Sorong, December 13th,
2017
Once again the earth has rotated
365 times on its axis and completed one more revolution of the sun, and the
Christmas and New Year holidays are rapidly approaching, providing a good
chance to look back over what has been an eventful, emotional year.
2017 began for Terri and me in a
lovely campground in northeastern South Africa in our beloved pickup truck
Stanley, having just left Swaziland. We
didn’t even manage to remain awake until midnight on Dec. 31st! We started the New Year with a swing through
KwaZulu-Natal: the wonderful
imFolozi-Hluhluwe National Park, the battlefields soaked with blood, history
and myth and the lovely Drakensberg. We
were plagued by rain, though, and eventually we decided to make a break for it
away from the persistent rain. We made
it across the Orange Free State, then dashed across breathtaking high-altitude
Lesotho to Port Elizabeth. We had
transmission issues to deal with there, but we weren’t able to resolve them on
the spot, so we drove north without a functioning 4WD, topping up the oil in
Stanley’s transfer case, to revisit the magical Kalahari, this time on the
South African side of the border. We
camped for a few days at Leeuwpan in perfect isolation under the stars,
visiting the impossibly cute meerkats of Meerkat Manor by day and braaing meat
over the coals of our fire by night. 
We
also stopped into the South African side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park,
where we couldn’t get a reservation at one of the magical wilderness campsites,
but where our daytrips into the park yielded a rich haul of lions and our first
cheetahs in 8 months, along with a big gaggle of baby ostriches and plenty of
tortoises.
From there, it was time to head
to the country that most travellers, including ourselves, find the crown jewel
of southern Africa: Namibia. We fell in love with this country: its huge empty spaces, its stark desert
beauty, its remote corners and its wildlife. We moved relatively quickly through the country’s south, past its iconic
Sossusvlei dunes and its flamingo-studded coastal metropolis of Waalvisbaai to
the capital, Windhoek, where we watched Roger Federer win the Australian Open,
and booked Stanley in for major surgery before heading north to Etosha, its
most famous national park. 
Etosha did
not disappoint, despite apocalyptic rain that had us wondering about the wisdom
of driving around the muddy tracks in two-wheel drive. Encounters with hyenas and rarely-seen
aardwolves were among the highlights, but soon enough we were back in Windhoek,
dropping off Stanley at the Gearbox and Diff Doctor and hoping for the best.
We flew to Johannesburg in the
middle of February to do a week’s work running a tour in and around Kruger
National Park. It was hectic but fun,
and we flew back to Windhoek with a bit of spending money for the last few
weeks of our tour. Stanley had been repaired,
expensively but expertly, and we put him through his paces driving along a
series of slightly hair-raising desert tracks in the northwest of the
country. We drove a little-used track
through a completely uninhabited desert that gave us several nights of
unforgettable camping under the desert stars next to a crackling campfire. 
Neither of us were huge fans of deserts in
the past, but Namibia converted us to the wonder of arid landscapes. We saw many signs of the desert rhinos that
roam this area, but we were never lucky enough to spot them. Eventually we headed north to the Cunene
River along the border with Angola for some birdwatchingm spending time with the flamboyantly adorned Himba people along the way. 
The drive out through a torrential downpour,
along a clay track glassy with slick mud, was the most white-knuckle driving of
all of Stanley’s Travels, and I have rarely been so glad to see pavement as I
was when we reached asphalt at the end of a long, tense day.
We drove east along the Kavango
River, heading once again towards Livingstone, Zambia, and it was on the way
that we were robbed in a campground in the town of Rundu, costing us a couple
of pairs of binoculars and my entire camera setup. I was gutted, but at least I still had the
photos. Saddened, we continued on to
Livingstone and one final visit to the Olive Tree Learning Centre, Terri’s
ongoing project for the past decade. It
was heartening to see the new classrooms, built the year before, in use, and to
see so much positive energy in the staff and the students. Then, sadly, it was time for the long drive
back to Windhoek, via lovely Ngepi Camp and its birdlife, and via a couple of
last bush campsites. In the middle of
March we parked Stanley in a storage facility near Windhoek airport and headed
our separate ways, Terri off to see family in New Zealand and then on to Bali,
and me back to Thunder Bay to help care for my father as he battled cancer.
I had expected to find my father
frail and bed-ridden after his thyroid surgery, but instead he picked me up at
the airport and drove us back to the house.
He was in remarkable shape and spirits, and it seemed plausible that he
could recover from the surgery and live many more years to come. I devoted myself to writing blog posts and brewing beer for the first time in a decade, as well as to playing tennis, convinced that my services would ultimately not be needed. Sadly, though, the pathology report after his
surgery revealed anaplasty, a rare, highly aggressive and universally lethal
form of thyroid cancer, and although he started his radiation treatment feeling
well and riding his bicycle to and from the sessions at the hospital, within a
week the anaplastic tumour overtook him and he began a rapid decline. 
My sisters flew in to see him before he got
too bad, as did my cousin Hein (all the way from the Netherlands for only 4 days!) and we had poignant final games of cards and Scrabble. My mother flew up from Ottawa to help me take
care of my father over the final few weeks, and the end eventually came on June
27th, a little over three months after my arrival in town. It was sad to see the end of my father, who
had always been a tower of physical strength, but at least it was mercifully
quick. 
The funeral, on July 7th,
was a surreal affair, and soon gave way to the herculean task of cleaning out
the house that had 46 years of accumulated possessions crammed in every nook
and cranny. One of the few edifying
results of all this labour was finding old photo albums that we hadn’t seen in
decades, if at all, and digitizing them for posterity. It was fascinating to see my father’s life
illustrated with pictures, and enlivened the otherwise grim task of getting rid
of books, furniture, clothing, papers and even our beloved upright piano. Finally, at the end of July, my mother and I
closed the door on an empty house and drove my father’s car, hauling a full
U-Haul, to Ottawa. The trip provided
closure for me on Thunder Bay, which had always been my anchor in an otherwise
very itinerant life, and I have to confess that I felt a little adrift.
At the beginning of August, only
a week after getting to Ottawa, I flew to Indonesia, where I’ve been for the
remainder of 2017. Terri owns a house in
Lipah, on the northeast corner of Bali, overlooking the ocean, steps from the
beach and great diving, and I spent the next three months diving, eating well,
getting back into shape and writing. I
am now almost finished the manuscript of a travel book about my Silk Road
bicycle trip, and although I wish I were already done, I feel as though the
past few months have been spent in the perfect antidote to those months spent
watching my father’s final decline. 
I
bought an underwater camera in October and spent the next month learning to use
it as Terri and I dived most days. It
was an idyllic existence, and my only regret is that I didn’t entirely finish
the book, although only about one-eighth of the journey remains to be written
about. I hope to finish it off over the
next few months.
We had a steady stream of friends
visit over our time in Lipah, and it was great to take them all diving. Terri had just finished her Divemaster course
and had learned all the divesites in the area, and was a marvellous guide. Soon, however, Mount Agung, the 3000-metre
volcano overlooking Lipah, began to rumble into life and our friends (and all
other tourists) began to give Lipah a wide berth. 
Terri went to Switzerland in
early November, and I headed to Gili Trawangan in mid-November to do my scuba
instructor course. I liked the other
students on the course and had fun, although the course was a bit stressful at
times and I thought for a while that I had failed my Instructor Examination (I
hadn’t). I didn’t much care for over-commercialized,
overpriced and rather tatty Gili T in comparison to our genteel lifestyle in
Lipah, though, and it was a relief to return to Lipah (if only for a single
night) two days ago.
While I was on Gili T, I accepted
a volunteer job teaching diving in Raja Ampat, the diving hotspot of far
eastern Indonesia which I visited in 2014, just off the western tip of New Guinea, and Terri accepted a
position running the volunteer camp on Arborek Island. I am on my way to Arborek today to start
work, and we hope to be here over Christmas, New Year’s and the first few
months of 2018, dividing our time between diving and community work (mostly
teaching in the local schools). It
promises to be a new, challenging adventure for us: just what Terri and I like best!
So I hope that 2017 was good to
you and those you hold dear, and that 2018 will prove even better. I don’t know what the upcoming year will
bring, other than my 50th birthday and further adventures, but I
look forward to finding out. For me 2017 was a sobering year, with my father's demise bringing home to me the impermanence and fragility of human existence, and making me determined to make the most of the time we have.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,
Season’s Greetings and a huge hug to all of you, and I hope that our paths
cross somewhere in the world in the upcoming year.
Graydon and Terri
