Sierra Nevada

The morning sun is shining on the Sierra Nevada range and the coast of Spain.

English pub

After hiking down the rock and back to town, nothing could be better than a pint in an English pub. We are in the UK after all.

Thursday, Gibraltar

Today we took the cable car to the top of Gibraltar. The views were amazing. It is such an improbable place. We hiked our way down back to town, along the way visiting caves, old military tunnels and finally an old Moorish castle dating back to the 1300's. By the way, the rock is inhabited by apes.

Groups sailing together

There are at least two groups of friends or acquaintances sailing together on this trip. The large group, consisting of 40 passengers, is from the Lido Yacht Club. There is also a small group of water color artists. In this photo they are working on the same sketch. They get guidance from an instructor and create paintings on board.

Thursday, Gibraltar

Today we will visit Gibraltar. It is an impressive site as we approach.

Wednesday, Seville

We visited the 3rd largest cathedral in the world, St Mary's, built over a 100+ year period starting in the early 1400's on the site of a previous Moorish mosque. We saw the palace built by Peter the First (aka Peter the Cruel) from the 1300's. We enjoyed some other quaint areas within the old medieval city area. And finally we visited the Spanish Square built in the 1900's.

Wednesday, Cadiz "football" bus

This morning we docked at Cadiz, Spain. We are going by bus on an excursion to Seville today. Our tour bus happens to double as Cadiz's pro soccer team's bus. It's very nice and includes wifi. We may get a lot of looks from passing motorists as our bus is in the team colors and displays the team crest.

Tuesday, Tangier, Morocco

Today we spent the afternoon shopping in Tangier for Moroccan souvenirs. We were "greeted" by many self-employed, self-described "guides". They were quite annoying but we do stand out as tourists. All in all we had a nice day and enjoyed the old city and views of the bay.  In the lower picture, if you look closely, you can see our ship docked at the pier. 

Disconnected

The ship is equipped with a high tech communication system. It provides cell service and wifi Internet thru satellite links. Unfortunately, it hasn't been working on this trip. I'm told that they recently installed a new satellite dish and that's the cause of the trouble. They are upgrading so that they don't have any blackout areas when they do their transatlantic trips, which is an issue with the old system. Apparently the new system isn't operational yet. They're "working on it."

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Tuesday sunrise

We departed Casablanca mid afternoon and travelled through the night northward toward Tangier. The Atlantic was rolling all night making sleep rather difficult. (The captain calls the weather a "swell".)  But this morning the sunrise over the coast of Africa is quite beautiful. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Crow's nest

Tuesday I climbed to the crow's nest. It's not that far up. Until you are making the climb. Then it seems to be very high. And you are glad to be wearing the mandatory safety harness as the ship sways and makes you think she's trying to toss you into the sea. Once up there, the feeling is spectacular. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Susan at work

Sometimes they invite passengers to hoist a sail. Here, Susan is one of a dozen people in a line pulling on a line to raise a sail. The pulling gets real tough as the sail goes up. With each pull, more of the sail is in the air and and off the ground and working against gravity. They allow passengers to do this for fun. Normally they use powered pulley systems to pull the lines to raise and lower the sails. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Monday, Casablanca cont.

After leaving the mosque, we then walked into the heart of the city and passed a number of little cafes where patrons drank (presumably) the local mint tea. We did pop into a little patisserie for some fabulous pastries - some odd little things with sesame seeds and jellies. We walked to the old cathedral. It is nothing fancy and is in disrepair. Our guidebook said it was only open for special occasions. Well, it was open for an art exhibit. We paid a small fee to the man at the door in order to climb the tower. Soon the steps narrowed and were full of pigeons and droppings. Susan (wisely) stopped at the first point it narrowed. Kyle went on to the top, clapping his hands along the way to scare away pigeons in advance. The views of the city at the top were quite nice. The minaret of the mosque is in the background and then the Atlantic (and haze) make up the backdrop. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Monday, Casablanca

Our ship docked in the port of Casablanca first thing Monday morning. Soon we were surrounded by three huge cruise ships. They dwarf our clipper ship. Casablanca is a big, busy city. We walked 30 minutes to the beautiful, huge Hassan II mosque on the coast. It holds 25,000 worshipers. We got to watch the retractable roof open. It was built in the '80s by the King and cost $800,000,000. After seeing it, the cost seems like a bargain. The photos don't do it justice. Susan is standing in front of one of the massive titanium doors in one photo to give perspective. And the minaret is 650' high. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Sewing 101

The ship is self sufficient. It even has its own industrial size sewing machine used for sail repairs. Just use the floor of the "Tropical Bar" in the morning when it's not busy. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Sunday, sails up

We set sail at 10pm Saturday night. The forecast is very clear and calm, which means we may not have winds to sail and will have to travel by engine power. But today as we make our way through the Straight of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic, we are sailing on wind power. Since the straight is relatively narrow, we see many huge freighters all around us in the distance.  We are enjoying the warm sun on deck and relaxing and reading. We will make our way around the northwest coast of Africa today and will be in Casablanca Monday morning. 

Sent from Kyle's AT&T iPhone

Sunday, day at sea. Beautiful day. Relaxing and reading in the sun. Internet satellite connection not working so can't post photos today. Hopefully tomorrow...

First Class seats (not for us)

We had to chuckle when we walked through the "First Class" section in our AirEuropa flight to Malaga. First Class is the same seating as the coach section except they mounted this tray gizmo on the middle seats and sell the aisle and window seats as First Class.

Paris

Welcome to Charles De Gaul airport in Paris. Perhaps the most disorganized, confusing, inefficient international airport in the world. And they speak French, too. But we've made it to our terminal and its time to board our flight to Spain.

Detroit to Paris

We dropped off Moshi at his sitter's home and have made our way to Detroit. We are ready to board our 8 hour flight to Paris. After a 2 hour layover we will have a 2.5 hour flight to Malaga, Spain. There we will board the Star Flyer. It was tough to leave Moshi behind but now we are anxious to get to Spain and our ship.

Star Clippers vacation

Saturday we board the Star Flyer in Malaga, Spain. We will visit Casablanca and Tangier in Morocco, Gibraltar, and Cadiz and Motril in Spain.

Vacation

We are excited to be getting ready for vacation but dread leaving Moshi behind for 9 days.

Annual July visit to St. Joseph, Michigan

Moshi's first trip to a beach. He's a beach dog, not a water dog.

Home with Moshi

Our trip home is complete now that we've picked up Moshi and brought him home. He's getting bigger!

Back home again

Mark demonstrated his happiness of being back to the Indy airport.

We have arrived in Amsterdam and will be departing shortly for Atlanta.

Nairobi airport

Last minute shopping before departure. Itinerary: Amsterdam, Atlanta, Indianapolis.

Elephant orphanage

We also visited the elephant orphanage in Nairobi. This place cares for young orphaned elephants until they are 3 or 4 years old. They provide health care as well as feeding them by bottle (formula) and/or tree branches every 3 hours. They spend each night in their individual pen where a caretaker also has a bunk and sleeps there so that they can do the feedings as scheduled.

At 5 pm each day they are headed from the fields to go back to their pens. Each goes straight to their own pen. They really do have great memories.

They are orphaned typically due to poachers killing their moms.

After they are a few years old, they are moved to Tsavo where they live in a group and start to integrate with their wild counterparts. By the time they are in their mid-teens, they leave for good and stay in the wild.

Here at the orphanage you can "adopt" one of the elephants by making a donation. They will then give you a packet of info and email you monthly updates. Susan and I adopted one and Chuck adopted another in the names of his daughters.

Giraffe center

Chuck, Susan and I visited the Giraffe Center in Nairobi this afternoon, where you can hand-feed giraffes from the platform viewing area.

Cessna safari

On the way back to Nairobi, Mike flew us over Amboseli National Park. He flew us nice and low. We saw elephants, buffalo, ostriches, zebras, antelope, hippos , and giraffes. It was a very cool experience.

Bush pilot

This is Mike, our bush pilot who flew us from Nairobi to Grogan's Castle and back over the last few days. He's a character right out of a novel. He seems to be a bit of a hot-head with a short temper. He had a week-old shiner on his right eye. He had other recent battle scars, including obvious bite marks on an arm and a leg. Supposedly these injuries were caused by his girl friend. Anyway, he was a great pilot who flew us safely

Friday morning view of Mt. Kilimanjaro

River flowing over the road

River flowing over the road before we crossed it and mudded Mark.

Crazy day Thursday

Our excursion today was to go to Moshi town, Tanzania. We were expecting a visa fee of $50. But to our surprise the fee for Americans and Irish is $100. Why? Tit-for-tat as they say. Apparently the US charges tanzanians $100. We decided to go ahead and pay. We are glad we did. Tanzania is very different. It's more developed and cleaner. The main roads are paved, smooth, and wide. We had a nice lunch, a nice visit to The Coffee Shop, and a little walk around part of the downtown. After a few hours, it started to rain. It has rained hard late every afternoon. So we headed back to Kenya. Back to Kenya in the rain means back to dirt roads, floods, and washouts. We had one incident where the road was flooded. Vicky, our proprietor and driver, listened to some kids and went straight through the middle. The Nissan stalled. She offered the kids a bit of money to push us. They weren't getting it done so Mark jumped in the water to help. I asked Vicky to keep it in first and walk it out using the starter. With all these things, we got it out of the water and it started again. Then, on the more narrow road to the castle, we came up to a crowd of people, motorcycles and bikes. There was a place in the road where it is low and made of concrete. It is designed to have water flow over it with heavy rains. It was like a river flowing over the road. One person was helping to drive the motorcycles across. He was also helping bicycles across. We watched all this for a while and Vicky decided we should go for it. (this washout pictured.) First Mark decided to walk across, through the water, to the cheers of the locals. We made it across. Vicky slowed while ascending the other side. At that time Mark approached from behind. Charles told Vicky not to stop until she made it up the slight ascent. She accelerated. The tires spun in the mud. Mark was behind. He got splattered. (Pictured.) It was hilarious. We are again laughing about it as I write this. But we made it back safe and sound to the castle once again. We are now cleaned up and ready for another wonderful dinner.

Coffee Shop in Moshi town. This seems to be where the wazungu, or whites, hang out.  No. 1 in Moshi per Trip Advisor. 

One beer and Mark went for a Tanzania dip in the pool of the hotel we visited for lunch. 

Beers in Tanzania. 3 out of 3 Americans prefer Serengeti Lager. Unfortunately, 2 out of 3 purchased Kilimanjaro Lager. Chuck got lucky with his choice. 

Moshi town, Tanzania

Today we are hoping to cross the border and visit Moshi, Tanzania. Why? Because it's there.