Filed under: >Africa,Travel Planning — Posted by: Baden on Jan 19, 2008
The process of travel planning always involves all kinds of research and discovery of new cultures and sights. Once we’ve decided on a destination, we start doing all of the specific research for the places within that destination that we may want to go to. At this stage we are usually reading any bit of information that we can get our hands on either from travel web sites or even on the news. However, the last thing that you want to read about for your travel destination in the news are words like: riots, tear gas, water cannons and political unrest.
Yes, but we’re also talking about Kenya – part of our Excellent African Adventure later this year.
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The news of the turmoil in Kenya over the past few weeks has obviously been of particular interest to us as it was going to be one of the highlight locations on our African trip. While there are many countries in Africa that have long histories of violence or at the minimum political uncertainty, Kenya has been one of the strongest democracies and best economies in the region. While travel to anywhere in Africa always requires you to keep your wits about you, travel in Kenya has been comparatively safe. All of the events that are happening right now are certainly unusual for Kenya but at some point we will have to make a decision in the next few months about keeping Kenya in the itinerary or not.
I think that Barb and I will be very disappointed if we have to remove Kenya from our travel plans as seeing the Serengeti and the Masai Mara National Parks was going to be a highlight of the locations to see some of the spectacular animals of Africa. If it comes down to it, any decisions that we make to change travel plans will not be taken lightly but after lots of research and consultation with the many contacts that we now have in Africa and at home.
We’ll see how things go.
Baden
Filed under: >Antarctica — Posted by: Baden on Jan 6, 2008
Many people whom I’ve talked to about our plans to go to Africa later this year naturally assume that this trip will be the high water mark for any of the vacations that we have gone to before – a trip of a lifetime.
Not to pour any cold water on this upcoming trip, I’ve known for some time that it is the Excellent Adventure in 2009 that will be the trip of a lifetime. After the 2009 Adventure, there is simply no way that anything else will measure up.
Welcome to the Making of Barb and Baden’s Excellent Antarctic Adventure.
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I started getting the idea of going to Antarctica a few years ago and have only started to do any real research on this in the past 6 months. This trip will, without a doubt, be very different from anywhere that we have ever gone before. I’m not just talking about the weather but let’s face it, you don’t just fly down to Antarctica and check into a hotel. There are no hotels. No airports. No car rentals. The entire planning process for our
typical adventure will require a significant overhaul.
Interestingly enough, in the past few months we’ve read about two ships that have sunk on their way to Antarctica. This is obviously not a pleasure cruise through the Caribbean.
Details of our Antarctic Adventure planning will continue to be published here over the next two years. Stay tuned for our most exciting adventure yet.
Baden
Filed under: Blog on Blog — Posted by: Baden on Jan 6, 2008
I’m coming up on the 3rd anniversary of me running ExcellentAdventure.ca and if you’re reading this you’ll have already noticed that everything looked quite different.
I’ve had to do some hard thinking about how much time it takes for me to write articles for the blog on an ongoing basis and some changes were definitely in order. You may well have already noticed that over the last 6-9 months the number of articles that I have been posting (when I am not travelling) has dropped off quite a bit. This has been reflective of not being able to write 2-3 articles a week anymore so I’ve decided to make a few changes.
First, I’ve re-branded the tag line for ExcellentAdventure from Adventure in Food and Travel to Travel Adventure Around the World. This will reflect my change in focus on just our travel adventures and I will no longer be writing about food and cooking anymore.
It’s not that I have any less interest in food or cooking any more but writing about it will no longer occur.
Thanks to all of my regular readers and I will continue to write to you on our ongoing travel adventures over the years.
Baden