Guten Tag, Dobry Den, and Greetings. So I’m overdue with updating the blog but it’s been a whirlwind trip thus far with little to no access to modern conveniences like internet access. It seems like the resorts of Kenya are a world away right now. I finally made it to Prague after a lot of trains, planes and boat rides including one taxi where I got the surreal opportunity to jam out to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” with a middle aged guy who didn’t speak English. But more on that in a little bit.

In my last installment, I had just arrived in Sri Lanka. After landing, I found out that the Sri Lankans make the Kenya drivers seem like old women out on a Sunday drive. They are absolutely insane. Lane lines are more for looks than for guidance. And the motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic make the X-games seem like a bunch of sissies. I’m convinced that each day the Sri Lanka families that drive motorcycles play rock, paper, scissors to determine who gets to wear the helmet for the day. I think this picture explains a lot:

So after a nice stay in a plush hotel, we took a prop plane to an air force base and then a short boat ride later, we ended up at the Navy base. We were put up in a small house that came with a couple of Sri Lankan navy attendants that served us our food and generally took care of us. This doesn’t mean we were living it up like kings though. It was very hot (in the upper 90’s) and we had no air conditioning anywhere. And sleeping under a mosquito net is not as thrilling as some of you may think. I think I sweat off 10 lbs though during those 2 weeks. The training went very well though and the students were a joy to work with. It took a little while to get used to their head shaking though. They kind of do this weird shake of the head as you talk which means yes. It actually looks like they are saying no. In our introduction brief to the Commodore of the base, I thought him and his staff were upset with us the way they were shaking their heads. The food there was very good as well but tended to be very spicy. If we weren’t sweating from the heat outside, the food had equally as hot. Here are a few pics of the wildlife and training:

So once the training was done, I flew back to Colombo and stayed the night before actually starting my vacation. I caught a plane to Doha, Qatar again and it was equally as nice being in business class. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to fly in the back with the common people anymore! Although getting off the plane in Doha, I realized that Sri Lanka was actually kind of cool. It was something like 115 degrees there, but they say it isn’t bad because there is no humidity. Yeah right…Anyways, I changed planes and caught a flight to Munich. I was supposed to be in business class again, but they didn’t have enough people there so they upgraded us all to first class. Talk about nice…I had one of those seats that recline all the way back into a bed. I tried to sleep because I knew it was going to be a long trip, but I must’ve been too excited because sleep eluded me. After the 11 hour flight, I caught a train to the Munich main train station. There I boarded an 8 hour overnight train to Berlin. I was finally able to get a little sleep before arriving at about 7:30 the next morning. After a couple more trains, I grabbed a cab and got to the hotel. It would’ve been nice to take a shower, but my room wasn’t ready so I dropped off my bags and decided to do an English speaking walking tour. I am completely fascinated with Berlin now. The history there is so amazing. To think only 20 years ago, the city was divided by a wall and was mostly communist ruled. I saw a lot of historical sites including the location of the bunker where Hitler had committed suicide (which by the way is a parking lot for an apartment building). I also got to see Checkpoint Charlie which was the final checkpoint for allied citizens to get into West Berlin. Before I left Berlin, I got my passport stamped with the 16 stamps required to get through all the checkpoints. After finally getting back to the hotel, I took a quick nap and then went on a pub crawl with the same tour company. It was a great time. You haven’t lived until you’ve had Jaegermeister poured down your throat straight from the bottle under an overpass in East Berlin, rocked out to Elvis in an old communist drinking hole, or done the Irish Jig in the streets of Berlin at 1 in the morning with drunk Scots. The group consisted of mostly Aussies who I found out are certified professional drinkers. I managed to keep myself from getting too drunk though. The next morning I got up and went out to a few museums and saw some more of the historical buildings. And then that afternoon I just kind of got lost in the streets of Berlin. It’s such a beautiful city with a sort of mystique to it. It’s definitely someplace I would return to. And then this morning, I got up and got my ticket to Prague. By the way, the food in Berlin was also very good. Of course I had to have a few brats. Surprisingly though, there are an awful lot of Chinese restaurants in Berlin. I had no idea. Here are some pictures from my trip to Berlin:

Since it was only a 5 hour train ride to Prague, I decided not to take the overnight train because it had an 8 hour stop in Dresden and I didn’t feel like sleeping in a train station. So I took an afternoon train and got a hotel room for an extra night in Prague. I decided to do that instead of staying Berlin because the Czech Republic is supposed to be much cheaper than Germany. So that’s how I ended up in a taxi with a driver who only speaks Czech (to be honest, I’m not positive what the language is called here) blaring “Barbie” girl and other European neo-classic techno. I’m excited about seeing Prague though. You will have to wait until the next installment for that report.

This Saturday, I will be returning to Germany to meet my parents for my last week of my trip. I do need to send the warmest of congratulations to Matt and Liz Fine. Liz gave birth to my Godson, Nathan, last Thursday. Yes, they asked me to be the “Godfather” of their latest addition. He is absolutely adorable as you can see…

Well I hope everyone is doing just fine. As much as I’m enjoying my trip, I’m starting to get a little homesick. It will be very nice to be back in my own bed and getting back into a routine. Hopefully I’ll have a job when I return though. There are some rumors going around that my company is closing the Charleston office. I’m not sure what is going to happen though. There’s a chance that my next assignment is going to be a few months down in Key West working on another project, but I’ll let you know when I get back.

Thanks and all the best to everyone. As they say in Germany....Prost!

Feeding the Soul of a Sailor

Hello everyone! I know it's been over 2 weeks since my last post but our internet connection in Mombasa, Kenya was horrendous. Most times I could only read email and not send anything out. I guess when the shower water occasionally looks like day-old coffee, you can't expect the internet to work all the time either! Right?

So I hope everyone is doing well. My course in Mombasa has now completed and I am on my way to Sri Lanka for the next leg of my adventure. Before I get into that, I'll do a quick recap. The past two weeks have been very nice. We stayed in a beach resort called the White Sands. It was an absolutely beautiful place with lots of Arabic influences. This used to be (and to some extent still is) a huge trading route from the Middle East into Eastern and Central Africa. Here's what the resort looked like:

And the food was absolutely amazing. The lodging was only $99 a night and that included breakfast and either lunch or dinner. And then when we were teaching classes, lunch was included as well. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to go back to the US and eat our food again. I ate more lamb, goat and ox and I enjoyed it. As some of you know, my neighbor in GA was Jamaican and she would make me curried goat. And I think that was my favorite meal here as well! It was quite yummy! Now they also had a whole roasted goat one night (it literally looked like a skinned goat without the head on the block) and I tried it. In case you are wondering how it tasted, have you ever been to a barn or petting zoo? You know that smell of barn yard animals? That's what roasted goat tastes like! I'm not even joking. The braised ox tail was very good too. The last night we were there, they had ox tongue and normally I would try it but I really didn't want to take my chances before spending the next day on the plane. It's one thing getting an upset stomach from eating something, but it's another having an upset stomach on a plane! I also think I'm going to go into a pineapple deficiency when I get back. I had fresh pineapple and mango with every meal!

Ok so on top of the great food, I got to do a few fun things. The first weekend we were there we went deep sea fishing. It was a good time but the seas were not calm. Being the swashbuckler that I am, I was happy to be out on the water again and feeling the sea spray in my face. It was quite invigorating. I can't say the same for one of my fellow instructors however. It was funny because this guy is this big and loud Texan cop. And he was the one who set up the trip because he has this nice boat/yacht at home in Houston. You should've heard him go on about it and the types of fishing poles he has. You would've thought he was Davey Jones himself! And then as soon as we get past the reef, he comes down off the flying bridge pale as a ghost and sweating profusely. Not long afterwards, he makes it to the head to "relieve himself". Then he spent the rest of the trip laid out on the bench. He didn't even get in the chair and reel anything in. Not that we caught all that much. See the pictures here:

I also got the chance to do 3 scuba dives. It was great being back underwater since it has been several years since my last dive. And since I didn't want my team leader to have to write an incident report from my unfortunate drowning, I took a refresher course. The dives were gorgeous but I'm sad to report that I don't have any pictures. As you can tell, my camera has been wonderful and I didn't think it would work to well 30 feet under the surface of the ocean. But I did see some amazing fish. From lion fish, to blue headed wrasse to octopus and squid, the reef was amazing. It was like being in an aquarium! I was disappointed though because we did one dive at 60 feet underwater at a place called Shark's Point. I was so excited to actually dive with some white tipped reef sharks that I think I worked myself up too much. I sucked air so bad that I only got about 35 minutes bottom time and had to come up early. Oh well, it was a lot fun anyways. I also did a couple of snorkeling trips just off our hotel and it was equally as beautiful.

So that's pretty much my trip in Mombasa. I didn't get to see the city too much however. We wanted to keep a pretty low profile since things were a little dicey down there. The 7th of August was the anniversary of the US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and the Al Qaeda operative that was believed to be responsible for those and other bombings in Africa (and 0n the FBI's most wanted list) narrowly escaped capture the same week in a town just south of the Somali border. And the Kenyan officials believed that he had taken mutatus (crazy buses that don't know the meaning of defensive driving) to Mombasa and was holed up somewhere in there. There is a pretty large Muslim community there so we thought it best to stick to the resort. I did get some pretty nice photos. Check them out here:

That is one ugly insect! It's a millipede that was about the size of a hot dog!

And why wouldn't there be a camel roaming the beach?



As opposed to that "non-Italian" Pizza!



I heard chewing on barbed wire builds character!



This is work?

And now I'm on my way to Colombo. Let me give a piece of advise when traveling internationally. FLY BUSINESS CLASS! Man what a treat! I'm not sure if I can go back to economy anymore. I kind of feel like I'm faking it though and that they are going to kick my butt back to coach. In Doha, Qatar, I had a 5 hour layover or so and the business lounge there is in it's own terminal! It is so very nice and if I wasn't knocking on 30's door these days, I'm sure I could make a run at their open bar. At least I would give it a shot. But now since I'm getting older and wiser, it doesn't have the same appeal. The Super Tuscan wine I had with my lamb curry on my first flight though was outstanding!

Ok so that's about it for this posting. I hope everyone is well. I still can't believe that this is my job and I haven't even started my vacation yet. I'm feeling very blessed right now to say the least.

My best to all of you. Yo ho ho and one more bottle of Tusker!

Sailing the sands of the Massai

Arrr! Ahoy ye followers of this here epic tale, a gripping story of a man, fancying himself as a sea faring swashbuckler, seeking himself on a journey through this wondrous yet dangerous world. In this next chapter, he has roughed through a sea of gold, the ever expansive and undulating plains of the Massai Mara on a land lubber's ship, named thee Land Rover.

Or should I say, Jolly Ho chaps. Cheers and all that rubbish. In his latest adventure, the mighty hunter has just returned from a lovely holiday, armed with merely a photography machine and his wits, he bravely trampled through the wild bush in search of the mighty beast.

Yes, I have finally returned from my first African Safari. I can hardly put into words to describe the experience. It was by far, one of the most amazing things I have ever done. On Saturday morning, our driver picked us up at the hotel and we departed for the regional airport. The flights were fine, but we had to make 2 stops along the way landing on dirt runways covered with rocks and animal excrements before we reached our destination, the Mara Intrepids Tented Camp. Here is a picture of the plane on our "runway":

Ok, when I say tented camp, it isn’t like we were roughing it at all. Here are some photos of our “tent”. You can see the canopy beds in the mirror of the bathroom:

After an amazing buffet lunch, we departed on our first game drive. The scenery was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed. It was like combining the vastness of the Grand Canyon with the beauty of an Italian fresco. During the drive we found Thompson Gazelle’s, Impalas, Wildebeests, Zebras, Cheetahs, a Leopard, Lions, an Elephant, and Hippos. I’m just going to let the pictures tell the tale (Disclaimer: I took each of these pictures. It's amazing what a good camera can capture!)

And these were just a few of the pictures. During the entire weekend trip, I took over 300 photos of which the majority will be posted in my facebook page when I get back or when I get a quicker internet connection. After that game drive, we had dinner (pictured below) and watched a traditional Massai dance.

Following a restful night sleep, listening to all of the strange animal noises, we woke up at 5:30 the next morning to meet our driver for our second and final game drive. We saw some of the same animals plus others. Here are a few more pictures from the second drive:

And here are just some interesting photos that I took with my super fancy new camera:

So that was the safari. It really stinks to be back at work because we had so much fun, but such is life. It's better than being stuck in a cubicle, right? (Oops. Sorry to all of you who work in cubicles!) I would’ve stayed there to clean toilets if they would've let me! We’ve got one more week of class here in Nairobi and then this Friday we are flying to Mombasa, which is on the coast. I’ll try to do another post when I get a chance in the next couple of weeks. I hope all is well with everyone and drop me a line if you want.

Take care, savvy?