Hi!

Welcome to the newsletter.

Welcome!

Normally I'd do a blog while travelling, but posting stuff on the public internet feels increasingly gross these days, so I'm kinda trying something new with this.

So thanks for signing up to join me on this adventure! Both the Africa adventure, and the newsletter adventure. It's great to have you.

Alternatively, thanks for humouring me as I shoved my sign-up form in your face. There's an unsubscribe link at the bottom. I promise I won't judge you if you use it.

Proof of life

First things first: We made it to Nairobi! Via Dubai, and thus Starbucks:

We're taking a guided tour through Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, with a fair bit of overland driving and roughing it in tents.

That kicks off quite early tomorrow, but we've been able to take today to attend to some essential tasks. Like catching up on sleep, and checking in with our tour group. And -

Seeing Some Giraffes

We booked this trip about a year ago for a whole bunch of reasons.

If you've asked us why we booked this trip in the last few months, you may have heard a couple of different reasons.

We had the post-COVID itchy feet. It's somewhere we'd both never been. We were looking forward to not having to make any decisions, and it was somewhere we'd have wanted a guided tour anyway.

We, quite frankly, if you wanted to get real deep, had a shit couple of years.

But the glib one liner that nonetheless cuts to the heart of what we were trying to achieve, was that we wanted to See Some Giraffes.

Well folks, in an incredible display of efficiency, on our first day in Kenya, before we've even started the tour, I'm pleased to declare Mission Accomplished on Project: See Some Giraffes:

I don't have a lot of deep reflections on the giraffes, except to say that they are quite gorgeous up close. I think it's the eyelashes.

Stoked, thrilled, humbled to be chalking up a win like that so early in the trip. Real step up from that 2018 trip to See Some Aurora, on which I saw no Aurora. Really makes me wonder where we go from here.

Oh right - a literal safari.

Wild.

Don't be a stranger

I reckon our connectivity may be a little spotty (see: aforementioned safari) and the timezone is kind of a sucker too - but the real neat thing about email is that it's really good at just sitting there til you're ready to deal with it.

(Don't tell my boss that's my attitude though.)

So while we'll be online and texting where we can, I'd also like to invite you to smash that like reply button and send us an email back. I'd love to see something nice in my inbox for once.

See you soon,

Rocky (and Grace.)