One of the things I love about travel is the increased openness I feel to see and respond to daily opportunities. Travel is an invitation to spontaneity. It is a chance to live how we would like to live if we didn’t feel too busy to do so. In this way it also reminds us to dust off the interests and passions that we have allowed to lay dormant and to live more fully by focusing again on what we love.

Pouring over lists of hostels last week my only concern was to find a place to stay somewhere in between Crater Lake and Lassen Volcanic National Park. Realizing that I would probably leave Crater Lake in the evening I thought it might be nice to have a place to crash after a few days of camping. I also love hostels and jump at opportunities to discover new ones. Finding a hostel in Ashland, Oregon looked perfect for my route.

Visiting the wonderful Noble Coffee Shop in Ashland, Oregon I decided to try something new and ordered the “Siphon Service.” This alternate process for making coffee is not only intriguing to watch but it also produces the cleanest cup of coffee you will ever taste! Here is a video that demonstrates the process!

I am taking a road trip all the way up and back down California, with the possibility of a little Oregon mixed in. Nearing the end of graduate school I began planning this road trip with great expectation. Sporting a new camera I have now set out to explore the “rest of California” that I have yet to visit!

During my first day of driving I took a different route to Monterey than I normally take. Traveling up 5 North and exiting at Jayne Avenue, I took 98 over to 101. The scenery along 98 is absolutely gorgeous. This particular mountain took my breath away! I will be adding ongoing photo updates to my new Tumblr blog as well at www.andyjohnson.tumblr.com/

I met President Barak Obama’s grandmother in a village in Kenya. She is a gracious 86 year-old woman who says that she loves receiving the visitors that her grandson’s fame brings her way. My Kenyan friends met her several years ago and wanted to take me to meet her. Realizing how unique this opportunity was I readily agreed. While pulling up to the front gate of her home, I did not know what to expect. On the one hand it seemed that she should have a better situation than most for this area of Kenya but on the other maybe it was fitting that her humble home and life fit so naturally into her local context.

They say that home is where the heart is but my heart is in many places. I guess this means that my home is where I reside among the hospitable. I have now been adopted by two Kenyan families. Meet my lovely Luo family as you accompany me into life in the Kenyan village of Manuanda.

After this experience I think I’m one step closer to being a true African. I took an eleven hour bus trip from Kigali to Kampala, all while riding on the floor. To be more specific, I was sitting on the engine cover, slowly cooking along the way. I’ve never had trouble finding a seat on a bus here in East Africa but today when I showed up for the last buses to Kampala they were all full. Then a confident man strolled up asking if I was heading to Kampala and then motioning for me to follow him. Along the way he said something about Kampala Coach being the best bus and having air conditioning. For a few seconds I almost believed this sales pitch aimed at naive muzungus. I think what he meant by air conditioning was that the windows opened.

Kigali has a fresh feeling to it. There is a chill breeze that carries minimal smog. Colors are vibrant and unhidden by pollution. Built on rolling hills, Kigali seems to naturally connect urban with rural. It is as though the cityscape is nestled into the countryside. The rise and fall of the local terrain means that in many parts of the city you get a fantastic view of the surrounding area.

Here I am at the Hotel des Mille Collines, sipping a cup of tea and pondering the tragic events that unfolded here only 15 years ago. Amidst chirping birds, laughing people, quality food and the luxurious atmosphere of this place, it is hard to imagine that hundreds of Rwandans once hid here to escape the genocide of 1994 that claimed more than one million lives in one hundred days.

I have long desired to visit Rwanda. It wasn’t clear if this trip would afford the proper circumstances for a visit or if it would be too far out of the way. Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, requires a ten hour bus ride from Kampala and since there isn’t much public transport back to Kenya through Tanzania around the South of Lake Victoria, you have to bus back to Kampala again before heading East into Kenya. When I decided to go gorilla trekking, however, I realized that I would be taking a bus most of the way to Kigali by reaching my stop in Southwest Uganda.

The next question was, what would I do there? Besides adding to my country count and experiencing a new place, would there be some redeeming value to the additional time and expenses that I would incur? While reading through my Lonely planet travel guide, I noticed with surprise that under their accommodations for Kigali they featured a guesthouse run by a Christian ministry. Solace Ministries, it said, used the funds raised by the guesthouse to purchase the ARVs, AIDS medication, for women who had been raped during the genocide. Realizing that this was exactly the kind of ministry that I have been looking for to support in East Africa, it was settled and I had to go.

There are rare moments in life where we have to remind ourselves to pause and take it all in. To realize that what is happening right now is unlikely to ever be repeated. When the extraordinary overpowers the ordinary and leaves us in awe. This is how I felt while trekking through the tropical rain forest of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park en route to visit a group of endangered mountain gorillas. The 13 mountain gorillas of the Bitukura family are among the 710 or so left in the world, all of which reside in either Bwindi or the Virunga Volcanoe range in the region bordering Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Referred to by Lonely Planet as “One of life’s great experiences”, seeing a family of mountain gorillas close range in their own domain is truly awe-inspiring.