365saturdays.org

What are the main themes to share, after traveling for a year around the world and visiting 32 countries? The most obvious point is that travel is one of life’s most important and pleasurable activities.  This year we experienced and shared amazing sights, delicious tastes, new stories, the growth and broadening of our perspectives in […]

  Great choice! You are in for the adventure of a lifetime.  Let us share some lessons to make it easier:  Planning 365 Days, What You Really, Really Need in Your Suitcase, Packing for Men, Health on the Road, Packing – the Technology.  You can also look back HERE to see a detailed retrospective of the […]

Piggy came HOME!

Camryn (my age), Maggie (6), Jill (Mom) and Chris (Dad) Woods made our last days in Paris awesome. The parents chatted about endless super boring stuff while the kids played tons of games. The Woods were spending their summer in London and took a two hour train to meet us. We both stayed on the […]

After finishing up the African mainland, the 365 trip around the world was nearly complete.   It was a bit tedious to get out of Nairobi because the airport staff were on a “slowdown” strike and the lines stretched for hours.  Happily we left plenty of time and the flight over is a quick one. We had reserved […]

After such a long trip, Piggy is relaxing on which island in the Seychelles?  Hint:  it’s the biggest one Send your guess by email to katherine@365saturdays.org

Safari is the most special form of travel we encountered.  It brings you to the edge:  remote location, special field equipment, expert guidance, real personal risk, high daily cost.  In return you are guaranteed a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  You escape from civilization and travel back to see nature the way it was centuries ago, before mankind […]

Imagine an ivy-clad turn-of-the –century colonial manor house surrounded by acres of unspoiled land.  Inside, you can take tea in the drawing room by the fire or settle in for a lovely breakfast beside the windows overlooking the grounds.  Next, imagine a 17’ tall giraffe strolls up and sticks his head inside the breakfast room, […]

One of the coolest parts of safari is learning how to track animals.  Our first few safaris we just sat back and watched the guide search, sometimes for hours.  After a while though, we realized we were missing a lot of action and we started asking tons of questions.  For those who like puzzles, tracking […]

The last stop on our safari journey was Sarara, a gorgeous lodge tucked away in the heart of the Matthews Range north of Mount Kenya.  We had six full nights here, plenty of time to view the abundant wildlife and to learn about the Samburu people to whom these lands belong.  The camp is the […]

There are only 20,000 of the Samburu people living in Northern Kenya.  They are distant cousins of the Maasai and they are nomadic herders.  Since they live in a remote area their culture has remained mostly untouched.  They believe that cameras capture their soul so photography is strictly forbidden unless they work at the lodge […]

Most people think you can’t fish in the middle of the desert in Kenya. You can, of course. Just not for fish. The first type of fishing we were introduced to was fishing for scorpions. To do this you took a long stick, preferably alive as they eat alive things, and chew on one end. […]

In Kenya people have really pretty teeth. That’s because there’s a common tree that grows in the bush called the tooth brush tree. It has long white branches that when broken off create a tooth brush. You peel away the bark and it reveals a green tube. Then chew one end and it will become […]

E.O. Wilson would love this corner of Africa.  In our first few days in northern Kenya we have seen creatures great and small, including three distinct and fascinating species of ants. The first was the safari ant.  We had just arrived at Lewa and our guide Simon was coaxing the Land Rover across a shallow […]

Wildlife While at the incredibly hospitable and very enjoyable Lewa Camp we had the luck to see several uncommon and even rare sightings. On the ride from the airport to the camp we saw both WHITE and BLACK rhinocerous and even a baby rhino nursing.  It was incredible. We even saw the black rhino push […]

 On our horse safari we saw a baby giraffe. He was young, so young that there was still an umbilical cord attached to his stomach. He ran away as soon as we got a few yards away but his mom stayed put until a few feet away. Let me back up. Horse safaris were popular […]

Piggy was in Kenya when she saw this special zebra that is rarer than the black rhino.  There are about 2000 left alive.  It is very big and has lots and lots of stripes.  Can you figure out what kind of zebra it is and whether she is in North Kenya or South Kenya? Email your […]

If you are of a certain age, you may recall a Sunday evening ritual from your youth:  watching The Wide World of Animals in full Technicolor on TV while wearing your fuzzy footy pajamas and munching Jiffy-Pop popcorn.  I remember sitting mesmerized as images of lions in full pursuit of field upon field of migrating […]

In my opinion the top animals in the crater are zebras and monkeys. The Crater is a huge 2000 foot deep hole. It’s also a great safari setting because lots of animals moved there for better food. There are thousands of zebras and monkeys and I’ve decided that, along with cows, they are the subject […]

I see Maasai! The Maasai are a tribe in Africa. The Maasai (Mah-Sigh) have many interesting customs and we were lucky enough to get to learn about them up close. Just a few days ago we visited a Maasai village. We were outside a massive crater made by a collapsing volcano; the technical term is […]

In Tanzania, Piggy visited an ancient gorge near a crater and saw footprints over three million years old!    Can you guess the name of the gorge and the crater? Email your guess to katherine@365saturdays.org

While in Soweto, we learned Michelle Obama would be there the next day, making a speech at the famous Regina Mundy church. This is the place where Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached and where many key events occurred in the Soweto uprisings. In the most famous, at a time when all of the ANC leadership had […]

Back when the British were first colonizing Africa, gold was discovered in what is now the area of Johannesburg. Upon further mining, it was realized that there was a massive vein of the precious metal and that more workers would be needed to harvest it all. People came in the thousands. Chinese, Europeans, Africans, everyone […]

  From the Okavanga Delta we flew to a city on the edge of Botswana and made the border crossing into Zimbabwe by car.  The contrast was immediate.  Botswana is one of the best and most efficient African countries, with an average income of $14K.  Zimbabwe has been torn apart by war and has an […]

Can you guess which natural wonder Piggy is visiting in Zimbabwe? Send your guess in an email to katherine@365saturdays.org!

The Okavango Delta is a unique place. It floods in the dry season and dries out in the wet season. What’s up with that? We arrived in the dry season and our car had to SWIM most of the time. Anyway, I recently got a birding book and have been attempting to cross off as […]

The Okavango Delta literally overflows with life.  The flooded plains and surrounding forests are home to an incredible number of animals we usually only associate with National Geographic specials.  Among the twenty-three distinct mammal and countless bird species we saw, we were awed by the big guys:  the African elephants –who are much larger than […]

Giraffes are one of the main animals in both the Kalahari and the Okavango delta (the camp we’re in). Normally Mom’s animal is the giraffe and mine the elephant but I wanted to write about something else so my mom generously agreed to let me borrow her animal. When we first saw a giraffe we […]

Piggy was visiting some cousins on safari in Botswana.  They dug up roots with their noses, raced with zebras, and found seeds in the elephant droppings.  But she was worried when she saw this predator’s track: Where is she in Botswana?  And for extra credit, what predator made the track? Send an email to me at katherine@365saturdays.org and […]

When you are a Bushman, you have to know how to live off the land.  We took a walk with some Bushmen to learn about the wild life of the Kalahari Desert. We learned how to hunt, and to recognize some useful plants and their properties, along with some other valuable survival skills. My mom […]

This was my brother’s catch phrase. So much in fact, that he was eventually banned from saying the words. But he really was justified. In the Kalahari Desert there were tons of animals to see. And before we came Mom gave me a book where I could cross off all the animals we saw. The […]

From Capetown we took a short flight to Durbin.  We stayed outside the city on Salt Beach, near the borders of the Zulu nation.  The Zulus are the largest African tribe in South Africa – 8.5 million people out of 48 million in the country.  The current President is a Zulu.  The Zulus live in […]

The drums pulsed a steady beat as the warriors filed past. In keeping with Zulu tradition, female visitors were seated on the left and men on the right (all the better to defend the kraal and its occupants, should the sudden need arise). Our eyes attempted to adjust to the dim light inside but it […]

I don’t know what I had in mind when I imagined eating in Africa.  I hadn’t really given it much thought. If I had been asked to speculate I would have guessed that the cuisine would be simple dishes consisting mostly of sweet potatoes, rice, and other starches.  I certainly never thought we’d be eating […]

An iron door sealed us in.  We were locked into a large empty cement room.  A thin, spectacled black man stepped forward. “You are here for a short visit, but I was locked in this prison for nine years.  I was sent here by the white South African government because I had joined the military […]

“Strap on your helmets…3..2..1…GO!” Katherine and Russell, aka Team White, were off with a roar. Carter and I, Team Blue, had to wait 5 minutes before we could take off—in our super cool sidecar! We are about to embark on an Amazing Race through Cape Town. Each team would have to complete a series of […]

We meet Cany the host and Riaan the cook Also Willem and Nicholas who show us things at which to look We see cooking utensils and pots and pans galore There are so many ingredients there can’t possibly be any more The recipes, knifes, and spoons are laid out on the table There are two […]

We reached the Cape of Good Hope a few days ago. This is the farthest southwest point of Africa and it is among the lowest latitudes we had planned for our 365 Saturdays (Australia and New Zealand were the others). The Cape was a real hazard for sailors trying to make their way to India. […]

Piggy just arrived in South Africa and went to the edge of the country.  Can you guess the famous location where she is?  There are several clues in this picture.  Email your guess to me at katherine@365saturdays.org

I pet a cheetah yesterday. His name was Chobee. He weighed about as much as me, and I sat next to him and pet him. It was super cool. He even purred, in the cheetah’s deep rumbling way. This was is in Cape Town at the Cheetah Outreach Center. Before we petted Chobee we had […]