Half Way - Already!

In keeping with the quarterly review - we thought it was time to update to the half way mark! There is more than one thing on some entries as we have differing opinions.

Turkey -
Best Food - Soups
Best Attraction - Cappadocia, fire breathing rocks, Turkish Dance night
Biggest Challenge - getting dropped at Kavashek as the sun was setting ( hwy junction)


Egypt
Best Food - Koshari
Best Attraction -Dahab Snorkeling, Pyramids of Giza, big market in Cairo
Biggest Challenge - the horrendous 8 hour ferry wait in the smoke filled cattle hold with wooden benches, crossing streets in Cairo

Jordan
Best Food - Bedouin breakfast and Bedouin whiskey (aka tea)
Best Attraction - Bedouin camp, camel riding, Petra Treasury
Biggest Challenge - finding a decent backpackers in Petra

Tanzania
Best Food - Damien's safari food, African fried bananas, fresh fruit
Best Attraction - Swimming with the dolphins, Lion kill
Biggest Challenge - always being on guard in populated areas ( safety first.)


And South Africa is not done yet - though this one will be hard!

On Being Wild

First of all, my apologies if the title is misleading... sorry to disappoint. (Also sorry for the lack images below. Slow internet connectivity is a bit of an obstacle here in Africa.)

One of the things that we as a family gravitate toward is wild places and so it was no surprise that the safari we did in Tanzania was one of the highlights of our trip so far. For me it solidified the importance of wild places for wild things to be wild in. Equally vital, as with so many things, is the need for me to experience the wildness first hand; observing nature unfold as it has for tens of thousands of years.

I love wild places and sometimes when you are traveling around the world it’s hard to get what we often take for granted in Canada. Namely, some open space without much in the form of human interference dramatically altering a place. In many cases the wild places in other parts of the world just do not exist. Population density and generations of human activity have all but annihilated or tamed whatever natural balance had existed. Iceland has wild places owing to the harshness of much of the land that simply is not conducive to a lot of people living there. Tanzania also has it, though it has had humans as part of the mix for as long as we as a species have existed. Humans, for most of that time, lived as part of the balance. Recent history has necessitated large tracts being left for conservation. It is in one such place - the unfenced Serengeti/ Ngorongoro, that we juiced our wild batteries.

Of course, here enters that age old debate as to whether the presence of “unwild” (namely people, trucks and roads) negates the wildness. I don’t think it is simply a case of yes or no, but a matter of degree that depends on each place. If the presence of those factors changes the essential balance of place, then it begins to no longer be wild. The Serengeti, despite the scale of tourism, seems to keep the wildness intact. The animals go about their business as usual. Likely a result of generations of humans observing, only some of the elephants would likely recall a time when humans meant something else. We were no more (and likely less) of a presence than flies.

And so we were able to watch the drama of nature unfold before us. Elephants browsing and wandering at will, millions of Wildebeest and Zebra migrating to the calving grounds, Lions and Cheetah hunting... The list goes on for at every moment some story is being told and we were always reading to learn.

Yes, there is the risk of loving a place to death and so the need for management of these sacred places is important. The Tanzanians seem to have figured that out for most of the parks that we saw which is no small task when considering the level of development in their country as a whole. Certainly there will  always be room to improve no matter where you are, but the effort needs to be made

The being there is the critical piece for the continuation and creation of wild places. When we have these deeper experiences we are far more able to learn, relate, and fight for their preservation. I feel it in myself and I see it in Mattias and Emilia. Long live the wild places!

Poaching

Hi everyone
Remember in my last blog, I told you I would write a blog about poaching? Well, here it is.  Poaching usually happens to the animals considered the big 5. Rhino, elephant, leopard, cape buffalo, and lion. They are hunted for trophies. The rhino for its horn, elephant for its ivory tusk, leopard for its skin, cape buffalo for its head, and lion for its claws and teeth. They are also hunted because they are big and the most dangerous to hunt.

Rhinos and elephants are the most hunted/poached nowadays. The rhino horn is used for aphrodisiac. Since it gets turned into dust, it is easy to sneak out of the country. A few weeks ago 5 rhinos were given to Tanzania from South Africa. This was a gift and while we were on safari, one of the gifted rhinos was poached in the Serengeti. Since it is such a large area, it's almost impossible to keep it patrolled. 

In 2007, there were three men in the Ngorongoro who poached three elephants.  Eight rangers found the camp of the poachers so the poachers shot at the rangers killing 2 and injuring one of them. The rangers shot back and killed 2 of the poachers and injured one. They interviewed the one who was injured, and found out that he was from Somalia. The three poachers had disguised themselves as Masaai so that no one would suspect them.

Poaching doesn't happen very often any more, but it still happens. Some of the international laws forbidding the export of ivory has helped decrease elephant poaching. I hope everyone who wants to will do their share to help stop poaching.  There is a good kids book on this topic called Akimbo and the Elephants. Emilia and I both liked it.

Good bye for now.....

Sunny Christmastime

Hi everyone. Merry belated Christmas. We were on Zanzibar, which is an island off the coast of Tanzania, for Christmas. For Christmas day we were on the beach. We started the day by waking up and looking at all our presents. I got a jingle dress, an Eqyptian bookmark, a ruler with heiroglyphics on it, some turkish delight, a Croation doll, a Greek doll and a Turkish doll, a blue eye bracelet, one special african hair braiding, and Santa signed us up for swimming with the dolphins in the wild.

My favorite was swimming with the dolphins. The closest I got to one was probably about one metre. I felt like diving down and touching it, but something told me “no”. The way you see them is to look under water with your mask and you see them. To get into the water near them you have to jump off your moving boat while there are other moving boats around. You can’t hesitate. We also saw one baby dolphin with its mom, it was really cute.

After we opened our presents we went for a big buffet breakfast. There were even cream puffs and brownies...  I especially liked when daddy thought the cream puffs were plain and he put chocolate sauce on his. He bit in to it and went “ wow!”  After breakfast we went to the beach for the day. About lunch time, Mattias and I got hungry (of course) so we got some food from the beach bbq and cokes.  After that, Me and Daddy built a sand man, (not a snow man) it was big but had to be lying down so he wouldn’t collapse. Later, me, mom, daddy and Thias all went for a long swim. The Indian Ocean is so warm, you actually feel like you are in a bath tub!

At dinner time, we went to a beach buffet dinner. It was a really really yummy dinner, and for dessert there was Christmas cake and fruit tarts. 

For presents from the family, since there were no shops around, we decided to make gift certificates. Daddy is getting a new coffee press mug since his old one got left behind... Mattias is getting a soccer ball, Mommy is getting a new swimsuit, and I am getting a long skirt.

On Christmas we also picked a fresh coconut that was very yummy. My favourite part of Christmas day was present opening from under the drawn Christmas tree.

Bye for now, Emilia

No bears, no chickens....but the big 5!

We went on a 9 day safari  from Dec’ 13 to Dec’ 21 the first day we went to Arusha National Park, it was a great starting place ‘cause you could see lots of variety of different animals and lots of them.There were lots of giraffes and we got lucky and saw a black and white Colobus monkey. They are rare to see because of how well they hide. We drove to a little view point and saw them in a tree and then when we were going back from the view point they were gone. The second day we woke up and drove to Lake Manyara National Park. Lake Manyara is famous for its tree climbing lions. The lions adapt to different habitats so this is why they climb trees in this park only.  Although we didn’t see any, we saw lots and lots of elephants. The first elephant we saw was way in the bushes and you could only just see him.  Looking contently at it, James (our amazing driver/guide) said lets skip this elephant because we will see many more up close. We drove about 2 minutes and  guess what? We saw another elephant. Not necessarily closer, but a lot easier to see. Actually, he was very hard to see at fir... let me skip the details and give you the highlights and main thoughts!

 Day 3 -we came about a metre away from a big bull elephant - he came so close we could have touched him, but instead we all jumped back. We thought we would drive away, but James just sat there while we freaked out! We asked him how do you know when an elephant is mad, he said since he is happily eating you don’t have to worry.  Phew!

Day 4 - Serengeti - James pointed out a Leopard in a tree but all we could see was its tail. He suddenly stopped, backed up and we were looking all over wondering what he saw and then he pointed in the tree about 30m away. None of us could see it, then he gave us more detail about where in the tree and we found him!
Day 4 - When we were driving in to the Serengeti, practically the first thing we saw was a cheetah lying down in the shade of a bush. Then after a few more minutes driving, we saw a lion lying down. He was hard to see unless you looked backwards and then all you could see was her paws sticking up in the air! (lions are lazy). We got a good view of the lion then as you know we saw the leopard I mentioned above.
Day 5 - We woke up early in the morning and went for a game drive before breakfast. Luck must follow us because we saw a pride of lions. There were 8 females, 3 cubs and one male. He was the dominant male ( there can be 2 or 3 males per pride). James said the pride probably had more dominant males because sometimes the males will leave the pride for a bit. We watched them for so long that we saw them move from the long grass all the way to the rock outcroppings. We watched them for a long long time and we saw something very interesting that they do to protect their cubs. They leave their cubs on a smaller rock nearby all hidden and all the other full grown ones on the big main rock. Then we went back for breakfast.
Day 6 - on Day 6 we went and saw a bunch of wildebeast and zebra on their great migration. James said there were half a million Zebra and 2 million wildebeast. Zebra and wildebeast go together because wildebeast can smell well and zebras can see very well. We drove right into the middle of the wildebeast and zebra. you could hear the zebra making their weird almost trumpeting noise. We were surrounded by them and could not see the road but James knew by heart the way to go and the wildebeast and zebra would move out of the way.
Day 7 - Day 7 was very lucky for all of our leopard sightings. We went out in the morning looking for some good game. We saw a bunch of cars parked around bad luck rock (we don’t usually see anything there, but James was determined we would so we kept going back, and that day we saw a leopard and two cubs. James said there were three cubs, but we only saw two.  Later that day, after lunch, we went for another game drive and came really close to a Leopard. You pretty much looked up and she was there sleeping in the tree. I am not joking that she was 3 metres away. After we looked at the leopard for a while I wondered, “hmmm, why doesn’t it have a kill in the tree?”  then James said “ look right behind her.” and there it was, it was a grand gazelle pretty much eaten and would last maybe for that day. She had wedged it in between two branches and stuck its horns into a branch. The Leopard’s put their prey in a tree so hyenas  (scavengers) and other cats cannot steal it. They also put it in a tree to rot for a day or two so it is more tender for eating. Their teeth aren’t strong enough for fresh kill. If it over rots they leave their kill for the vultures.

Day 8 -  Day 8 was our luckiest day. We actually saw two kills. The first was a cheetah walking around in the grass. James said he is looking for rabbits, and the next thing we knew she had a rabbit in her mouth! It wasn’t hard for the cheetah. She just had to walk and pick it up.  The second kill was the most amazing. It was five lions, one was male, attacking a heard of cape buffalo for a newborn young one. In a fight like this one, either one of the cape buffalo or one of the lions will die. After a while, some of the herd left. Only the mother and one other was left to help the calf. The lions got the calf and the mother buffalo made one last try to save her young and realised it was already gone. wah!: (

Day 9 -  On our final day we saw a mother black rhino and her young. They were very far away and very scared of vehicles. There are still poachers but not in the Ngorongoro Crater where we were. There are only 27 rhinos left in this area.  We also saw lots of Hyenas here, there are over 400 in the crater!

The safari was so amazing. I think we got really lucky on it!  Everyone we meet says that Mima and I are the luckiest because of our age already doing crazy things like this.

Bye everybody, I will do another blog shortly about poaching.

This is Africa

Tanzania has been a wild and amazing ride! We came here with a lot planned, unlike most of our travels to date.  All we had to do was make sure we got busses and ferries to get to and from our various points of interest.  Dar Es Salaam is not the city of dreams, rather, a city to avoid. Even the TI office was stumped when we asked if there was anything worthwhile to do!  Having said that, we knew it would be a point of departure and arrival - so today, we have a full day to get ourselves caught up while sitting in a muggy, humid 35 + degrees before flying to S Africa tomorrow.  The power is off for now, so the AC is not on either.  This is Africa!

Our travels began with the fun bus to Arusha, 9 hours turned 12 - but best slow than option b, the driver who gets you there in 9, but you are so shell shocked when arriving you aren’t sure how you are still alive - luck of the draw. Arusha is the starting point for most safaris in Tanzania.

What a 10 days - too hard to describe - phenomenal. Mattias is giving a day by day highlight so I will leave that for him.  Seeing the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara, Arusha National Park was a once in a lifetime experience - and we will never forget it.  Bernie is working on getting the photos up - but the power here is on again off again and it is slow going - This is Africa.

From Safari we made the trek back to Dar to make our way to Zanzibar by ferry.  Most tourists travel between places by air - now we know why- chaos is endemic in public transport here ( reminder to self -this is Africa). Emilia’s blog tells most of the story of Zanzibar - beautiful beaches, warm waters, lovely hotel for Christmas and lots of fun. We met lots of people, and the kids even found a good buddy to play with, Sonny from Germany was a great kid and they spent lots of time together.

Jambiani Beach allowed us some freedoms not seen to us in the rest of Tanzania. Feeling quite segregated from the locals in Dar and Arusha, we finally were at ease to mingle freely and not have the same security concerns. A breath of fresh air, and some fun getting to chat with the Africans.  Mattias is a great barrier breaker as he wears a footie jersey daily and it always brings comments his way. It even started some footie games on the beach.

Tanzania has been a country of highlights for us, our only regret being that we often felt cooped up and unable to really get out and to mingle with the locals. We are reminded daily by ourselves and others - This Is Africa.

Happy New Year everyone - we long to hear your holiday stories too.

Toot is common

We went to the cairo museum and saw a tooting mask (king Tut's). It was mostly gold with beautiful rock that was green and dark and light blue. Tut's beard was long, wow! It had two serpents on the head that represent upper and lower Egypt. He was so full of himself that he decided to make a coffin around him, another around that and another around that and then a sarcophagus around that. And around the sarcophagus was a pyramid (I think I'll make a pyramid here... hmm, not big enough- make a new one!)

Animals were so important to the Egyptians they even mummified their animals. We saw a baby alligator, this big-{ }
And an adult alligator about 50 times that length. There were monkeys and Cobras. There were even the bones of a hippo! There were sarcophagi for shrews (interesting).

We saw a mummified common person which I think is crazy because everyone needed to go to the after life, well didn't need to. Some of them had real sarcophagi and some just had baskets. As you might know the king's had their brain taken out through their noses during mummification, but I don't think the common people did.

That museum was great! Sorry photos with this one, no cameras were allowed inside.