Africa Via Antarctica

When Laura Vae Gatz, avid adventurer and photographer, discovered that the company she worked for offered a sabbatical program, she knew exactly what she wanted to do: take a two-month trip around the world, one of her life-long dreams. After procuring her boss's blessing, Laura started planning, figuring out how to put her daily life on auto-pilot for sixty days, and pack for it all in two rollaboard suitcases. Laura set out to explore places she'd read about in National Geographic magazine and seen on television - legendary, remote and wild places. She sailed past Cape Horn, south through the Drake Passage and beyond the Antarctic Circle, kayaking around blue glowing icebergs, sitting surrounded by rock-stealing Adelie penguins. She explored the windswept volcanic fields of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), communing with the giant stone Moai at sunrise. She traversed the north and south Islands of New Zealand learning of the native Maori, glimpsing the mysterious glow worms in a dark forest grotto. She trekked across islands in Botswana, tracking bull elephants, a pride of over a dozen lions, and encountered a large pack of endangered African Painted Dogs. Fueled by a passion for exploration, Laura Vae Gatz travels around the southern hemisphere, seizing life one day at a time, recording her daily encounters with locals both domesticated and wild, and relaying the fantastic stories of the characters she meets.