Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Christmas, Happy New Year and all those holidays we have missed. We are getting more and more lax about writing in the blog. Mostly due to the internet issues here - it becomes so frustrating it is easy to pop open a beverage and sit on the balcony rather than fight the Cambodian snail pace upload/download. But anyway, we have been continuing the adventures, the most recent was Christmas and New Year's in Tanzania.



This is the view from our bungalow on Zanzibar where we spent Christmas. It was a wonderful place, full of windy narrow alleys in Stone Town and gorgeous beaches like this around the island. The one downside was there was no power to the island. A main transformer had blown and the replacment part blew as soon as it was installed. The bungalows and some hotels had generators for a/c at night but the diesel was running short and the locals couldn't get fresh water as the pumps are all electric. Makes you appreciate the little things.

























Then it was on to the mainland and safari! We saw the big 5 but also had a wonderful time with the little guys like these - warthogs at play! We had a wonderful guide/driver who is Massai and a great "tracker". We saw things that many other groups did not see. The highlight of which was a cheetah jumping up on our land rover and then coming up to the open top and peering in at us inside.
Click on the video link at the bottom of this post - I finally got video to upload!






As good as our guide was..... he got us well and truly stuck in the Serengheti. We tried to dig out, along came another land rover and he got stuck trying to pull us out and finally a 3rd one come and freed the other guy and dropped us off at camp. (6 hours) It was pretty cool to be stuck in the middle of the migration - the animals left us alone but were out there just beyond view.






We will leave you with a few more images from Tanzania - a place we would highly recommend as a safari/holiday destination. We are happy to give more details and recommendations for those of you planning a trip.

We did splurge and go "high end" (Marilu's dream Hemmingway safari) and it was definitely you get what you pay for experience. Well worth it!

We are still in job search mode - haven't secured a place for next year yet. We will let you know so you can plan your visit early... there are still a few months left to see Cambodia with the Burdens. Any takers?



Till next time, Marilu and Simon