Africa travels begin

Every airplane ride is preceded by the anxiety and excitement of a new journey. This is felt in the days leading up to departure and even more so, upon arrival at the airport. At the airport it is then magnified by the number of people in the waiting areas, in the lines for Security, and in line to check in. And we are not immune.

After much humming and hawing, we decided against taking the Nikon big camera and opted to get a smaller version of a DSL wannabe, the P600.

 We spent many an hour trying it out, learning it's quirks and a lot of referring to the manual. Did you know that you can now take photos by connecting the camera to the iPad and using the iPad as a remote control? Yup! You can! Will this be useful? Only time will tell. And what about the special effects?

 Would we ever realistically use something like this? 

Then there was the packing. Seemed like we hummed and hawed for days here too. Trying to reduce the amount of stuff that we are taking was a battle that was lost. We ended up taking one suitcase each that was loaded to capacity, weighing in around 30 pounds. Under normal circumstances this would not be bad but during the trip we have to trek for an hour on a walking path to a village, carrying our bags I am sure. Am not sure how the cases will do on that. We shall find out and adjust accordingly once there. [photo]

The RV went into storage. I am sure that she must be very disgruntled every time that she sees the place for it means that she is left to her own devices for a long period of time. Still, she waits patiently for our return and never acts up once we are back. She is just glad to see us return and get her out into the sunshine again.

And so we leave ...