Email: Greetings from El Valle, Panama
When last we wrote we were in Panama City making do with the extreme weather and the havoc it was reaping on our plans.
When last we wrote we were in Panama City making do with the extreme weather and the havoc it was reaping on our plans.
Iguazu Falls, which is located on the Parana River between Brazil and Argentina, is one of the great waterfalls of the world. Legend has it that when Eleanor Roosevelt first saw it, she said, “Poor Niagara!”
Since we last wrote, we left the hacienda north of Quito on Wednesday and made our way to Cotopaxi National Park about 50 miles south of Quito. We hired a driver to take us between the two destinations, which included a stop at the equator itself, about 15 miles north of Quito.
As I write this, Sandy and I are making our return trip upstream on the Rio Napo (Napo River) from the Sacha Lodge back to Coca, Ecuador – a distance of approximately 50 miles. We stayed at Sacha for the last four days.
We have been in Entebbe, Uganda for the past two days to acclimate to Africa and explore the area around Lake Victoria prior to beginning our National Park / Gorilla safari on Saturday.
Sandy and I are currently at Ishasha Bush Camp in Queen Elizabeth National Park, just a few minutes from Uganda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The camp is perched on the Ntungwe River which is fast moving and deep brown in color.
There is no electrical grid in Buhoma – the name of the settlement that includes the buildings both inside and outside of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. It took 180km (111 miles) of poor dirt roads to get here and the nearest paved road is 85km (53 miles) away. Our purpose for coming to Buhoma was to see the mountain gorillas in the wild.
We are now flying over the Atlantic in the midst of a 30+ hour odyssey home, which is comprised of four flights: first to Nairobi, then Brussels and Chicago, before the final leg to LAX.
We spent the first day of our 4×4 off-road trip through Death Valley National Park in the south side of the park. After visiting Saratoga Springs, we joined the main road to see Artists Palette, Badwater from Dante’s Peak and Zabriskie Point.
We have been at sea for three days now. We are now approximately halfway between New York and Southampton, at about 600 miles south of Greenland.