Travels with Catskill Farms
Currently I sit in the Emirates International Lounge with my first born (and only) son, 13 year old Lucas Petersheim (I mention him by name cause he all his friends google each other and for better or worse, half of them end up on this blog reading it. As I posted prior, we are heading to Nairobi, the Serengeti, Zanzibar, and Dubai. 3 or 4 days in each, with little planes taking us up and over Mt Kilimanjaro, and from camp to camp in the Serengeti.
The little planes actually became a defining element of the trip, since you can only carry 32 pounds each onto these planes. So now we are traveling half way around the world with 4 very different destinations with only a carry on each, and a small backpack. This instilled a bit of stress, but actually in the end, you can fit quite a bit under 32 lbs, especially my son who wears basically the same thing every day so his bag weighed in at 14 lbs, and that included a football and frisbee. And even for me, when you think about it, you don’t actually wear have of what you take along on most trips so this one just was a sort of forced marched into spareness and packing efficiency. I’m only at 29lbs and that includes all the medicines and even my computer and 3 or 4 books.
And boy did we bring some medicine. Having a good doctor, and a good travel med consultant, we are loaded up with pills if we get covid, pills if we get bad stomach, pills if we get a cut and need anti-bacterial. We (this is more of a ‘me’) have some valium for planes and assorted travel stress management, some viagra just in case and our malaria pills which true to its reputation, gives you some peculiar dreams - in my case I’m dreaming of arguing with friends, having my own personal hot air balloon crash into one of my rental units injuring the tenants and a few other oddities.
For books, we went regional. Lucas is going to read I Dreamed of Africa (much to his chagrin - “School just ended!” He pleaded. I’m reading Bill Bryson’s short African diary, and Into Africa- The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston. I also brought a sketch pad and a book How to draw perspective - which will be my 40th try to learn to draw. It’s not as if I do or don’t have a knack or interest in it - I just don’t stick with it.
Since this is being posted a few days after being written, we have successfully landed in Nairobi, flew into Arusha Tanzania, flew the first 4 legs of our 10 seat small planes on airports that have quickly become dirt runways with assorted wildlife running across them. It's funny how traveling can be intimidating beforehand, but you settle into the groove pretty quickly, especially for an old nomad like myself.
We are currently 15 miles or so from the Kenyan border in Tanzania's Serengeti Preserve. Been on half a dozen game drives resulting in a plethora of game sightings, 5 small planes, a tent, a glamp and a hotel inn on former/current coffee plantation.
Lost track of day of week days ago.