Our morning began with a boat ride on the Hozu River in Arashiyama, heading toward a small Buddhist temple perched on the hillside above the water. We had actually seen it from a distance a couple of days earlier, and now we were going to visit. The boat was propelled by a man standing at […]
overseas adventure travel
Japan, Full Day 6: Tea Leaves, Grasshoppers, and Getting Into Hot Water
Goodbye, Tokyo — But First, a Little Shrine After several wonderfully busy days in Tokyo, it was time to leave the city behind and head toward Hakone. But before saying goodbye to Asakusa, I wanted to share one little discovery tucked beside our hotel, The B Asakusa. There, squeezed between modern buildings, was a tiny […]
Day 25: Cheetah Conservation Foundation: Wine, Genetics, and Two Very Relaxed Boys
All photos of entire CCF portion can be found HERE Lynn and I are now at the Cheetah Conservation Foundation (CCF), and as I started to type this, we were sitting on the veranda of Babson House, looking out over two cheetah brothers lounging in the afternoon sun while we sip wine from…appropriately…cheetah glasses. Travel […]
Day 23-24: Leaving the Namib: Bush Dinner, Apple Pie, and the Road to Windhoek
We had an easy day and a late morning. Many people stayed back at the lodge to pack, but a few of us went with Abraham over to a small settlement just inside the park gates. Once there, Abraham encouraged us to talk with the guard and ask him about his life. When asked if […]
Day 22: Sossusvlei: Big Daddy, Belly Bumps, and a Marble at Dune 40
The dunes of Sossusvlei are the kind of place that almost doesn’t look real. Photographs help, but when you actually arrive the scale of it all is hard to comprehend. These dunes sit inside Namib-Naukluft National Park, which covers roughly 49,000 square kilometers—one of the largest national parks in Africa and among the largest protected […]
Day 21: The Longest “African Massage” — Swakopmund to Sossusvlei
Today we drove from Swakopmund to Sossusvlei, a journey of roughly six hours across the Namib Desert. Or as Abraham described it: “Today you will experience an African massage.” He was referring to the road. The road — if we are being generous with that term — is mostly corrugated gravel, which means the vehicle […]
Day 20: Skeleton Coast — 210,000 Seals, Sorghum Lunch, and the Long Road Back
Today we drove north along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, a stretch of shoreline famous for fog, shipwrecks, and one of the most overwhelming wildlife spectacles on earth. The drive itself is long and starkly beautiful — the Atlantic on one side, the desert on the other, and almost nothing in between. Our destination was Cape Cross, […]
Day 19: Namibia — Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, and the Dunes of Sandwich Harbour
We said goodbye to Cape Town and flew north to Namibia, landing in Walvis Bay — a place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Namib Desert in a way that feels almost improbable. From the air, the landscape looked like someone had taken a giant paintbrush and swept endless shades of tan and rust across […]
Day 17: Table Mountain, Penguins, Poaching, and the Complicated Beauty of the Cape
We began the day at Table Mountain, because when in Cape Town, you go up the mountain. The cable car (technically a rotating gondola) carried us upward into blue sky… and then later, back down into pure whiteness as the fog rolled in like a curtain being drawn. At the top, the landscape felt almost […]
Days 14–16: Wine, Words, Freedom, & the Long Road to Cape Town
The last you saw your fearless traveler, we were being told “Good luck” by the Kruger gate while pinned between elephants. Since then: vineyards, revolutionaries, perfume chemistry, language monuments, prison guards, penguins-to-be, and one very long stretch of early wake-ups. Let’s work backward. Day 16 (Today): Gardens, District Six, and Christo Brand Up at 6. […]