Bundi was our least favorite stop In India. It’s a small town with fort and palace – surprise! The tour guide was terrible – we fired him after about an hour.
Nighttime view of the fort
Bundi Fort during the day
The best thing about Bundi was sitting on the roof of the hotel and watching the total lunar eclipse.
The lunar eclipse occurred when we were in Bundi. We watched it rise over the fort and then go into eclipse.
Ranthambore National Park is home to tigers along with a variety of birds, monkeys, sambars, but the tigers are the big draw. Tiger safaris leave in the morning or the afternoon. It was back on safari schedule – 6 AM wake up with coffee and tea, quick showers and off to the NP. We knew we’d be in a 6-person vehicle but we had no idea with whom. The first morning we ended up with 3 other people – a couple from the UK and Abeget, an Indian from Cupertino who works for EA Entertainment Arts.
The safari vehicles have no top; they are completely open air. Khem Villas provided a wool blanket with hot water bottle, 2 bottles of water and 2 sandwiches. We laughed when we read this but, when we hit the road, the blanket with the hot water bottle came in mighty handy!
The driver drove fast, making our heads and faces even colder. First stop was at the main gate of the National Park so the hawkers could try to sell hats and gloves and fleeces. For some reason, they didn’t bother Abaget!
The park is divided into zones and each vehicle is assigned a zone never to be violated by entering another zone! Zone 2 was ours with the road following along the bottom of the hill with the Ranthambore Fort which is high and VERY large. Pictures can’t do it justice.
The walls of Ranthambore Fort
A tiger paw print in the road.
Victory! We saw two tiger “cubs”. This guy is only about 18 months old.
The tigers blend into the background quite well.
Hawkeye spotting! A lady in a passing vehicle in the National Park saw Mark’s shirt and said “GO Hawks!”
This lake was full of birds and Sambar deer during the afternoon safari
Our afternoon National Park Guide. She is the ONLY female guide in the National Park.
Naturalists are freelance and work on a rotation basis. She tried really hard to find a tiger for us in the afternoon but to no avail.
These sambars had some afternoon delight.
The birds were spectacular even if the tigers are in hiding.
The guide spotted two owls nestled in the tree.
Fruit bats hanging around in the trees!
After the Agra tour, we hopped in the car with Sonu and headed off for our next adventure – riding a train to Ranthambore National Park. Our train was 2 hours late (no surprise!) but even waiting for the train was an adventure.
This vendor sold chai to the train passengers.
The vendors walked up and down the platform selling food through the train windows when the train stopped.
These guys knew the next train would be crowded. Some of them jumped on the track to board the train through the other doors in hopes of getting a better spot.
The Audley rep met us at the train station and arranged porters to take our bags to the correct track, thank heavens! The rep waited with us and another Audley couple to make sure we got on the right train and right car. While we waited, the rep wandered off every once in a while, talking to everyone he knew, giving the hawker and beggars the opportunity to swoop in and make us practice saying “no”.
When the train finally showed up, the Audley rep got the train guys to put our bags up above our seats and told us not to tip until they took the bags down at the other end. That strategy worked, even though the porters grumbled, and it saved us from manhandling the bags up the steep train steps, through the crowds on the train, and then undoing everything at the end.
The train was worn and old but the seats were comfortable and we all had a reserved seat. Our car’s monitor didn’t announce stops, making it somewhat of a guessing game as to where we were at any point in time. (It’s now dark so we can’t see the stop names as we come into the station.) We had our eyes on the Western tour group with an Indian guide– when they got off, so were we!
Some Indian guy traveling with his family stared at the two of us for the whole 3 hour train ride! I didn’t dare take his picture!
Another Audley Rep met us at the station and took us to Khem Villas who’d been alerted to our late arrival. They greeted us with hot towels, lemonade, showed us to our room (outdoor shower and tub and candles) and then fed us dinner at 10 PM.
This day did not start off well! Susan woke up at 3 AM with nausea and suffered the effects of food poisoning for 5 hours while Mark slept through the whole thing. He couldn’t have helped much, anyway. The Costco version of Immodium and some Indian anti-nausea meds helped!
We had our own driver for this whole India adventure; this gave us the flexibility to put off leaving Delhi for Agra until 11:30 AM while Susan recovered a bit.
The smog was so bad it obscured some of the Taj Mahal. I wondered if Corel has a smog cleaning tool for photo editing?
The air quality was Hazardous as we drove to Agra on the freeway. After arriving in Agra and meeting our guide at the hotel, we told him we’d pass on any tours today and meet him at 8 tomorrow morning for the Taj.
The Taj Mahal was built as a love story – you can find the story here – and the building is beautiful in every way you’ve heard described. We lucked out because the cleaning of the Taj has just been completed and the scaffolding was gone! They still have to clean the dome but that’s a project for another year.
Mark and Susan at the Taj Mahal. Our guide did well with the cameras, thank heavens! Our selfie skills are severely lacking.
No crowds at 8 AM so no lines for security. Speaking of security … every monument we went to had some sort of security. Our bags were at least checked. Regardless of the security, men and women go through separate lines all the time. Since non-Indian visitors pay a much higher price for admission tickets, we also use separate admission lines. The non-Indian visitors get the faster lines thanks to paying 10-20 times the price that an Indian citizen pays.
Different lines for “high value” ticket holders. Translation – foreigners who pay WAY higher admission prices!
Taj reflected. If you look really carefully, the dome is a different color because it hasn’t been cleaned yet.
The fountains at the Taj don’t turn on until about 9. This made for a nice reflection in the pools. The crowds hadn’t descended on the Taj yet, either.
Tomb of I’timād-ud-Daulah is a Mughal mausoleum often regraded as a draft of the Taj Mahal.
The Itamad uh Dualah, also known as the Baby Taj , is a smaller, delicate building on the river with very few visitors and a lovely western toilet! Somehow, an unwritten rule seemed to be that international visitors also were charged more for the toilets – 20 rupees versus 10 rupees. If the toilet was clean and western, I was happy!
Camels, cows, elephants, goats, sheep, trash, shrines, dogs, motor scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, push carts, bicycles … you name it, you probably find it on the roads of India. Throw in a few – or not so few – people along the way and the picture gets more complete.
DIsclaimer: Many of these pictures were taken from the car as we moved along.
Bicycles, auto-Rickshaw, people, and motorcycles all share the road.
A few goats along the way. I like the spotted one.
Autorickshaws in India are the same thing as tuk-tuks in Thailand. Bicycle powered ones are just called “rickshaws”.
This guy hung out at a busy intersection in Delhi.
Where does a cow cross the road? Anywhere she wants!
Camels are used for hauling wagons in the countryside.
She obviously needs her coffee in the morning. We saw this in Bundi, down the street from our hotel.
Baby camels are pretty cute! This group was walking down the road.
Staying within the lines on any road is completely optional as is going in only one direction on a divided highway. Want to turn across traffic? OK … just stick the nose of your car out and nudge your way across the road while blocking traffic.
Telling someone to “Blow Horn” seems pretty unnecessary! Blowing the horn must be a requirement on the driving test.
One day, we had a diversion (British for “detour”) at some point that took us through little villages that we never would have seen. The road was very bumpy, holey, cracked with a large sample of trash, shrines, cows in the road. The road took us through small villages where all the men seem to sit in groups outside of shops visiting and drinking coffee and tea, reading the newspapers, while the women do all the work.
Walking along the road and we have no idea where they were going.
This guy walked through the traffic lined up to pay tolls. He was selling snack food.
Taking grass of some sort to the animals. We never saw one tipped over but it has to happen!
An Indian countryside version of a bus. They were all going to the market town near them. Spelling was a problem!
Indian freeway. The trucks were taking gravel to a road works site. This is the clearest lane I ever saw!
This gives you some idea of the variety you see in the cities. This was Delhi.
Throw in a snake charmer or two on the sidewalks. The snakes are de-fanged.
We know so many people from India and have heard so much about the country that India made the final list of places to visit on this trip. The Chief Travel Planner (Susan) decided she didn’t really want to try to figure out how to get around India so we did a bit of research on tours. We scratched the group tour idea and decided to go with a driver/guide combo.
After finally deciding on Audley, we gave them the places we wanted to visit, and Bryn put together the itinerary, booked drivers, hotels, and guides. We just showed up! Audley did a great job from start – meeting us at the Delhi airport – to end when the rep helped us navigate the lines that are the Delhi airport at midnight. Sonu, our driver, took care of us and didn’t freak us out on the roads at all. He knew the best places to stop for food and CLEAN bathrooms!
Sonu was our driver from arrival time in Delhi until we flew home. He’s from the Himalaya region of India and an amazingly good driver and nice person.
Along the way we saw Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Ranthambore National Park, Bundi, and Narlai. It was an adventure!
The first 3 days were in Delhi. Because it was National Day (Public holiday) AND the ASEAN conference was going on with leaders from all the ASEAN countries, security was tight with closed roads and many buildings closed. We saw many of the places from the outside that, normally, we could have visited.
Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi
This street was pretty normal with electric, phone, TV lines going in all directions.
The mosque was only about a block away and you can tell how smoggy the air was.
Air Quality Index – Unhealthy!
No pictures with this – just a pet peeve!
Where have all the sheets gone?? For years, I thought only Germany and Austria used just a duvet on beds without a top sheet. I’ve been known to pack my own flat sheet to get around this problem. This trip we’ve been in more hotels than not who use just the duvet and forego the top sheets. These are way too hot for us to sleep but so far I haven’t resorted to one trick – take the duvet out of the cover and sleep with just the cover.
Pillows … way too hard! I was thrilled at the Intercontinental at the Johannesburg International Airport after 3 weeks in Africa to find soft, squishy bed pillows at 3 AM! The Sheraton and Meridien hotels in Koh Samui have great pillows, too. I’m enjoying the Aloft pillow in Bangkok, too, for a few days.
Love this string of outlets – controls for the fan, on/off switch and one outlet that was a bit loose. If you jiggled the plug JUST right, you got a connection.
Many hotels around the world are trying to cut down on electricity use. That’s a great idea! How do they do it? The room’s electricity only stays on when the key card is placed in the slot by the front door. Theoretically, this works great – EXCEPT when the key card controls ALL the power to the room and not just to the lights or TV or A/C.
In some hotels, the key cards also switch off power to the outlets which causes a major problem when trying to charge computers, Kindles, cameras, etc. while we’re out of the room!
Years ago, we figured out that there’s nothing magical about the HOTEL key card. We would leave other cards in the slot when we left so the outlets stayed on and our computers charged. We’d laugh and say “Powered by Qdoba” or “Powered by Body Shop”.
This trip we discovered 2 hotels in Thailand where we really had to use the key card! The key card had an RFID chip in to unlock the door and that same RFID chip turned on the electricity. At one hotel, the Bangkok transportation card with a RFID chip worked as a substitute but at another hotel, no substitute chipped card worked except for an ATM card.
Then there are the motion-sensored air-conditioners all over the world. I hate them! If no one moves, the A/C shuts off. Great! When we sleep, we want it COLD -as in about 62F or 18C – so having A/C on all night is important. We must not move enough in bed nor get out of bed often enough, because the A/C always shuts off and then I wake up and am very hot.
We have read a way around this – tie a balloon to a string and tape it near the A/C. That should be enough motion to keep the A/C/ running. We haven’t tried that trick!
We’ve been traveling for 5 1/2 months so far and have stayed in hotels and apartments, as well as with friends. You’d think bathrooms are pretty standard, right??
Cool tub and artwork at Gibb’s Farm in Tanzania
This property in the Seychelles has an open shower in the middle of the room. You’d better be comfortable with your roommate!
We used Starwood points to book a room in Koh Samui with a private pool. Little did we know the toilet, shower, sink are all by the pool and separated from the bedroom by a door and a few steps/walkway next to the pool. Let’s just say it was interesting at night finding the toilet!
Let’s start with electricity … In the UK or any country with historical ties to the UK, light switches are OUTSIDE the bathroom – for safety’s sake, of course. This is despite the rest of the world turning on light from switches INSIDE the bathroom and not dying.
Don’t even think of plugging in a hairdryer or a curling iron in the bathroom, either, in UK countries – too close to the water. This makes for interesting times every morning trying to find an outlet for the curling iron and hair dryer in a location that I have some hope of looking in a mirror. I’m pretty sure that GFI outlets would work in the UK bathrooms!
Then there’s the lighting … some have bright lights … some not so bright. It’s always a toss up to see if makeup can be put on in the bathroom.
Oh, sink handles. You’d think there is universal agreement on HOT and COLD – Hot on the left, Cold on the right. Most of the time yes, but not always. Two sink handles in one sink should turn on and off the same direction, right? They both turn water on clockwise and turn water off in the counter clockwise direction. Not so much! I gave up counting all the various combinations of how sink handles turn.
These 2 faucets turned opposite directions for on and off..
Water pressure in showers?? Most of the time, the water pressure has been OK. Then we reached India and at least 2 showers had such low water pressure I wasn’t sure I could get the shampoo out of my hair. Seriously, the camp showers in Africa had better pressure and it was just gravity fed.
The tiles are old Victorian tiles. This is the shower that sort of dribbled our of the faucet.
Where do you, logically, place a toilet paper dispenser? Close to the toilet, right? Someone needs to reach the toilet paper when sitting on the toilet, right? We’ve had TP holders to the rear about even with the tank. My arms need to be longer to reach those! Others have been placed down low or up high, relative to the toilet. A few were in the front of the toilet requiring the user to stand up to reach the TP. The current one in Bangkok is hung upside down so the roll of toilet paper slides off.
Rolls of toilet paper in India are not exactly large even if the paper is thin. I used a pen to show the relative thickness of a new roll of TP.
So far, every hotel/apartment has supplied a hair dryer which is good! Of course, two of them didn’t work – one in Germany and one in India. The India one was replaced right away; the German one wasn’t replaced before we left so I had wet hair at the airport! Some dryers have very little power, one blew the air so hard it knotted my hair up, and others were just right!
Screen in screen technology at the Bangkok airport. In the upper right corner, you can see luggage moving along.
We flew Bangkok Airlines to and from Koh Samui and we checked bags both ways – don’t ask! At the Bangkok end, we waited quite a while (about 20 minutes) for our luggage to show up (and this was after a potty stop). The airport entertains passengers with ads on a big screen above the carousel. At some point, we noticed a little screen was added to the big screen. Then we figured out we were seeing suitcases moving through the luggage system at the airport. THEN, we saw our 2 suitcases fly by on the screen. This gave us some hope that the luggage was on the way or at least was in the bowels of the airport someplace.
This is pretty cool technology. Think DIA (DEN) would ever install a few cameras in strategic locations in the luggage areas? At least it relieves the boredom of just standing and waiting.
Sawadee! We’re back in Bangkok after 10 days on Koh Samui hanging out at the beach. The weather was pretty warm and humid and rained more than it should have. The Thais even complained about the heat! The food was great tasting and cheap. Dinner was a whole $10 total when we did take-away and bought beer at the Family Mart.
Romantic Bamboo was up the street from our hotel. It’s owned by an Italian guy and his Thai wife. She does all the cooking. He is perfect for a restaurant – personable, friendly, talkative, describes the food well, makes great suggestions. We ate there three nights.
Speaking of beer … Thailand has regulations on what time any alcohol can be sold and we never could remember the times! The Family Mart and 7-11 all post the times on the refrigerated cases, thank heavens. I know beer can’t be sold until 11 AM and, I think, it’s until 2 PM. Then sales can start again sometime in the late afternoon.
We used some SPG points and stayed at two different properties – Sheraton and Le Meridien. We liked them both but liked different things about each property. The beach at the Meridien is covered with white soft sand and a reef protects it, making the water nice and calm. The Sheraton’s water has many more waves, making it a great place if you’re into playing in the waves, but the sand is much coarser with lots of tiny shells in it.
This beach is by the Sheraton Samui. The waves were pretty big while we stayed there.
Soft sand by the Le Meridien hotel on Koh Samui. This beach was easy to walk on in our bare feet.
Sunset on a Koh Samui beach. Must be Happy Hour time!
Each hotel is located in the middle of a little village with restaurants and LAUNDRIES meaning we had clean clothes for about $1.25 per kilo of laundry. We’d waited awhile to do the wash so our bill was about $5. We dropped the dirty clothes off in the morning and could pick it up the next day, clean and folded. One day, the drying took a bit longer after the downpour we had in the middle of the night. The lightning and thunder woke us both up about 5 AM and kept us awake for about an hour.
We took the wine glass from the air-conditioned room to the patio and it steamed up, along with my watch and the camera lens!
Notice the “Feels like” temp
84% humidity at 82 F. This is VERY humid!
If you need a drink or food at the pool, just push the buzzer on the table by your beach chair.
This is the “Do not Disturb”
sign at the Le Meridien hotel in Koh Samui. It really is NOT a monkey picking his nose.
We walked by this tree every morning. I have no idea what the fungi are that grow on the tree, but they’re pretty interesting.
Shrimp Chips and Green curry chips in the same bag
We don’t know what this is but the chips were really good!
Hot chili squid chips
Susan loves to hunt for different flavors of potato chips when she visits different countries. (This all started in Bhutan.) These are ones we found in various grocery stores in Thailand.
Then there are the signs on public transport. Obviously, spending too much time looking at cell phones is a problem all over the world. These signs are posted on the SkyTrain metro system in Bangkok. And, yes, cell phones are everywhere!
The Scotland trains aren’t the only ones who think we should talk to each other!
And look up! Mark reached the point he doesn’t move for someone walking and looking down. He just lets them run into him.
We’ve been traveling for almost 5 months and haven’t had Mexican food the whole time. Mark found this place, Sunrise Tacos, that gets good reviews and it’s right near our hotel. Why not? The food turned out to be pretty good Mexican. They even had spicy sauce for Mark’s burrito. You say … but Thais know how to do spicy! That’s true but we’ve discovered they are somewhat reluctant to serve it to westerners. We don’t know if they think that all Europeans and Brits and US people don’t like spicy, but Mark has to convince most people that he actually likes HOT food! Even Susan can eat medium spicy in restaurants for tourists.
This was our first Mexican food in 5 months. We ate at Sunrise Mexican in Terminal 21 in Bangkok. The margs were pretty good and the glasses even better!
Mark enjoyed the margarita, too. We sat by a couple we think were from Russia and they liked the food, too.
We couldn’t take the lovely wine glasses out of the Executive Club Room so they gave us to-go cups for our wine to take to our room. Too funny!
To go cups for wine to our room in Bangkok. The wine was almost done, anyway.
We both have a bunch of United points saved up and we’ve been using them for many of the flights on this RTW trip on Star Alliance members. We decided a long time ago to do one splurge flight with points. Thai Airways first class from Europe to Bangkok was the route we chose for our splurge. After our month in the UK, we headed off to Asia and routed ourselves from London to Munich (overnight) and then onto Bangkok. We flew Lufthansa Business class from Heathrow to Munich. This flight is nothing special since Lufthansa doesn’t even have Business class seats on these short flights. They simply block out the middle seat and call that Business Class.
The flight wasn’t crowded, though, and the flight attendant was really nice. She wanted to know all about our year of travel. We landed on time in Munich and then waited for 40 minutes for luggage since the airport, in their infinite wisdom, posted one carousel for the luggage and then delivered it on another one! Susan finally went to ask Customer Service. Her reply “The luggage is in on Carousel 8”. We were all standing at 14!
After a night at the Novotel by the Munich airport, the next day was the fun flight on Thai Airways on an older 747 so no pods but super service. Only 6 people were flying 1st class and it seemed as if we each had own flight attendant.
Dom Perignon champagne was offered as soon as we got on the plane and we readily accepted!
Yes, this is what we drank!
No one else was drinking champagne. The flight attendant just put the bottle in the ice bucket and left it between our seats for us to help ourselves.
Everyone gets a pair of Thai Airways pajamas to wear during the flight and they are yours to keep. I changed into the top while I tried to sleep just because the top was so comfie. Not much sleep, though, because the flight leaves at 1 PM – not an ideal time for sleep. No pics of the pj’s.
Dinner starts with caviar, followed by whatever your special request was. We made the reservation so long ago – February, 2017 – and couldn’t remember what we’d ordered. Somehow the Thai reservation system let Mark order TWO entrees – steak and lobster – and the check-in people were quite confused. They had a special note for Mark to talk to the flight manager to clarify the mix-up.
Lobster for dinner with more champagne
Caviar was the first course in dinner.
We landed on time in Bangkok to a downpour. The plane was rocked by wind as we landed and we could hear thunder and see lightning while we taxied to the gate. At the gate, the crew was sort of prepared for the rain, grabbing towels and blankets before they opened the door. They, obviously, knew that the jetway door does not match up exactly with the 747 door and, sure enough, the rain was pouring in the space between the plane and the jetrway. They tried to use umbrellas to shield the passengers as we left the plane to not much avail!. My shirt sleeve got soaked!
Thai Airways has little electric carts meet these flights to transport the first class passengers to immigration. Sure enough, we saw the signs with our names on them. They took us to immigration and then had additional guys on the other side of immigration to go with us to get our luggage and transport it for us to whatever transport we used from the airport. Due to the rain, lightning, and thunder, the luggage was delayed but the helper guys hung out with us until it showed up. We took the Rail Link into the city and told the helper we didn’t need him when our suitcases finally came off!
The downpour and lightning caused a ground delay and we had to wait a bit for our luggage to show up.
Summary … the use of points was totally worth it to use an Asian airlines and fly first class! I’d never pay for the flight but use points? Sure! The U.S. airlines could take a few lessons in Customer Service.
We learned a valuable lesson from a couple we met at the hotel yesterday while having drinks. The couple is from Illinois – one U. of Illinois grad and one U. of Michigan grad. You can’t avoid the Big 10 people no matter where you are in the world.
They went sea kayaking and took along a bag with wallet, money, credit card, passport and 4 beers in cans. As they kayaked, they drank the beers and returned the empty cans to the bag to be safely and responsibly disposed of at the hotel. As they got back to the beach with the kayak, they realized the bag had fallen out of the kayak so off they went to retrace their rowing steps.
Right as they got up to a dock up the beach, what did they see? Amazingly, his bag was floating happily in the water. They give all the credit to the empty beer cans for keeping the bag afloat! The contents were a bit wet, but everything was still in the bag.
See, beer and kayaks go well together!
One of the beaches on Koh Samui. This one had rough waves over the weekend.
Our friend Tim has a position at Oxford University in the Said Business School and he graciously agreed to let us leave our winter clothes at his apartment. Now we have to plan a trip for next summer to come retrieve the clothes we’ve left all over Europe!
This Oxford Dining Hall as used in the Harry Potter movie. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you can take some tours of the various locations.
Oxford Divinity School – one of the oldest part of the university
We’re in the Divinity School here. A hospital scene and a ballroom scene from Harry Potter were filmed here.
We spent the weekend in Oxford and Tim showed us around the University. He can take guests into many places that usually cost (Oxford has figured out they can generate income by charging people to see the various colleges and chapels.) so we visited the Library with books from the 1600’s. The library smells like old books.
We just spent about 3 weeks in London, Cambridge, Fort Augustus, Oxford, and Inverness with most of the time in Fort Augustus. It just happens to sit at the southern end of Loch Ness and we were on the search for Nessie every time we went out walking. Finally, on a cold sunny day we decided to take the Loch Ness cruise and who did we see??
Maybe this is Nessie hiding under the water!
Nessie, herself! Isn’t she cute?? She was just floating next to the boat checking us all out.
A visit to the Highlands isn’t complete without a wee dram of whisky. Another sunny day took us driving south the Fort William for a tour of Ben Nevis Distillery.
We shared 4 wee tastings. I like the whiskies that taste more like caramel than the smoky ones.
The distillery sits beneath Ben Nevis Mountain, the highest mountain in the UK.
These distillery buildings were overlooked by Ben Nevis.
We were cold but the temps never didn’t fall below freezing during the day. That would make us way warmer than our east coast friends. And the Gulfstream keeps snow away from the lower altitudes, most of the time. We had a bit of snow a few nights.
Happy New Year! We bundled up for champagne and fireworks at midnight!
The grounds were barely covered one morning with snow – wet snow at that!
Snowing at night
Sunrise with snow. This was about 8:30 AM. Morning came late this far north and night came early – about 3:4- PM
Have you ever thought about which way to turn the sink handle to turn on the water? Probably not! We just use muscle memory and turn them on. Not so much in the U.K.! We’ve run into sink handles everywhere – toilets, kitchen sinks, bathroom sinks – naturally. Some of the handles turn clockwise, some turn counter clockwise. Some of the sinks even have the hot water handle turning one way and the cold water handle turning the opposite direction.
I’ve splashed myself a few times when turning the handle the wrong way! It’s a mystery to me.
At least these 2 handles for HOT and COLD turn ON and OFF in the same directions.
These two handles turn in opposite directions.
Just in case you aren’t sure there’s hot water, you get a warning!
A warning sign but no fixtures. This one was in a Men’s room Mark used.
We woke up this morning to discover blue sky in Scotland! After 13 days in the U.K., can you tell we get really excited about blue sky?? We had no other plans and have a rental car for Mark to drive on the left, so we hopped in the car and drove 33 miles to Fort William to check out the scenery. We saw some pheasants along the road and lots of closed B&B’s and hotels.
Loch Ness in the sun!
Fort Augustus village and the canal the runs through the middle. We want to see the locks in operation but there’s not much boat traffic in December!
A view of the Highlands mountains with a bit of snow. Notice how green the grass is. We’re betting it never turns brown.
With a population of about 11,000, Fort William is the 2nd largest city in the Highlands. The drive was beautiful and few of the mountains have snow on the top.
Boxing Day (December 26) is a holiday in the UK – no postal service or banks open. Not many shops were open either and some of the pubs and coffee shops were actually closed when we wandered down High Street. Thank heavens Tesco was open since we need some toilet paper and cheese and crackers. The little store in Fort Augustus didn’t have toilet paper this morning!
BBC had an article about people not shopping at the Boxing Day Sales today. Since not many stores are open, what do they expect?? Clearly, after-Christmas sales are not a big deal here, at least on the 26th. Maybe tomorrow!
How do you split a pizza in half – along the Equator or down the International Dateline? We were in Cambridge, England, visiting Darcy (Mark’s cousin) and her husband, Kelly.
Darcy and Mark at a pub in Cambridge
They took us to a lovely musical program at the Round Church in Cambridge after which we had a beer at the Student Union (Discount with the music program secret code), followed by pizza and beer at a local pub.
We found this sign in the Student Union.
Kelly and Darcy shared a pizza and couldn’t agree on which half of the pizza belonged to whom. Kelly says pizzas are split across the middle. Each person takes the half closest to that person – north or south of the equator. Darcy insisted pizzas are split from top to bottom. Each person takes the left or right side of the pizza. After a long debate with all four of us involved, no settlement was reached but the pizza somehow disappeared.
How do you split a pizza? Of course, if the pizza has different ingredients on the two sides, this isn’t an issue!
This is the First Court at Christ’s College at Cambridge University in Cambridge. During breaks, they rent out student rooms to visitors. It was not expensive and is right in the middle of Cambridge. The room was pretty good considering that the building was built around 1640. We had breakfast in the Upper Room which is the cafeteria for the college’s students. It’s wood paneled and had pictures of famous grads, such as Darwin and John Milton.
“Ugly sweaters” seem very popular in England. We saw them all over the place – hotels, stores, bars, Starbucks, Tesco. Our lunch restaurant had ugly sweater napkins just in case you didn’t have your own sweater.
We flew Condor from the Seychelles to Frankfurt because that’s the only direct flight to Germany and we really didn’t want to connect through either Istanbul or Dubai. The flights all leave Mahe late at night (10 PM or later), making the connections at 0 Dark 30.
After flying for 10 hours, the Condor flight landed on time and our body had a small weather shock. It was about 85 F when we left the Seychelles and it was 32 F when we landed in Germany. What was Mark wearing?? You guessed it – shorts! One flight attendant looked at him and said, “I hope you have pants packed someplace.” He did!
Our luggage with all our summer and safari clothes actually showed up and we managed to have some coffee before we met the Lufthansa shuttle to Heidelberg. The room was ready when we showed up at 10 AM and our suitcases with winter clothes (We’d left them in Heidelberg with friends.) were waiting for us! By the time we sorted out dirty clothes and found warm clothes, the snow started. The Christmas markets are pretty magical when everything is white, even if it was wet snow. When we wandered back to the markets in the evening for some more gluhwein (Susan’s favorite!), the snow stopped and was all melted!
Snowy Heidelberg shopping street
Snow at the Christmas Market in Heidelberg
Mark has melted snow flakes on his face from all the wet snow. Yes, we were having a dunkel beer to warm up! And he’s wearing the U. of Iowa scarf to stay warm.
It’s always nice to see familiar faces and this time we enjoyed meals with 2 different sets of German friends. The first night (after we managed to get our clothes washed!) we met Joachim at Heidelberger Kulturbrauerei for beer and dinner. The sauerbraten was really good, and the side dishes were enough for all to share. Their November beer was good even if we drank it in December!
Christmas wreath at Kulturei Brauerei
The second night after a day of shopping for supplies, we met Bettina, Michelle, and Hermann for gluhwein at the Christmas market and dinner at the Zum Güldenen Schaf. It was a fun night with the gang who’s being so kind to store our suitcases and clothes so we don’t have to take them all with us everywhere!
This Christmas pyramid was on the main square in Heidelberg. There were at least 5 different market locations in the city, including one with an ice rink.
We were all trying some Gluhwein. It’s pretty hard to hold the cup with mittens on.
Let’s start with the first question we get from friends and the Moms – “Where are the Seychelles?” It’s an island country (115 islands) off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean with a population of about 95,000. It’s east of Tanzania and lies about 4 degrees south of the equator.
We flew from Johannesburg, South Africa and spent 2 nights in Victoria, Mahe, including Thanksgiving. Marie Antoinette is a highly-regarded Creole restaurant that just happened to be next to our little hotel, Hilltop Boutique Hotel, so that’s where we ate Thanksgiving dinner. The people were friendly and the food was yummy!
Some of the Creole food we had for Thanksgiving dinner long with South African white wine.
Next stop was the island of Praslin, reached by a 1-hour ferry ride. We hung out there for 9 days at the Old School Self-catering – translation: apartment. The apartment is in Baie Ste. Anne village so we checked out the various shops and markets. Our favorite market was ISPC because it actually refrigerates its white wine and has A/C for the red wine. Many of the other stores were HOT and we didn’t want to think what the heat did to the wine on the shelves! Wine is very expensive in restaurants but wasn’t badly priced in the stores.
The apartment was lovely and clean and above a bakery. We bought many an item from them, including some roasted chickens, quiches, meat pies, desserts for dinner. Peter and Shirley were lovely to visit with and get information about Praslin. Yes, they know most of the population of the island!
We watched NFL football on our Slingbox on our cell phone!
Praslin Beach view from my beach chair
Peanut butter made in Dubai.
Curieuse Island is home to Marine National Park, home to Aldabra Giant Tortoises, and made a great day trip from Praslin. After we visited with tortoises who wander freely, moving more quickly than I ever imagined, we hiked 2 km. across the island to Anse St. Joseph for a BBQ and to meet our boat again.
We’re pretty sure there was some hanky panky going on with these 2 tortoises!
Two kilometers (about 1.7 miles), you say. How hard can that be?? One version of the “walk” was it would take about 20 minutes. Another version was “it’s a short walk”. What everyone failed to mention was the mangroves to walk through (easy and flat on boardwalks); the trails filled with tree roots and big rocks; and the up and down over the rocks and roots (not so easy). Did I mention the heat and humidity?? We each had 1 large bottle of water with us, thank heavens! By the time we reached the other side, all I wanted to do was jump in the clear Indian Ocean to cool off – and we did! Oh, it took us 45 minutes to walk this.
I need a geology lesson to explain all the rocks on all the beaches.
We made a snorkeling stop after the visit to the turtles and the hike.
Enjoying the sun at the snorkeling site
We had a small world moment in the middle of the mangroves. Mark wore his Fort Collins University of Iowa shirt and we heard “Fort Collins? Are you from Fort Collins?” It was a guy who grew up in Wray, Colorado; graduated in Fish and Wildlife from CSU and is now a pilot for Austrian Airlines and lives in Vienna.
Another day, we took the ferry to La Digue Island (population 2000) to see some of their beaches. We spent the day at L’Union Estate on the beach Anse Source D’Argent, the most photographed island in the Seychelles. The water is incredibly clear and warm with fishes swimming all around. This beach has no waves – just water to float around in.
Anse Source D’argent, La Digue Beach
Crystal clear water at La Digue, Anse Source d’argent
Everyone put the towels under a tree because the sun was so intense and so hot!
After 9 days on Praslin, we took the ferry back to Mahe on what can best be described as a rough crossing. The ferry rocked and rolled for the entire hour. Then we spent 6 days at Le Meridien at Fishermens’ Cove on Beau Vallon/Bel Ombre. Great hotel, super location, nice people. We’d met a Finnish couple on our Curieuse Island Expedition and they ended up staying 2 hotels from us so we enjoyed a few dinners with them.
Fan palm, I think! This tree was outside of our room at Le Meridien.
This big guy showed up every day at the beach on Mahe. I tried to see him catch a fish but no luck!
The postman on La Digue uses a Fat Boy bike to deliver mail.
Americans don’t make it to the Seychelles too often since it requires about 20 hours of actual flying to get there. Most people guessed we are British and that means we don’t like spicy food. We were warned all the time “This food is spicy”. Then we’d have to explain we’re American and we like spicy food. Of course, none of the food even came close to being as spicy as some we eat at home! Even Susan didn’t think it was spicy.
After 17 days, we headed back to Frankfurt, Germany on Condor Airlines, the only direct flight to Germany, even though the flight was 10 hours long! As we exited the plane in Frankfurt to 32F temps, the flight attendant told Mark “I hope you have some warm clothes packed”. Yes, he was wearing shorts!
After the safari and gorilla adventures, we decided to spend a few days in Cape Town since Star Alliance flights in that part of the world either go through Johannesburg or Nairobi and we opted for Jo’burg. After spending the night at the Johannesburg airport hotel, we caught a flight to Cape Town. Nice small airport, the luggage showed up and our taxi driver gave us a running commentary on the way to the Westin Cape Town (used Starwood points). He pointed out the hospital where 50 years ago Christian Barnard performed the 1st heart transplant.
We’d booked 2 day-tours ahead of time with I&F County Tours since we didn’t really want to rent a car and navigate our way to what we thought we wanted to see. On Sunday we had an all-day tour along the coast to Maidon’s Cove and Chapman’s Peak Drive. We saw the Dimension Data Professional cycling team out riding. We learned they had a training camp in Cape Town when we ran into a Dimension Data guy at the hotel waiting for an elevator. Geraint Thomas, a Team Sky rider, was riding, too, but we’d seen him the day before at the airport. His big Team Sky bike bag was a dead giveaway!
Beaches south of Cape Town
The Cape of Good Hope is behind us. We skipped a trip to the Cape of Good Hope when we saw the line to pay for the park. Since the Cape is not really the southernmost point in Africa, we opted to take a picture from afar.
The highlight of the day was a stop at Boulder’s Beach to see the African penguin colony.
These penguins were molting, a once a year activity.
No selfie sticks allowed!
The coastline is spectacular with wide sandy beaches and sharks! Shark spotters are employed to look for the sharks before they become a problem.
Shark spotter south of Cape Town
Our second day trip was a city tour along with a visit to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his prison sentence. Fanny was a great tour guide and showed us Cape of Good Hope Castle and the daily ceremony of the keys. No cannon shot today because the only person who can shoot off the cannon didn’t show up for work!
Ceremony of the Keys at the Castle of Good Hope in the middle of Cape Town. It was built in 1666.
She took us to the Malay area on Cape Town with brightly colored houses and then to the District 6 Museum in a small church that tells the history of one piece of apartheid. The museum was well done and brings home in a personal way how awful apartheid was. Fanny, who is considered colored, was willing to answer questions about living through apartheid and what it was like for her family. She had to get a pass to enter the white part of town to visit white friends and police walked up and down in front of the house to make sure she left, for example.
The day was windy but we didn’t give it a thought until we got to the departure point for the Robben Island trip and discovered all the boats were cancelled due to weather. No Robben Island for us!
What else did we do on Cape Town? Stocked up on all the items we’d run out of – deodorant, toothpaste, contact lens cleaner. We had a fine time shopping and eating at the Victoria & Albert Waterfront.
In the midst of the search for all the items we needed, I found some new Lay’s flavors. The onion and vinegar ones were the best.
Sushi at the Harbour House restaurant overlooking the water. The square ones are called sushi sandwiches and we saw them on all the sushi menus around town.
Really good South African Sauvignon Blanc. The plastic gift bag was filled with ice to make an ice bucket.
Safari Tale #7 Dancing Hyena – On Day 2 we had an optional walking tour in the Serengeti in the morning with the guides and a park ranger. We chose to do the walk along with Lee, Aileen, and Russ. The tour was very interesting because the camp guide and ranger pointed different things like scat (translation: poop). Hyena scat is white because they will literally eat anything, bones, glass, metal, etc.
This guy was out for his own walk and posed for some pictures.
The wildebeest migration was on from north to south and millions were on the move.
During the walk, we saw packs of zebras just hanging out.
As we were walking, Mark asked the guide, “Can we see a Hyena den?”. Mark thought the guide replied, “I will show you the Hyena dance”. Mark said to Lee, “Are they really doing a dance later?” Lee said “No, he said we will see a Hyena DEN, not DANCE.” That became a source of amusement every time we saw hyenas and most likely it becomes a t-shirt when we get back. In all fairness to Mark, some of accents were a bit hard to understand.
This hyena, known as the scavenger since they eat anything and everything.
This den was created by aardvarks, used by warthogs, and then became a hyena home as it is abandoned sequentially and taken over by the next animal.
Safari Tale #8 Favorite sayings of our guides – Willie was the oldest guide on the trip and had been doing this job for 37 years. When we would be stopped next to lions or cheetahs, Willie would say to Mohdy (a young guide), “When I was your age, I would run out there and grab one of cubs and bring it back to the vehicle”. Or “When I was your age, I would run out there and grab one of the lion’s tails and run back before I got caught. Go ahead and try it”. One time Mohdy replied, “You should go try it now because you have lived a long time. I still have many years to live.”
Momma cheetah and her cub just looking at us. No one was getting near her. She’s the fastest land animal, no matter how calm she looks here.
Safari Tale #5 Take Down – Mark and Susan normally rode with JoJo, Ann, Lee, and Aileen in the safari vehicle. Mark kept saying that he wanted to see a “Take Down” (e.g. a lioness kill a Wildebeest or an Impala). Mark knew it is pretty rare to see a kill, but he was still hoping for one. Our guide, Willie, said people hope for a kill, but often when they do see a kill they start crying. The joke for several days whenever we saw a lioness was, “I want to see a take down”.
On Day 5 in the Central Serengeti, low and behold, we saw one lioness stalking a herd of wildebeest. Then two more lionesses got involved in the hunt. Suddenly, the first lioness takes off and everyone thinks she started too early, but the other two lionesses cut off the wildebeests’ escape route and the hunt was on. We saw two kills in the same hunt. Willie, the head guide, said one kill was rare; you almost never see two kills in the same hunt. No one cried when the kills happened, but JoJo and Ann were hoping the wildebeests would all escape the lions. “Take Down” was our motto after the kill.
This was definitely the highlight of the entire safari!
Lioness #1 was carefully and slowly stalking the wildebeest.
The lioness was poised to start the attack.
This lioness is chasing one of the wildebeests. You can see the herd in the background.
This wildebeest was getting out of the way.
This is the lioness who missed the wildebeest she chased.
This lioness was successful on her take down. She’s standing next to the dead wildebeest in the grass.
After the kills, the lionesses headed back to their cubs to bring them to the kill. We followed around to watch. The lionesses and cubs didn’t appear at all phased by the vehicles watching them.
This is out of focus but you can see how close the lionesses were to the vehicles.
Mom found all the cubs and they started down the road. These cubs belonged to all three of the lionesses but only one lioness went to retrieve them.
They all calmly walked down the road with Mom taking a swat every once in a while to keep the cubs in line.
Lions on parade.
Lion cubs are just too cute!
They all hung out under a tree or in a field for a bit before the lionesses sent the cubs off to the kill.
This little guy needed to scratch the tree.
The cubs were clearly not hungry since they played with the dead wildebeest, rolling over it and climbing on it.
Mom finally tried to show them what to do with the kill.
We used Thomson Safaris to book our safari and they took good care of us. Gabriela in Boston answered all my million questions before we booked and then handed us off to Nicole and Annifreed. Both of them managed to make sure we got all of our published materials about two months earlier than normal since we left the country in August.
We had 10 people on the 12-day safari and used to safari vehicles (Land Rovers Defenders) every day – 4 people in one and 6 in the other. Willy was our head guide with Harrison and Mohdy as the two drivers and assistant guides and spotters.
We spent about 8 hours a day in this vehicle. There was a lovely blue stool for some of us to use to reach up the steps!
The groups consisted of:
We all landed at Kilimanjaro (JRO) airport either on KLM (everyone else) or Turkish Air (us because we used United Star Alliance miles for free Business Class tickets). Our flight landed at 1:30 AM and the driver for the KIA Lodge was waiting after we exited Immigration and got our luggage. Staying there, saved us a 45 minute drive at 2 AM.
JRO Airport at 1 AM. We walked across the runway to the terminal.
If the clouds weren’t in the way, we could see Kili from here. The locals told us Kili is very shy and doesn’t make an appearance often.
Our first view of Tanzania from KIA lodge. The scenery looked like all the pictures we’ve seen of Africa.
After a short night, the next morning we transferred to Rivertrees Country Inn, as planned. We came in a few days early due to free ticket availability and Susan’s fear of cancelled flights.
Three types of monkeys live at River Trees Inn. These two were grooming each other.
Our room had mosquito netting around the bed. We were lucky that we saw very few mosquitoes!
This was our cottage at River Trees Inn.
Here’s our Safari tale #1. Two people in our group had luggage that was missing in action! Jerry got his in a few days. Aileen’s suitcase had a lovely trip – Chicago to Amsterdam to Tel Aviv to Dusseldorf with some of this on an Air France flight somewhere along the line. How do we know this? Air France put an apology card in her suitcase and a Dusseldorf luggage tag was attached when the suitcase FINALLY showed up 6 days late.
Everyone pitched in and loaned/gave combs, malaria meds, allergy meds, shampoo, cameras, chargers, etc. Mark used his Google Pixel for pictures so he loaned his Canon camera to Aileen. He’d left the camera battery charger in Germany, though. Amazingly, Annie had a charger for the Canon battery!
The safari began with a drive from Rivertrees Country Inn to Arusha airport (about 1 hour) where we boarded a small plane and flew to Waiusa airstrip in the eastern Serengeti.
Where did we stay?
Most of the time we stayed in permanent tented camps, complete with real beds, camp toilets and camp showers. We could have hot showers so no one complained. All lighting was solar. However, there were no outlets in the rooms. We charged items either in the main tent or in one of the vehicles while we drove around. We just had to pray for sunny days, so the bar tent had solar power for charging! It was only a problem one day.
One of the tents we had. We were always either tent 4 or tent 5 so those are the only 2 numbers I know in Swahili!
Yes, it’s a real bed! The pillows were hard. At the camps that were “cold”, hot water bottles were provided at night. Mark and Susan only used the bags one night in Ngorongoro Crater Rim camp. The rest of the nights it was plenty warm.
Where did we eat?
Meals in the camps were served in a dining tent next to the bar tent! Safari tale #2 – One morning, Russ was in the dining tent for breakfast and saw a snake on the ground. He lifted the edge of the tent, kicked the snake out, and told the camp manager who called the ranger (Every camp has one assigned to it.). The ranger used a long stick to move the snake to a better location and THEN told Russ it was a highly poisonous black mambo that he’d kicked. Russ promised never to kick another snake!
All meals were done as a group with formal service. The food was good especially the variety of soups we had.
Dining and bar tent where the charging of phones, batteries, Kindles, toothbrushes was done!
Safari Tale #3 Showers – Camp showers consist of a cloth bag filled by two guys with a combination of hot and cold water at the time you specified. They worked pretty well and when one person in the tent was finished, the guys would come back, and we’d hear a voice say “Ready for another shower?” They’d fill up the cloth bucket again and we’d hear the same voice say, “Shower is ready”. These were the talking showers!
You can see the water bag outside the mesh window. It worked pretty well!
Shower set up. The solar power was for the little lights in each tent. The green rope controls the pulley system for lifting the bag.
We each had our own sink but you had to fill it with water from a pitcher. In the morning, we all got a big pitcher of hot water to mix with the cold water from the other pitchers. This was only for washing. Teeth brushing and drinking water came from bottled water.
We spent three nights at Gibb’s Farm and it was heaven – soft beds, proper showers and toilets, great food, and a cat who came to visit. We had both an indoor and outdoor shower.
This was a shared living room. We had Happy Hour here, inviting some of the other safari people. The lodge asked every night if we wanted the fireplace lit.
The bathroom complete with African carving artwork.
A lively game of croquet was played except no one really remembered the rules!
Every bed had mosquito netting. Again, we saw few, if any, mosquitoes here.
We had the left side of this cottage. Annie and Jo had the right side. Our cottage was the furthest away from the main building and involved a nice little walk at about 7000 feet.
This was our outdoor shower.
Mark modeled the slippers from our rooms for us during Happy Hour. They’re made out of old tires.
We thought we should give a report on flying RwandAir from Kigali to Johannesburg. No pictures on this one – just a story!
The security to even get ON the airport property is more than most Americans have ever seen. Security #1 – Every car has to go through security before they’re allowed near the terminal building. We all had to get out of the car, put our bags on a platform for the German Shepherd to sniff while we all went through a metal detector. Of course, Susan’s bra set off the detector, and that required her to be wanded.
After that, Robert, our gorilla tour guide, could drive to the terminal lot and park and we could take our bags to near the entrance of the terminal building. Only passengers with tickets are allowed in the airport terminal. Check-in starts 3 hours before the flight and you are not allowed in the terminal until that time. An electronic sign told us when the check-in would open and guards would let us in. A local guy who got there at the same time we did told us to get up closer to the entrance because the hoards will come from the café when the 3 hour time is near.
After the terminal guides saw that we have tickets for the proper flight, the first stop INSIDE the terminal was to show our tickets to the RwandAir personnel who let us go to security check #2, another x-ray or metal detector of both us and all of our bags, carry-on and check-in. We always had to take out our computer but shoes were OK to stay on. Mark usually had to remove his belt. The security guy asked Mark if he had a knife in his checked bag? Mark said yes and the guard said to make sure it was in my checked bag. We passed and we proceeded to the check-in counter.
At the check-in counter they told us we couldn’t have any electronic items in our checked bags. (I hoped our electric toothbrush didn’t count. I forgot it was in the suitcase until we were on the plane.).
After we received our boarding pass, we could go to Immigration and have our passports stamped that we left the country. The Kigali waiting area has 2 shops, 1 set of clean bathrooms, and 1 small snack bar. I recommend the Croque Monsieur (grilled ham and cheese) at the snack bar if you’re hungry. Mark got a chicken sandwich and was not sure it had any chicken in it. He’s still not sure what was in the sandwich but he didn’t get sick.
To get to the actual gates (labelled 4, 5, 6, and 7 but all are really one gate), we went through security #3 and they were pretty thorough in looking at the contents of suitcases. We’re so Americanized, we had no problems – nothing looks suspicious in our backpacks!
We were finally in the boarding area and we waited and chatted with 2 South Africans. Flight was late by about 40 minutes and then came boarding!
No announcements are made … some gate agent just walked in front of the seated people and said, we think, “It’s time to board”. Everyone rushed to the open door, exchanged their ticket for a plastic “Boarding Pass”, walked across the runway to walk to steps UP to the airplane, where we boarded in no special order!
Eventually, somehow, everyone got on the plane and managed to find some places for their carry-ons.
After that, the flight was uneventful but everyone (except the well-trained Americans) took off their seatbelts and stood up the minute the wheels touched down in Johannesburg at 2:45 AM. This airport has a real jetway but it wouldn’t connect to the plane requiring us to wait on the plane for about 10 minutes while that problem was solved!
We wondered before we left Fort Collins how long would it take for one of our cards to be compromised, either through a data breach from our issuer or from someone “skimming” our card. As it turns out, it took less than 3 months. It appears that our card was “skimmed” in Cape Town South Africa.
What is skimming you ask? Here’s the definition from Investopedia: An electronic method of capturing a victim’s personal information used by identity thieves. The skimmer is a small device that scans a credit card and stores the information contained in the magnetic strip. Skimming can take place during a legitimate transaction at a business. A skimmer can be placed on an ATM, gas pumps, or a waiter or waitress can have a device on their person.
We figured out that we were compromised at the Johannesburg Airport when we had our debit card declined when we tried to buy lunch snack food at a convenience store for the equivalent of $10 and it was declined. We had used the card in Cape Town for the past 3 or 4 days without issue. We were on our way to the Seychelles so we had to wait to call our bank until we got to Victoria, Seychelles.
When we arrived at the hotel in Victoria, Seychelles, around 10 P.M. local time, Mark had a voice mail and it was time to call our bank – First National Bank. We called using Skype (There’s another story about using Google Voice, and not really being Google Voice.) and Mark spoke with a nice lady who wanted to know if we were traveling in South Africa. Mark, sounding a bit annoyed, said “Yes, I told First National in August all the countries we were visiting during our 9 months”.
The lady said, “OK. So the charge for $2,500 for cellular network is legit?” That would be a “NO”.
She asked if the 2 charges at the home improvement store for $1,200 & $300 were legit. That was another “NO” and then Mark thanked First National for declining the charges.
The nice lady brought on a personal banker, Wade, who asked some of the same questions. We asked if First National knew if the card was skimmed and, if so, where? Wade said they weren’t sure if it was skimmed, but the card had been marked as fraud.
Next up was how to get a replacement card to us. After some talking with 1NB, checking with First National management, and talking to our favorite person at the next chain hotel we would be staying at in the Seychelles, Le Meridien, First National gave the go-ahead to send us a new card via FedEx. We are keeping our fingers crossed it will work.
We want to give a big shout out to First National Bank for detecting the fraud and for working with us to get us a new card in the Seychelles!
Here are a few more pictures from our gorilla treks to give you a better idea of what went on.
He obviously knows he’s a pretty adorable little gorilla!
Very young gorilla
Big Silverback (may be redundant!) gorilla. He’s the oldest one in the park.
Mom hanging on to her baby.
Our porters on the rainy, wet, muddy day! This was at the end when we were, obviously, drenched! You really can’t tell how muddy our shoes were although the picture below helps.
Time to switch from gorillas to smaller primates – Golden Monkeys! The routine was the same – 5 AM wakeup, 6 AM departure to get to the National Park. Snow was on top of one of the volcanoes this morning. This is the low season before everyone starts visiting during Christmas holidays and very few people were at Volcanoes National Park today – only 2 gorilla trekking groups and 2 monkey groups.
The park doesn’t set any limit to the number of people who can visit the moneys and our group consisted of 10 people. Fernando was the trekking guide we had for the gorilla trek the day before.
The starting point was in the middle of a small village. Only Mark and Susan hired porters (Jack and Theo) to start with – one each. Shortly after we started walking, the Iowa lady decided she wanted one after she found out the porters carried our backpacks with water as well as helped Susan walk up the really steep parts (only 1 spot) and across bridges or rock “steps” ( A few piles of rocks to maneuver.)
These are a few of the porters who helped on the monkey trek.
Pointing the way to our monkey group – into the bamboo forest
We walked through farm fields again and they were a bit drier than the wet ones yesterday! We saw a few chameleons and a rock hydrax along the way before we entered a bamboo forest and continued uphill. The walk was only about 20 minutes after we reached the bamboo forest before we saw Golden Monkeys! We followed them as they moved along through the forest – climbing, peeling and eating bamboo, moms with babies.
The Iowa people didn’t tuck their pants into their sox nor did they wear gaiters and they managed to get ants crawling up their legs and inside their pants! I was really glad I had long socks AND gaiters on!
No exciting stories for this trek. The monkeys are adorable, naturally, and move incredibly fast as they jump from tree to tree or scurry along the ground on the hunt for bamboo. The speed makes them tricky to photograph.
Just hanging out watching the people and monkeys
This one was eating some plant he found delicious. Their fingers are very agile and allow them to peel bamboo and get to the yummy part in the middle.
The baby was nursing with Mom. It was hard to take pics with all the shadows of the trees .
What did I do?
Fernando was our trekking guide for Gorilla Trek #2 and for the monkey trek. The guides rotate which treks they do so no one has to do all hard treks.
You can see the baby monkey if you look in the grass carefully.
He’s carefully balancing on the limb – and is a bit fuzzy!
Mom and her baby walking on a thin bamboo limb.
We tried to get a picture of the monkey jumping from one tree to another. You can see what the bamboo forest looks like.
Time to wake up at 5 AM, breakfast at 5:30, meet Robert at 6 AM and head off to Volcanoes National Park Headquarters. Even if we weren’t going trekking, it was good to see all the activity in the towns in the morning. Adults and children were out and about walking to work or school, taking potatoes, bananas, eggs etc. to market.
Taking potatoes to market. These guys buy potatoes from farmers and use their bicycles to move them up to 25 km. to market.
After yesterday, we were very glad we’d booked two treks to have another opportunity to see gorillas. This time we were assigned the Sabinyo group with Big Ben, the bald gorilla; and Guhonda, the oldest Silverback gorilla in the park. and our trekking guide was Fernando with Placide to help. Fernando made Susan into Queen Susan and Susan and Jane from Australia led the way. No one could go faster than we did. At least people were kind enough to tell us that we were going just fast enough – ie. SLOWLY!
This group was much better than yesterday’s group:
Susan and Mark each hired two porters again and Josse (female) and Andreus were the best for Susan. I think the drivers should do a better job of explaining what the porters can do and the importance of the employment to the economy. I can testify that their assistance in walking in mud and crossing rocks and little wooden bridges is immeasurable!
Today’s walk was much easier than yesterday’s hike, at least on the way up to see the gorillas. We found them after a nice walk through a relatively good trail and only a bit of trekking through cleared brush. Susan must have looked pitiful again because the ranger and trackers helped her through the brush after we left the porters.
Our first encounter with a gorilla was to see Big Ben sitting in the middle of the trail as Susan came around a corner. He was easily identifiable as he is noticeably bald on top! He moved a bit off the trail and we all watched him for 5 minutes or so.
Big Ben with his bald head. He was standing in the middle of the trail when I came around a corner
Next encounter was in a clearing with the Silverback wanting to move down the trail. When a silverback wants to move, you move! We all cleared the trail but the silverback charged the group as he moved. Another male (teenager) stopped to play with bamboo tree and threw it, hitting the Australian in the knee. Then he rolled down the hill in sommersalts!
This silverback gorilla, leader of the family, was every bit as big as he looks here.
He walked on the path right in front of Mark.
We saw a mom holding on to her baby tightly.
This mom and her baby were standing close toe Mark.
We followed the gorillas for a bit and found some playful little ones.
This young one was playing with a stick.
This little fellow was enamored with Mark and tried to get closer to his shoes.
How could one get any cuter??
Then the rain started, and we learned that gorillas don’t like rain. They all try to find some place to hide and several ended up under a tree’s rout system. The gorillas sat and stared at us! By this time our hour with the Sabinyo family was up and we moved on to trek back to the start.
Remember, it rained, right? The rain stopped but now the trail was mud and more mud! Thank heavens for the porters who helped Susan through the mud and held me up when I had to slide down a little hill and helped me up the steps of mud!
Mark and I thought the hike was easier than yesterday other than the mud but the MA couple said this was harder than their previous trek. The MA couple only walked 6 minutes the day before because our silverback had chased their silverback and his family out of the park.
After the trek Robert stopped at the gift shop for us to get our certificates, use the toilet and buy t-shirts of the family we saw!
Poor Elie at Virunga Lodge when we got back! He took one look at our hiking boots and knew we’d had a messy hike. He laughed and asked if we wanted a picture of our boots before he cleaned them!
If you ever get a chance to visit Rwanda and the Gorillas do it. Rwanda is a beautiful country and the people are very proud of how clean and safe the country is after the 1994 genocide. We can attest to both as we never saw a piece of trash and we will talk about security at the airport in another post. BTW, people are hired in Rwanda to plant flowers, pull weeds, and pick up trash. This isn’t their full-time job; it’s a part time job. The last Saturday in every month is national clean-up day and even the president participates.