Man overboard!Jambo, my friends. Wainwright and I have survived our 2 week trip around East Africa and are pleased to be home again.
And my, what an adventure it has been! It would be frivolous of me to summarise our trip in one blog entry as there is so much to share with you. Besides, I'm getting far better at keeping notes as I travel. So, I will attempt to provide a series of entries over the coming week or so that cover the highlights of our trip in chronological order. Here's a flavour of some of the episodes I intend to write about:
Wainwright gets kidnapped and held to ransom
In search of the Big 5
Ballooning over the Maasai Mara
The water buffalo shoot out
A lion comes to visit
Spot of bother in Kampala
Rafting the Nile
Chimps at Lake Victoria
Lake Bunyonyi orphanage
Plughole experiment on the equator
Genocide Memorial, Kigali
Gorilla, Gorilla
At times the trip has been an emotional roller coaster. Africa has a habit of balancing out its beauty and sheer awesomeness with pain and suffering. Something that I have difficulty coping with.
A picture paints a thousand words and all that, so I'll do my best to add a few . There's planty to choose from - I estimate that I took nearly 3,000. Of those maybe 80% will be deleted for being poor or too similar to other pics as I searched for that perfect shot of a lion (I got some great shots of a mummy and daddy lion making baby lions - talk about lay back and think of Africa!). My poor laptop is creaking as it is so it may not be a simple task.
The picture above was taken by the company I went rafting with. Yes, that is me going for an unplanned swim in the Nile.
This week marks the end of my first three months of retirement. This was always planned as a bit of a time out. I've had a fantastic summer and even now it is strange to return from a trip and not to be going back to work. But by the end of the week I do need to change up a gear and introduce a more rigid structure into my life. Quite what that will be I haven't decided yet. I do intend to devote far more time to writing and I have a few projects lined up. And I haven't given up hope of the TV/Film Extra work starting to come my way as I enter a more settled phase of my life.
No more big trips until November, when I head off to Vietnam. Australia and New Zealand are in the process of being planned for January/February.
The new term at university begins in a week, which means two things. One, I will have to get used to not having my gorgeous daughter around the house as she returns to Leicester for her second year of studying Law. Incidentally, her boyfriend's surname is Law, which means that when she's not studying Law she's studying Law - boom, boom! Two, I drag myself back for the final year of my Creative Writing degree. Not surprisingly, I have elected to focus on travel writing for the 10,000 creative words I have to submit. Should the book ever emerge don't bother buying it as you'll have read most of what I have to say on here.
Asante sana!
Live long and prosper.
Genocide Memorial, Kigali
Gorilla, Gorilla
At times the trip has been an emotional roller coaster. Africa has a habit of balancing out its beauty and sheer awesomeness with pain and suffering. Something that I have difficulty coping with.
A picture paints a thousand words and all that, so I'll do my best to add a few . There's planty to choose from - I estimate that I took nearly 3,000. Of those maybe 80% will be deleted for being poor or too similar to other pics as I searched for that perfect shot of a lion (I got some great shots of a mummy and daddy lion making baby lions - talk about lay back and think of Africa!). My poor laptop is creaking as it is so it may not be a simple task.
The picture above was taken by the company I went rafting with. Yes, that is me going for an unplanned swim in the Nile.
This week marks the end of my first three months of retirement. This was always planned as a bit of a time out. I've had a fantastic summer and even now it is strange to return from a trip and not to be going back to work. But by the end of the week I do need to change up a gear and introduce a more rigid structure into my life. Quite what that will be I haven't decided yet. I do intend to devote far more time to writing and I have a few projects lined up. And I haven't given up hope of the TV/Film Extra work starting to come my way as I enter a more settled phase of my life.
No more big trips until November, when I head off to Vietnam. Australia and New Zealand are in the process of being planned for January/February.
The new term at university begins in a week, which means two things. One, I will have to get used to not having my gorgeous daughter around the house as she returns to Leicester for her second year of studying Law. Incidentally, her boyfriend's surname is Law, which means that when she's not studying Law she's studying Law - boom, boom! Two, I drag myself back for the final year of my Creative Writing degree. Not surprisingly, I have elected to focus on travel writing for the 10,000 creative words I have to submit. Should the book ever emerge don't bother buying it as you'll have read most of what I have to say on here.
Asante sana!
Live long and prosper.
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