Snapshot of East Africa (Part 1)

The last time I was on the continent of Africa, I met the woman that would eventually become my wife. There were some setbacks to be sure: an attempted stabbing, the fact that my jeep was almost gored by a rhino, some unpleasantness with a group of ravenous baboons… but all things considered, I’d say it went pretty well. I had incredible experiences in each of the countries that I visited, did a lot of things that I hadn’t done before and made some lifelong friends. Africa is quite possibly my favourite continent, to say that I was happy being back would be an understatement of the highest order.

This latest trip took Jill and me through four new countries: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. As you can imagine, we did quite a lot during our travels and my personal account of the trip ran to well over 40,000 words (for reference, the typical length of a mystery novel is about 60,000 words). I always write my travel logs with an audience in mind but as often seems to be the case, this one is too long to share here. Instead, I’ll walk you through our journey with a photo diary.

The first of many scenic viewpoints during our month in East Africa.

A “superb starling”.

Pictures from our hippopotamus-spotting boat ride on Kenya’s Lake Naivasha. The lake included an island-like peninsula about half an hour from our campsite on the lake shore. The peninsula was private land but from the water we could get pretty close. We saw impalas, zebras, wildebeests and a few different kinds of antelope.

Our first campfire of the trip.

The first of three equator crossings.

This was probably the nicest campsite that we stayed at during the month we were away.

The second equator crossing.

We found these baboons just wandering around one of our campsites. We kept to ourselves so they didn’t bother us… much.

Akole tea plantation. The tea was originally planted by Indians that were brought over to Uganda for the sole purpose of introducing the country to the lucrative tea market. They owned, operated and maintained Uganda’s plantations until Idi Amin went full crazy in the 1970’s and started forcibly removing various groups from the country. Indians were among these groups.