Another trip, another post! It has been just under one month since I have returned from Colorado, but it feels more like a year. I’ve always known I love to travel and thrive from it but this just proves that my case of Wanderlust is growing more extreme and there’s only one cure for it… more […]
Snapshots: Cabo San Lucas
When the man that scans your boarding pass at your airlines gate is wearing a San Francisco Giants sombrero, you know you’re in for a good week! Mid August the Bates family departed on a long awaited family vacation to Baja California! We stayed at the stunning Hacienda Del Mar just outside Cabo San Lucas […]
Gas Stations & Guard Rails | Disposable Camera Challenge Pt. 2
At some point in life everyone has to take a good ol’ American road trip, right? Well I can check that off the bucket list now! After spending the summer on opposite coasts, my best friend and I (accompanied by a mountain bike and disposable camera) crossed through five states to get her back to Colorado […]
Kwaheri, Kenya!
Whenever I talk about going to or having been to Kenya, the responses I receive in return are a bit jumbled. There’s a lot of “wow!” and inquiries about safety, as well as the occasional “oh cool…and where’s that?”. Maybe it’s just on my radar more-so than others because my friend Zaneta lives there, but […]
Kazuri Beads | Opportunity in Creativity
Kazuri: a Swahili word that translates to “something small and beautiful” Kazuri Beads: a factory that provides regular employment to local village women, many of who are single mothers Located on what used to be part of Karen Blixen’s Estate (aka Meryl Streep in Out Of Africa), is a small factory started by Regina Newman […]
Disposable Camera Challenge | Kenya Edition
Being a photography student, I pretty much have to believe that film is not dead. It has an intriguing air of mystery to it, now that we live in a digital world. With no way to see the pictures until trusting someone to correctly develop them for you, you don’t know exactly what images you […]
Animal Expedition | My Safari Stay
I previously posted on The Big Five you see while on a safari, so now I will elaborate on the whole safari experience! With a large list of national and private parks to choose from, we went to the Maasai Mara in the Rift Valley, approximately a six hour drive from Nairobi, where we stayed with […]
The Perks of Sponsoring an Elephant
As if visiting The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and seeing orphaned elephant calves could get any cooler, it did. One of the privileges you receive in return for “fostering” an orphan is getting to visit the Trust after hours and watch as the calves are brought in for the night and fed! The elephant I sponsored as […]
Meeting the Maasai
While on safari in the Maasai Mara, it seemed only right to make a visit to a Maasai village and learn about their culture. First off, I think the cow pies front and center in the picture above need to be addressed. To the Maasai, the cow is everything. They breed, raise, herd, eat and […]
The Big Five | My Safari Stay
When on a safari, there are the notorious “Big Five” you hope to see: leopard, lion, buffalo, elephant and rhino. Why only five? These animals got their high rankings from being the most difficult to hunt on foot (back when that was legal). Unfortunately the rhinos succeeded in staying camouflaged in the brush so we were […]
World Watching 