It had some redeeming features.
Fortunately, February was also the month I got to get on an airplane and fly to Nairobi to spend a week with Peggy. For anyone who doesn’t know Peggy, she and I met in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 1985 and have been best friends ever since. She is also the reason I’ve ever been in shape in my life since then, as we’ve made a habit of doing wonderful and challenging backpacking trips, canoe trips, and cycling trips, as well as triathlons when we were a bit younger, and crazy bike rides like the Triple Bypass. (Peter has been a happy third participant on many of them.) She was riding the Tour d’Afrique this winter, started from Cairo with a group of about 30 others in early January, and rode her bicycle to Khartoum, where the group had to fly to Nairobi to avoid the unrest in Ethiopia. They then had 10 days to kill in Nairobi while their support vehicle and equipment came overland to meet them. So of course, I went to Nairobi. I met many of her cycling group, matched some faces with names, and quickly came to realize why she was having so much fun along with all the pain. (They all finished in Cape Town just two days ago – April 22nd – a feat of physical and emotional endurance that is beyond my comprehension.)
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We visited the Sheldrick elephant nursery in Nairobi National Park, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the country and got to see a lot of wee baby elephants that looked a lot like the ones Peg and I adopted before going to the nursery. (https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/orphans) I’ve been a huge fan of the organization since someone told me to follow them on Instagram, and so like thousands of others, I was not going to miss seeing the place and their tiny charges in person. It was totally worth it. Look at those little nuggets! SO cute.
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And later that afternoon we got to meet our old Denver neighbor and dear friend and craft buddy Ingrid for a fabulous dinner. Ingrid was in Nairobi for a few weeks working with the Kenyan department of health teaching workshops and then conducting field work. The odds of overlapping with her? Tiny. The joy of seeing her? Immense.
Then Peg and I got on an airplane and flew to Kigali for a three-day wildlife adventure in Uganda and Rwanda. What’s the biggest tourist attraction in those countries? Gorillas! We were driven directly to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in northwestern Uganda and got up early the next morning for gorilla tracking.
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The forest is aptly named. The bush is extremely dense, and the lead guide had to hack a trail for us. It did become evident after an hour or so that we were probably just being shown the scenic route to make us feel like we were getting our money’s worth – it felt a lot like we were going in circles, and after the epic hour with our gorillas, we took a very direct, and mostly very well-worn path back to our vehicles. But the hour with our gorillas was one of those things that is more than the sum of its parts. It was humbling, being in their orbit for a short while. I felt impossibly privileged: no matter how many people make their way to these remote places to see them in their own habitat, that number is vanishingly small in the context of our planet, and to witness a snapshot of their lives was awe-inspiring.
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Our driver then took us back to Rwanda that afternoon, and we tucked up in a nice little lodge right down the road from the Dian Fossey Primate Museum FUNDED BY ELLEN DeGENERES. (Very clear who the important person there was) and Volcanoes National Park. The next morning, we joined throngs of other tourists at the visitor center of the Park, where we were first separated into groups that were gorilla bound, and groups that were golden monkey bound. We were the latter, and after a short drive up to the village in the Park that was one of the “trailheads” for this adventure, we all set off with our guides. The path wound through fields of beans, fallow fields, and fields being prepared for sowing, and we had a relaxing hour long stroll up into the footbumps (not quite foothills) of the nearest volcano. Our trackers radioed the current location of a very large band of golden monkeys, and within another five minutes we reached a densely vegetated clearing that was crawling with the little guys. Despite the rangers’ best efforts, the monkeys are thoroughly habituated to humans, and they paid us absolutely no attention as they ate their way through the low growing vegetation. We spent a delightful hour watching their antics – such personalities! – and very grudgingly left them behind after our allotted hour. We had not had high expectations for the golden monkeys – what can compete with gorillas after all? And as a result, we enjoyed them just as much as the gorillas. For different reasons, but just as much.
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A few hours later we were back in Kigali boarding our evening flight to Nairobi. And then tearful goodbyes at the Nairobi airport as Peg uber’d back to the camp and her cycling buddies, and I caught a few hours sleep before leaving for Podgorića early the next morning. SUCH a good break, and so, so hard to come back.
As a side note, I had 8 hours to kill in Istanbul both going to and coming back from Nairobi, and my favorite exhibit was of pieces that had been created using waste left behind by travelers to the airport. Zippers, buttons, pieces of fabric, leather, medicines – it was incredibly cool, and I spent a lot of time with them on both layovers. [Artist: Deniz Sağdiҫ]
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So back to Tivat and the boat and Peter. Peter was a party animal while I was gone – at least for one night. He whooped it up at Colin’s birthday party on Grace, and even won a medal with Kate (SV Intrepid Bear) in one of the games.
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It’s boring to write about, so it’s got to be boring to read about post after post, but the weather, with a few notable exceptions, remained crap. We hiked more, did boat chores on the sunny days (see The Bura post for photos of Peter trying to retrieve the fender that popped and blew off during the Bura), and spent several rainy days taking inventory of all the boat’s tools, electrical equipment, safety gear and equipment, maintenance and cleaning stuffs, fasteners (ropes, tape, bungies, etc) and first aid kits. We still have a long way to go, but it was a good start.
And in a truly lovely development, Claire became my boat craft buddy. She’d been working on curtains for their boat’s salon for two years and was desperate to just get them done. We set up our sewing machines in our cockpit/atrium and went to work. A couple of days later I had a new linen top and Claire had finished two more of her curtains! Very satisfying.
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The month ended with a delightful afternoon with friends Pandy and Craig on their motor catamaran Distraction (AKA the Popemobile, which has been our neighbor here on B dock all winter long), cruising over to Dobrota in Kotor Bay with Claire and Ollie (SV Aquila Constellation) and goofy Tim and Karina (MY Matilda) for lunch at a favorite seaside restaurant. On the way there we motored by a seasonal (as in only when it rains. Which is kind of a joke.) waterfall, and on the way back to Tivat we were joined for a stretch by a friendly dolphin.
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And finally, suddenly, it was March.
One response to “February 2023 – The Rest”
Love the goofy pic of us, lots of fun times and good memories. The Istanbul artwork was awesome!