Rach and Si

Hi Rachel here, interrupting our African adventure stories (being sent months late - sorry) to say a quick hello for Christmas. Christmas is only a few days away, which is very exciting. We got into the Christmas spirit with a visit to Munich on the first weekend of December, where we visited our dear friend Vicki. We had a day skiing and looked around the beautiful Christmas markets. Of course I started playing carols in November and am very much enjoying the nights closing in, the Christmas decorations in the shops, the carol singers and just the buzz of Christmas in Winter here. We will be spending Christmas and New Year with our families and are looking forward to it. I am also very excited about starting a new job as a Year 5 Teacher at ... read more

OK sorry for another massive delay of getting this updated but determined to finally get at least the Africa portion of our adventures finished. If you can't remember where we were up to then you'll have to go back to the previous Blog, but we had arrived at Lake Malawi for a couple of days rest after the trip down from Tanzania. We had two stops in Malawi centred around the wonderful Lake Malawi which is one of the worlds largest fresh water lakes and is just like a tropical paradise. First up we were in Chitimba Beach for a couple of nights staying in nice little lake front cottages - very relaxing and with great views over the lake. Second stop was the small lakeside village of Nkata Bay a few hours drive south taking ... read more

Well as you may have guessed we have been fairly busy finding a house and jobs here in the UK, we have settled in Maidenhead in Berkshire, which is just outside London in the West. Maidenhead is an average sized town with 'Royal Windsor' 5 miles down the road and many pretty little villages in between. We are on a 'fast link' into Paddington (20 minutes during peak time), which is great for my work (I am based near Oxford Street), and great for Rachel and shopping!! Anyway, finally we are doing a bit of a catch up on our blog entries, one reason it has taken so long is because between us and my family there were about 3,000 photos to go through!! So we will do a few entries to cover our trip and ... read more

OK, I know we have been really slack and left the blog hanging half way through the trip - Sorry - no excuses. After we left the Gorilla's in Rwanda we headed back to Kosoro in Uganda for the night before the start of the return trip to Nairobi with a few stops along the way - at hopefully, a more leasurly pace!!! We had already covered a massive distance in the first 7 days and had an amazing experience with the Gorilla's on day 8. Day 9 - Left Kosoro at 5.30am (finally getting used to the early starts) and travel to Queen Elizabeth National Park (about 9 hours later). We enjoyed a late afternoon cruise on the Kasinga Channel in the park which apparently has one of the worlds largest concentrations of Hippos along ... read more

As we mentioned in the last entry after leaving St Jude's we were booked onto an overland trip from Nairobi to the Gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda (depending on permit availability), travelling quite differently in an overland truck with six other people for 14 days. We left the school early on the Friday morning with Dan (my trusty Accounting buddy - who was also leaving the school on the same day as us) and we headed to Nairobi in his car. We spent the night at his friend's place and then checked into our tour departure hotel the night before heading off (early on the Sunday morning). Kristina lives in a perfect setting right on the edge of the Nairobi National Park. A pretty nice place - whilst having breakfast in the morning we saw ... read more