Five and a half weeks on…. The travels might have ended but I still feel compelled to write, particularly as now that we are back, a common question seems to be "So how is it being back?" Which made me want to conclude the blog with some earlier thoughts when we knew we were coming home, and what it feels like to be home now that we are actually here! I think my main thought is just how goddamn lucky we are, to have had the last 14 months, full of such amazin...

Our onward travel to Uganda involved a small minibus from Bukoba to the border, which was a couple of hours away. We'd got on the required minibus, and then waited for ages for it to leave - I am sure so much of our time in Africa was spent in hot, crammed minibuses, not moving, waiting for them to just go somewhere, anywhere - when after a while there was a growing commotion, and what seemed to be a heated debate, mostly between a policeman who had got on the b...

From Zambia we had decided to get the train to Tanzania, which would take us from just north of Lusaka, Zambia's capital, to Dar es Salaam. We have grown very fond of train travel on this trip, and we weren't put off doing this particular train journey even when we were told that it normally took anywhere between two to five days…the casual acceptance of a possible 3-day delay acting as a very good summary of travelling in Africa. To our surprise the train ...

The heart strings had been well and truly tugged as we said goodbye to South Luangwa, the second-hardest place to leave on this trip, after leaving my family and our stint in Guatemala earlier this year. And it was almost a lot more problematic: for a reason I won't bore you with (but which was Simon's fault…sort of) we were under the impression we had a 3-month visa in Zambia, however when we double-checked, it was actually only for one-month, and so we had ...

Our time in Livingstone was up, as we were now due to head north to the South Luangwa National Park, a national park in eastern Zambia, often cited as one of the greatest parks in Africa, due to its beauty and prolific wildlife. This had been my home for six months back in 2008, when I had my first dose of the safari hospitality world while working at one of the bush camps belonging to the Robin Pope Safaris company. I'd stayed in touch with my former employers ...