What's Life after work like? Pretty great. Enlightening. And lightening (I felt 50 pounds lighter after my last day). We celebrated the day with a helicopter flight over Niagara Falls. It was a cool experience to enjoy a bird's-eye view of one of the Natural Wonders of the world.
After that the plan was to spend the summer relaxing locally with friends, family, swimming and playing around town.
However, an interesting opportunity came up when my nephew said he wanted to travel before starting college in September.
So I said "let's travel!"
The world was our oyster, we could choose to go anywhere. We looked into Peru (Machu Picchu!), Madagascar, but looking for maximum adventure we chose...
U guessed it!
Uganda!
We're going on a series of safaris where we'll (hopefully) find elephants, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, lions that live in trees, and whitewater-raft the source of the Nile past crocs and hippos (the hippos are more dangerous than the crocodiles!).
But the "trip of a lifetime highlights" include trekking in to meet some chimpanzees face-to-face and hiking through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to track a group of mountain gorillas, the largest primate on the planet!
(skip to 1:10):
Our tour would normally cross the border into Rwanda, but the land border is currently closed due to Covid :(
What do you do if you're in the jungle and are suddenly charged by a silverback gorilla?:
And after our safaris? We thought it prudent to relax on some white sand beaches, snorkel amongst the coral with playful dolphins, spend a night on a private island with coconut crabs and a guided moonlight snorkel session off the beach in... Zanzibar!
We're going from planning to takeoff all in 2 weeks! It's been a flurry of visas, vaccinations and vacation planning...
Stay tuned for African updates!