Aha, I got you! You thought I had finally solved the mystery of all those missing ships and aircraft, didn’t you? Well you’re wrong! I’m talking about unlocking the delights of a different triangle, that formed by the three main towns of Bermuda. For the geometrically-inclined, these form an inverted isosceles triangle, with a wide base and short height (or depth?), with the capital Hamilton on the apex and St George to the east and the Royal Naval Dockyard to the west on the base. Mind you, Bermuda has a lot more to offer than just these three towns. There were six of us on this trip spanning three generations - Joan and myself, Damon and Sarah, and the grandkiddies Elliott and Layla. We had rented a really well located Airbnb for the week at Paget, ... read more

I thought nothing in Ethiopia would surprise me any more but this morning managed to do just that on two occasions. We were advised that our next tribe visit to see the Dassanech village near Omerate, just over the Omo River, was a similar distance from Turmi to that of the Karo tribe the previous day, a journey which had taken around 2 hours along a windy, dirt road with its share of potholes, so we assumed much the same for this trip. To our total surprise, by the time we were just a few kilometres out of Turmi, we suddenly hit an almost straight, level bitumen road, marked on both sides and the centre, and with virtually not a single blemish the whole 80 kilometres to the village. Thus a potential two hour trip was ... read more

Our first tour of the day was a brief 90 minute ‘cruise’ in a local fast boat on the nearby Lake Chamo to check out the local wildlife. That wildlife comprised half a dozen fresh water crocodiles (that we have often seen in Oz) and a few heads of hippos sticking out of the water (a poor relation of our sightings in Kenya), so I guess overall I would have to say it was pretty underwhelming, but this was all included in our travel package. Our second tribe visit was to the Konso village to learn about a tribe best known for its unique social life structure. It is built heavily on communities of which we were advised ... read more

A visit to the island of Zanzibar has always high been on my bucket list, having heard many times of the great sandy beaches along with atmosphere of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Stone Town, and this desire was only further increased after my visit to Oman a couple of years ago when I learnt of the historical trading relationship between these two countries. Given its colourful history, you can see evidence at times of each of African, Indian, Arab and European cultures, within each of the architecture, the cuisine and the people. While I declined to take one of the offered spice plantation tours, having experienced a similar tour previously in Granada, there was plenty of evidence of the presence of their products in the various markets, thus giving rise to Zanzibar being known ... read more

As promised, I said I would write a separate blog summarising most of the wildlife we saw between the 5 safari parks we visited. I'll list the animals in roughly the order of the numbers of them we estimate we saw in total: Zebra: These were regular sightings at all parks, and often in their hundreds, if not thousands. Wildebeest: With the Great Migration having already started, there were plenty of these around, mostly in packs but periodically a solo beast was found wandering by itself. Gazelle: Two types appear - Grant's and Thomson's. They cropped up frequently, usually in groups of a couple of dozen or so. Elephant: These were seen at most parks, but by far the biggest player was Amboseli, where we would see groups of up to 50 wandering around. An amazing ... read more