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My friend Ted is normally a calm, placid man. Nothing really bothers him. That was until 4.00a.m. in the pitch black of an African night, when he heard a rustling sound, looked at the shadow cast by the tiny light outside his tent flap and saw a hyena looking in on him.  For an hour the hyena stalked Ted’s tent. They are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa with jaws capable of crushing bone and known to attack humans. It eventually ambled off after marking its territory all around Ted’s tent. Thirty minutes later Ted came to breakfast looking as white as a sheet. Just hours before the…

The noise was deafening as 40 or 50 Vervet monkeys started shrieking loudly from the tops of a group of rain trees in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “Let’s go,” shouted our guide. “That’s the alarm call from the monkeys that there is a predator in the area.”  Moments later we spotted a year old male leopard running between the trees and tracked him for several minutes until he disappeared into thick bush. Andrew Harkness, the guide/owner of the mobile safari company we were with, is in many ways a wildlife detective. He could interpret sights and sounds of wild animals and birds to lead us to Africa’s greatest predators. Vultures are…

Iceland – The Land of Fire and Ice – may not be the first place that springs to mind for a cruise, but in many ways it is the perfect voyage – allowing unprecedented views of this diverse and beautiful landscape. You can watch from the decks as you sail by towering mountains of ice, spectacular fjords, stunning waterfalls, geysers, some of the world’s most active volcanoes, black sand beaches, and steaming lava fields – reminiscent of an almost alien landscape. The most common way to see Iceland is to drive the Ring Road, a 2,100 mile route encircling the country – but it doesn’t go anywhere near where a…

Ethiopia is one of Africa’s best kept secrets.  When I told friends we were going there in the spring of 2019, they were almost unanimous: “Why would you want to go there….isn’t it the poorest country in Africa…..aren’t they still in the midst of a famine….is it safe?” And the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Max 8, a few weeks before we departed Canada, didn’t help. Yes, they are poor, but proud. So proud. And while food shortages and poverty are continuing issues, they are nowhere as desperate as they once were in the Eighties. And in the ten days we were there, we never once felt remotely unsafe. Time, armed…

We knew this adventure cruise along the West Coast of Africa was potentially dangerous. But when we were told about the threat of pirates, it raised our anxiety to a whole new level. We were embarking on a 16 day cruise along the African coast…from Ghana to Morocco.  As soon as we stepped on board our Silversea expedition ship, the Silver Cloud, we heard that the ship had already had to bypass two West Coast countries because of the very real threat of piracy: and that several times the ship had to be plunged into total darkness – all lights had to be turned out, or black out curtains used…

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,    And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless,    And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons;    There are valleys unpeopled and still; There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,    And I want to go back—and I will. I was a 15 year old in England when my geography teacher read this Robert Service poem by way of introduction to a lesson on the Yukon and Alaska. I never forgot it: and it inspired me to one day make the trek to the North and see this land for…

Radoslav Bozovic thought we were nuts. Absolutely nuts. We’d hired him to drive us through five countries in a day. We left Dubrovnik, Croatia, early in the morning, then drove through Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and finally to Skopje, Macedonia. Actually we made the trip for a couple of reasons. Largely it was economic. We wanted to see Dubrovnik, but then had to make our way to Istanbul where we had already booked flights with Turkish Airlines down to South Africa. And there were no direct flights from Dubrovnik to Istanbul. To fly would have taken all day and cost twice as much as it did to drive. Not to…

Each journey can be done in around three weeks. 1. GALAPAGOS, MACHU PICCHU and EASTER ISLAND. Fly to Quito, Ecuador. One day there: fantastic city. Fly round trip from Quito to Galapagos. You need to take a seven-day boat tour of the islands. Only way to get around. Take zodiacs from the mother ship to different islands every day. See amazing wild life, including 400 pound tortoises. Fly back to Quito and direct to Lima, Peru. One night there, fly to Cusco (10,000 feet). Two days there to acclimatize. You need a coca based tea to overcome altitude sickness. From Cusco take a train to Machu Picchu. Overnight there (but…