April, May, June and July - Part 2

May took me to Mozambique for ten days to attend a USAID conference. I had the great joy of traveling with one of my work colleagues, Pam, who always makes everything fun. While we were mainly in a hotel for most of the time, we did spend one day exploring Maputo (a somewhat run down formerly glorious African city with wide boulevards and crumbling buildings but a city that is humming nonetheless with countless cranes on the horizon and astronomical real estate prices) and another day on a beautiful, outrageous catamaran - just the two of us sailing out to a couple of islands and back with Maputo Yachting. Talk about living it up (and no tax payer money involved here!) We ended up being boarded by pirates...but that's another story! Needless to say, I loved being back on African soil - even for a short time!

Pam!

First A380 ride leaving London

Sunrise view from the hotel looking out on the Indian Ocean

Hotel and Pool

Hotel Veranda

Maputo Street

Mines and other explosives on display at the fort

Front of the Railway station

Inside the railway station

Our ship for the day...

The other way we could have sailed to the island...

We ended up "rescuing" 40 people from the wooden 'pirate' ship you see on the horizon when it got stuck on a sand bar

Another view of the ship

Returning to Maputo at sunset

Conference in progress...

The weekend after returning from Mozambique, Andrea and I caught the train up to New Haven, Connecticut for her brother's graduation from Yale. It was fun (and so easy and cheap) to go by train and to be present to celebrate Matt's accomplishment(s).

Duncan