Hey everyone, We're alive! Sorry it's been so long since the last update. We've been away from 'civilization' for the last 3 weeks. We have posted tons of pictures from the past three weeks since we left Addis Ababa. We're in Nairobi for the next 5 days and will be taking the time to relax and catch up on what's going on in the world. We promise not to flood your inbox with update notices and will only send out this notification, but not for the other entries, so please feel free to go back to previous entries (there are approximately [View Full Entry]

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After our game drives in Samburu National Reserve we spent the night camping at a Samburu village. The Samburu Tribe is related to the Masai and like the Masai, they live off their animals only. They don't grow vegetables and they strictly eat meat and drink the milk and blood from the animals. After our experiences with tribes in Ethiopia we were reluctant to visit another village and have another "cultural experience" consisting of photos for money. We were pleasently surprised with exactly the opposite. The Samburu people were such friendly hosts and performed a dance in the evening. [View Full Entry]

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After 5 weeks in Ethiopia, we finllay changed countries again and crossed the border into Kenya. As most people are aware, Kenya has been hurt by post election violence over the past several months. Up until a week ago we didn't even know if we'd be able to travel to Kenya. As things stand now the violence has calmed down and there are onging negotiations towards a power sharing agreement between the two major parties. Hopefully they're on the road to recovery. We have seen the problems that this has caused for the Kenyan tourism industry which has dropped by 90% [View Full Entry]

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We've had 5 flat tires in as many days, and there is no place around to fix them until we get to the border... Have we mentioned that we hear Celine Dion everywhere we go. It seems she is following us around, ahh.... [View Full Entry]

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Back to the incredible diversity that Ethiopia has to offer, we moved on from our game drive to see some of the most unique culture. This is the sort of thing that you grow up reading in National Geographic and seeing on the Discovery Channel. Here we saw several intersting tribes and also encountered one of those major moral dilemmas that comes with travel to these sorts of areas. While the people of the Omo valley seem to have maintained a great sense of thier traditions and culture, they majority of them have also grown up with a camera shoved in [View Full Entry]

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One of the most amazing things that we discovered about Ethiopia on this trip is the incredible variety of culture, scenery, and wildlife that you don't expect when you first think of Ethiopia. We never imagined that we'd be on a game drive in Southern Ethiopia, but here we are seeing loads of zebras and gazelles in a park that you would expect to see in Kenya. It may not have been as exciting for some others, but being our first real experience with Zebras in the wild, we were absolutely thrilled! Some others commented that these were some of the [View Full Entry]

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This morning we woke up around 7ish to go horseback riding and see the various animals around the park. We saw lots of DLT's (deer like thingys) such as Reed Buck, Bush Buck, Nyalla, and lots of warthogs. It was so much fun, but man is my bum sore! We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the lodge, sorting through our photos. [View Full Entry]

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From our base camp at the Bale Mountains National Park we set off early in the morning and drove four hours up to the Sanetti Plateau with the goal of seeing the rare Ethiopian Wolf in its natural habitat. We were incredibly lucky as we saw several of them snacking on the numerous rats that were running around. They were very close to the road and weren't phased much by the presence of our truck (although they moved on pretty quickly). We then drove up to the observation point at the summit at approximately 4300 meters above sea level. That night [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at the Abijata-Shalla National Park around 4ish, but by then there was already a dust storm blowing in. So after struggling to get our tent up in the blowing wind and dust, we hung out in the truck, playing cards, until dinner was ready. It was a good thing, neither of us was on cook duty, as it was a pretty tough night to be cooking, with dust blowing everywhere, and getting into everything. We camped at the view point, where we could see the two lakes, one of which was a soda lake. Mike, the trip leader was [View Full Entry]

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Yeah we have our temporary passports, and new 48 page passports are on their way.... Some of you already know about the stress our passport issue has caused us. But I'll explain a little of the history for those that may not already know. It started in West Africa, as we were crossing several borders, and entering several countries requiring full passport page visas. It was when we exited Nigeria, when we realized we wouldn't have enough passport pages to get us all the way through into Kenya. The standard issue Canadian passport is only 24 pages, of which only approximately [View Full Entry]

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