journals. Some good parts are when he says something which must have been quite normal in the 1830s but seem rather ludicrous now.

Charles Darwin – “The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party of officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, which I had found on the summit of a neighbouring hill. “

The best part of the entire book was, of course, where we can witness the birth of the theory of evolution. Years before he wrote his On the Origin of Species he writes about the Galapagos on page 400 of the copy I have, what you see in the paragraph below. It’s a bit long for a quote but worth reading.

Charles Darwin – “The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of the islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

 What everyone realizes when they set foot on the first island is that you can get incredibly close to the animals, reptiles and birds. You could literally poke them if your guide would let you. That’s really the best part. You are part of the eco-system while there. I swam  with sea lions, sea turtles and penguins. How cool is that?

You can sit there pondering all sorts of crazy thoughts. You’ve heard that the dinasours were both reptiles and birds, right? Why is it that all the endemic life on the Galapagos Islands are also reptiles and birds of all sorts? It seams to me to be a view of what the earth was once like. Recently cooled mounds of lava with reptiles and birds everywhere, etc… Anyway, you don’t think thoughts like that when you are sitting behind a computer launching websites.

The entire trip was really an incredible learning experience. I hope my kids can retain even a portion of it. Hell, I hope I can retain a portion of it. Before I left I thought blue footed boobies were something you saw on the French riviera. Well, maybe the Spanish riviera. I don’t think the Frenchies would wear Crocks.

Another thing you learn is that the world is a dangerous place. It’s an eat or be eaten world. You hear these stories about birds that have two eggs and the stronger of the chicks pushes the weaker one out off the cliff onto the rocks to die so he doesn’t have to compete over the food his mother is bringing. Or you watch baby sea lions starving to death on the beach because their mothers abandoned them and the guides do nothing about it because they can’t alter the eco-system. The humanity in you says, “well feed the damn thing” but you know they are right so you just shake you head and move along.

The birds in this picture have blue feet. I just thought that I’d point that out.

Would I recommend this trip? You bet I would. Take your mate, your kids or both. Learn to dive first if you don’t know how because the best stuff is all under the water.

Tomorrow I leave for the Galapagos islands. It’s the type of trip you have to book two years in advance and spend enough money to buy a small country.com to get there.

Other than checking email Friday from a hotel in Quito  I’ll be offline for a full week. I’m not sure if that will be therapeutic or traumatic.

People keep telling me “Wow, that’ll be great memories for your children”. I suppose they are right but I didn’t book the trip thinking about them!

I’ve always wanted to make this journey so I’m pretty damn excited. I’ll be armed with a 150 year-old copy of The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin’s journal during his 5 years at sea in which he spent much time on the Galapagos and later developed and published his theories on evolution as  On The Origin of Species. I’m not sure why I bought a 150 year-old copy. I saw it in the used section on Amazon.com and thought it would feel more authentic, I suppose.

I will not be sending any of my daily emails next week, nor will I be replying to any forms filled out on this site. Basically, don’t expect crap out of me until around the 1st of July.

This past week I was in the Philippines but that’s no excuse. I’ve also had a terrible case of writer’s block.

When I first started this blog I told myself I wouldn’t write about things that I wasn’t interested in. Up until a week ago that wasn’t a problem. There was always something that would inspire me to put something down.

I guess I was too busy. Oddly, 10 hours a day of meetings gives you less to write about. Partly because my mind was too busy to ponder any deep thoughts but mostly because the subject of those meetings were hush-hush.

I’ve made a few changes in my business life but I can’t tell you guys about it just yet. All in due time, as they say.

So this was a completely meaningless post. Tomorrow I’ll be a bit more rested and hopefully a lot more inspired.

“I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly” – R Kelly

Business Travel takes practice. Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years.

For at least 2 weeks before a long-haul flight, avoid movie rentals and pay-per-view. Otherwise, you’ll you may find yourself actually watching a movie about a water horse not once but twice.

Regarding luggage, my daughters can claim fame to the largest collection of broken dolls from around the world. I prefer hard luggage. I like to be able to bring home mementos without them breaking. This isn’t to say they don’t break anyway. They just break a little less.

When going across this spinning rock, you have a few choices. Wake up early and be awake the whole flight, stay up all night and try to sleep on the plane or stay up all night partying and continue partying on the plane until you pass out 40 minutes before landing. I recommend avoiding the later. These days I work until I pass out. It’s also a bit more profitable.

You don’t have to fly business class to go through the business class line. No matter what country I’m in and what airline I’m flying and what class I’m in, I still go to the business class line when I check in. If I’m ticketed in coach, I simply ask, “Can I upgrade”? If they reply with, “Sure it’s 129,000 dollars” I just tell them, “never mind, just check me in”. It never fails. They print my boarding pass and I’m on my way while the rest of the saps are waiting in the coach line.

Why is it that you have to put your seat up at takeoff and landing? My best guess is that it’s similar to it being safer to sit closer to the steering wheel when driving. The closer you are to the object, the less speed your face will have at impact. That being the case, why not tell everyone to lean their chairs back? That way everyone is still the same distance but we start our mutilation and probable death in comfort.

Babies, overweight people and flatulence can all cause misery if not handled correctly. Here are a few tips. Lotion below the nose helps with smelly neighbors. If you really want to do it right, keep in mind that the lotion only has a shelf life on your nose of about 20 minutes. A true traveling C.B.A. would tell the aggressor that they are aware of their stink and request a warning signal so they could dose up on lotion before the stench hits the nostrils. Always bring an MP3 player in case of babies and lastly if your single-serving-friend weighs more than 350 pounds, you flight is going to suck. I’m digressing.

One time, I was booking a flight for a friend and I chose a Muslim meal for him as a joke. To this day, he still can’t fly without being inspected. Don’t do that to anyone you really like. Do that to anyone you don’t really like.

When possible, bring extra batteries.

No article about plane travel is complete without discussing the bathrooms. Rule #1, always lift the seat with a paper towel and not your bare hand. You never know what is on the bottom of the lid. Rule #2, unless you are starting your journey in Bangalore, don’t eat Indian food before the flight. If you must shit, and you have the luxury, wait until no one else is in line, put the seat down with a tissue in your hand and wipe it off thoroughly. If you are the type that takes your shoes off on long flights, please put them back on before entering the loo.

In case of emergency, white lights lead to red lights. Oxygen is flowing even if the bag isn’t inflated and your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.

Zip-Lining through the canopied rain forest in the Jamaican mountains, I can’t help but to think about Frank Schilling’s post on SevenMile.com. Like most of the big domainers, he doesn’t sell domains and he attempts on his blog to explain why that is so.

Perhaps because I was flying through the trees at night I could focus on the question at hand. When is the right time to sell a name?

I think back to my days at an Internet start-up in the mid-nineties. The venture capitalists would rant about how they would only invest in a company with one of three exit strategies. They would need to “go public” so their shares would be liquid, sell the company or the founders would need to buyout the investors.
What was their reason for this way of thinking? They wanted to realize their gains. They were keenly aware of the worthlessness of paper wealth. Gains aren’t realized until the cash is in the bank. Having something worth money is not the same as having money.

I think that many domainers out there have only paper wealth. I’m not speaking of Frank who has both. A good deal of domainers are sitting on names that are worth a pretty penny but generate little income and they refuse to sell the name. I just don’t see the sense in that.

I suppose part of it is personality related. For me, I can sell a name at or slightly below today’s value and feel comfortable that I can do more with that money than what I sold it for. If I was someone that didn’t have faith in my ability to buy something new for far less than today’s value I would struggle with it a bit more.
For now, I’ll take the cash and this little girl on an adventure.

After 7 days of island hoping in the Caribbean we at last arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I own SanJuan.com so I had a special interest in the city. I’m selling the name but more about that later in this post.

It’s the oldest American city and the center of commerce in the West Indies. Yeah, you heard me right. The oldest city is not James Town. It’s also not Saint Augustine as you Floridians were told in grade school. It’s San Juan. The people there are Americans that pay federal taxes and social security like the rest of us who carry the same passport. Puerto Rico has been a U.S. territory since the Spanish American war at the end of the 19th century. We won it along with Guam, The Philippines and Cuba. On hindsight, we should have kept The Philippines and Cuba as well but at the time the American populace was worried that our government had imperial tendencies. Up until that point we were a neutral country in foreign affairs. Oh lord, how times change.

According to Wikipedia, nearly half a million people call San Juan home with over two million people in the greater San Juan metropolitan area. There are another million people that pass through every year on cruise ships or to hit the area directly as tourists.

You can find information about the domain after the pictures.

SanJuan.com is now number 2 on Google for the search term “san juan”. This is a term that gets searched for over 14,000 times a day according to SeoDigger.com. I had the site built a few months ago just to attain that ranking. Almost everything has been done for you. All you need to do is buy the domain and site from me and sign on advertisers. This is something I don’t have time to do and my business is selling names. I originally wanted half a million dollars for this name. I’ve lowered my expectations all the way down to 350,000 or the best offer. If you want the name, hit me up and we’ll see if we can work something out.

There is something great about having kids with different spring breaks. While I’m Island hoping with my youngest, I’m just 11 days away from spending a week in Jamaica with my oldest. My friends and family can enjoy pictures of that trip too while I annoy domainers with completely non-relevent ramblings.

So far we’ve hit the U.S. Virgin Islands, St Martin/Maartin, Antigua and St Lucia. The boat was supposed to stop in Barbados today but due to large swells it couldn’t safely dock. Instead we are out to sea and tomorrow we’ll drive around the Caribbean’s Pompey, Montserrat, to look at the volcanic ruins. All this before returning to the home port of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s there that I am looking forward to the most, simply because I own sanjuan.com.

P.S. Never tell a personal trainer you’ve just met that you climbed Mt Kilimanjaro. I’ve worked out each day on this ship and the guy has nearly killed me each time. Damnit though, I’m going to get in shape.

Greetings from St Thomas.

This has to be the largest concentration of jewelry stores on the planet. Seriously, do all of these stores make a profit? If you’ve ever been here, you know what I’m talking about.

The weather was pretty crappy today so the beach wasn’t all that great either. Overall, it looks like a nice enough place. Myself, I’m more of a fan of the pacific islands with their towering volcanic mountains.

The trip started out like most of my worldly adventures. I left my passport at home and had to call a friend to run by my house and rush it to the Atlanta airport. Twenty minutes later I realized that I had the keys to my car in my pocket which was parked behind my wife’s car. I had to call that same friend and have him run all the way back down to the airport and get them. Now that I am back I figure I’ll buy him lunch and find out if he is still a friend at all anymore.

I’m not sure what I expected Tanzania to be like. I’ve done business throughout Latin America and Asia and I’ve seen poverty many times. On the flight there from Amsterdam I struck up conversation with quite a few people. Everyone was going there for either a safari, to hike the big mountain or for humanitarian reasons. Not one person was going there for business. I started to lower my expectations.

What you quickly witness upon arriving at the Kilimanjaro airport and driving to your hotel takes it all to a new even lower level. The sad part is that I’ve only seen such a small part of one country yet I feel certain the entire continent is in dire straits. There were no hordes of bicycles or rickshaws scattering the streets. Instead there were simply throngs of people walking in every direction. It was all broken down to the most basic level of human existence.

Granted, it’s a vast continent and I was there only a small amount of time. I really have no right to speak on such matters. That said, I’ll be first in line to rally behind anyone who has a solution to help those people. Read the rest of this entry »