Hole In The Donut Travels

During my travels, some places capture my heart more than others. Zimbabwe was one of those places. I met so many wonderful people who were gracious and smiling despite suffering unbearable economic woes and political suppression. Finally, I am happy to report that my friends in Zimbabwe, who keep me apprised of current events, tell [...]

A few days ago I received an email from my friend, Victor Sibanda, who lives in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. There is so much bad news coming out of Zimbabwe these days that it surprised me to learn Victor has started his own tour hosting business. I was encouraged by his news; it indicates there [...]

Ask anyone if they think Christmas has become too commercial and they will most likely answer with an unequivocal “YES!” Stores bring out the Christmas decorations earlier every year. Kids’ wish lists get longer and pricier. Parents go deeper into debt each year. Christmas morning dawns to frenzied ripping of gift wrapping, with the contents [...]

During my week-long safari and subsequent three-day Maasai home stay I had three showers – suffice it to say that I was definitely ripe by the time I got back to a town. While I would have loved to stay with my Maasai friends for a few more days (and indeed they invited me [...]

I have been back from my Maasai home stay for two days now and I am still struggling to write about it. I could variously describe the experience as appalling, fascinating, stimulating, exhausting, rewarding, frustrating, mind-expanding, enraging, or gratifying, and each one of those adjectives would be appropriate. But, let me start at [...]

The Ngorongoro Crater is a caldera – a volcano cone that has collapsed inward, creating a 15-mile wide hole in the earth surrounded by a high rim on all sides. Over the eons, sediments accumulated on the crater floor and a shallow lake formed in the center of the caldera, providing an environment where [...]

The Serengeti, one of the harshest environments on Earth, is all about survival. The fact that you are reading this is proof that I survived two nights camping in the Serengeti without being eaten by a lion. On the first day my guides had warned me not to leave the tent at night, [...]

For the past three days I have been on safari in Tanzania, Africa, and both my mind and my soul are overflowing. My guide, Joseph, has retired to his tent for the night, exhausted from driving eight hours over bone-jarring, roughly graded gravel roads. My cook, Hamisi, has left me alone to write as [...]

I’ve arrived in Tanzania after 17 hours of travel and I head out into the bush early tomorrow morning for a nine day safari, followed by a four day stay with a Masai family in a tribal village, so I won’t be blogging for at least a week.
However, I did just post about the day [...]

I’d been told that there was an incredible diversity and volume of wildlife in the country of Botswana, so on my last full day in Zimbabwe I elected to do a day safari in Chobe National Park, which is located in Botswana, just an hour’s drive from Victoria Falls. In this part of Africa, [...]