Ashlynn Has a Visitor...

The day after Ashlynn returned, Gabi arrived from London for three nights. Ashlynn and Gabi met via Instagram after they were both scouted by IMG and became online friends. Unfortunately, Ashlynn was still sick from Africa for the first two days, so Gabi went off exploring on her own.

On Gabi’s final day, Ashlynn was feeling better and went along to Utrecht where they met up with two other IMG girls: Alyssa (who’s also signed with Dune along with Ashlynn) and Immy.

The girls enjoyed renting a pedal boat to explore the city from the water.

Our Adventurers Return...

Two days after Jimmy and I returned from England, Ashlynn returned from Tanzania. She was all smiles for this photo, but she was actually sick, having come down with a bug on her final day at camp. Poor kid vomited at the airport, but luckily was still allowed to fly. She was feeling much better once she saw her puppy.

Four days later we went back to Schiphol to meet Veronica. It was such a relief to have both our girls home safe and sound. And as you already saw, they both had fantastic trips.

Ashlynn’s Nudibranch Report and Interview...

My apologies, but I forgot to include this photo of Ashlynn’s new favorite sea creature: the nudibranch. Often erroneously called a sea slug, nudibranchs are soft-bodied molluscs which shed their shells. Personally, I’d never heard of them, but learned a lot in the blog entry that Ashlynn wrote for Frontier.

On a separate note, while we were in California in April, Ashlynn was invited to do a photo shoot for Florum Fashion Magazine, an online eco fashion magazine. I posted the results of the shoot in June on this blog after photographer Stephen Sun released the photos to us. Just this week, the interview itself was published and you can find it here.

More of Mafia Island...

Unfortunately, Ashlynn didn’t have a chance to help write these blog entries, so we’ll have to settle with some beautiful photos with no explanations.

Final words from Ashlynn: Same same, but different.

Frontier Tanzania...

When Ashlynn found out that Veronica was going to a marine conservation volunteer program over the summer, she was determined to do the same. She was too young to attend Veronica’s program, but she managed to find a program that allowed volunteers as young as 16. So, five days after Veronica left for Africa, Ashlynn did the same. I completely freaked out the night before she left when I learned that Dar es Salaam, where Ashlynn would be spending her first night in Tanzania, is one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

Luckily, Ashlynn had no problems. She was picked up by a taxi driver arranged through Frontier, the non-profit tour organizer, and taken to a youth hostel where she had her own room. The following morning, she was brought to the airport where she boarded this plane to Mafia Island, where she’d be camping for the next month.

Both girls enjoyed beautiful waterfront settings, but that’s where the similarities ended. Whereas Veronica was staying in relative luxury in a guesthouse with electricity, running water and a chef, Ashlynn was camping in a primitive camp with no electricity, running water or Internet.

She quickly adapted to pooping in a bucket and loved being offline, although she did send a few texts so we knew she was OK.

She was the youngest volunteer, but had no problem fitting in with the older volunteers or the kids from the local school.

She dove nearly daily, which she loved! In addition to obtaining her Advanced Open Water certification, she continued with her training to get her Rescue Diver and Emergency First Responder certifications—she may be the youngest in our family, but she is now the most advanced diver.

Apparently Ashlynn was very lucky when it came to food during her stay at Frontier as not only was everything naturally vegan (hard to deal with dairy products without refrigeration), but there was a lot more variety than normal since the camp leader refused to eat only beans and rice as is often the case.

Waterfalls and Canyons...

Instead of spending another day in the safari park, we had a guided tour around the surrounding areas. 

We visited a viewpoint over the Blyde River Canyon, one of the largest canyons in the world. As you can see, the views over the landscape were incredible.

Here I am with some of my best friends from the Mozambique trip: Daisy, Charlotte and Shelly. We were dressed warmly as it was winter in South Africa; the mornings were especially cold. 

Lisbon Falls—the tallest waterfall in the region at 308 feet (94 meters)—was absolutely stunning, especially with the beautiful sunlight glinting off the water. 

I enjoyed playing around with long shutter speed at these smaller waterfalls. 

All-in-all, the 5.5 weeks I spent in Africa was truly an incredible time exploring a new and beautiful part of the world, meeting many like-minded people, and having lots of opportunities for taking photos.

More Safari Adventures...

One of the baby giraffes we saw on our bush walk

The baby zebra was adorable!

Our driver got us so close to this elephant that I thought he might charge at the vehicle. I actually had to switch to my wider angle lens to get photos of the whole elephant as we were too close for me to use my zoom lens. 

After the sun had set on our first game drive, we came upon a group of elephants. I love this photo with the elephant in the front and the African starry skies behind.