Sarah and Pat

We crossed the border this past weekend to Uganda and rafted the Nile River from where it is released from Lake Victoria. It was a day long trip of white water rafting complete with four class 5 rapids, one class 6 rapid (unraftable), crocodiles, backpackers, and everyone getting dumped from the raft. The Nile has some of the best rafting in the world not just because of the extreme drop in elevation after it leaves Lake Victoria, but also because there is so much water, that there is minimal risks of getting mashed against a rock when you do fall out, which is inevitable. This coming weekend is our last in Africa, and I don't expect that we will do anything too interesting. We may post one more blog entry, but for further updates on our ... read more

Our apologies for not getting a post up sooner. We spent the last week on the island of Zanzibar and then safari'ing through the Maasai Mara. In this post I've included pictures from our island vacation. We rented a bungalow on a pristine sandy beach for about $35 US dollars a night, and spent our days snorkeling, getting sun burned, and being lazy.... read more

Greetings! We've been busy traveling and having diarrhea. Here are some photos from a couple of sites we've seen. The first is from Hell's Gate near Lake Naivasha. It's a national park where you can chase down Thompson Gazelle and Zebra on a Huffy mountain bike from the 1980's. Lake Naivasha is nearby, famous for the flocks of tens of thousands of flamingos you may have seen on the Discovery Channel. The other set of pictures are from Island Camp at Lake Baringo where a quarky old British guy in a man-skirt named Perry gives you a tent and lets you hang out at his pool. Perry would qualify the term tent, however, its a 'luxury tent' complete with a bathroom and bed...fantastic for sitting in the hot sun and baking while your intestines try to ... read more

We spent the weekend at Fern Gully working with Zach, Robin Williams, and Tone Loc to help the fairies save the rainforest. Actually we spent our weekend at the last remaining rainforest in Eastern Africa called Kakamega which we referred to all weekend as Megakaka. At any rate, its a very small national park, only 230 square km, which is a legitimate rainforest. We stayed at a compound run by missionaries which had the feel of a well manicured ghost town. All the same it was a great trip, with excellent food, over 300 species of birds, 7 species of primates, butterflies, and too many bats.... read more

We are leaving Indy today headed first for London, and then on to Kenya. We are well prepared and have three checked luggages, all kinds of expensive yuppie hiking gear, a mandatory bag of trail mix (apparently a required item to take along for all Barretts leaving the country) and our very own sherpa (visible just to the left of us in the photo).... read more