Short Trips Blog

Travel to Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland and experience the vacation of a lifetime. Your trip will later continue to refresh you as you remember this paradise in the midst of your hectic daily life. The Bernese Oberland is probably the best known area of the Swiss Alps. Its beauty is astonishing and incredible, renowned throughout the world. Its clean glacial lakes, mountain streams and rivers, and spectacular waterfalls make the area lush and green, and the peaks of the Jungfrau, Eiger and Mönch have attracted European and worldwide vacationers for centuries, both in summer and winter. Read the rest of this entry »

Knowing the day and date is becoming a challenge; all the days start to blend into one cycle of darkness and light.

Since we last wrote we stayed two more nights at the Lower Sabie River campsite in a hut. Very nice accommodations. Though less fancy than our Berg en Dal bungalow. We realized two days ago that we left our digital camera card reader at home, leaving us with no way to burn our pictures onto a CD for storage. So we drove two hours back to the nearest big city, Nelspruit, in search of one. Found one (in a very elegant big mall; again thinking of Boonie (Susan)), but discovered that the laptop wouldn’t accommodate it or any other card readers. So, our plan of burning pictures onto CD isn’t going to happen, so on to plan B- we bought another 128mb card. All of this left us way behind schedule for getting back to Kruger National Park by their 5:30 p.m. curfew, after which time they forbid people driving through the park because of how dangerous it is: the animals come out at night posing a threat to people and cars pose a threat to the animals. So we drove at high velocity back to Kruger, calling ahead to plead with the park ranger to let us get back to our campsite after the curfew. He was nice enough to allow us through. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now in Swaziland, most famous for being a small country landlocked within another country somewhere in southern Africa. It’s actually very beautiful, not as poor as Cam’s college geography class made it out to be, and very friendly. We’re staying at the Sondzela Backpackers Camp in the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, just outside Mbabane, the capitol city of the kingdom of Swaziland. There are warthogs and ostriches wandering around our front yard right now! And here we’re living for about $22 a day, room and board for both of us. It’s cheaper for us to live here without a job than it is for us to live at home with two. Still, we only plan to be here for another day or so and will continue to pass through Swaziland to the South Africa coast. We originally planned to stay only one night, but the place is so relaxing and conducive to Cam napping that we decided to stay another day.

While Cam naps the day away [editor's note: this was written by Cate. I've only had the chance to nap three times on the entire trip for the record. My wife wants us on the go so that napping has become an endangered activity] Cate will be out wandering the plains looking for more furry critters (she never seems to get enough of them). Later this afternoon we’re going horseback riding through the Swazi hills then we’ll come back and have dinner. The staff at our camp makes wonderful African meals over an open fire. We all eat family style. Tonight there will be a Swazi celebration and we’ll be able to take part in the singing and dancing festivities. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago we went to the famous Sodwana Bay for scuba diving. This was important because for some unexplained reason Cate has been nervous about being 40-60 feet underwater and not being able to breathe…but she conquered her fear at Sodwana Bay. After EMDR and a refresher course on diving at the Bay, she was able to dive, breathe, and even feel relaxed (though still a little sea sick). We saw a beautful (but scary) eel, and a Devil Fire Fish, among other colorful specimens. Then onto St. Lucia Wetlands Estuary, a world heritage site and bioreserve, for hiking. We stayed at our least favorite backpackers retreat, called BIB’s. Loud and kind of scummy. But they took us on a great hike and saw wildlife. We went to the Crocadile Centre and saw baby crocs and snakes eating baby chickens. This was very traumatic for Cate, yet shouldn’t stop watching.

We headed down to Durbin, where we went to the Shark Board, an agency dedicated to shark conservation and fencing off the Zululand coast to protect beachgoers from shark attacks, of which there have been many in the past. We saw a shark dissection, including liver, heart, nose, intestines, stomach. We thought of Jamie and Charlie, who would have been fascinated yet grossed out by the entire spectacle. Read the rest of this entry »