We’ve all made it safe and sound back to Seattle, Lyanda and Claire on Monday and me on Thursday. We’re home to the Blue Angels, an overgrown and abundant yard, and the spirited welcome of friends and family (including banners!). Thanks to all of you who kept us blogging with your encouraging comments and e-mails, and to those of you who pitched in to help care for our house, our work, our cat, our blog, and so on.

What a trip! It was truly a life-changer, with lots of deep experiences, new friendships, and plenty to ponder about travel, Africa, poverty, hope, development, conservation, and more, food for thought and conversation and reflection in the months and years to come. In the next week or two we will write a list of specific travel recommendations and ideas for future travelers who want to visit the same places we did, based on our experiences in coastal Kenya, on safari, in the Usambara and Uluguru mountains, and in Zanzibar. In addition, I’m re-organizing the blog a bit to make it work better as an archive, and we’ll leave it up for future reference. If you want to see all of our photos, on the Flickr.com site, follow this link, and you can click on individual images or see a slide show online.

And we have our next trip to start thinking about and planning - we’re thinking neo-tropical rainforest. Belize? Costa Rica? Amazon?!? The next adventure awaits!