Happy Holidays from snowy Scotland

Dear Currier,

We wish you all a wonderful Holiday and a very Happy New Year. We hope that with exams over you can relax and enjoy this richly deserved break.
We are also enjoying a break - one in the winter weather which has grounded us on the West Coast for 2 weeks. Cold is predicted to return in a few days but we hope that the airports will stay open so our kids can join us for Christmas. We are really looking forward to a rare chance to spend the holidays with our UK family and there will be 16 of us sitting down to Christmas dinner this year.
We are setting of for Uganda in early January so the next posting will be from somewhere a lot warmer.
With best wishes
Elizabeth and Richard

Fall in Scotland

The view from our house

Torridon Mountains from Gairloch

Lots of wonderful beach walks

Badachro

We have settled in for the next 2 months in the little village of Badachro on the Gairloch in northwest Scotland. We are so far north- opposite the northern end of Skye -  that it does not get light until 8 a.m and is dark by 5. Long quiet evenings give us lots of time for thinking and writing so we are getting plenty of work done.  But we are also taking advantage of the gaps between rain and gales to do lots of birdwatching. The light from the low sun at this time of year is magical, the colors wonderful and  the views breathtaking.

Barra likes Scotland too!

Bird watching with the island of Skye behind

Hope you all have great Thanksgiving - we will certainly miss the pumpkin pie this year.

Summer Travels

Richard in our new Kayak with the Torridon hills behind

In front of the house in Scotland

 Dear Currier, We have been very dilatory about our promise to keep you all up-to-date with what we are up to on our sabbatical. The days just whiz by. We are both so busy writing and traveling and Richard has been giving lots of talksOur plans to spend the summer in Uganda had to be changed at the last minute but we had a good time visiting our family house in the north west of Scotland instead.
Richard spent a week at the International Primate Society meetings in Japan in September and then we went off to Tanzania for 3 weeks leading a trip to Gombe to celebrate the 50th Anniversary  of Jane Goodall's arrival at this famous chimpanzee research site.
Richard did his PhD research here in the early 1970's and was delighted to find a few old friends, both human, and chimpanzee still around.

The  site of the Homo Habilis skull

Before Gombe we had a wonderful trip through the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro crater seeing terrific wildlife but for Richard the highlight of the trip (even more exciting than seeing the place in Ujiji where Stanley greeted  Livingstone with the famous words "Dr. Livingstone I presume) was the cement post in Olduvai Gorge that marked the site where the Leakey's uncovered the fossilized skull of Homo Habilis - the first human ancestor that Richard believes used fire.

On the way to school, Stone Town, Zanzibar

The trip ended with 4 days in Zanzibar - an enchanting place with a rich if sometimes brutal history. It is here that, for centuries, slaves captured in Central Africa by African and Arab slavers were shipped to Arabia and the far East. The mix of cultures; Arab, Swahili, European, Indian and East Asian which grew from trade routes between Africa and China operating since the 14th Century makes it a wonderful place to visit and the food is great. Zanzibar for us Brits is full of fascination as the starting point for many explorations of East and Central Africa by Europeans. Livingstone, Stanley, Burton and Speke all began their journeys across Africa from Zanzibar.