Email: Greetings from Fort William, Scotland
Lauren and I are now in Fort William, on the western side of Scotland and a major gateway to the highlands. We spent three days here enjoying the scenery while dodging rain storms.
Lauren and I are now in Fort William, on the western side of Scotland and a major gateway to the highlands. We spent three days here enjoying the scenery while dodging rain storms.
On June 10th Sandy and Lauren are going to Scotland for 10 days. Our itinerary calls for stops in four cities, where we plan to mix historic sights with the natural beauty of the area.
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.
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.
In August 2005 we spent three weeks exploring Peru, visiting the Amazon Basin, hiking in Colca Canyon and gazing on the lost city of Machu Picchu.
The last portion of the trip to Death Valley was spent in some of the most remote parts of the national park. We visited The Racetrack, exploring the rocks that move across the dry lake bed. After a beautiful drive through Hidden Valley, we spent the night on Hunter Mountain.
Traveling across the USA by train is an unique way to see and experience the variety and scale of the country. We broke up the journey, stretching it into a 17 day trip in August / September 2004, by stopping at Glacier National Park for five days and visiting Chicago before reaching New York City.