Back from safari

This is just a quick post to touch base. The computer I'm on is painfully slow & can't handle much more than this... Lots of photos will follow, but possibly not until I'm back in the UK on 8th August.

We arrived back in Arusha today after an amzing 10 days on safari. We had 3 days at Tarangire National Park, 1 day at Lake Manyare NP, 3 days in the Serengeti, then 1 day in the Ngorongoro crater. All of it was fantastic, but Tarangire was especially good for elephants, & the Serengeti was obviously incredible for lions. We were lucky enough to see 2 lion kills in the Serengeti which was quite special. We also saw all of the 'big 5' (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, & rhino) bar the rhino. However we can always count the semi-wild one we saw in Kenya! We also saw lots of cheetah, as well as hyena, jackals, giraffe, hippo, baboons, plus countless wildebeast, zebra & antelopes.

We stay tonight in Arusha, then tomorrow we have a long bus trip to Dar Es Saalam leaving at 6am, where we are hoping to arrive in time for the last ferry over to Zanzibar which leaves at 4pm. Fingers crossed... We have a week of R&R on Zanzibar, before arriving back in the UK on the 8th August.

Africa!

We flew out to Africa early on Wednesday morning. There had been a slight panic at 3am when I realised that my passport wasn't anywhere in the house... We found it about half an hour before leaving for the airport, in a box of stuff I had stored at the Abery's place. It was a huge relief, as I had visions of it being sealed in a box, sealed in our container, sitting in the Anglo-Pacific depot ready to sail to NZ!

We had a good BA flight out of terminal 5 to Nairobi. We met Richard & Rachel Roe at Nairobi airport. They had come from NZ, via a couple of nights in Jo 'Burg, & arrived an hour or two before us.

Thursday was a big sightseeing day. We started out at an animal orphanage where they hand rear orphaned baby elephants & rhinos. When they are 3 years old they re-release them back into the wild. They only open the centre to the public for one hour each day, so that the animals don't get too habituated to people. The younger group of elephants wore blankets to protect them from the cold, and were hand-fed bottles of milk. They were very very cute. They then bought out an adorable baby rhino...

They kept the baby rhino away from the crowds where they could make an easy escape. They explained that a rhino which was reared at the centre but had been released in the wild still tended to turn up during the viewing hour for a bit of attention. Sure enough, he made an appearance & they hurried the baby away as the older one was likely to attack it.Next was the giraffe centre where you could stand on a platform and hand feed Rothschild giraffes. Will even gave one a big smooch! Luckily their saliva is antiseptic...On Friday the plan was to travel to a Maasi Education centre in Kuku, as we had a contact for the place through Curto. However after discussing with the travel centre options for getting there, we decided it wouldn't really be feasible. Kuku is out in the middle of nowhere, & transport options were tricky, to put it mildy. It would have cost a fortune to get out there. We had a few days to kill before we were due to start our safari in Arusha, so we decided to head into Tanzania early & spend 3 nights in Moshi, right at the foot of Mt Kiliminjaro. It pretty much took the whole day on the bus to get here, but that did include a hold-up of a couple of hours at the Kenyan-Tanzanian border where a couple on our bus had insufficient funds to pay for the Tanzanian visa. In the end we had to leave them behind to catch the next bus passing through...Moshi is a cool little place. We are staying in a good cheap hotel which has a rooftop terrace giving amazing views over Kili. It has been shrouded in cloud all day today, so hopefully it will be clearer tomorrow for a few pics. We did get a glimpse of it yesterday, & our bus driver was kind enough to pull over so the tourists could take some pics. Today was a very nice chilled day spent wandering around the markets. It's a relaxed place with not a huge amount of tourism, apart from people climbing Kili. There doesn't seem to be the hassle here that you get in a lot of African towns. In an hour or so we are heading up to our roof-top terrace for our own 'happy hour'. Rich & Rachel bought all sorts of goodies over from NZ, including a block of speights beer, & a lovely bottle of NZ Sauv Blanc!

Moving Day

The movers were in on Monday & Tuesday. We decided to go with Anglo-Pacific, & they really were amazing. The packing crew did a superb job, they had boxed & carded up the majority of the house on the first day. I must admit, it was a rather stressful few days... Will was away at a conference in Canada for the week before the movers arrived, & he only arrived back Monday afternoon after his flight from Canada was delayed by 5 hours! Ric was a star & helped me out loads on the Sunday night, returning all of our ikea furniture to it's original flat-pack state. We got there in the end, but it did mean 3 nights of about 3 hours sleep each night!
The container arrived Tuesday afternoon, & the crew started to load it up. Despite the initial estimates, we managed to fit everything in one 20ft container which was good. We haven't been told the sailing date yet, but it will be a good few months before we see our stuff again, as we will put it into storage when we arrive in Wellington early September.

The end of an era...

I managed to survive my farewells on Wednesday night without turning into a blubbering mess... Which is more than I can say for Scottie, my head of department, bless him. He really is the most emotional man I know, but he did manage to get through his speech, & said some lovely things. I got some very nice leaving presents including a print of the College copied from an 1870 lithograph, a wine goblet etched with the College crest, and some John Lewis vouchers. Ripper also gave me a gorgeous birds-eye view map of the whole estate which he had done.

Thursday, my first day of holidays I spent pottering around the house, doing a bit of cleaning & tidying. It had been a bit neglected over the last couple of weeks. I met Will at his house at lunchtime and helped him do a bit during his lunchbreak. It is slowly getting there, but we really do need to get it on the market ASAP. Thursday night Becs & Rhian, a couple of friends from my rugby team came around for dinner. On Friday afternoon we had a maths department trip out. Nick, my replacement was in College going through a few things in the morning, so he also came out with us which was really nice. Wendy's parents own a gorgeous old (built in the 1890's!) steamer which they moor at Windsor, so they kindly took us out for a couple of hours on the Thames. It is a beautiful boat, and in the past it has won the top award at the annual classic boat rally held in Henley. We had a great afternoon, & I finally got to go through some locks!We got some great views of Windsor castle, & I particularly like the pic of Ric & I, where you can just see the castle in the background.

Wendy's father used to teach at Eton College and we cruised past his old house on the riverfront. He also pointed out the headmasters house. As you can see below, it's not a bad old pile...

I am about to head into London for the Wireless festival at Hyde Park. There are a few bands playing early on that I'm not overly interested in, but I'll go in for Jack Penate, Dizzie Rascal, The Streets, & Basement Jaxx. It was a bit overcast during the morning, but the sun is out now & it should be a lovely afternoon/evening. England has had heatwave warnings throughout the week, the temperature has been up in the 30's.

The Killers & Dartmoor

It has been busy times of late. Friday evening a group of us from school went into London to Hard Rock Calling which was on in Hyde Park. Despite the forecast being for thunderstorms, the weather held & we had a brilliant evening. We met Claire & Nic there, so it was lovely having some quality time with my friends. The Kooks were the main support, & I was slightly underwhelmed by them. I do really like them as a band, & have been to some brilliant gigs of theirs, but they were a bit lost in the vastness of the venue. The Killers on the other hand ROCKED. They are pretty much my favourite band at the moment & I can't get enough of them. I did kind of lose my husband for a lot of the evening, as he chose to watch Echo & the Bunnymen who were playing on the second stage, then once that was over he struggled to find us again! However with impeccable timing he did track us down just before the end of the evening. The whole of the Killers show turned into a massive karaoke party, & people continued the theme as we filed out of the park. "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier" was the lyric of choice, & it was especially impressive reverberating around the subway as hundreds of people sang it on the way to the tube station.
Saturday morning I was up early in order to drive down to Dartmoor. I was helping out with my last ever Duke of Edinburgh expedition down there. I made it down in about 3 & a half hours, & had a lovely 3 days on the moors. We had two really hot days, & the kids struggled a bit, walking in the heat with their fully laden backpacks. However the middle day had a bit of light rain to cool them down. Dartmoor expeds are always good ones to go on as the kids wild camp out on the moors, but the staff camp in a field belonging to a very nice pub!

The famous Dartmoor ponies were everywhere, complete with foal. They were totally oblivious to anything around them & played havoc with the traffic in the middle of the moor. They were very very cute though...

I arrived back Monday night, with 2 days at Bearwood College remaining. I must admit, not a huge amount of teaching was done today as I farewelled some of my classes. Tomorrow I have my last 3 lessons. It was quite sad saying goodbye to some of them. There really are some great kids at the school. Tomorrow evening is the official staff farewell function. I'm not really looking forward to it as I have to give bit of a speech, which isn't really my thing. I think mine will be fairly short & sweet! Then it's pretty much 6 months holiday for me, as the NZ school year doesn't start until late January. Bring it on!!! I've got back to back summers to enjoy...

Pretty Flowers

This has been a great year so far for the garden. There was no hard frost at all during the spring, & we've had lots of warm sunny days, but also a reasonable amount of rain. The aquilegia was especially good this year, & we had about 4 different shades in the garden.

The hanging baskets are also the best they ever have been.

The clematis was simply stunning...

While the roses and lillies added glorious scent.

The vege garden isn't looking too bad either. We are eating the first of the peas, & the runner beans are probably about 3 weeks away. We've got about 11 baby courgettes growing on our plants, & the carrots & onions are also looking good.