Back in the saddle!

Or probably more to the point attempting to re-mount after 2 weeks away and not getting back until Saturday morning after travelling for nearly 20 hours in total on two flights overnight.

I had intended to get a post going on the holiday experience and to post some pictures but things are not moving as quickly as I intended what with the garden and allotment deciding to become wildernesses during the 2 weeks away and Mrs DeeJay’s car refusing to start when we got home. Now I am back at my desk, I have some 225 emails to process – oh joy!

So to whet your appetite for some postings to come here is a synopsis of the holiday itinerary.

Day 1 Friday night/Saturday morning

Long, long day leaving home mid afternoon and arriving at first lodge at Mount Meru in Tanzania via Nairobi airport and Kilimanjaro airport some 18 hours later. Overnight at a Game Lodge with a small private reserve.

Day 2 Sunday

First real game drive in the Tarangire Game Reserve seeing many elephant, giraffe, gazelle, antelope, wart hogs etc.

Day 3 Monday

Game drive through Tarangire again seeing all of the above again plus baboon and vervet monkey on our way to the Ngorongoro Crater. We arrived there at a height of 2000 feet to rain and thick gooey very RED mud. It cleared as we descended into the crater where we once again saw many animals including lions feeding on a wildebeest (we didn’t witness the kill), a black rhino, cheetah, hyena, several types of gazelle and flamingos.

Day 4 Tuesday

Leaving a cold and wet crater rim with more gooey red mud we headed for the Serengeti Game Reserve via an authentic Masai village joining them in singing, dancing and buying jewellery from them. We visited their school and saw the delight in the children’s eyes when we left them with some colouring pencils. We arrived at the Serengeti (Masai translation “endless plain” and you can see why!) for lunch and an afternoon game drive seeing lions and their cubs and many gazelle again

Day 5 Wednesday

A 10 hour all day game drive where we saw all of the aforementioned animals again including 4 prides of lion, and the highlight – a leopard.

Back to the same lodge for a second night – bliss!

Day 6 Thursday

A very early start at 4 a.m. in the pitch black for a hot air balloon ride at 6:30. Amazing views and floating over the animals ending with a surreal experience of champagne and a full English breakfast under an Acacia tree in the middle of the bush just knowing that somewhere out there are wild animals.

Day 7 Friday

Left Serengeti and drove via Lake Manyara reserve on our way to Arusha airport for a brief 1 hour flight to Zanzibar.

Days 8 to 14 Zanzibar

Pretty luxurious hotel and spa with lots of service and good food, lazing on the beach and by the pool recovering from the rigours of the first weeks endless driving around on mud tracks in the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser.

Days 14 & 15 – homeward bound

The previously mentioned 20 hour journey overnight to a real cup of tea and our own bed.

More posts later with some accompanying photos and I promise I will catch up with all your posts from the last two weeks

Last Day home!!

Tomorrow we fly all being well with Mrs DeeJay. For several weeks now she has complained intermittently about "an ear infection". I finally persuaded her to make an appointment with the doctor this morning after it flared up again yesterday - "you don't want to have a bad experience in the pressurised plane cabin, or not be able to go snorkelling do you".
It turns out that she has got something like some cotton wool bud stuck in it!!
The doctor couldn't retrieve it so she has an appointment very first thing at the local hospital ENT out patients clinic. Lets hope they can get it out without any serious effort.

I have ben off work a day early today to shop and pack etc. Why do it before when you can do it at the last minute :-). I have now finished and I am going to get in some serious guitar practice as it will be the last for 2 weeks

Four Days and Counting

Only 4 days to go (3 at work) before heading off for the unknown of Africa.
Mrs DeeJay and I spent some of the weekend sorting out our packing. Well mine was on paper as I am very much a list person while Mrs DJ spent a lot of time laying stuff out on a spare bed and then putting a lot of it away again to replace it with something else.
I am having awful trouble convincing her to really travel light this year. Eventually the scales will do the persuading as we are limited to 15kg because we have some travel to do mid holiday in quite a small plane, to say nothing of the daily trips between safari lodges.
I was amused to see not only how our packing approach differed, but also the content. Whilst her's was mainly, clothing and feminine stuff like cosmetics and facial cleansing etc, mine was very limited in that respect (OK lay off the jokes about the cosmetics) but was heavily influenced by cameras, binoculars, iPod, iPAQ and all the relevant charger gear. Must be my IT geeky background!

Another week nearer my holiday - YIPPEE

As another work week draws to a close, and a pretty hectic one at that, I will enjoy my weekend even more knowing that I only have to work 3 days next week and then pack my bags.
I can't remember if I told you but Mrs DeeJay and I will be jetting off at the end of the week for a week on safari in Tanzania followed by a chill out for a week on the beach in Zanzibar. I hope to bore you and make you jealous with my photos for quite a few postings to come lol.

Did I also tell you that I had re-started yoga classes after a lay off of some 5 years?
I stopped when the new gym that I joined at that time offered a class that was far inferior in quality to the one that I had been going to at my old gym. Recently, over the past 4 weeks though, they have put on a class with a new instructor who is absolutely fantastic. He trained in India and has such a relaxed teaching style that really seems to get results from us all. Last night he had us in a position called Bakasna that I think translates to "Crane" as in the bird not the building machinery. It looks really hard but step by step he had the whole class doing it last night.


And no that is unfortunately not me as I am not sure I was there long enough for anyone to get a good photo :-)

WooHoo - coming home!

I am sitting in the Boston airport lounge waiting to be called for my homeward flight. Should get in around 9 p.m. tonight with any luck as it seems that yesterday's weather delays have been lifted.
It has been a long and particularly tough week this week with many changes taking place at work. I was pleasantly surprised with my own situation which I had expected to be one of planned removal from the project that I have been working on. But have been asked to consider about six different prospects as it seems my experience is still sought. A good end to the week.

Wednesday night was a bit of a stress reliever with some of my team. Something that would be impossible to do home in the UK. One of the team has a veritable arsenal of rifles and hand guns which six of us took to his local range. Now I have shot rifles before when I belonged to a target shooting club in the UK some 15 years ago but I have never shot semi automatic rifles nor the array of hand guns that he had. Some of those were such monsters (e.g. .357 Magnum I think). It was a terrific way to de-stress and to pose a personal challenge.

Less than two weeks to go now for my annual holiday. Mrs DeeJay and I are going to Tanzania for a 7 day safari and then to a beach on Zanzibar for a week to chill and hopefully get some sun, lots of swimming and snorkelling and some new food experiences - can't wait!

Bend Zee Knees!

Woohoo I'm going skiing!!
Mrs DeeJay and I have not been skiing for 3 years since we got thoroughly spoiled by the fantastic pistes and organisation of North American slopes when we visited Lake Tahoe. When the slopes get icy in Europe it sucks and the queues for the lifts, which are virtually non existent in America, are really like small battlegrounds in the Alps!
Anyway on the spur of the moment when idly discussing the reports of really good snowfalls in the Alps last week, I said to her "why don't we go?"
So on February 23rd we are going to Passo Tonale in Italy for a week's sliding down mountains.

All I have to do now is to get some additional workouts at the gym to get my squats and lunges together so that I can get down the mountain without agony in my thighs and to learn some basic Italian. I better call on Welshcakes Limoncello for some rapid tuition.

A Little Disappointed and Depressed

This weekend I should have been taking Mrs DeeJay away for a long weekend as a surprise to Edinburgh for her birthday. Unfortunately she has been unwell all week and the weekend has always been at risk. Lo and behold, come Friday when we should have been flying, she seemed to be even worse and we made the sensible decision to cancel.

It is now Saturday afternoon and our decision has been vindicated as she is really not any better and is alternating between the settee and bed, so I am on TLC duty in a big way this weekend as I know she is probably more disappointed than I am.

I have just been into the garden and look what I have found -

it’s the first of December and we have Hyacinths coming up!!! What is going on?

I am also suffering with sore fingers today. My first guitar lesson ahs done the trick and given me the incentive to practice daily so that I can show some development next Wednesday at ‘lesson 2’. The chords and strumming pattern that I am learning are supposed to lead me to be able to play House of The Rising Sun. Hmmm, not sure I can hear it yet, but hey early days.

Post holiday Bliss & Blues

OK, so here we go with some holiday memories and reflections tinged with sadness that it is all over.

The Highs

Firstly, what a lovely island Mauritius (Ile Maurice) is.

The resort, the people and the general ambience of the place was a tonic and just what I needed to counteract all of the stress of this year at work and in my personal life.

It is such a shame that these lovely people are being taken advantage of by the holiday companies. When you compare the prices being charged by these companies with the standard of compensation and living of the local people, it is all too clear that someone is making a killing.

We stayed at a hotel named Beau Rivage and were overawed by the standard of service and the beautifully kept gardens, pool, restaurants (4 of them) and the beach.

We were not allowed to raise a finger for ourselves with staff even spotting when you were about to clean your sunglasses and immediately rushing to your aid to spray and clean the lenses for you!

We spent most of our time on the beach and at the pool soaking up the sun and swimming as well as taking advantage of the free water sports facilities, the gym and the cycles available to explore the local towns.

We also spent a day touring the north of the island where we submerged to a depth of 35 metres in a submarine on the reef and the wreck of a Japanese ship. Afterwards we visited the almost unpronounceable Sir Seewoogasur Ramgoolam botanical gardens which used to be named Pamplemousses Gardens.

Mrs Deejay dressed in a Sari for dinner on a special Indian Dinner evening.

The Lows

Well actually there was only one and that was having to leave to come home, facing a 12 hour flight and knowing that my next significant activity would be to resume work – ugh!

I am now going to commence catching up on the blog postings of my ‘blog family’ as Merelyme so aptly described this wonderful group of cyber friends

Hi Guys, I'm home!

Hi everyone, just got home yesterday from my holidays.
I will be posting more hopefully this weekend including some photos (from the nearly 200 that I took!) of the idyllic island of Mauritius.
Well done to all of you who correctly guessed it, but as Furtheron said, the Dodo reference probably gave it away.

Thanks to all of you who have posted comments and sent me emails asking where I was and when I was going to return. It is wonderful to have a group of friends in cyberspace. I will respond to those who have mailed me and I will try to get some holiday posts up soon.

Apologies

I am sorry that this has been a bit of a boring blog site over the past week, but I have been rather preoccupied.
I am going on holiday at the beginning of next week and have been attempting to get all sorts of loose ends sorted at work before I go and have not had time to post this week.

So I promise to try to find time and an interesting topic to post about this coming weekend and then when I return in 2 weeks time I will regale you with tales from the beach and the bar. Hopefully I won't have any airport queue and delay horror stories!