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Charles Bruce
Here we are again, and this time we are leaving on our last big trip before trying to start a family. We have chosen Africa because of the wildlife, the exotic landscapes, and the price. This trip will be a bit different from our South America trip because we have planned a specific itinerary. We found that the spontaneous approach to travel that we took in 2009 meant for more wasted planning days during the trip itself. This time, we have spent countless hours doing online searches, bookings and wire transfers in order to have everything arranged beforehand. We will discover which approach is best in the next 11 weeks. We are not sure how reliable our internet access will be, so we may not be able to post as many photos as in our South America blog. We hope our friends and family will enjoy our occasional updates and will send comments from home. Thanks again to everyone who has made this possible.ChuckandRach
Travel Blog Posts
March 11th 2012
Our time in Addis got off to a rough start with a delay in our flight from Lalibella which caused our luggage to be put on the next flight! I spent about 45 minutes in that stressed-out state that frequent travellers know well: Watching fellow passengers gradually pick up their luggage and leave until you are the last one, then watching the empty carousel go round and round before finally coming to terms with the fact that your luggage is not going to appear through the plastic flaps. We were flying home toCanadathe next day and I have no idea if our luggage would have made it without us to transfer it. Thankfully we didn’t have to deal with all of that because it showed up on the next flight just as we were starting to ... read more
Trekking with TESFA in the Ethiopian Highlands
Published: March 11th 2012Africa » Ethiopia » Amhara Region » Lalibela
March 11th 2012
We fortified ourselves for the first day of our TESFA trek by having a huge lunch of Ethiopian food at a local restaurant. It was my idea of a perfect meal: a huge piece of injera with many little types of food arranged around it, such as pickled vegetables, spicy goat meat, shredded beets and lentil sauce. I thought of it as Ethiopian tapas and once I’d discovered it, I ordered it every chance I could get! The TESFA arrangement with the local villages in the Ethiopian highlands around Lalibella was unique as far as our travel experience went. The local villages would build a group of tukuls, or huts, at a scenic place within a certain distance of their village. Trekkers would spend the night at these huts, being hosted by a different village each ... read more
March 6th 2012
We arrived inLalibella, Ethiopia, at about 10 in the morning after an early-morning flight fromNairobitoAddis Ababa, a flight from Addis to the Lalibella airport, and a half-hour drive in an overcrowded minicab. To continue the bad luck we’d had booking last-minute accommodation on this trip (memories of arriving inDurban,South Africaat the same time as the International Conference on Climate Change), we unknowingly planned to arrive in Lalibella right in the middle of one of the biggest religious festivals of the year. It is called Tim Kat and is a celebration of the Epiphany, which of course would be of great significance to this predominantly Orthodox Christian area of the country. We were lucky enough to find a room at a reasonable price, as we’d heard that some hotels were charging up to 200 USD for a ... read more
March 3rd 2012
We only allocated one week of our itinerary toKenya, and the Kenyans seemed a bit insulted by this. We were told that most visitors toKenyawould divide their time betweenNairobi,Mount KenyaNational Park, the Maasai Mara National Reserve, andMombasaon the coast. Our itinerary merely had us spending one night inNairobi(at the beautifulFairviewhotel, called an “oasis in the middle ofNairobi” for a reason) before being picked up for a 5-day trek upMount Kenya. Our reasoning was that we had already seen landscape and wildlife very similar to what could be found in Maasai Mara in the Serengeti, and that coastalKenyawas supposed to be very similar toZanzibar, where we had spent a week. This being said, I would love to go back and spend some more time inNairobi. We had been warned that this was one of the most dangerous ... read more
Thieving Chimps and Doomed Elephants
Published: March 3rd 2012Africa » Uganda » Western Region » Queen Elizabeth NP
March 3rd 2012
After our rewarding gorilla tracking experience, I felt like the chimp tracking was just a bonus! We drove from Bwindi Impenetrable forest to a new guesthouse called Ihamba Lodge, which was still working out the kinks as we had no power or hot water for long periods of our stay there. We were also the only guests staying there that night, which meant for overly attentive staff! The rooms were actually individual cottages with nice views overlooking the marshyshoreofLake George, but there was a loud generator spewing diesel fumes at night, and for some reason the patio doors didn’t have screens but the windows facing the generator did. Still, it was nicely decorated with good food and a good location and I’m sure they’ll work out the power and water problems eventually. The next morning we ... read more
Gorilla-rama in Uganda!
Published: February 29th 2012Africa » Uganda » Western Region » Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
February 29th 2012
Our transfer fromTanzaniatoUgandawas one that I was a little bit worried about, because we planned to take an overnight bus fromArusha,TanzaniatoKampala,Uganda, passing throughNairobi. This meant two border crossings, into countries that we didn’t yet have visas for (KenyaandUganda), in the middle of the night! I had heard horror stories of people being left behind by their bus (luggage still on board) as it takes longer to get tourist visas than for the Africans to simply have their papers stamped. Unfortunately we did see a French girl to whom this had happened, but we had no problems at all. An employee of the bus company, Kampala Coach, even told us that he’d watch for us on theKenyaside of the border. For those of you who haven’t travelled outside North America orEurope, it seems that in most other ... read more
January 29th 2012
We spent New Year's Day, 2012 in Ngorongoro Crater. It was a great way to bring in the new year. We actually enjoyed our two days in this Conservation Area more than we had enjoyed the Serengeti. The fact that we saw about a dozen lions in our first hour probably had something to do with that.... I had been looking forward to exploring this amazing-looking area since our quick glimpse into the bowl on the way to Serengeti. It is a collapsed volcano (caldera) about 20km wide, which means that there is a large concentration of wildlife in a fixed location. The only animals that don't venture into the crater are giraffes, because they have trouble going down hills! We saw even more wildlife than usual because there were still quite a few straggling wildebeest ... read more
January 13th 2012
Our last true safari experience was going to be the Serengeti. We had booked this again through a UK company who outsourced to an Arusha based African agent called Shidoyla. Shidoyla is a word in a local tribal language for the black and white colobus monkey. Our flight from Dar to Arusha was short and easy and the airport affords views of both Mount Kilamanjaro and neighbouring Mount Meru. We were met at the airport by our cheerful guide for transport to our lodge. For our first night we were staying at Karama Lodge, just outside of Arusha situated pleasantly on the side of a hill overlooking a picturesque valley. The lodge was nicely appointed and fairly typically set up for most safari lodges. We had one of the smaller huts with an ensuite, comfortable bed ... read more
January 13th 2012
Zanzibar was definitely one of the highlights of our trip, but our time there had some ups and downs. We arrived at about 4am after 24 hours in transit. This was the wackiest transit in our itinerary as the only way we had been able to get a flight to Zanzibar was to fly from Maputo all the way up to Addis, then back down to Dar Es Salaam, then to Zanzibar. That, coupled with the 5-hour drive from Tofo to Maputo to catch the first flight (and my stressing out about getting stopped by the police and missing our flight), meant that we were ready to crash on whatever horizontal surface was available at our hostel, called Warere Town House. We had only booked a room for the following 3 nights, thinking it wasn't worth ... read more
Whale Sharks and Driving Adventures in Mozambique
Published: January 13th 2012Africa » Mozambique » Southern
January 13th 2012
When we initially planned our trip we were left with two weeks in between the Drakensburg and the Serengeti. Zanzibar was a must and we had allotted it at least 5 days. Mozambique and Malawi were the two places left to decide between and for how long. Our initial hope was to try to do both for a few days but time and budget got the better of Malawi this time. That gave us one week to explore Mozambique. The highlight we had heard was snorkeling with whale sharks in a place called Tofo. In researching the highs and lows we found that Maputo was supposed to be a lovely capital city that added to the appeal of the country. Since we had a full week we thought we could take a couple of days to ... read more
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