Post Tour: Zimbabwe – Botswana – South Africa

After our final night on tour, Amanda and I elected to stay a further two nights in Victoria Falls. After nursing rather epic hangovers from the night before for most of the day, we first moved to a nicer accommodation before taking on one of the “adventure” activities that you can do in Vic Falls being a Canyon Swing. The swing basically involves jumping off a platform with a rope attached to your waist (via harness of course), dropping into the gorge and then swinging on the rope in a big arc over the river. The drop on this particular gorge swing was 70m into a 140m swing arc. Amanda bravely went first and although she did scream a little, I was very proud of her starfish jump into oblivion. I followed her but instead of jumping off, the guys on the platform helped me into a handstand position so that when I jumped, I fell head first. It was an awesome rush. We had dinner in town that night with our tour group at a Spanish tapas restaurant. We said our final goodbyes to everyone that night.

The next day we awoke early and were picked up from the hotel and taken for a day trip to Chobe National Park in Botswana. Of course, that involved a border crossing out of Zimbabwe and into Botswana. The guide that took us to the border passed us over to his sister company in Botswana where we proceeded down to the Chobe River for a morning game drive by boat in the Chobe National Park. The Chobe is home to over 120,000 elephants and it didn't disappoint. We saw herd upon herd of elephants along the river, as well as plenty of hippos. We also spotted the odd crocodile as we went along, as well as plenty of birdlife. At one point we stopped to watch a single elephant play in a mud hole and shortly after stopping, the elephant proceeded to walk into the water, straight at our boat, so we had to reverse up to get out of the way. The elephant then treated himself to a bath, completely submerging his body in the water. Was great to watch.

For lunch we were dropped at a very flash lodge on the Chobe River while the rest of the boat had lunch elsewhere. After lunch we got into open top/side 4WD vehicles and went for another game drive. We were hoping to spot some big cats but alas they proved difficult to find. Instead we saw lots more elephant, giraffe, warthog and kudu. In some parts of the game drive, we came within mere feet of herd of elephants and had to stop on more than one occasion due to animals being on the road.

After our game drive, we returned to the border and crossed back into Zimbabwe. We had just a small amount of time back at our hotel before we headed back to Victoria Falls for a lunar rainbow tour. During high water season (which is when we were at the falls), and on a clear night with a full moon, it's possible to see a rainbow form in the mist of the falls produced by the moonlight. We had a reasonable night and did manage to see the rainbow, but it was very faint and impossible to photograph. It was still a unique experience to witness none-the-less.

We woke on our final morning at Victoria Falls and packed up ready to check out and fly to Johannesburg. Before we departed though, we had one final experience at Vic Falls to do – a helicopter ride over the falls themselves. We were picked up from our hotel and taken to the helicopter for a 12 minute ride over the falls.. We had a four seater chopper which we went in with a random German couple (we met a few German couples at Vic Falls). Amanda got to sit in the front, which she really loved as it was her first time in a helicopter.

That afternoon we flew to Johannesburg and then took the Gautrain to Sandton, where our hotel was. We walked to the hotel and then checked in up on the 27^th floor as we had upgraded to a club floor, where we had our own lounge that provided complimentary breakfast from 7-11:30, light lunch/high tea from 12:30 – 5pm and then cocktails from 5:30 – 7:30pm. We went out to dinner that night at a steakhouse nearby the hotel. The next day we had a day with nothing planned. We explored the shopping malls nearby the hotel. We also took the chance to freshen up – Amanda and I both had haircuts and then Amanda also got a pedicure and had her makeup done. That night was our final night on holidays we went out to dinner to celebrate a great holiday at a local Italian restaurant – Pigalle. After a couple glasses of champagne and enjoying our entree and a huge seafood platter for mains, I got down on one knee and asked Amanda to marry me. She instantly said yes and we celebrated with more champagne.

The next day we asked for a late checkout and then floated around the mall until it was time to the head to the airport. We did some final shopping after clearing customs and then boarded our plane for home. And so concludes our epic African Adventure of 2013. Thanks to everyone that made it to the end of this blog. Stay tuned for the next adventure!

Cheers

Dave & Amanda

Zimbabwe: Harare – Masvingo – Bulawayo – Hwange NP – Vic Falls

Just like Zambia, our first day in Zimbabwe was mainly spent in the truck simply covering distance. We did have one memorable event though while commuting. It was about 8:30am and most of the people in the truck were asleep from yet another early morning. I was sitting up the front, stretching my legs, when we passed a truck with a load on the back heading the opposite direction. The truck going the opposite way somehow flicked a rock up, which hit the front window in the passenger cabin of our truck (despite it being protected by some mesh), which resulted in a really loud bang, Next thing I saw/heard was the glass of our truck window starting to crack. I barely had time to get my hands to my face and duck my head before the window exploded and covered me and the front of the passenger area in flying glass. Fortunately the glass didn't do me, or any of the others on board, any injury, with little more than a few half cm long surface scratches on my legs to show from my shower of glass. We spent the rest of the day getting wind blasted from the open window – luckily it wasn't raining today.

Our campsite for the first night was just outside of Tanzania's capital of Harare, which we spent about an hour checking out while the truck got some fuel. We got in quite late, put the tents up, had some dinner and most people went to bed early as a result of three 12+ hour days on the truck, along with the associated early mornings, taking its toll on our bodies.

The next day wasn't nearly as long in the truck as we headed for Masvingo. Our campsite was located just out of town and mercifully, we got there about lunch time. We had a couple of hours to kill before we headed to the local Great Zimbabwe ruins, which the guide tells me is the forth most famous non-mortar brick structure behind the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China and Macchu Pichu. The ruins were quite impressive and spanned up and down hills and through valleys. Our camp was very nice with hot showers and overlooked the lake.

The next day we headed for Bulawayo, which meant more time in the truck. Our campsite at Bulawayo is our home for the next two nights so everyone elected to upgrade into proper rooms, although we maintained shared facilities, so that we could stretch out and have a proper bed. We arrived mid-late afternoon after spending a few hours wandering around the city itself. The next day we left for an all day game drive/village tour in an open top jeep, modified to carry 16 people. We saw several cultural sites within the Matobo National Park, including checking out some cave paintings, seeing Gordon Park, the starting place of the Boy Scouts and passing the gravesite of John Cecil Rhodes, who explored a lot of Africa and started up a successful diamond trading business. Zimbabwe was previously known as Rhodesia, named after John Rhodes.

We visited a local village just prior to lunch, where we talked (via a translator) to the local village chief, who was quite the character – having narrowly avoided death after taking on a leopard with only a spear. The local kids did a dance for us and we had the chance to buy some local wares (as we quite often do). In the afternoon we went looking for white and black rhino, which we didn't have too much luck finding until right at the end of the day, where we got out of the car and walked up to within 20m of them. It was quite exhilarating starting within 20m of two male rhinos with nothing but grass between us. Apparently rhino's have incredibly bad eye sight and would have seen the group of people as one big blob, rather than individuals so wouldn't be prepared to take on such a large being. Just as well for us because they can hit something like 50km/h in a matter of seconds so we'd have no chance of out running them.

The next day we got back in the truck and headed for Hwange National Park. We stopped on the way at the Painted Dog Organisation, which works to protect and rehabilitate native dogs, as well as stopping poaching. Shortly after visting Painted Dog we arrived at our campsite, right on the edge of Hwange National Park. That afternoon we had a game drive inside the national park in an open top Jeep. We saw quite a lot of giraffe, elephant, cudu, impala, ostriches, sables, some hippos and a couple of crocs. There are lions in the park but we couldn't find any. We went back to camp at nightfall for dinner before departing in the Jeep again for a night tour. We didn't expect to see a lot but figured it would be fun anyway (especially with a few beers on board to consume as we went).

We were driving along with the spotlight and the guide thought he saw some eyes shining back at him so we stopped the car and turned off the lights and engine. The guide found the eyes he saw and told us that it was a bush baby. However, in the darkness, we could hear the crashes of branches and heavy footsteps. The noise came closer and then, out of the foliage, emerged a herd of elephant, walking directly toward our vehicle. There were about eight in total, the large ones female and then there were some juveniles and babies. They walked literally to within 5 feet of our car and stopped. The matriarch elephant raised her truck to within 2 feet of the car and smelled us. Our guide made the noise of a baby elephant requesting food from a mother just to inform the elephant that we were there but posed no threat. The herd then slowly started moving around our car and vanished off into the darkness. During this time we were all silent, but smiling from ear to ear. It was an absolutely incredible experience, one I'm not likely to forget.

The next morning we awoke early and went for another game drive within Hwange. It was quite cold out and to start with, we didn't see many animals but as the morning warmed up, we started to see more giraffe, elephants, impala and wart hog. Perhaps the best thing we saw was a snake eagle swoop down and pick up a mongoose and fly away. That was pretty cool. We left Hwange NP after lunch for our final time in the truck as we headed to Victoria Falls. Upon arrival, we went straight to the falls, which I must say are rather impressive. It's high water time so there is a lot of mist/spray, which meant you got very, very wet when viewing the falls from certain places but the shear volume of water going over the falls makes it spectacular viewing.

After walking around the falls, we took our guide, cook and driver on a sunset river (booze) cruise. We all sat back and cruised up the Zambezi with a few drinks and looked out for wildlife. We saw two hippos chasing each other and I can tell you honestly that those things are fast! Almost every hippo we'd previously seen were barely moving but these ones ran out of the water, across the land and back into the water and they weren't too sluggish, despite their stature. After the cruise we shared a final dinner before hitting a local nightspot to ensure the night/trip ended on a (drunken) high.

That's it as far as this blog entry is concerned with respect to our Intrepid Travel tour. I can highly recommend them as a travel company. No one got sick, everything went well and they offered us flexibility, suggestions and assistance. A further blog entry will follow for our post tour adventures.

Zambia: Lilongwe – Lusaka

This will be a short update as there isn't much to say about Zambia as we didn't really do anything in country. We had two nights/three days in Zambia, with all of our days being spent in the truck crossing the country from Malawi to Zimbabwe. Our days entail getting up at ungodly o'clock (about 4:45am), having a quick brekky and then hitting the road by no later than 6am. Then driving through Zambia until about 5pm, at which point we'd set up tent, have a few drinks, crash and repeat the next day.

One highlight of Zambia was that at our campsite for the second night, there was a fenced off nature reserve just outside of camp that had zebra, giraffe, impala and warthogs in it, which we went and explored by foot, looking for the animals on foot (as we were assured there were no predatory animals about). We found several giraffes which we followed through the bushes for an hour or so, which was quite cool. We got quite close to them which was pretty exciting.

Day 3 in Zambia and we headed for the border of Tanzania, which will be our final country visited as part of our tour so I'll post a separate update on Tanzania. Sad to think that our travels within Africa are coming to an end, with just under 10 days remaining (at time of writing this).

Malawi: Chitimba – Kande Beach

We departed Iringa in southern Tanzania and headed for the Malawi border, which took us about 1.5 hours to pass through, without any dramas. Apparently the foreign exchange bureaus are useless/non-existent in Malawi so our guide organised a money man to exchange our Tanzanian Shillings into Malawi Kwacha during our roadside lunch stop just before the border. The rest of our day was spent heading to our campsite at Chitimba, which we got to early evening. Amanda and I upgraded into a real room, as opposed to our tent, as Amanda wasn't feeling well.

The next day we packed up (in the rain) and headed further south into Malawi to our next campsite, at Kande Beach. Along the way we stopped at a town called Mzuzu to pick up some supplies. Here we found a coffee shop that did real coffee so most of us indulged in a cappacino. You would think with a lot of coffee sold around the world being African in origin, they would have great coffee over here but the reality is that coffee is a luxury that few can afford so (bad) instant is usually all that you find. On the way out of Mzuzu, we came to a bridge which seemed to be swarmed by locals. Which quickly discovered that the road leading up to the other side of the bridge had started to wash away with the flood waters. It was about ¼ gone. Our guide went and sussed out the remainder of the road and determined that we should try and pass. We all hopped off the truck (very quickly) and our driver crossed the bridge slowly and then gunned it over the remainder of the road leading off the bridge. I swear you could see the road dip a little and I wouldn't be surprised if that road didn't make the end of the day.

After the excitement with the road, the rest of the trip to Kande Beach was unevntful and we arrived early afternoon for a stay that would be over the next two nights. We all upgraded into private rooms, although none had en suites. The Kande Beach camp was right on the edge of Lake Malawi, which looked more like an ocean – it's huge, you can't see the other side, it takes up roughly 1/5^th of the whole country's area and the water was rough with swell, rips and waves. We chilled out for the rest of the day as it was blowing a gale so no good for swimming. Beers went for 400 Kwacha which is about 1 AUD and the “local” beer of choice is Carlsberg! That night, our guide organised a Karaoke session, and mixed up some very potent “punch” to help ease our stage fright. It was a great night with lots of laughs.

The next day Amanda was hoping to go diving in the Lake but the wind had not died down from the day before so it was still very rough and she couldn't go. Instead, she and I went for a walk to the local village. Being white people, we stood out and quickly found ourselves with a couple of local children (it was a Sunday so no school) who accompanied us on our walk, eager to practice their English and show us around. They spoke good English and were very helpful so we gave them a few dollars each for their efforts. The rest of the day was spent lazing in the hammocks, drinks in hand, chilling out before another day in the truck.

The next morning, we awoke early and got on the road again facing another 12 hour day, which included a border crossing into Zambia. As this is the end of my Malawi update, I'll stop this here and post again for Zambia. I should also point up that I've not had Wifi internet for about a week now so there will be multiple posts put up once I finally find some!

Tanzania (pt2): Zanzibar – Dar Es Salaam – Iringa

We left Dar for the early morning ferry across the harbour, which took about 7 minutes, before getting onto a bigger ferry to take us to Zanzibar, an island off the coast of Tanzania. The larger ferry ride to Zanzibar took 2.5 hours and the waters were quite calm. Upon arrival in Zanzibar, we checked into our hotel in Stone Town, an older section of Zanzibar, grabbed a quick bite before jumping onto a smaller boat and heading out to “Prison Island”, which is a 30 minute ride in a very underpowered local boat. On Prison Island we saw giant tortoises, which early rival those I've seen in the Galapagos for size, with the oldest one that we could see being 155 years old.

After visiting the tortoises, we got back in the boat and headed out for a spot of snorkelling. We were all dying to get into the water because it was very hot and humid – about 30 degrees and about 90% humidity. The waters were very clear and we saw a good variety of fish, however, the coral looked a bit dead, which we were told was due to fishermen using nets in the area (illegally). We met our guide later that afternoon for a drink. It was supposed to be a sunset drink but our boat ran out of fuel on the way back to Zanzibar so we were a bit later. We ate that night at the local markets, which Amanda and I enjoyed a seafood feast. The vendor tried to overcharge us – commonly known as a “Mzungu Tax” or “White Person Tax” (we get called Mzungu's everywhere we go), but we threatened to get the tourist police over and they changed their pricing by over 50% down.

The next day we visited the site of the slave markets from the 1800's. We got taken down into one of the chambers where they kept the slaves, which wasn't high enough to stand in, would regularly get flooded with high tide and where the centre corridor also served purpose as the toilet. The room didn't have a good feeling about it and most of us got out quite quickly. We also visited a church built by a priest who had a good deal of influence in ending the slave trading. After the slave market site visit, we drove north up the island for a bit before stopping to visit a spice farm. Here we got shown many types of spices they grew on island, along with other fruits, before sampling some different types of tea infused with various local products.

We enjoyed lunch at a local family before heading further north to our hotel for the next two nights, called Sun Set Bungalows. Our room was easily the best hotel we've had since being on tour and our hotel was right on the beach. We did a bit of shopping in the afternoon before going for a several swims, enjoying happy hour drinks and grabbing some dinner. The next day Amanda headed off early to go scuba diving off a local island called Nmemba while I enjoyed a day of leisure, not really going any further than from my beach side sun lounge into the water, over to the bar and back again. The weather was sunny and warm so perfect day to lounge at the beach. Amanda joined me in the afternoon and we had more happy hour drinks and more dinner rounded out of day.

The next day we headed back to Stone Town for some quick shopping before getting back on the ferry for the mainland. It was a little rough on the way back and I felt a bit seasick, probably as a combination of too many happy hour drinks the nigh previous. Once we got back to the mainland, we hopped back on the local ferry and back to the hotel we previously stayed at in Dar Es Salaam. We all upgraded because we were due to have a very early start and a long day in the truck the next morning.

At 4:45am, everyone emerged from their mosquito infested room upgrades and we hit the road for a long day as we endeavoured to beat the traffic in Dar Es Salaam and head about 570kms to our destination of Iringa. On the way, we passed through Mikumi national park where we saw giraffe and a family of elephants. Other than that, there wasn't much to report – just a long day of driving and getting passed by a lot of local buses, whose drivers have a complete disrespect for human life as they hurtle up hills on the wrong side of the road around a blind corner over the speed limit. In fact, a bit later in the day we passed one such bus on its side on the side of the road. Our driver was pretty sure that bus had earlier passed us. That night, we set up our tents for the first time in four nights and prepared for yet another day in the truck, which will include a border crossing into Malawi so I'll finish this post here and update again from Malawi (internet depending).

Tanzania (pt1): Karatu – Serengeti – Mto Wa Mbu – Dar Es Salaam

We left Nairobi early with our new group and headed straight for the border of Kenya and Tanzania. After another uneventful border crossing, we headed for the city of Arusha, where we stopped for lunch and got some local Tanzanian Shillings. Our stop for the night was supposed to be Mto Wa Mbu but there was a threat of not being able to access the Serengeti due to the amount of rain the area had been getting so we pressed on for another town, Karatu. The trip to Karatu was slow, with single lane road in places, and roads awash in others. At one point, we watched a bus get swept off the road and end up on a very precarious angle, absolutely chock a block full of very scared people. We went through that section anyway, with our overland Intrepid truck negotiating the heavy flowing waters much better than the local bus had. Was a wet night in the tent that night.

The next day we got up and headed for the Ngorongoro Conversation Area in 4WD landcruisers. We entered the caldera (i.e. the Ngorongoro Crater) and started a game drive, spotting herds of Wildebeest, Gazelle, Flamingo, Hyena, Hippos, a couple of warthog, two sleeping lions (right by the side of the road) and some Elephants off in the distance. We ate lunch by a watering hole inhabited by hippo before exiting the caldera and heading for our campsite in the Serengeti NP. On the road between Ngorongoro and Serengeti, we saw the start of the southern migration, with hundreds of thousands of zebra, and wildebeest in particular, all amassing for the trip south. It was truly an incredible sight. We arrived late due to rain and bad roads but fortunately our tents were already set up for us.

Our first day in the Serengeti started off sunny and we were supposed to be going for a hot air balloon ride but the company lost our booking and we had to delay a day. Instead, we went for a game drive out in the Serengeti where we saw our first Leopard (along with a couple of cubs), lots more lions (including a pride of about 15), more gazelles, hippos, babboons, topi, impala and hyena. We came back to camp and chilled out for a couple of hours, before heading out for another safari drive, this time in pouring rain. We hoped this afternoon rain wasn't a sign of a wet morning for our balloon ride the next day. More big 5 spotting was done in our afternoon drive, with several giraffe spotted in additional to the usual stuff aforementioned. Unfortunately, the elephants were proving elusive, which is a shame because they grow bigger in Tanzania than other parts of Africa due to the amount of phosphorous in the soil. As a result, they also have bigger tusks.

Another wet night in the tent but woke up (very early) to another lovely morning. We were picked up from our camp site in the dark and taken to the hot air balloon launch site. A total of 14 people were to go up in one balloon with our pilot, Jason, being the present Canadian Hot Air Balloon Champion. We had an awesome time ballooning over the Serengeti as the sun rose. It was very peaceful and we spotted quite a few animals, including a herd of elephants that had three baby elephants amongst them. We came to quite a wet landing with the basket tipping over on landing, which we were prepared for. We were greeted with champagne shortly after – it was supposed to come out to the balloon but the 4WD got stuck. We later got stuck ourselves trying to get out of the thick muddy roads. After touch down champagne, we were taken to breakfast, which was a full English breakfast with silver service and more champagne. The table was set up in the middle of the Serengeti, about 100m from where we passed a pride of sleeping lions. It was a magic start to the day.

We met the rest of our group after breakfast and headed back out of the Serengeti, on our way back to Mbo Wa Bu, our camp site for the night. On the way out, we spotted more elephant (although too far away to shoot with camera), more impala, gazelle, zebra and wildebeest. We even spotted three Cheetahs enjoying a fresh kill. We also got another chance to see the animals preparing for the migration. I previously said there were hundreds of thousands but I think realistically there were millions. The countryside was filled with animals as far as the eye could see in every direction. It was simply amazing to witness. We arrived at camp late afternoon and chilled out, with everyone taking the chance to have a warm shower after two days in the Serengeti without hot water.

The next day we had a guided tour around Mto Wa Mbu (translates to Mosquito Creek), checki8ng out the local artists (source of the Tinga Tinga paintings), wood carvers and tried some of their banana beer (nasty stuff) and banana wine (potent but not as bad). We then headed back to Arusha before heading further on to Marangu, which is where many people leave from when they start their ascent of Mt Killimanjaro, which we could see the top and bottom of as we drove past, but the middle was covered in clouds. Our quick overnight in Marangu included an upgrade out of the tent and into a proper room with ensuite.

The final part of this section of our trip involved an early departure from Marangu and just over 12 hours in the truck driving to Dar Es Salaam. We didn't see much of Dar, other than the traffic. We arrived at our campsite, which was right on the ocean's edge. The next day we are due to depart to Zanzibar, which we'll cover in our next update.

Kenya (again): Eldoret – Nairobi

Not a lot to write here. We left Jinja and headed for the border of Uganda and Kenya. Border crossing was relatively straight forward with our guides doing most of the hard work. The rest of the day was spent in the truck making our way ultimately back to Nairobi. However, road conditions mean we couldn't possibly do the distance between Jinja and Nairobi in one day so we stopped back at Eldoret for the night. We'd previously stayed at this camp site so knew it had hot water and western toilets to use, which is always welcomed, especially by the ladies in the group.

The next day is officially the end of the first tour we're doing (Gorillas, Chimps and Game Parks – 16 days). We left Eldoret and had essentially another full day in the truck heading to Nairobi. Upon arrival in Nairobi, we had a few people staying, a few people continuing on different tours and a few people departing. We exchanged contact details and said our goodbyes to those leaving and to our guide, driver and cook for the tour.

That night, we met our new group for our next tour (Kenya to Vic Falls – 23 days). This group is 12 people, including Amanda, Hayley and myself from our Gorillas tour, plus 9 other Aussies with a new tour leader, Victor. After our initial meeting, we had a final dinner with those of our old tour who were still left at the hotel, said our goodbyes and prepared ourselves for our next adventure.

Next update from Tanzania, internet depending....

Uganda (again): Lake Mburo - Jinja

Our second day in Rwanda was a very rainy day which saw us doing not too much. Mostly hanging around at the hotel while the other half of our group trekked the (very wet) gorillas. We checked out a local textiles market but couldn't find anything we liked. The next day, we departed Rwanda and started our journey back to Nairobi as this part of our tour winds down. We spent most of the day in the truck as we crossed the border back into Uganda and headed for our camp for the night at Lake Mburo. Here we went on a two hour walking tour to look at the wildlife, including more Zebra, Impala, Topi (like an antelope), Buffalo and lots of Warthogs.

Another day in the truck saw us drive to Jinja, which is located on the River Nile right by Lake Victoria. Nine of the 15 people on our tour elected to do a full day white water rafting the next day, which saw us depart (after a few false starts and troubles with EFT machines) about 9:30am. We would negotiate 4 rapids in the morning and another 4 in the afternoon. On the third rapid of the day, our raft guide intentionally flipped us out. Most people ended up drifting down the river to be picked up by the safety kayaks and rafts that accompanied us. I managed to cling onto the raft as it went over and helped the guide go and get the others, including Amanda, who ended up on the safety raft with three other ladies.

The rapids were pretty gnarly – much worse than I'd experienced in Bali. On the fifth rapid, we lost two people who got thrown out and put through quite the turbulent ride through the rest of the rapid. On the next rapid, we discovered that our raft wasn't perhaps as inflated as it otherwise should have been as it folded on itself as we hit one of the waves and all of us, bar one lady who was sitting right at the back with the guide, were ejected into the water. We eventually got everyone back on and continued without too much fanfare to the last rapid, where I jumped onto another boat for a “hardcore” angle through, while the rest of our boat took the “chicken route”. About half way through the last rapid, our guide told us all to jump out and experience the “Nile Special”, which is basically negotiating the rapid wearing only your life vest as floatation. I got hammered as I “floated” through the rapids but it was quite the unique experience.

In between rapids, we were able to swim around in the Nile a bit, which was quite warm and refreshing, especially given it was a very hot day and we were all getting quite burnt, despite liberal application of sunscreen at every opportunity. We bought all of the professional photos taken of us digitally as keepsakes of the day. We wound down the evening in the bar (fancy that!). This was our last night in Uganda, we cross back into Kenya tomorrow.

Rwanda: Musanze (Mountain Gorillas)

The main event for this part of our holiday was trekking the mountain gorillas in the misty hills of Rwanda, near a small town called Musanze. On our way to Musanze, we visited the genocide memorial, which was quite the eye opener, considering the genocide in Rwanda was only 19 years ago. Horrific to think about how such an event can occur in the modern era in which we live.

Anyway, the main event – the Gorillas. The group was split into two for trekking activities over two days. Amanda and I were in the first group, meaning we tracked the gorillas yesterday (25^th) rather than today (26^th). Our group of 5 was joined by a couple from South Africa and appointed a guide. Our guide informed us that we were going to be going to the biggest family of Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda, the Anahoro, which has five Silverbacks, several Black Backs, juveniles and babies – family size of about 24 in total.

We set off, first in a car, and then a walk, and the weather wasn't kind, with low lying mist/fog reducing visibility to about, 10m and rain. Fortunately by the time we got out of the car to start our trek, the weather had cleared up a little. Our trek took us predominantly uphill for about two hours, the first hour of the trek, the path was very, very muddy, with mud up to about a foot deep in places. The next hour, we traversed fields of stinging nettle which we learnt pretty quickly could still get our legs through our mud stained trousers.

All the mud and all the nettles were well worth the trouble when we arrived. The experience we had was nothing short of sensational. The family of gorillas seemed to care little of our presence, which at times was within a metre or two of the gorillas, and played and ate while we took lots of photos and videos. The babies would play with each other, climbing trees and jumping onto their parents from the tree, tackling each other in a big rollie-pollie down the mountain. Meanwhile, the big silverbacks were keeping a watchful eye on all the activities as well as us. The leader beat his barrel like chest a few times to assert his dominance, which produced a very deep drumming noise that I can't really describe sufficiently to capture its impact.

After a little over an hour of observation and photos, it was time to go. The way down was a little easier as the sun had come out and dried the path, just a little bit but enough to help progress. At the end of the trek, our shoes were unrecognisable from the mud coating they had and our pants were covered in mud up to our knees. Our legs and hands were stinging from the nettles but it was all worth it because it was an experience like no other I've ever had (or possibly ever likely to experience again).

Uganda: Kampala – Kibale NP – Queen Elizabeth NP – Kabale

We left our campsite in Eldoret (Kenya) early, heading for the border crossing to Uganda. When we got to within 4km of the border the queue to cross the border for the trucks started. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait in that queue, which our guide informed us can take 3-4 days to clear! Progress across the border was uneventful, although one of our group got in trouble for taking photos of the customs building.

The rest of the day was spent in the bus/truck driving through Uganda to our campsite in the outskirts of the capital of Uganda, Kampala. Compared to Kenya, the roads are much, much better in Uganda, the land is generally greener, with many banana and tea plantations amongst the green fields of trees and bushlands. Progress isn't as slow as Kenya but we rarely get to country's speed limit of 100km/h. It rained most of the afternoon but fortunately our camp for the night, called “Red Chilli” gave us the option to upgrade to dorm style accommodation, rather than putting up the tent, for a whopping $3 upgrade fee, which basically everyone opted for. The camp also had a bar with free wifi, which worked intermittently and got worse when many people were using. I should mention that beers are around $2 AUD for long neck, full strength beer. The Kenyan beer of choice is Tusker (4.2%), while the Ugandan beer, Nile Special, packs a little more punch (5.6%).

The next day was another day in the bus, as we headed for the Kibale National Park, west of Kampala toward Rwanda. Fortunately it wasn't raining for most of today, although it was a little overcast and rained a bit later on. More rolling hillsides covered in tea plantations, towns with shanty buildings and far too many speed bumps and mercifully flat roads were the order of the day. Another couple of Ugandan beers were sampled at the bar that night, which overlooked the lush green rolling hills of Uganda, just outside Fort Portal, mostly covered in tea plantations. On offer were Eagle Extra (6.5%) and Bell (4.0%). The camp showers were also open air, which you could stand in and see out over the hillside, which were nice (especially as they had hot water).

The following day the group was divided into two, with one lot people going off to trek for chimpanzees in the Kibale National Forest, while the other got to have a bit of a sleep in before heading for a 2 hour walking tour around some tea plantations, some local houses and the crater lake that were all located nearby our camp. In the afternoon, the groups swapped. We were in the afternoon group to trek the chimps and after hearing good stories from the morning group, were excited and expecting so see the chimps that afternoon. We set off on foot around 1:30pm to a very quiet, very humid forest walk in the direction that the last group had left the chimps. However, luck was not on our side – we walked til after 5pm, trekking up and down hills, over bushes, through mud, across rivers and under branches but did not find any chimps. We left the forest most despondent, completely covered in sweat and exhausted. It was an early night that night.

Fortunately, our guide was able to organise for our group to go back early to the chimps the next day and try again – even the rangers were disappointed that they couldn't find them for us. So we got up early (5:30am) and headed back to the forest. Fortunately, this time it didn't take us long to find the chimps – just shy of 30mins trekking. It took a while to get the right setting on the camera because of the low lighting but eventually got some good photos as we followed the chimps through the forest. At one stage, our guide spotted an elephant, which Amanda and I were able to look at through the binoculars, before the elephant turned and headed for our group, at which point we were told to run the opposite direction, and our guide cocked his assault rifle and let two rounds off into the air to scare the elephant away. It was all very exciting, especially considering the disappointment of the previous day. We continued to track the chimps for about 2.5hours in total before heading back to camp, getting the others and heading for Queen Elizabeth National Park, which was to be our home for a night.

Upon arrival at QENP, we had a two hour boat ride around one of the lakes – Lake Edward, along with our tour groups. QENP is known for its elephant and hippo populations and during our cruise, we observed plentiful numbers of both, along with a variety of birds, water buffalo, baboons, crocs and deer. At this point, I've already taken over 700 photos. After the boat ride, we drove to our campsite for the night, where most people upgraded to walk in rooms with hot showers and real beds, but Amanda and I stuck to our tent, instead indulging by taking several of the Intrepid supplied camp mattresses to make our tent more comfortable.

The next day, we awoke and departed camp for Kabale. Most of the day was spent in the truck on pretty poor roads, which made the going very slow – especially as a lot of the roads weren't even bitumen. At one point, our truck failed to make it up one of the steeper muddy road hills, with the whole truck finishing on a 40 degree angle to the road as a result of some back end wheel spin crab crawling. We were stuck for about an hour until the driver decided he wanted another shot at it, threw some dry material under the wheels and gave it a solid dose of the loud pedal. Successfully getting us up the hill. We were supposed to stay down by a lake tonight but due to the rains, the roads were inaccessible for not only our truck but also smaller 4wd vehicles. Instead, we camped in town at Cepha's Inn, which had nice grass to pitch our tents, a bar and free wifi.

We were up early the day for our trip to the Rwandan border, from tomorrow, our group will be broken up into smaller groups to begin our tracking of the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. So that's it for Uganda (for now), next update from/about Rwanda.

Kenya: Nairobi - Lake Nakuru - Eldoret

We met our group last night, which consists of 15 people, mostly Aussies and mostly female. This will be our group for the next 16 days, although one girl is continuing with us all the way to Victoria Falls and another couple is continuing on to Zanzibar.

Day 1 we left Nairobi around 7:30am on our overland tour bus, with our guide, Albert, our driver John and our cook Albert (Snr – although not related). Once clearing the city, we headed for our first stop – a look out over the Rift Valley. We stopped only briefly to take some photos, being harassed by some local flogging their wares.

Next stop was an orphanage in a small town called Gil Gil. We stopped here as the Intrepid Foundation is involved in giving back to the community so we spent some time listing to how the orphanage was set up, how the children came to be there and about different ways we can help keep the orphanage running (i.e. sale pitch for more cash). The ophans took us all around, showing us their beds, where they did their homework, where they played and, of course, the beaded jewellery they had for sale.

After the orphanage, we drove about an hour to the town of Nakuru. Here we ate some lunch down by Lake Nakuru, which is also our camp site for the night. We were all shown how to put up our tents and then got some time to chill out. Whilst having lunch, we had our first encounter with the wildlife – a cheeky baboon ran right into the middle of our lunch circle and snatched a sandwich one of the girls was eating. He was quickly shooed away by a park ranger but we had a good laugh. A little later on, another monkey snuck into our food prep room and took off with half a loaf of bread.

After lunch & some down time, we went on our first “safari” in the Lake Nakuru area nearby the camp site. It wasn't long before we spotted water buffalo, zebra, impala (like a gazelle), water bucks, guinea foul and even a couple of white rhinos, all just out having a graze in the grass and wet lands surrounding the lake. Oh yeah, and plenty of baboons – they were everywhere!

That night in camp, we spotted and heard several animals loitering about the campsite. During the night we had quite a lot of water buffalo in and around the camp but no damage (mainly thanks to the ranger who moved them on!).

The next morning we awoke early to go on another game drive around the lake, but in the opposite direction to the previous evening. Again, we had some luck with our animal spotting, this time getting a glimpse of two hippos (although too far away to get a good photo, even with the zoom lens), a lioness (which we nearly missed as she was very, very well blended into the grasslands, more white rhino, a rarer black rhino and a giraffe. Lots more photos, lots more baboons, impalas and water bucks later and we were back at camp. We finished packing our tents (we had previously emptied their contents to ensure the baboons didn't get in and steal anything) and hit the road, stopping briefly in Nakuru to pick up suppiles, heading for another camp site just out of Eldoret.

Eldoret is still in Kenya and our campsite was a bit more deluxe than the night before. Not only did it have hot water and proper western toilets (with TP and soap) but it also had a really funky bar, where the tour group sat back and enjoyed several local beers called Tuskers. Shortly after arriving at camp and getting our tents up, we had a bit of rain, which made the camp (and our bus) quite muddy, but nothing was going to damper our spirits with cold beer and warm showers on offer.

Progress between cities in Kenya is slow going, with a lot of road works, detours, speedbumps, heavy traffic and generally ordinary roads. Distances of 150km take far longer than you might think, which means we spend a fair bit of time in our tour bus, which is a customised Mercedes Benz truck, that has had its back section custom build to seat 24 people, each with a locker, store tents and other camping gear underneath the passenger cabin on one side and food, gas bottles, water tanks and the like under the passenger cabin on the other side. It's pretty basic inside but comfy enough when doing distance. We have a charging station so we can keep our music players, laptops and cameras all charged whilst on the move.

Next update from across the border in Uganda.

Kenya - Pre-tour

After 15 hours in the air and five hours in airports, we arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. Happily, I can report that our shrink wrapped luggage also arrived without drama. Nairobi is five hours behind Perth and one hour in front of Johannesburg. We were picked up by our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Nairobi. We had a swim, downed a drink or two and got some in-room dining before passing out for the night around 8-8:30pm (1-1:30am Perth time).

Waking up in Kenya, we had no official plans for the day. At 6pm, we were due to meet our Intrepid group for the first part of our tour (our Gorilla trek), but that was the only planned event for the day.

We consulted with the hotel's concierge who recommended we go to the David Shedrick Wilderness Trust, which is a group that cares for orphaned elephants (and rhino) and then onto a Giraffe Centre. We had a hotel car take us around, the first stop being the elephant orphanage. Quite a few other people had the same idea as there was already a crowd gathered despite it being 45 mins before opening.

We were led to a large roped area where we waited for the elephants to come to. Scattered around the area were large bottles of milk and some green foliage. At 11am, some workers emerged from the nearby bushes with about 12 baby elephants in tow. The elephants obviously knew what was happening because the picked up speed and headed for the milk bottles, which the workers helped them to drink from. They were very cute. After drinking, the trainers encouraged them over to the ropes where the public got an opportunity to touch and pat the elephants. Other elephants played with soccer balls while one of the workers explained how each of the elephants came to the orphanage (quite a few found down wells!). Another group of slightly older elephants came in after the babies – about a further 11 to repeat the process.

We left the elephant orphanage and headed for the giraffe centre, which wasn't too far away. Here there was an elevated viewing platform from which you could feed giraffes, what I can only best describe as kitty litter pellets (obviously food of some description). The giraffes have really long tongues, which are quite soft and not as slimy as you might think. They were generally very timid (but hungry!) animals, although there was warning signs instructing you to watch for headbutts! We didn't stay here long as we quickly ran out of food for them and were in need of food for ourselves. We headed back to the hotel for some lunch, checkout and transfer to the hotel were we are meeting the tour group at.

We have our group meeting at 6pm tonight, which it looks like it'll actually be a meeting for four different tours. Next update when we can from somewhere into our tour!

Vaccines and Visas

Today is ten days until we leave for Africa. Dave and I are very excited and are counting down the days. This year has already gone very quickly and since 2013 kicked over we have been focusing on getting ready for our trip. This included getting updated passport photos for visas, booking flights & accommodation and  and yet more vaccinations. Vaccinations have come in the form of many needles and some tablets. Needless to say that some have been fine while others have made me, in particular, quite unwell. Easily the worst was the Typhoid tablets, which saw my accomplishments for a whole day being to make it from the bed to the couch.

Fortunately most of our visas we can obtain on arrival into most of the countries we are visiting but a couple we needed to take care of before we left, which has also kept us busy. For Rwanda, you require an invitation letter to present to border control that gives you permission to buy a visa to enter the country. For Tanzania, you need a normal visitors visa, which, fortunately, we have a consulate here in Perth to be able to obtain one from.

We've had a practice pack, which went alright but resulted in us going back to the shops for yet more stuff to fit in. Dave has also been busy breaking (he tell's me he's fixing but I'm not so sure) the reticulation so that while we are away the lawn and plants can get regular watering.

Other than that, we have to convert some dollars into USD to take with us and pack properly and then we should be good to go. Next update from somewhere in the African continent!

Pre-Safari, two months out

Hi Everyone
Unless you've been living under a rock, or don't know us at all (welcome), you would know that Manda and myself will be heading to Africa in a little under two months. I've created this new blog to capture our adventures, even though it's part of my global adventures, they are no longer only my adventures.

So, a little about our upcoming trip. We fly out of Perth on March 14th at pretty much midnight with South Africa Airways direct to Johannesburg. From there, we transfer to another SAA flight straight up to Nairobi, Kenya. Our first official destination. After a night and a day of recovering from what I anticipate to be about 24 hours of travel door to door, we join our Intrepid tour - "Gorillas to Vic Falls". The route map for our tour is obviously on the right. The tour goes for 39 days and is mostly camping in tents, which we'll have to put up and take down nearly every day. The entire tour is overland in a 4WD bus.

As you can see, we are going to some pretty special places with highlights such as: trekking the mountain gorillas "in the mist" in Uganda/Rwanda, visiting the famous Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater, visiting the spice island of Zanzibar, visiting Lake Malawi and finally ending at the "smoke that thunders", Victoria Falls.

At the end of our tour, we'll be spending an extra day or two at Victoria Falls. Nothing planned as yet but we may venture into Botswana for a visit to the Chobe National Park and then finally flying back to Johannesburg around Anzac Day for a couple of final days of relaxation before flying back to Perth.

We will endeavour to update this blog as we go but obviously power will be hard to come by at some points along our trip and internet probably even more scarce.

Hope you can join us and have fun following our African Safari.
All the best,
Dave & Manda