"It's that most won-der-ful time of the year..."

Vacation time! That's right, in just a few short days (after my latest bout of stomach woes subside, and I finally get my work visa issues sorted out) I'll be heading south to Mozambique to spend Christmas and New Years on the coast with some of the friendly folks at VSO Namibia -Jason, Kate, Michael, Ben, and Peter. We'll be somewhere near the Bazaruto Archipelago, (you'll note that I'm not precisely sure where- probably a good thing to find out at this stage of the game) and I plan to spend most of my time swimming, drinking beer, reading, fretting over my inevitable sunburn, fishing, dhow sailing, etc. Not your standard Christmas, but not exactly a lump of coal either. The route down is a bit precarious at the moment; my original plan was to backpack it south via Malawi using local buses, and to then meet up with the VSO crew (who are traveling from Nambia via South Africa) in Vilanculos, but work visa issues mean that I'm going to have to leave substantially later than planned. Nothing sounds worse than being stranded in some godforsaken minefield in backwater Moz. for Christmas, so I might have to rethink my travel south. Despite having incredibly bad safety records, (so much so that their planes are banned in France and Belgium) Linhas Aereas de Mocambique does have cheap intercountry flights, so that might be an option if time is tight. I'll keep you posted. In any case, after New Years I'll be heading back north, this time with Jason and possibly Ben, and we'll be taking the scenic routes through Malawi and southern Tanzania. I'm particularly excited about the day long ferry on Lake Nyasa between Malawi and Tanzania, and then the Tazara train through southern Tanzania (which goes through the Selous Game Reserve.) We'll end up in Zanzibar for a few days, before I return to the real-world (well, sort of) in Dodoma.

(by the way, you know the Travel section of the NY Times online? It's the section that focuses on fabulous getaways for the monied elite, and usually it just pisses me off- on a drizzly New York February morning, the last thing I want to read about is some beautiful new place for the weathy to spend money. That said, I had the cool surprise this morning of finding that Zanzibar is the profile of the week; you can read about it at http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/travel/11zanzibar.html?adxnnl=1&8hpib=&oref=login&adxnnlx=1134369582-l8uJAryWIiLTMYMCIok1PA
(and then feel free to heap abuse on me the next time I start bitching about how life is hard.)

I'll post as often as possible while I'm traveling, and would love to hear how your holidays are going as well. Hopefully, I'll finally be able to get some pictures up on this site too. Okay, take care,

kt