Recent Travels

Despite the best of intentions, this travel blog still isn't being updated on a regular basis. It certainly isn't for a lack of travel. I will have to try harder!

I enjoyed a wonderful trip to Italy in August. Included visits to some of the top galleries in Florence (Bargello, Uffizi and Accademmia), seeing the major sights of ancient and baroque Rome, visiting the Vatican, and touring the Sorrento and Amalfi Coasts with stops at Herculeneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius and Naples. I was fortunate to have a wonderful travelling companion in Alix for the Rome and Florence portions of the trip. Many photos from the Italy trip are posted on Flickr.

I also embarked on my first trip to Africa in December, spending most of the trip on safari and hiking around Tanzania. This included visits to some very special places, including seeing four of "the Big Five" in Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti, and visiting Olduvai Gorge, "the Cradle of Civilization". The list of animals we saw is very long (I know we hit over 40 when we tried to make a list at the lodge) and included giraffes, zebras, hippos, elephants, lions, cheetahs, ostriches, buffaloes, flamingos, camels, baboons, monkeys, black rhinos, antelopes, impalas, buffaloes and hyrax. We were also fortunate to catch the wildebeest migration through the Serengeti.

The safaris were a small but incredible part of our trip. The main focus of our trip was hiking, and we hiked both Mt. Meru (5th highest peak in Africa) and Mt. Kilimanjaro (highest peak in Africa; world's tallest free-standing mountain). We unfortunately hit the tail end of the rainy season, so it was soggy slogging for pretty much the entire time on Mt. Meru. Kili was a bit of a mixed bag -- some rain, some hail, some snow -- but at least we enjoyed beautiful weather when it counted! We hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro via the Rongai route, which provided vistas of Kenya on the way up, and Tanzania on the way down. The hike up Kili went very well, and we reached the true summit (Uhuru Peak - 5895m) on the morning of December 31st. A great way to end the year. As usual, tonnes of photos from this trip re posted on Flickr.

So, now I find myself back at home. Apart from a work trip to Geneva, Switzerland later this spring, no official travel plans are set. But certainly lots of places I would like to visit, and I'm sure it won't be long until the next trip details are being worked out!