Africa - the continent of amazing wildlife, spectacular sunrises and sunsets, incredible costs to the travellers (more expensive than Europe!!), unbelievably friendly and non too friendly locals and a continent which only has 1% internet facilities has made a very interesting 2.5 months for us.
So, firstly, we are alive and well but as we say the internet in Middle/Southern Africa is almost non existant. We have travelled from Kenya to Namibia through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Botswana, we've taken very rough local transport, boats, buses, luxurious coaches and even had to hitch hike 1000km through nothern Namibia.
The game parks live up to their expectations, they have been fantastic and we've seen all the BIG FIVE wild animals all so close up. Leopard, Lion, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant plus dozens of other animals and now do not think we will visit a zoo again. - The Masai Mara Game Park in Kenya was by far the most rewarding as for a game goes.
Mount Kilimanjaro (as Shawn calls it [Kill Me Manjaro]) was another "must do" on our trip. And from a "must do", it turned out to be "never again"!! One of us reached the top at 5860m and from an easy start, it turned out to be very physically and mentally challenging, a bitterly cold experience which took a week on a beach in Zanzibar to recover from!!
The Victoria Falls lived up to and far exceeded expectations as did northern Botswana/Namibia where we slept over river surrounded by hippos.
So, here we are in Windhoek (capital of Namibia), we are relaxing here from a few days after a few weeks in the desert and game parks before moving down to our final destination, Cape Town, South Africa.We have 2 weeks to see this area before returning back to Perth, Australia on 26th August, hopefully staying with relatives here before flying to Melbourne and driving back to Sydney.
- 8th Sep, Shawn returns back to Commonwealth Bank.
- 11th Sep, we move back into North Sydney.
- 13th Sep, Andrew returns back to his job in North Sydney.
- 20th Sep, we will begin to wonder if we have been away at all?
We are both looking forward to returning home. Africa has been quite tiring and hard on the pocket and new plans need to be put into action and paid for.
So this is the last update from our travels, we will post a short note once we get back to Australia.
Again, we hope everyone is well and do keep the emails and comments coming in.
Cheers
Andrew and Shawn
