Well, There It Is

Linda Lou Burton posting from Zanzibar Serena Hotel, Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania – I’m not just looking at the Indian Ocean right now. I am smelling it, hearing it, and within inches of touching it. Which happens to be the next part of my plan. You see, there are five oceans in the world, and they cover 70% of the Earth’s surface. So if you plan to See The World, you’re going to have to swim, cruise, or fly over a lot of water! And naturally, you’ll want to get your foot in it. I may have come in contact with Atlantic waters when I was 5 and Dad and Mom took me swimming in Virginia’s York River. But that’s a stretch, although salt water does come inland that far. Certainly during the 60s and 70s I spent time on the Atlantic seaboard with my kids, wading and splashing from Florida all the way to Maine. In 1978 my sons and I went plowing into the Pacific waters at Santa Monica Beach, after a long drive cross-country to California. Then I had 25 years of living on the West Coast and enjoying the Pacific waters from California to Washington state. It was 2005 when I did the quirky thing of going NORTH of the Artic Circle and SOUTH of the Antarctic on the first day of summer at each. So, June 2005 I put a boot into the Arctic Ocean, and December 2005, a boot into the Southern Ocean. Yes, for both of those, I was surrounded by snow; a guide had his rifle ready on Artic Ocean day and barely agreed to let me out of the Hummer. “If a polar bear is coming, I can’t see him until he’s close,” he warned. In Antarctica, the penguins were much less a threat; the idea there was to protect THEM from US; my boots were sanitized before going ashore. It’s 2022 now, and here I am, FINALLY, at Ocean #5 – there it is – the bluest, warmest, and 3^rd largest ocean in the world. Pardon me while I sit on my porch just 20 feet away from it. I’ll do the touching thing tomorrow, but right now I’m going to look at it until it’s pitch plum dark. Room service, please?

Know Your Oceans

• Pacific Ocean: 104,800,000 sq miles between Asia and Australasia and the Americas. 
• Atlantic Ocean: 52,899,000 sq miles between the Americas and Europe and Africa.
• Indian Ocean: 43,844,000 sq miles between southern Asia, Africa and Australia. 
• Southern Ocean: 13,645,000 sq miles between Antarctica and the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. 
• Arctic Ocean: 9,667,000 sq miles between northern North America and Eurasia in the Arctic.

Zanzibar Serena Hotel https://www.serenahotels.com/zanzibar

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