Dear All First of all, a very Merry Christmas to one and all! Hope all who are reading this, if it happens to be on Christmas Day, are having a happy and holy holiday season – if not, hope you had a good one! I must admit, contrary to what the title of this blog says, I’m not actually writing this one from New York, but nearby – in a small town called Washington Crossing, just over the border from New Jersey into Pennsylvania state, about an hour by train from the Big Apple. Here is where my “tocaya” lives- tocayo/a is a Spanish word you use to refer to someone with the same name as you, and here lives a distant cousin of mine amazingly called “Alex Waring”, and staying with her here for a ... read more

Dear All Here we are again – after another great term at school, the holidays have arrived, and I’m just about to set off on another journey to distant lands. This time I’ve decided to go somewhere a bit less out of the ordinary, with no need for exotic disease vaccinations or malarial preventatives – the USA and Canada! Yes, this time tomorrow I’ll be on a Continental Airlines flight going West, to the Big Country, and most excited about it I am too! Having been to the States twice before, but only to New York City and around, I really just can’t get enough of the country – the people, and the big big places. Compared to England and London, America is just big man! And I’m looking forward very much to being a part ... read more

Dear All Greetings from Zambia – country number 66, and counting...! Right now in the capital Lusaka, the final destination for my Southern African trip 2011, though not quite finished travelling yet. As usual, the last few days of my trip have just been amazing, and it really just seems to keep getting better – I may even go so far as to say that Thursday was just my best day yet! Last I wrote I was on the Zimbabwean side of the Victoria Falls, having been suitably impressed, and drenched, by the largest cataract in the world, at least in terms of length. The Vic Falls runs for nearly 2km, and dramatically drops into a vertiginous chasm, and runs off through a 100m deep gorge for several kilometers further. On Wednesday I packed my bags ... read more

Dear All Greetings from Bulawayo, second city of Zimbabwe and situated in the West of the country. As has been the case on all my trip so far, I’m having a whale of a time and have seen some amazing places – it just keeps getting better! Before I continue though, I just have to say how shocked, and disgusted, I am at the news back in the UK, and I do hope everyone is ok – hoping that at last the British government and society may come to realize that this “gang culture” is just out of control and something drastic really needs to be done about it – military schools and harsher youth sentences to teach some respect and basic decency come quickly to mind. But anyway, this is not a general blog but ... read more

Dear All Greetings from Mozambique! Wow – what an exotic place to be in, and although just nextdoor to Malawi, a completely different country with a completely different feel to it (starting with the fact that people speak Portuguese here...!) I must admit this different feel was a major shock when I first arrived, and my initial sentiment was one of missing Malawi actually and a desire to go back, which was a bit of a surprise. But fortunately I stuck through the feelings and am having an amazing time right now – different, but amazing! I am currently writing this from a super lodge located on the shores of the Lake Cahora Bassa, the 5th largest reservoir in the world, in the remote, far north-west of the country. Mozambique is primarily a coastal country, with ... read more