Well, I'm back in Calgary but thought I better write an entry for my time in Madagascar... The landscapes, flora and fauna of Madagascar really are out of a fairy tale land. Walking around the tsingy I couldn't believe that this was actually what the rock really looked like, and lets not forget watching the lemurs jump from tree to tree, decent distances too. Unfortunately Madagascar is also very poor and it snaps you back into reality, you want to do something to help these people, but what is the best and most effective way??? I arrived in Madagascar with no [View Full Entry]

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Okay...so before departing Swakopmund, Namibia the leader of our overland group (Heini) organized a tour of the township that he grew up in - Mendosa (hopefully I've spelled that right). We hit all the highlights - the barber, the market where we had some fat cookies (fried bread) and meat and drank some sogum (a drink made out of a kind of millet), Tears of Hope (a local orphanage), the DRC (the very poor area where there is no electricity or running water in the homes and the houses are made out of whatever kind of material could be found), a [View Full Entry]

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Wow!!! I've covered a lot of ground since my last entry. I joined an overland tour in Livingstone and over the past couple of weeks we have driven through Botswana and into Namibia. After leaving Livingstone, Zambia we crossed back into Botswana and headed for Chobe National Park for a game drive and a cruise. Botswana has so many elephants, thanks to their anti-poaching laws, that they are now culling them, so in Chobe I saw lots of elephants and giraffes as well. Seeing them on the islands in the river was especially nice. From Chobe we headed to Maun, our [View Full Entry]

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So I got out of Jo'burg and hit the road with a group of great people and headed to Kruger National Park where we kept our eyes peeled for wildlife....and let me tell you I didn't spot much. Kruger is bushveld and even though it is winter and the trees are not lush it still makes it super hard to spot anything not right on the road. The landscape is breathtaking and we did manage to see some animals....hippos, elephants, vervet monkeys, baboons, zebras, giraffes. Then we went on a night game drive and during dusk we saw 2 lions and [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone, First off let me apologize for the lack of pictures again...I now have all of the tools necessary to get pictures on the blog but the computer that I'm on keeps crashing when I'm adding them. So at my next opportunity I will give it another try. I was sad to see my time at the beach end because it was so relaxing but I shared a taxi to Stone Town, a shoppers dream...and a serious navigational problem to solve. The streets are walking streets super narrow with bends and dead ends. By the end of my 2 days [View Full Entry]

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After 6 days on safari, I have moved on to the beach for a little relaxation. The safari was great! We started at Lake Manyara were we saw many elephants, hippos, zebra.... The next day we set off for Ngorongoro Crater which amazed us with how close some of the animals were including a male lion that walked down the road in front of us! Then we headed to the Serengeti for a couple of days. The animals were much harder to spot here but we still managed to see a number of lions even close up and a couple of [View Full Entry]

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6 days of hiking brought me to 5050m and back down the mountain. We had some great weather for the hike and wonderful guides they were all so nice and helpful. On the day we were to climb to the top we woke up at 11pm and started to climb at midnight. I couldn't believe how cold it was. The night was clear and we climbed slowly, we were scheduled to reach the first point on the crater 5 hours later for sunrise. I was feeling good and hadn't yet feld any of the affects of altitude sickness and was optimistic [View Full Entry]

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