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(Dana) It feels like Christmas morning. I have wanted to trek to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda for years. It’s finally here. Will we find them? Will our interaction meet expectations? Will it have been worth the effort to find some of the last 800 of these animals on earth? The process that leads to […]

(Dana) Walking for hours through the African bush with the hopes of coming across an elephant, giraffe or buffalo is something man has been doing for thousands of years. In Ruaha National Park in central Tanzania, we are privileged to walk in those same footsteps. Ruaha is approximately the size of New Jersey and receives […]

(Andrew) With over 44,000 crocodiles, Padenga Crocodile Farm on Lake Kariba is one of the largest of its kind. At the age of 3, its reptilian inhabitants are slaughtered for their precious skin, which is sold in today’s markets. We arrived off of our houseboat and were greeted by a pool of disinfectant to dip […]

(Greg) We hadn’t yet been told that, just a few weeks earlier, a Zimbabwean fellow had been killed by a lion exactly where we were walking, but I didn’t need that happy yarn to keep me on my toes. This was our first walking safari and I felt a certain responsibility to my own four […]

(Emma) Since it contains hippos, crocodiles and the occasional elephant, it is perfectly natural to be afraid of going anywhere near the Zambezi River. So, one might say it is insane to go canoeing on the river, but that didn’t stop us. Alex, Andrew and Reis were all too afraid of death, so they passed […]

(Alex) Wild Dogs were a bit of a fantasy to the six of us, similar to fairies, unicorns, and the occasional aardvark. We knew that they existed, of course, but in all seven weeks of safari on our big trip, there was no evidence of any dogs. African Painted Dogs, or more commonly known as […]

(Dana) Admittedly, we all have a natural fascination with spotting predators – lions, leopards, wild dogs.  But elephants are the animals the 6 of us have grown to love during our time in Africa. We relish the times when they have come near to observe them up-close. Most Americans have seen an elephant in a […]

(Fausto) Ethiopia? Why do you want to go there? People are starving and dying! This is the general impression of the general public about this very populated country in the Horn of Africa. And yet, when you start researching deeper, a different story will unfold. Ethiopia has some of the most fertile volcanic and alluvial […]

(Dana) In many cultures, there is a rite of passage – an event that marks the transition into adulthood.  At home, some teens become a bar/bat mitzvah; others are confirmed.  In the Hamar tribe in Southern Ethiopia, girls of marrying age (14/15) are circumcised.  Boys of ~18-21 prove their maturity through bull jumping. When a […]

(Reis) Riding in our 4×4 vehicles on the crazy, bumpy roads of Ethiopia had no shortage of wild and well… bumpy experiences. Important to understanding our long pilgrimages to and from villages is that most of the roads in this country are made of dirt, a substance quite susceptible to the elements. The displacement of […]