Traveling Jules

My time in New Zealand is sadly over, but having heard so many great things about the Coromandel Pennisula, I made sure to fit in a visit before I left the country. With only 4 days remaining I took a ferry from Auckland to Coromandel Town and organized a day to hike the Cormandel Walkway, which is at the tip of the pennisula and goes from Fletcher Bay to Stony Bay. I wish I could post all of my photos here, it was absolutely beautiful. I was fortunate to have nice weather and a lovely English couple to walk with. Along the walk we stopped at a little bay for lunch and decided to search for some shells. I found a beautiful cat's eye shell and then became obsessed with finding more just like it. I'm ... read more

After traveling around for almost 3 1/2 months, it has been really nice to stay in one place for more than a week. As I mentioned in my last entry, I arrived in New Zealand on New Year's Eve and had a chance to chill on my own before heading south to travel with my friend Paul. We had a great time exploring the north end of the South Island. We visited lots of wineries and tasted some great wines in the Marlborough region. Outside of Nelson we went on an awesome hike along the Abel Tasman Track. It was a 20km (about 12.5 mile) hike that we planned to do in 6 hours. We started at a pretty leisurely pace (taking lots of pictures, relaxing for lunch, etc.) which put us a bit behind schedule, ... read more

It's been over two months since I left Moshi, so I thought some of you might like an update on the progress at the Newlands Orphanage. Given that it's a new year, I thought this would be a good time to once again thank all of you who donated, or offered to donate in support of the work I (and many others) did at the orphanage last year. I was pleasantly surprised to receive donations from perfect strangers in addition to my friends and business associates. The power of the internet continues to surprise me! Thanks to the generosity of many donors, not just my friends but the generosity of the other volunteers friends and families as well, the children were able to receive new dorms, new mattresses, new beds for the boys rooms, a new ... read more

Well, as you probably guessed by now...I did make it out of Dar es Salaam. In fact, as soon as I posted my last entry I booked a flight to Cape Town and was at the airport within a few hours. I can not begin to tell you how excited I was when I got to the Johannesburg airport on my way to Cape Town and it was clear I was back in a developed country. For one, my Blackberry worked again and they have a huge airport that has something other than curio shops in it. I got into Cape Town around 10:00 at night and had booked a room at the Cape Town Backpackers at the last minute so that I'd have somewhere to go when I arrived. I was fortunate enough to be ... read more

Jambo! ("hello" in swahili) I am quite behind on updating this blog and have so much to say, but will limit this entry to my last week in Moshi. I'm currently in Arusha and flying to Zanzibar later this afternoon after returning from a 4-day safari yesterday. I can't wait to share my safari photos with you, but will have to wait till I get to a place where I can upload my photos. I mentioned in my last entry that I was going on a hike on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. With 20 people on a bus (all from our hostel), we headed to the Materuni village and hiked up to the Kuringe waterfall. It was a great day for hiking and the waterfall was beautiful...and cold! The tour company provided a cook to ... read more