I always enjoy the sights and scenery when I travel, but what I really love are the people, especially from cultures so different from mine. As much as this trip was about spotting and watching the movements of magnificent animals in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the safari was also a huge lesson about culture for me. It was the prospect of visiting a Maasai village and the city of Arusha, Tanzania that made my heart skip a beat before we even left Lansing.ArushaOur tour Continue Reading
Time for Some Sun and Sand – Africa, Part 1
At the warmest part of today, with the sun beating down on my car, the temperature still registered zero. We are deadlocked in bitter cold, and I can’t think of a better thing to do than travel to some place warm and sunny. Not Florida, or the Caribbean, Arizona or California. Instead, it’s time to revisit Africa – specifically, the Serengeti and surrounding area in Tanzania. From April, 2012, my Safari Adventure - I hate getting up early for anything. But more than hating that, I love a Continue Reading
Gorilla Tracking – The Experience of a Lifetime
My friend, Sandy Thomas, is a world traveler, and when she shared with me her last adventure, I asked if she’d be willing to share, since travel is one of my focus areas. An amazing experience! Being with the gorillas in their natural habitat has always been a dream of mind. Not sure why... perhaps because as a child King Kong was my imaginary playmate. (True, don't laugh.) Each time my travel buddies and I looked at excursions to see the mountain gorillas, Uganda and Rwanda Continue Reading
Hanging On By A Thread – Arches National Park
Look closely - can you find the rappeler? Finally, in the last hour of the last park on our national park tour, we came upon what we’d been looking for since we entered the parks a few days earlier. In the distance, hanging on by a thread – rock climbers. Or in this case, a single climber rappelling with such speed, I could barely capture the photo. As I walked closer, I could tell it was a woman with her husband, son and dog at the bottom waiting for her. The Arches Continue Reading