Ailsa’s Travel theme: Hot

Ailsa this week wants us to show some hot shots for her theme,

I’ve had so many vacations to hot places, but I think Egypt in July was the hottest I’ve ever experienced. It was, as you can imagine, a very dry heat, which I find far more bearable than heat with high humidity. Nevertheless, when we arrived from winter in Johannesburg, to temperatures of well over 40 C, it was quite a shock to the system. We were met at the airport by our guide, and whilst our luggage was transported straight to the hotel, we were immediately herded off into the desert, still in our ‘winter’ clothes minus jackets, and stuck on top of camels in the blazing heat. I didn’t even have a hat, and my feet, swollen from the flight, were screaming to get out of my socks and trainers, and into some sandals. Hubby had the well-behaved camel, but after the photo was taken, the one which I was on, had a bit of a tiff with the third one, and decided to break away from the group and go cantering off,  with me hanging on to my son’s waist for dear life. The handler came chasing after us, shouting what I imagined were all manner of obscenities in Egyptian, and eventually caught up and grabbed the rope. Here you can see the heat just shimmering on the sand.

In Ecuador, whilst travelling on the much pot-holed Pan American Highway, our transport slowed as we passed a local Saturday market. The people there seemed totally oblivious of the volcano over the next hill, spewing hot ash into the air. Hubby did notice that many of the houses had reinforced concrete roofs to protect them from falling hot rocks.

At Yellowstone National Park, there was no shortage of hot spots. Here you can see the steam from one of the underground geysers. The air temperature there was so cold that there were icicles all around the crater.

I was shivering with the extreme cold up on the ground, but it sure looked hot down there.

One of the most enjoyable visits I had on the trip, was to the ‘Hot Springs’ at Thermopolis. After being frozen to the core in  icy temperatures, it was so great to just thaw out in those wonderful hot mineral-laden waters, heated by geothermal processes.

I think this post would be incomplete without a really hot sunset. This photo was taken from our cruise ship on  the Barrier Reef. Did you know that our sun is more than 25 million degrees on the Fahrenheit scale and that there are many thousands of stars in the universe that are thousands of times hotter than the sun?  Just  imagine that!

If you’ve enjoyed my HOT post, you can see more interpretations of Ailsa’s theme by clicking here.