We were driven from the Plantation House to the Manyara air strip where we caught a 45 minute flight to our first safari camp located in the Serengeti called Suyan. I’ve probably mentioned it a few times now but we have been pretty lucky as far as the weather goes since we arrived in South Africa and the sun and warm to hot temperatures continued to be what we were to experience. It wasn’t until we landed that we saw that the ground was all wet and perhaps our lucky streak was going to run out here. We had heard from a few people whom we had dined with over the previous few days who had come from the Serengeti area who told us that it was not only raining but was considerably colder that in the more south Tarangire area.

When we were picked up at the air strip by the camp staff they confirmed that it had rained for 8 straight hours the night before. The ride to the camp had us going through muddy roads which required on several occasions to use the full 4 wheel drive capabilities of the Land Rover that was being used. The vehicle was quite a different style to the one that Nuru was driving – the main difference was that the style of vehicle that were more common in the Serengeti park were open side vehicles as opposed to the vehicles with full doors and large openings in the roof more commonly used in the more southern part of Tanzania. I soon came to dislike these open side vehicles as there was no place to rest your camera when taking pictures as I was able to do on the top of the open top trucks.

We had to traverse no fewer that three rivers to get to the Suyan camp and because of the heavy rains the night before the rivers were far higher than usual. The highest river came above the running board of the truck and had the water in the river been about 2 inches higher than what it was the inside of the vehicle would have been flooded. For what it’s worth, we seemed to be more worried about this than our driver.

The temperature continued to drop that afternoon and the rain started to fall soon after we got to camp. Barb and I had bought brand new long sleeve fleeces before going on this trip and up until then had been languishing in the bottom of our bags. However, we ended up wearing them for almost two days straight when we arrived in the Serengeti as the temperatures had dropped to about 15-17 degrees in the daytime and colder at night. This was in comparison to low 30 degrees just a day before.

We only spent one night in the Suyan camp before we moved on to the Suyari camp about 4 hours drive north through the Serengeti park. The weather was still cold and it had rained several times when we were out on safari drives and we had gotten used to wearing the rain gear that was in every vehicle (over top of our fleeces, of course). By the time be had arrived in the Suyari camp the weather was starting to warm up again and we were starting to see signs of the weather clearing up. Within less than 24 hours we were back in shorts again and the warm, clear skies were back once again.

Safari Concludes

The final two days on safari were now looming with our arrival at the Suyari camp. The first 5 days had gone by pretty quickly and we never really got tired of going on one safari drive after another. While we had definitely started to see many of the same animals after the 4th to 5th day, we would continually be surprised on something new. For example we had seen over 20 different lions in different places but on the very last day we saw a small group of female lions and hidden between them in a thicket was a small lion cub.

We came back the next day and after waiting for about 20 minutes, the cub decided to come out by himself.

One of the major must-see spectacles in the northern Serengeti is the wildebeest crossing of the Mara river. The Mara river generally flows east-west, criss-crossing the Tanzania and Kenya border several times. The wildebeest cross the river several times during the year and in general going to the other side when the grass that they eat has been depleted on one side. The herds of wildebeests number over a million and hundreds of thousands of them congregate in large sections wanting to cross the Mara together.

There are several obstacles in the way of the wildebeests successfully crossing the river. The biggest one are the huge crocodiles which wait in the water for the crossings and feast on wildebeests as they swim by. In the frenzy to cross the river wildebeests may be swept down the river and drown or may just get trampled and killed by another wildebeest.

I had seen and heard of this event about 15-20 years ago and was definitely something that I was looking forward to. The problem is that the wildebeests cross on no particular schedule and even if you see a few hundred thousand of them sitting on the other bank, they may spend hours thinking about it and eventually decide to turn back to wait for another day. We were told by the guid at the camp that it was unlikely that we would see the crossing and naturally we were disappointed to hear this news. However, on one of our morning drives we noticed a growing herd of wildebeests on the north side of the river bank and we followed them along to where they were congregating several kilometres away. There were about 100,000 of them all standing around and we stopped and prepared ourselves for the and unknown wait. We were informed that the wildebeest crossing is an unpredictable event and that you might wait for half a day and see no crossing or a handful may cross and then the herd stops and retreats from the river. There were no hard and fast rules to predict what to expect for this type of thing. In general, this was the way of the entire safari. you never knew what you were going to see from one minute to the next.

Once the wildebeests did start to cross the Mara river, it was truly a spectacle. Several things were occurring at once: the were ones climbing down the embankment, others starting to cross the river (some getting swept away by the strong current) and on our side of the river, the wildebeests desperately getting out of the water and onto the shore. Within a 100 metres of the crossing were the crocodiles that sat on rocks watching the wildebeests cross. Normally the crocs are in the water feasting on the animals as they cross but in our case they seemed to ignore them. The explanation that was given to us is that the crocs were probably already full from a previous crossing.

The wildebeest crossing that we watched ended after about 1000 of them had crossed the river. For an inexplicable reason the majority of the wildebeests herd stopped crossing and withdrew from the river. Sometimes things like this just happen but we have to consider ourselves pretty fortunate to witness even a small wildebeest crossing as the odds of see anything are not in your favour.

Our last day in the Suyari camp had Barb and I feeling the same way that the entire safari had come and gone too soon. The entire experience of seeing all of these animals so close in their natural environment was so incredible and difficult to describe but will be something that Barb and I will share for the rest of our lives.

On the very last night in the Serengeti we stopped and watched the sun go down where I happened to take this picture.

Airport Security

As we have flown to many different parts of Africa we’ve gone though a lot of really small airports where I have described before that the security protocols are pretty casual. Having this on my mind I happened to notice this security sign at one of the small airports right above the check-in desk. It was one of those signs that says things like don’t pack explosives or guns or knives in your carry-on luggage. What happened to catch my eye was the warning not to carry sword umbrellas with you on the plane.

In case you’re wondering, a sword umbrella is a regular umbrella that when you press a special switch you can pull the handle and a sword comes out. My only expererience with sword umbrellas is one used by The Penguin on the old Batman shows but obviously they are used by regular people too.

My first thought about all of this is that at least one person has attempted to bring a sword umbrella onto a plane in Tanzania for them to add this to the list of restricted items. My second thought was where you could buy one of these? Are there specialty sword umbrella stores or is this just a custom request from a regualar umbrella store? Important questions to think about.

Spice Island

After concluding the safari portion of our African Adventure we were now off to a completely different part of Africa which is the island of Zanzibar where we will be concluding our trip. Zanzibar is located off the east coast of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. Known for centuries as the source of many spices such as cloves, tamarind, nutmeg, cinnamon amongst others, Zanzibar differs from mainland Tanzania as it is a predominantly Islamic population and a correspondingly Arab-influenced history.

We flew into the airport in Zanzibar and was picked up by our car to take us across the island to the eastern coast where our destination of the village of Matemwe where our Matemwe Bungalows hotel is found.

Driving across the island took us almost 90 minutes and through many villages and towns see the worst poverty imaginable. Along the coast where many of the hotels are located beside ours there are shanty towns within about 100 meters of the hotels. Don’t get me wrong, I am not stating this in the context that the poverty of Zanzibar needs to be kept well away from the delicate eyes of us tourists but more that the stark contrast of the haves and have-nots are no more obvious than in this part of the world.

Our room was quite amazing with a large mosquito net draping down over the bed but it was the smell of the tropical flowers and incense burning in our room that was the most striking feature. The double doors opened up to a large balcony with a sweeping view of the Indian Ocean and a couch and hammock available to make the three day stay here even more restful. And rest was our primary agenda item in Zanzibar.

The rooms at our hotel all have large, open air sections of the walls and shutters that close but you never really close the room to the air coming in from the ocean. Mostly this is to provide some natural cooling as Zanzibar seems to be one of those places in the world where the humidity is stifling even at night. The constant breeze coming in from the ocean ranges from gentle to really, really strong such that the shutters all have to be closed to prevent the strong wind from blowing everything around in the room. This of course necessitates the need for the mosquito net around the bed as it would be impossible to sleep without it.

Interestingly, this is the only part of the entire African trip where we have seen any mosquitos at all. Throughout the 7 days on safari we saw no mosquitos although there were lots of flies in Tanzania that in some cases really made things miserable. The tsetse (pronounced: teat-see) fly was bar far the worst as they would often bite you and no amount of insect repellent seemed to make any difference to these flies. I’ve already been bitten by mosquitos a few times since arriving in Zanzibar yesterday so hopefully the malaria medicine that we’ve been taking regularly will do it’s job.

Our first dinner that we had in Zanzibar last night was a real treat as they were serving an authentic Swahili dinner – mostly made of rich curries and exotic sounding side dishes. The food was spicy and fragrant, no doubt made from all kinds of local spices. For some reason, none of the safari camps that we were in served any local food. It was all great food but mostly stuff that we would find at home or in Europe. I can only assume that this was to cater to a mostly European and North American clientel.

Creepy Crawly Things

One of the worst fears that Barb and I had about coming to Africa was dealing with all of the bugs and snakes that are commonplace in this part of the world. Not only are most of these creepy crawly things poisonous, they all seem to be unnaturaly larger than anything that we see in Canada. For example we saw this moth the other night flying around the room and it had about a 2 inch wing span! Up until now, we have been fairly lucky that we haven’t had to deal with any surprises in our room.

Until last night.

We were lounging about the room thinking about getting ready for dinner when this thing caught the corner of my eye. All I was able to see was that something was crawling along the floor and it went underneath some furniture. The only part that I was able to see was that it was about 4-5 inches in size .

So as you might imagine the two of us went into full alert mode and within a few seconds I’m on the phone to the front desk asking them to send someone to our room to help us deal with this. Within about 10 minutes we have a housekeeping lady and two burly security men in our room and me standing well back holding the flashlight on the area of the floor where I saw it crawl under the furniture. One of the security guys takes some bug spray and sprays it under the furniture and proclaims "it’s probably dead now". Of course this wasn’t satisfactory as we both wanted to see the bug removed out of the room.

The two guys moved the furniture aside and using one of their night sticks started to poke and prod the creature into exiting its hiding spot so that it could be captured. Finally, one of the guys says that he sees it and reaches down underneath the small cavity under the cabinet and pulls it out. Always thinking about the blog first and knowing that a picture was going to be necessary for this story, I had the sense to have my camera ready and took this picture before they got rid of it.

Mental note: I’ve got to remember to tell Peter and Liz to check their duffel bag that they lent us for this trip for spiders and scorpions when I give it back to them.

Final Day

As I write this section, it is the final day in Zanzibar (and Africa) before we begin our long flight how starting tomorrow. Barb and I hired a boat this afternoon and went to the nearby Mnemba atoll to do some snorkelling. The water was bath water warm and the variety and colours of sea life was incredible to behold. Overall, it was a warm relaxing day but Barb and I knew that our thoughts were already around the return flights and the whole process of departing Africa and returning back to everyday life. We had already noted yesterday that "by this time next week we’ll both be back at work" with some reluctance.

And Finally…

When I am writing these blog articles on our Excellent Adventures, I always try to convey what was it like? and not just what did we do? It’s important that the feeling of what we experience is in some way described in my words and on this area I’m not sure if the feeling that Barb and I have had on this African Adventure is possible to really describe – at least in the time that I have set aside for writing these blog articles. In many ways, our Excellent African Adventure will be the greatest adventure that we have been on as there have been so many unique things that we have seen on this trip that it really is set apart from anything else that we have done before.

So the natural question is will you go back to Africa?

Long before we got to this stage of our trip we had already answered that question and it is certainly yes. There are so many other parts of Africa that we’d like to see and having gone here once we will be far less shy about returning. One thing in particular that I would like to see is the gorillas in Rwanda and several people whom we had met on this trip had done that and have said that it is a once in a lifetime experience.

When we will come back to Africa is not clear but I suspect that it will not be too many years before we start talking about it again.

Most of my regular blog readers know that we usually have our Excellent Adventures planned several years in advance. I had already mentioned for some time that after Africa our next big trip was going to be to Antarctica. However, Barb and I have decided to move this trip back one year as it was going to occur very close to the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver and we both wanted to be in town around that time. So, Barb and I only recently discussed it in the past few days and have decided on an alternate location for our next big fall trip. Please join us in the fall of 2009 for Barb and Baden’s Excellent Turkish Adventure . We also have some smaller getaways planned before next fall and those trips may also make it to my blog as well.

I want to thank everyone who has followed along on our African Adventure and especially those whom have helped Barb and I with the planning process for this trip over the past 10 months.

Within a few days I will post more new Africa pictures onto my photo web site here .

Take care,

Baden

I have to say that only after 5 days of driving in South Africa I had gotten quite used to driving on the left side, shifting with my left hand and signaling with my right. It’s amazing that something that we take for granted (like driving) can be radically changed and the adjustment that was originally thought to be a huge problem turns out to be easily dealt with.

Getting to Dar es Salaam (the capital of Tanzania) from Cape Town was really not much of a problem as we were on South African Airways which is a modern, efficient airline as good as any other that we have flown on. We were warned by many people that the customs and immigration process at the Dar es Salaam is pretty convoluted and that it involved filling out several forms, having US$50 cash and having a lot of patience.

So anyway, back to the Dar es Salaam airport store. What ends up happening is that everyone who gets off the plane at the airport who isn’t a Tanzanian citizen has to fill in two forms for immigration. Under normal circumstances, most countries have the airlines hand these forms out on the arriving plane so you can get them filled out in advance but in this case there is a couple of tables with the forms and everyone makes a mad dash for them and starts filling them out together. I should add that it is about 35 degrees and the highest humidity that has ever been imagined so the stress of getting these forms filled out is not enough to make you sweat.

After you fill everything out you proceed along the hallway and hand your forms and your passport to this guy in a uniform just standing around in the hallway. Oh, and you also give him the $50 cash money. The guy then walks 5 feet to a wicket and hands your paper work to another official. I have no direct visual proof to state if everything that we gave the guy was given to the official at the wicket.

Depending on a number of unknown variables, you now wait for 20+ minutes with all of the other passengers from that flight and one by one they hold up the picture on your passport meaning that you can go up and get your passport and proceed. You then get your bags and proceed to the exit. In our case we needed to get to the domestic terminal which required a 10 minute taxi drive.

Stopping at the information desk to ask how to get to the domestic terminal involves about 10 taxi drivers leaning over to hear what you are asking and then telling you that they can take you there. We ended up with two guys who took our bags and we followed them out the door, past the taxi stand and half way into the visitor’s parking lot where they had their taxi parked. Asking why they did not have their taxi in the taxi stand seemed a redundant question at this point so I didn’t bother. The ride only cost us $5 each (plus a $2 tip) so it wasn’t a complete rip-off.

When we got to the domestic terminal we found the airline that we were going to take to get to Arusha and got our boarding pass. The departure gate check-in process comprised of us writing our name and passport number on a blank sheet of paper. We were then given a laminated card that said boarding pass on it. We ended up giving the boarding passes to the guy at the steps to the plane and they probably got recycled for the next flight.

The flight to Arusha was on a small single-engine plane that seated about 10 people. We had to stop at a different place first but we made it to Arusha as expected at around 6:00. This plane gave a whole new meaning to the term cramped seats. Compared to this plane, regular economy seats on a jet are made to feel like business class.

We were picked up at the Arusha airport and driven to the place that we would be staying for the first night which is a guest house called Onsea House. On the drive over we talked to our driver Nathan* about a lot of things about Arusha and Tanzania in general. The first thing that really amazed me is that I had thought that Arusha was some small town but it in fact has a population 800,000! The major industries in town are a mosquito net factory and they grow roses that are mostly sold to countries in Europe. The drive over from the airport across town took about 40 minutes to get us to Onsea House where we were given our room for the night.

(* this name has been changed for privacy reasons)

It’s interesting that we were picked up at the airport just after 6PM where the sun was still out and in the 40 minutes that it took us to get to our accommodations it was pitch black. It was also a bit cooler than we expected it to be as it was really hot and humid when we were at the Dar es Salaam airport. It was easily about 10 degrees cooler in Arusha and we were told that the reason was because Arusha was at an elevation of about 1300 meters.

Our room at Onsea was quite luxurious and it was the first time that we had to use a mosquito net over the bed. Barb and I had already started to take our malaria medicine a few days ago because, unlike South Africa, Tanzania is a known malaria area (which is spread by mosquito bites). We’re also armed with some industrial strength insect repellent which is supposed to be our first line of defense against getting the deadly disease. Apparently malaria is either the top or one of the top causes of death in Africa – mostly because most people in Africa cannot afford the appropriate malaria medicine.

Finally, the Safari

This morning we made an early start and head out with out driver and guide Nathan eastwards toward our first safari destination which is the Tarangire (pronounced: taran-jire) National Park. All (or most all) of the safaris in Tanzania take place in protected national parks which have protections for the animals against poachers who apparently still kill a sizeable number of animals like elephants and rhinos.

By the time we got to Tarangire the temperature had risen considerably since leaving Arusha some 2.5 hours earlier. The roads that we drove on to the national park were fairly good (all paved) and we passed several other safari vehicles heading in the same direction. One of the biggest differences is that all of the vehicles were the same as ours but every one else had between 3-6 passengers where Barb and I were all by ourselves with our guide. Barb had done quite a bit of research on this and found that she was able to book us a private safari for only slightly more that what most of the safari companies were offering for group bookings. After the end of one whole day on safari as I am writing this, I can honestly say that the decision to go with a private safari was worth its weight in gold.

Our guide Nathan has been really great to have with us and from the time that we met him at the airport we immediately took a liking to him. He’s one of those good natured African people who’s got a great outlook on life even though he’s living in one of the poorer part of the world. More importantly, his knowledge and expertise as a guide has been very valuable to us in spotting different animals in the bush and for me, situating our vehicle to get the best possible photographs.

We spent most of the day driving in Tarangire with the exception of stopping for lunch as a designated picnic area. and of course stopping regularly to take pictures. For the first hour to hour and a half we really didn’t see many animals and a growing sense of dread began to mount as I was wondering if the whole day was going to be like this with very little animal viewing to show for it. However we quickly had a pack of elephants walk by our truck and almost like magic, we began to see all kinds of animals every few minutes.

I simply cannot put into words what the experience is like seeing these animals up close in many cases mere feet from our truck. On example is two sleeping lions that we came across under a tree and we go within about 10 feet of them taking picture after picture.

I shot about 200 pictures today and I can say without any hesitation that the opportunities for taking fantastic pictures in one single day today had probably been equivalent to about 10 years worth of previous trips.

Tonight and tomorrow we are staying at a camp called Oliver’s Camp and it will be our base from which we will explore for those two days. Within Oliver’s Camp we are staying in tents but the word tent really doesn’t due justice to our accommodations. The tents at Oliver’s have queen sized beds, drapes, furniture and an attached shower, sink and toilet. It’s really a hotel room with soft walls.

The one thing that makes you really be on your guard while being here is that you cannot walk anywhere outside in the dark unescorted. So to go for dinner in the dining tent, you have to wait for a staff member to escort you with flashlights along the path to the main area where the dining room is located. The reason for this is that you don’t get eaten by a lion or a hyena on the way to dinner. As I am writing this section it is almost 11PM and Barb is already asleep. Through the screen walls of our tent I can hear all kinds of animals off in the distance. Apparently the majority of the animal predators come out at night and make a bit of noise so how much sleep we will get tonight is uncertain. Hopefully the noises stay "off in the distance".

Walking Safari

Barb had arranged for a walking at Oliver’s Camp for this morning. In contrast to a traditional safari where you are driven through the park in the safety of a vehicle to protect you from the animals that might kill you, the walking safari gives you the opportunity to leave the vehicle behind and get up close to those very same animals. The way it works is that you get up early in the morning so that you can walk around the bush for several hours before it gets really hot and you follow in single file with guys with guns in the front and the back. It’s explained that the guns are there only as a last resort but that the animals in the bush are not always predictable so it’s best to be prepared.

Our host Rudolph, a likeable South African fellow is the lead on this safari and he carries his rifle at all times during the walk. Joining us is a park ranger who takes up the rear. He’s carrying what looks like an AK-47 machine gun and doesn’t talk much. Although no gun expert, I’m pretty sure that between the rifle and the AK-47 we have enough firepower and can probably deal with any situation that comes up.

The walking safari involves a lot of walking through the bush and talking in hushed voices. We occasionally spot an animal far away and attempt to get closer but in most cases the animals run away on their own. We see lots of tracks made by elephants, lions, and African buffalos. Most of what we see in this category is elephant dung which, in case you were wondering, each piece is about the size of a cantaloupe. Email me if you want to see pictures.

We end up seeing a group of African buffalos and we try to get close enough to them to get a better look. African buffalos are in the category of the 5 most popular safari animals known as the Big Five. The other four of the big five are elephants, lions, rhinos and leopards. Apparently this list was given to the 5 most hunted animals back in colonial times. Today, the name is more accurately given to the list of must-see animals when going on safari although we can say from personal experience that there are way more than 5 animals worth seeing in Africa. By the time that we get back home we may have a Big 25 or something approaching this number.

The buffalos also happen to be one of the most dangerous of the big five. The reason we were told is that unlike other animals that may attack humans, the buffalos will do so without any warning. The other animals will give you some kind of indication that they are getting annoyed and may charge you which gives you the opportunity to quietly retreat and diffuse the situation.

With this in mind we continued to approach the buffalos. We saw about 4-5 of them grazing in the tall grass and stopped about 100 meters away from hem hoping that they would move towards our direction. We waited in silence for about 10 minutes and two of them started to move towards us. However one of the buffalos started moving in the other direction and all of the other started following so we never did have any direct encounter to write about. All things considered, maybe this was for the best.

The Crater

On of the most famous sites in Tanzania is the Ngorongoro Crater. Located just east of the Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro (pronounced: n-go-ron-goro) is one of the largest intact craters in the world measuring almost 20km across. It also happens to be one of the largest concentrations of animals in Tanzania.

At this point in our trip, we were staying at a hotel called the Plantation Lodge which is about a 20 minute drive to the gates of the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area. The lodge is one of those old 1800′ – early 1900s era plantation that has lush tropical gardens, a big central house and several separate bungalows and attentive staff wherever you may want something. While Barb and I were taking a swim at the pool a nice lady came by to take our drink orders. There was a rumour that the Plantation lodge was built only 10-20 years ago but even if so I can’t help but feel that we stepped into a time machine and for the two nights that we stayed there it was more like 1908 instead of 2008.

We arrived at the Ngorongoro Crater park gates right when it opened at 6AM so it was another early morning for us as we left the Lodge by 5:30. Because of the popularity of Ngorongoro, there are many other safari vehicles waiting at the gate for it to open. Getting into the crater involves driving up the steep road to the crater rim then down (a very steep road) again to get to the crater floor. Both the up and down roads are easily the worst roads imaginable as you are bouncing along a potholed dirt road that goes on for about 45 minutes up and another 45 minutes down. To add additional excitement, the side of the road is a steep drop-off so if you manage to leave the road on the way up or down you’ll drop about 100 meters down.

One of the most interesting things that we came across on the drive up the crater was that there were elephants that lived on the outside of the crater and were actually able to walk up this incredibly steep embankment. We actually saw a full grown elephant do this and we’re talking a hill so steep that I would probably have trouble climbing it.

From the top of the crater rim there is a spectacular view of the entire crater floor. I took several pictures of the crater floor from the top view but because of the panoramic view I need to stitch together 4-5 pictures when I get home to show you what it looked like.

Once you are on the bottom of the crater floor, you can take roads going off in many directions. One of the first animals that we came across was a family of jackals in the above picture. They were running on the road ahead of us and all stopped and turned towards me at the same time and I got this shot. For some reason I had always thought that jackals were the same (or close to) hyenas but there are obviously quite different – the jackals being more like foxes than dogs.

We ran into more traffic in the crater than we did in Tarangire National Park but our guide Nathan was always able to direct us down a different road that the majority of the traffic was on so we often alone in the crater with other vehicles many kilometers away going in different directions. It wasn’t until we moved on to our net destination of our safari and got different guides did we really come to understand how Nathan was a real talent. Nathan had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of all of the animals and birds that we happened to come across and he was amazing at spotting the most obscure animal (while driving, no less) that it took us time to even see what he was pointing at. In the five days that we were with him, we learned a lot about the animals of Tanzania but more importantly we learned about the people and what it is like living in his country.

We spent a good 6-7 hours in the Ngorongoro crater and had both breakfast and lunch there in different locations. The view of the many different animals is only surpassed by the incredible beauty of the crater itself. Lions, hippos, rhinos, ostriches and countless other animals were seen that day at it will without a doubt be one of our most memorable days on our safari.

The Photography of Africa

For those of you who are not interested in the technical details of photography, you can probably skip this entire section.

The planning of our African Adventure has been years in the making and as a result I have known for some time that, more than any other Adventure, this trip would be a photographer’s dream. As part of that photographic planning in the last 10 months I have done an upgrade of my camera body, purchased a new zoom lens and also a new laptop specifically with this trip in mind.

One of the biggest challenges in getting good photographs on a safari is having the appropriate zoom lens. In most cases you are in a vehicle on defined roads and you are unable to control how close you can get to the wild life. When I was looking at purchasing a new zoom lens I had to balance out the capabilities of the lens with the weight and cost factors. In the end I chose the Nikon 70-300 f4.5-5.6 VR lens to compliment the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 lens that I already had. The Nikon lens gives me 450mm of zooming power on my Nikon D300 and is the main lens that I have been using here in Africa – usually on my camera about 90% of the time. The VR (vibration reduction) capabilities of the lens are so good that I will never buy a new lens that does not have VR capabilities. The Nikon lens is a consumer lens made of plastic (compared to metal-based pro lenses) but I have found that this material has kept the weight of this lens down which is a real significant feature given that my camera back pack is already pretty heavy as it carries my laptop in it as well. In sun light, the low-speed f5.6 maximum aperture (at full magnification) hasn’t been too much of a limitation but if I’m shooting subjects in shadows this becomes more of an issue. Again, the only solution to this would have been to go to a full pro-level lens at f2.8 adding size, weight and about $1000 extra cost.

About 14 months ago I took the step up to digital SLR cameras with the purchase of a Nikon D80 body (along with the Tamron lens above). The D80 was (and is) a great camera but when I was planning the Africa trip, there were several issues that made me reconsider this purchase and after only owning the D80 for about 5 months sold it and soon bought my current D300 body. There were two main reasons for the upgrade: first, I had read a lot about how the dust is a big problem on safaris and how it gets into all of your electronic equipment. As I was going to be occasionally changing lenses getting dust on the sensor would have to be dealt with and the D300 has a dust cleaning feature for the sensor and the D80 does not. Another big difference is that the D300 has rubber seals on all of the openings to keep dust out. The second reason was because of the D300′s better low-light capabilities although admittedly this was not going to be such a significant issue on this Africa trip.The

The concern about the dust getting into all of the equipment didn’t really start to become a real issue for the first few days of our safari. Most of the safari roads in Tanzania are dirt and as a result, a lot of the red dust gets kicked up when other vehicles pass by you or when your vehicle comes to a stop. As you’re normally holding your camera in your hand while driving being prepared for an unexpected shot, there’s really no way to avoid not getting it covered in the road dust. What I did to minimize the impact of this was that I got into the habit of wiping down all of the equipment with a damp cloth as soon as we got back to our room. I realize that this doesn’t get the dust out of all of the small nooks and crannies but that level of cleaning may have to wait until I’m back in Vancouver and may involve some professional camera cleaning.

For almost all of my wildlife shooting, I leave my camera set in aperture priority mode with the maximum aperture setting. For my Nikon lens this would vary between f4.5-5.6 deepening on the focal length to which I have zoomed. Of course, this is to try and keep the subject in focus and everything else out of focus.

Even with VR, keeping a long lens steady is always a challenge when trying to achieve really sharp pictures. To maximize the steadiness of the camera, I used a bean bag resting on top of the roof of the car. Our vehicle had large sun roof openings so standing up gave me 360 degree unobstructed views and a place to rest my camera for all shots except if shooting high up in trees where hand holding the camera was the only option. For some reason which I cannot explain, I have not seen any other person using a beanbag on their car even if they are using an SLR and a long lens. Everyone other person who I’ve seen in other vehicles taking pictures seems to prefer to handhold their camera.

With this being the last day of our safari at the time of this writing, between Barb and myself we have taken about 1500 pictures and about 20-30 videos using Barb’s Panasonic FX01 pocket camera. I am carrying an 8GB and a 16GB compact flash memory card for my camera. I have been alternating between one and the other every day so that if I suffer a card failure there is less chance of losing several consecutive days worth of photos.

My D300 has 6 variations of RAW file format and I am shooting 12-bit RAW compressed which produces about a 10MB file in NEF format for each picture. I stopped using JPG a long time ago once I discovered how much more latitude I could recover a bad picture from NEF format as opposed to JPG. Of course I have to convert any image from NEF to JPG in order to make is useful to post on my blog and on my laptop I have Nikon ViewNX and Adobe Photoshop Elements installed. ViewNX is used primarily for viewing my images and I can convert multiple NEF files to JPG using this software. For those images that need some touch-ups before I post them, I will use Photoshop which can also export to JPG when I’m finished.

Earlier this year I decided that the Dell Axim PDA that I had been using on the road for the past 2 years was no longer suitable and needed to choose a full Windows notebook. The main driver for this was twofold: I needed a reasonably large hard disk to use to backup my multi-gigabytes of photos from my camera on a daily basis and I also needed to be able to work with large image files being produced by my D300. The small screen on the Axim and the Windows Mobile operating system was just not able to work with 10MB image files and there was no option to edit NEF files.

As such, I bought the smallest, lightest notebook that I could find which ended up being a Sony VAIO TZ series running Windows Vista. One of the biggest selling features of this notebook was the ability to offer about 8-9 hours of battery life which has been a real benefit here in our safari camps where I have no power in our tents.

Overall I have been really happy with the D300 and hope to have a few of my favourite pictures pruned out of all of the overall shots some time after I get home and published on my photo web site.

Last Post

My next posting will be the final chapter of Barb and Baden’s Excellent African Adventure.

Baden

When we travel to a different country, one of the things that we try and do is discover (as much as possible) what defines the people and what better way to do that than by learning about the food that they eat? As a result, I am often looking for those unique dishes that are just not possible to get at home or alternatively, a unique local variation of something that I have had before.

Case in point: we’ve just come back home from dinner at a local restaurant in Simonstown called the Seaforth Restaurant. Barb and I both caught a unique item on the menu which we both ordered called a Karol Game Pot. The description said that it was made with African game simmered in wine, apricots and vegetables. The game pot was served in a small metal pot in a delicious sauce. We asked what kind of game it contained and we were told that it was Springbok . As we have never tasted springbok before we could not easily identify it but I can only say that it had it own unique flavour and it was perfectly matched to the delicious sauce. With only two days in South Africa behind us we have been completely impressed by the local food.

About the only thing that we can say that has exceeded the local dining scene is the low cost of it all. Without a doubt South Africa is the best bargain of any place we have ever traveled to. There’s simply no comparison. I’m pretty sure that this all has to do with the falling South African currency and as a result the value that you get with the dollar is really quite amazing. The dinner that we had tonight which included a large glass of wine, two appetizers, main courses, dessert and cappuccinos came to about $65 (before tip) for the both of us. This caliber of meal would have cost about double that in Vancouver.

If it wasn’t for the brutal flying time to get here and the political uncertainty and the crime problems, South Africa might definitely be seen as the bargain vacation destination of choice by most people.

A Good Hope For The Cape

This morning began our first full day in Simonstown and our intent was to head south to the bottom of Africa.

South Africa straddles the Indian and Atlantic oceans and the point at which they meet is known as the Cape of Good Hope which is the very bottom of South Africa about a 30 minute drive from Simonstown. Along the drive to the cape we passed at least 6 tour busses coming in the opposite direction and we surmised that a lot of people take a day trip from Cape Town. After we arrived at the cape it was clear why this was such a popular destination. The spectacular views were pretty hard to beat.

Before I forget I should comment on the left side of the road driving thing. The good news is that we haven’t yet met with a head on collision and it’s becoming more and more relaxing to drive even after just one day. A lot of the challenge is driving in the city streets where there are a lot more turns where highway driving is almost exclusively straight driving and maybe the occasional lane change. Without a doubt driving a 5-speed transmission makes the whole job quite a bit more difficult but the most troublesome part of driving this car is dealing with the turn signal with my right hand. For some reason I can’t get this done consistently and the win shield wiper is getting more accidental use on this car that should ever be getting. Tomorrow morning we are moving north to our new destination in Cape Town so I need to step it up a notch to avoid any problems.

From the parking lot at Cape Point (the official name where of we were), there is a several hundred metre hike up the hill towards the top point where the lighthouse is located. There is also a funicular that you can take to get up the hill but we chose to walk. As I had mentioned before, the place was teeming with other people and a good 6-7 tour buses filled a large part of the parking lot. As a result of this the hike up the hill to the top was akin to walking along a busy city street.

Despite all of the crowd at the cape, the whole thing was completely worth it. Incredible views like this are simply not something that you see every day and if you have the opportunity this is one of those must-see destinations (assuming that the weather cooperates). The weather today for us was sunny in the high teens only that low because the was a strong wind was blowing. Being at the bottom of a continent sitting between two oceans seems to result in a never-ending wind in this part of the world.

One of the interesting features of the mountain at Cape Point was the addition of a number of baboons which lived in the area. This immediately brought back memories of a similar group of baboons which lived on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar which we visited in 2003. The baboons here also seemed to have the run of the place and could go where they pleased.

One the way back to Simonstown, we took a detour to go to a small cove about 5 kilometers from Cape Point and in the parking lot of this cove were two huge ostriches walking along the side of the parking lot like it was perfectly normal (which obviously it was). It continues to amaze us how these wild animals just run around wild in public places. In Canada, we would only see such animals in zoos or otherwise in captivity.

The experience of seeing the wild animals in close proximity will almost certainly be the most memorable part of this trip and something that we both look forward to in the safari part of this Adventure which will start next week.

Cape Town Experience

This morning we departed our hotel in Simonstown and began our drive north to our final South African destination: Cape Town.

Under normal circumstances the drive probably should have taken about an hour but with us getting lost 2-3 times and stopping at the side of the highway a few times near the town of Llandudno which had absolutely spectacular scenic views of the turquoise coloured water it was more like about 2.5 hours before we pulled into our villa which, coincidently, is called An African Villa .

An African Villa is a completely renovated and modernly decorated late-1800′s Victorian mansion that has 12 guest rooms and our with a view of Table Mountain from our balcony.

Table Mountain is the defining feature of what most people think of when they envision Cape Town. It’s the picture on the front of any Cape Town guide book and the first thing on the list of things to do when you arrive in Cape Town. As I had mentioned before the large mountain the background of the city reminds me very much of the Vancouver skyline but sitting in my room right now looking up at Table Mountain as I write this I can say that there is a much more imposing closeness of Table Mountain as there is no body of water that separates the mountains as there is in Vancouver.

A cable car goes up to the top of the mountain and if you are lucky, you will be rewarded with unobstructed incredible views of the city and surrounding countryside. In October, the likelihood of getting such an unobstructed view is very small as the weather is often rainy or cloudy or windy and the cable car is shut down in such windy weather. However, yesterday when we arrived we knew that we had the perfect weather and immediately made it our priority to get to the top of the mountain. It was the best decision that we have made of our trip.

Sidebar: on the subject of weather there had been a lot of discussion when we were planning our Excellent African Adventure of exactly how warm (or more accurately how cold) it would be in Cape Town when we arrived. On average the weather has been between the high teen and mid-20′s but overall sunny and warm all of the time. We have been wearing shorts almost all of the time since we arrived but the strong winds sometimes require the need for a light jacket. On the way home from dinner last night we were commenting that there was an almost tropical warmth in the air the way that we had felt at night in places like Hawaii and the Cook Islands. However we should point out that most people have been telling us that it has been unseasonably warm lately and in the next few days things are supposed to get closer to normal – whatever that will mean.

Getting back to Table Mountain, it doesn’t take too much thought to figure out that the near perfect flat landscape at the top of the mountain has given Table Mountain it’s name. Once you are up top you can walk around the top of the mountain and enjoy the views of the surrounding city from a variety of lookout points. Paths go off in many directions and overall it’s very easy to get around. You wouldn’t be able to get around in a wheel chair but it’s no problem getting from side to side of the mountain.

On of the interesting features of the cable cars that goes up and down the mountains is that it solves the problem of everyone wanting to take pictures from the relatively small window that looks out the back of the car overlooking the city. The solution that they have is that the entire floor inside the car rotates as the car goes up or down the mountain so that during the entire ride you will see exactly a 360 degree view and the open window will eventually just come by you allowing you to take your pictures. It’s a very clever idea.

Without getting into too many words to describe the views from the top of Table Mountain, suffice to say that the views are spectacular and if you have the opportunity to be in Cape Town and the weather cooperates that this is a must-see site. The whole thing is a bit on the touristy side but sometimes playing the tourist and just shamelessly cranking off picture after picture just makes sense.

Mall Food

Yesterday evening was our first night in Cape Town so we had to figure out where to go to dinner. Upon the advice of several sources we ended up at what is known as the Waterfront area (the official name is the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront ) to find a place to eat.

A large section of the Waterfront area is a shopping mall which is open late every night so there is quite a few people inside given that it was a Wednesday night. In addition to the usual variety of stores there are several restaurants inside with many of them of the seafood variety.

Now I have to admit that under normal circumstances the idea of eating mall food was not something that I normally would even consider when we are in a foreign city and are trying to get a taste of the city’s unique culinary flavour. To me, mall food is what you eat when you’re hungry after spending a few hours shopping when convenience is the primary feature. Nonetheless, we were here and it was late and we were hungry. It was too late to back out and start looking for another place.

The first sign that something unique was up was that there was lots of people at their tables with bottles of wine. Ok, that’s not something that you’re going to see at the food fair at a mall in Vancouver! We decided to go to a restaurant called Willoughby and Co. which on the surface seemed like just another mall restaurant with most of the tables in the walking section of the mall. It also specialized in seafood and had several types of sushi on the menu as well.

Overall we were quite impressed with the meal that we had at Willoughby and Co. Barb’s entree of salmon tartare (pronounced: tar tar) which is raw, ground salmon was first rate. The whole dining experience was very different than I ever would have expected at a mall restaurant and it’s gotten me thinking that there’s a whole lot of other things that I can’t assume about seemingly similar things here in South Africa.

Wine Country

Most people whom we talked to when we were in the planning stages of this trip said that if we were going to be in the Cape Town area that we had to go to the nearby wineries on a day trip. I didn’t learn this until very recently (ok, last night) but South Africa has been a wine producing country for several hundred years. So today we had set aside the day to take a drive east to the heart of the South African wine region. In particular, our destination of choice was the town of Franschhoek .

It took about an hour to drive out to Franschhoek and overall I found that driving on the local highways to be generally a positive experience and the highways were in good conditions supporting the maximum speed limit of 120 km/hr. There has been a lot of construction on the highways and in the Cape Town area in general and I suspect that this has a lot to due to the FIFA World Cup coming to South Africa in 2010.

Of course there’s a whole separate discussion that I’m not going to get into about South Africa’s ability to successfully pull off a world class event like the World Cup but that’s probably a topic left for someone else’s blog.

We stopped in the town of Franschhoek (the town and the region share the same name) with the intention of having lunch there but decided that we weren’t that hungry since we had a large breakfast at the Villa just a few hours ago. So we passed some time in the town looking in some of the galleries and other local shops. We ended up only staying a short time as the heat didn’t really lend itself to just walking along the street (it was easily about 25 degrees by mid-afternoon) so we decided to move on to some of the wineries.

We stopped at one nearby winery but left unhappy after tasting a few of their wines. The real place that we were looking to go to (more for food than for wine) was a winery called La Petite Ferme . Make no mistake about it, the food that we were to have at La Petite Ferme was worth the entire day’s drive. The wine was pretty good as well.

Barb and I sat outside in the back of the restaurant while we waited for our table. The restaurant was booked solid and we had to wait until 2:30 to get a table. Obviously, lots of people were in on the secret of the food at this place. While we waited out back, we got to take in the following view of the local wine valley:

Barb and I too a look at the menu and we both came to the same conclusion what we wanted: the ostrich. What we were served looked and tasted closer to beef but had a unique taste all its own. It was served with an apricot wine sauce that was a perfect compliment to the ostrich meat on a bed of quinoa and spinach. I wouldn’t be overstating it by saying the the food at La Petite Ferme was in the top 10 restaurants that we have ever eaten at in the world. Well, maybe top 20. We out out a lot.

So How Bad is Bad?

For those of you who are long time readers of my blog you probably have figured out that I try to stay fairly positive in my comments about whatever place we happen to visit and almost never touch on any serious social problems that happens to be relevant to that country or city. However I need to break from that tradition because with the case of South Africa the day to day issues are so far to the surface and affect the day to day lives of people that I cannot ignore it and still claim to present any sort of true reflection of what it was like here.

As I stated in Part 1 of this Adventure series, there has been no other place that we have travelled to that has prompted us getting so many warnings about our personal safety before we left. From the time that we left the Cape Town airport driving to our first destination of Simonstown we could see immediately that this was a place that you had required some extra attention.

So, the natural question that might be on everyone’s mind is: how bad is bad? Well, the answer to that question is that it really all depends on what we’re talking about.

Upon arrival into a South Africa city like Cape Town, you are immediately on your guard from the fact that on virtually every street corner there are what appear to be poor black homeless people attempting to sell you something at your car. There is some analogy to what we have in Vancouver where people approach your car to wash your windshield but this is really at a whole different level here. You cannot travel on any street or major highway and not see large groups of people walking along the sides of the road or what appears to look like just hanging out. Later on I realized that part of the source of this issues is that I saw really no developed public transportation in Cape Town and much of the working people rely on either the trains or "taxis" which usually happen to be vans or pickup trucks that were packed with 10-12 passengers.. Considering how large Cape Town is this the lack of a real public transit system is sorely lacking considering that most of the poor black live far out of town.

On our way out of Cape Town heading south on our arrival we had a chance to see a township with for ourselves. The word township has a specific meaning in South Africa and my best explanation is that that it is an area of town or a whole town itself that is exclusively comprised of poor black people. The roots of these townships go far back in history rooted in apartheid but the end result is that a large part of the population live in these slums. From my purely visual perception, the township reminded me of a refuge camp that I have seen on the news in some war-torn country. The word shanty-town would be a word that I would use to describe it.

The issue of personal safety and overall security is a topic that seems to be of high importance to understand. Most of the larger homes in South Africa are built around high walls and locked gates. One of the first things that we were taught when we arrived at our villa in Cape Town is how to unlock the metal gate to the front door. Places in town that were safe to visit and places to avoid, what times of day to not be outside were all part of our orientation when we arrived.

Pretty much everywhere that you park your car you will be approached by someone who is wearing a high-visibility vest with something on it like "car attendant" or "security" or "car guard" written on them. We came to learn that in the vast majority of cases these "guards" are just individuals who are looking for a few Rand to watch your car for you. Nonetheless in the short time that I have been here I have come to expect that someone will be around when we get out of the car. This one fact took some getting used to.

All of these issues are obviously complex and based on the unique history of South Africa and have no simple solutions. I want to stress that my observations are based on us being in South Africa for a very short amount of time and as such my observations may be out of context with the reality of the real situation. I encourage any of my readers who can provide a better insight into these subjects to post their comments on my blog.

Goodbye South Africa

Tomorrow morning we leave Cape Town and move onto our next destination in Tanzania where we will begin our safari.

In the five days that we have been in South Africa, we have seen first hand many of the things that we have been told about by the people whom we know who have come from this country and live in Canada now. In virtually every case – we have heard time and time again the store of people who have left South Africa due primarily to personal safety issues and either the threat or real personal experience with crime. Until we came to this country, we really didn’t understand what people have given up by leaving this country. In just the few days that we have been here we have seen that there really is no other place like South Africa. The combination of history, climate, culture and the natural environment make South Africa a unique country in the world that has something really special that I have never seen before. If I were born in this country and had to make the decision to leave I can now appreciate that this would be a very difficult decision.

Now, I’m not going to try and convince you that in five days that I have all of South Africa "figured out" but I’m going to take away some memories of this country that we will have with us for a long time.

Hello Tanzania

Some time tomorrow we will have arrived in Arusha, Tanzania for the start of our safari. The only unknown is that for the first time on any of our Excellent Adventures, I’m uncertain as to what Internet access we will have. As such I’m not sure when my next posting will occur. As I have my laptop with me I will continue to compose my new blog postings so worst case scenario I will do a "batch" update when I next get Internet access.

Until then.

Baden

We didn’t have a great start to our arriving in Heathrow as we got stuck in one of those lineups waiting to see the immigration officer that seems to hardly move for over 30 minutes. We took the tube from the airport directly to our hotel and it only took about 10 minutes of hauling around our new luggage to know that we were going to be in for a real struggle with them. Our "new" luggage was really just an old sport bag and a larger duffel bag that we borrowed from my brother Peter. On this trip we left behind our tried and true 4 wheel drive luggage at home and only packed in soft bags. The reason for this decision is that one key flight which we will take in Tanzania on the way to our safari will be done on a really small plane that had a strict limitation of no bags heavier than 15 Kg. As a result of this we had to do a trial run with the new luggage about 2 weeks ago to verify that everything that we planned to pack would actually be under the 15 Kg limit.

The problem with all of this is that while the 4 wheeled luggage that we normally would take is almost effortless to move around the two duffel bags (plus the two small back packs that we use to carry day to day things) ended up being a huge pain to move around for more than 1 block at a time. By the time we walked the 3 blocks from Victoria station to our hotel we were both exhausted. It didn’t help that London was practically in a heat wave with temperatures around 25 degrees when we arrived on Saturday.

But I digress about all of the luggage hassles because while I happen to be writing this section in the Madrid airport on our way down to South Africa, all of our memories of our day and a half in London were extremely positive.

We had an opportunity to spend Saturday evening with some of my cousins who live in London – all of whom we haven’t seen in 10 years. It’s kind of weird travelling across the world and only seeing family for just a few hours. You end up feeling that was far too short of a time to spend with people whom you haven’t seen is such a long time but it was great to catch up even for that short amount of time.

Walking the Hill

Sunday morning was the day that we leave London and head south to South Africa via a connection in Madrid. Unfortunately it will be Monday morning by the time we reach Cape Town so we have another full day of travel ahead of us. However we don’t leave London until about 6PM so we have pretty much a full day again here to explore.

On our last (first) visit to London 10 years ago we spent enough time here to visit a lot of the "must-see" places so we really didn’t have a huge list of things to do for today. We ended up deciding that with the weather so good it would be a shame to spend it indoors so we decided to take in a walking tour of the Hampton Village part of London. I should confess that we were really tempted to spend some time shopping but (for once in our lives) we didn’t do any shopping while in a major European city for the simple reason that anything that we might buy would have to be hauled around in our luggage for the next 2.5 weeks. Maybe next time.

In hind sight, the walking tour of Hampton village that we did this afternoon was great idea and a perfect way to spend 2 hours outside on a sunny day. The company that we connected with is called London Walks and the instructions on their web site stated to meet at the Hampton tube station and about 40 other people were there with the same idea. For £7 each, we were treated to a walk and commentary through one of the most picturesque parts of 18th and 19th century London which is also situated on the tallest hill in London and in some cases gave some great views of the city. All of the interesting historical information that was provided by our guide aside, the walk was a great photo opportunity.

After the walk in Hampton, we still had some time to burn so we ended walking through Hyde Park which is one of the biggest parks in central London. Visiting parks in major cities that we visit is a common theme that Barb and I have done on many of our Excellent Adventures. Spending time in a calm natural setting in the middle of a large city surrounded by lots of local people seems to be a great way to contrast the usual hustle and bustle of city streets and shopping malls.

Heading South

Before I finish up my section on London, I have to mention a few great finds that I picked up for my SAP collection.

What’s this you’re saying? What’s with the SAP ads?

Well for those of you who are new I shod explain that I’ve been collecting pictures of [company name] Runs SAP ads from airports around the world for about 8 years now. It’s a small way of me keeping some memories of the places that we’re been to over the years.

Of course, more than one person has asked me "isn’t the hours that you spend writing in your blog and the hundreds of pictures that you take a small way of keeping some memories of the places that you’ve been to over the years"? Well, technically yes if you’re willing to split hairs but I think that the SAP collection conveys something that the blog articles and the pictures just don’t. And as you know, the holy grail of the SAP airport ads which has not made it to my collection yet is the almost mythical BMW Runs SAP ad. Rumoured to have once hung in the train station in Munich it has eluded me on every visit to Germany so far. If I am lucky enough to get a picture of this ad I think that I could finally retire my SAP collection .

Blowing in to South Africa

Another overnight flight from Madrid had us landing in Johannesburg (or Jo-burg as everyone seems to call it) around 11AM. As soon as we stepped off the plane we were hit with a wall of heat and humidity as it was around 30 degrees – quite the difference to the low 20′s that we experienced in London. However we knew that the temperatures in this part of South Africa were not going to be any indication of what it would be like in the Cape Town area as we know that the Cape area is quite cooler and much windier (Cape Town is known for its windy climate).

On the flight out to Cape Town we had a great view of the landscape and the flat, arid lands eventually changed into more mountainous geography the more we flew west. This, of course, made sense as all of the pictures that we had seen of Cape Town were those showing the mountains in the background (very similar to Vancouver, in fact).

Our arrival into Cape Town airport was uneventful enough and it was the only time in our trip where we would be picking up a rental car for our 5 days in the Cape area. The Toyota Yaris that we were given was easy enough to drive other than the fact that it was right hand drive and a manual 5-speed that I had to shift with my left hand. Of course this all meant that the turn signal was on the right side as well. Now I have driven right hand drive (which all implies driving on the left side of the road) twice before in New Zealand and in Scotland so it was not completely unfamiliar to me. The thing about driving on the left is that you constantly have to be concentrating on driving on the left because your natural tendency (for us) is to drive on the right. What this all means is that you’re constantly reminded that if you lose concentration for even one second it will result in a head-on collision and we will all be dead. As you might imagine this makes driving a bit less relaxing that it might normally be.

So other than the head-on collision and us both dying part, the drive from the Cape Town airport was quite scenic and we drove along the coast to our first South African destination, Simonstown . We arrived late yesterday afternoon at the Boulder’s Beach Lodge and had barely dropped our bags in our room before we ran across the parking lot to the beach to check our the penguins. Yes, it was the penguins that live at this beach that was the reason why we are staying here as it is no secret that Barb loves her penguins.

More adventures in Simonstown and the Cape Town area of South Africa will be in my next posting. I should also say that I will be uploading some of my pictures to my web site as I go along. You can view them here .

Baden

It’s possible that all of this anxiety has something to do with all of the people who we’ve spoken to over the past few months and have told us how unsafe Africa is. Dire warnings have been passed on to us about things like never to venture out at night and not stopping your car at red lights leaves one to wonder how safe things really are.

So all things considered, it has to be a fair question to ask if the risks of going to Africa are worth it?

Well, obviously we’ve answered that question ourselves by the very fact that we’re already committed. We’ve had lots of chances to reconsider and every time that we’ve talked about it we’ve never seriously planned on cancelling. The only real change that we’ve made since we started doing the serious travel planning about 10 months ago was that we were originally planning on doing our safari in Kenya. Unfortunately the political situation in Kenya was a bit to uncertain and we decided to change to Tanzania where we will now be going.

Our Excellent African Adventure has four stages to it with the first stage not even in Africa. I’m writing this prologue 3 days before we leave and in less than 48 hours from now Barb and I will have our suitcases out and we will start packing. Both of us are working on Friday so we will go straight to the airport when we get home for our evening flight out of Vancouver.

For those of you who have followed along with us on many of our previous Excellent Adventures, you know that I’ll be posting updates every few days along with recent pictures (where I am able to get Internet access). Without a doubt, Barb and Baden’s Excellent African Adventure will be our greatest adventure yet!

Getting there in style

Well, it’s officially started. We’re sitting here at the boarding lounge at the Vancouver airport waiting to board out first flight off to London which is the first leg of our journey down to the southern hemisphere of the world (or more specifically, Cape Town, South Africa ).

As we were walking though the airport on the way to the security check-in, we were both saying how it was kind of surreal that we were actually going to Africa now. First, we’ve had almost 10 months of planning for this trip (if you recall we booked our flights last December) and secondly we’ve both had all kinds of things wrapping up at work today so it just seems like any other day after work right now. I think that it will take a few more hours before we’re in the right frame of mind. We do have about 9 hours to take care of this before we land in London.

I’ve mentioned to a few people that we are flying business class with British Airways for the entire journey to Africa and back. We’ve been fortunate to have travelled business class 3 times over the years and it’s really something on which you can get spoiled. The biggest benefit has to be the extra large seats with the 5 feet of legroom. The seats also fold down almost flat so this makes attempting to sleep on the flight all that more possible.

Of course there’s the royalty treatment that comes with business class travel like expedited check-in, free access to food and drinks in the BA boarding lounge and of course the personal service on board. All of these are nice (I won’t try and convince you otherwise) but I’d be willing to give us all of this is I could just keep the extra large seats.

We have about a day and a half stay in London and we plan on visiting my cousins who live in London and try and do a few more things if we can. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since we last visited England. For some reason it really feels like it has only been just a few years but if I think back there has been a lot of travelling in between those years since 1998.

The time now is about 11:45AM (London time) and I’ve just woken up about 30 minutes ago. We’re about 2.5 hours from Heathrow airport and I’ve managed to get about 4-5 hours of sleep on the flight. For the record I would normally get about 1-2 hours of sleep so yet another plus for the fold-flat business class seats.

Barb and I are seated in the "pods" type of seats which means that we are facing each other side by side with me facing forward and Barb towards the rear of the plane. There is a fold-down foot stool on the wall in front of me for each seat which becomes the end part of the "bed" when I adjust the seat fully flat for sleeping.

When we boarded the plane last night of course they allow first class and business class passengers on first so we are seated and are already been served drinks (champagne or orange juice) when the other passengers come walking by to their seats in the economy seats (or as British Airways calls it: World Traveller class). To be fair, even the regular seats on BA flights are pretty good but let’s not kid ourselves that those people walking by you while you’re drinking champagne are thinking that it would be pretty nice to be in business class. But hey, Barb and I have done our fair share of the same thing on our way to the back of the plane. I think that actually have travelled in business class even once makes it that much harder to make that adjustment.

As we had a late evening departure out of Vancouver, I only had a salad for dinner trying desperately to avoid ordering the beef tenderloin from the menu that I had my eye on. Under normal circumstances I would have had no problems having a good meal on board but had we had an earlier flight it would have been a different story. Getting used to an 8 hour time zone change will often make eating hard on your body because you are often eating when your body thinks that it should be asleep. To me the best approach has always been to take it easy and not eat too much until you’ve landed. Besides, there’s plenty of time to indulge in the local cuisine when we get to our first African destination of Cape Town on Monday.

That’s all that I’m going to write for now. I’ve brought my laptop with me so typing out a few paragraphs here and there is relatively easy. When travelling, I find that there’s always some time throughout the day (especially in the morning before Barb gets up or late at night) that I can spend 30 minutes and write down this stuff. So, next stop London and I’ll provide at least one posting there before we move on to our real destination of Africa.

Baden