Catherine -- Now that we've returned, some of you have very kindly told us how lucky~ / amazing :D / awesome!! it was that we were able to do this trip. And it was. I'm not denying it. But in an attempt to be always forthright and honest, I thought I'd mention another part of life while on a trip like this, beyond the physical discomforts I've already blogged about.

Because as much as you may envy (and we enjoyed) our blank slate and total freedom to go where the wind blows, it does come at a price. Everyday we were faced with dozens of decisions. Most of them were pretty menial: where to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner, where to stay the night, what activities to do during the day, where we wanted to go the next day, how we were going to get there and what did we want to do after we arrived. But we were also faced with more important choices like what area of the country should we visit, what country should we travel to next and how long should we set aside to see each place.

At times this freedom has been glorious. Getting to sleep in, staying another day at the beach for the hell of it, flying to a new country on a whim (you get the point). But for all the joy it may brings us, it also brought us some unrest. It was hard not to feel lost when I don't know where or what I'd be doing tomorrow, the next week or the next month. I had no order to my universe, no schedule to keep and no certainty as to whether the decisions I made were the best ones. Daniel mostly enjoyed the freedom, but I've discovered I like to know what continent I'm going to be on next week.

Catherine  --  I have to admit I've done a complete 180 this year regarding motorcycling. Before we left, I would have equated motorcycling with a terrifyingly stupid way to travel.

I had this idea that riding on the back of a motorcycle required holding on tightly or you'd fall off. I had been on the back of a scooter a couple times before but I wasn't all that anxious to jump on the back of an even bigger and faster motorcycle.

I'm not proud of it exactly, but I can say that at this point, I am possibly too comfortable on the back of a motorcycle (at least when Daniel's driving).

I've gotten used to taking photos, writing blogs (on the smartphone), organizing the day bag, and even reading books while on the back of one. But perhaps my greatest (worst?) accomplishment is getting to the point where I've been able to fall asleep while whizzing along.

It's a good thing I'm just the passenger.

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This was our first time travelling with friends and we've learned a lot this past year about what works and what doesn't.

First, it goes without saying, but you should have a fairly solid base of friendship before you embark on a trip together. Travelling brings out aspects in a person that you may never be exposed to back home.

This is especially important the faster/harder/cheaper you're going to go. Backpacking using public transport while attempting an ambitious itinerary is a lot more stressful and taxing on a friendship than boozing and relaxing at an all-inclusive. Even if everyone wants to go rough, it pays to plan some organized activities that gives everyone a break from the constant decision making of travelling.

Similarly, the longer you plan to travel together, the more likely you'll run into issues. No matter how much you all love and adore each other's company, you'll probably start to drive each other crazy after two weeks of spending every day all day with each other. So schedule a shorter trip, or split your time together with a break in the middle to allow everyone to go their own ways.

And last but definitely not least, make sure there is a lot of communication about each others' budgets. Even if your financial situations are identical, everyone has different spending habits. And there's nothing that brings out tensions and resentment quicker than spending more than you want or can afford in order to compromise with your travel buddies. Talking it all out beforehand and being honest about expectations helps, and of course, prearranging things can prevent possible disagreements coming up.

Since I focused on all the things to avoid and the problems that come up, you may mistakenly think that we had some terrible trips with our friends. This isn't the case at all. We've thoroughly enjoyed having visitors and getting to travel with some of our best friends.

If fact, we feel that friendships often can become all the stronger from travelling together, because it allows you get to know your friends in ways you never would back home and to be purely selfish, can add a lot of fun to your trip!

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Catherine -- There's so much we could write about every place we visit. Since I only have so many days left to post blogs before we're totally immersed in Christmas I guess this will have to do.

7 common and fairly unique sights in West Africa:

• Nudity. There's the occasional naked person that we've seen wandering aimlessly here that we can chock up to mental illness. But we've also seen more topless women in public than I've ever seen before. Then again, some of the more rural tribes only started wearing clothes in the 1970's so maybe it takes a while for clothing to catch on fully. (No pics on this topic)
• Babies. Not unique on this trip, but definitely the highest proportion of children and babes I've seen. Sometimes it feels like every other woman is either pregnant or has a baby on her back. Then again, the average birth rate is close to 6 children per woman in Burkina Faso, so what we see may actually be a true reflection. 
• Poverty. Likely strongly tied to so many babies, Burkina Faso is listed by the UN's Human Development Index as 181 out of 186 countries (with Togo and Benin not behind at 162 and 167 respectively), and as such is one of the poorest areas of the world.
• Complete matching outfits of bright African prints. Men wear matching suits almost reminiscent of western pajamas while women wear matching skirts, tailored shirts and often head scarfs. It's not something you see that often in more westernized southern and eastern Africa but here it's a popular outfit.
• Drinking water in plastic bags. We've seen places where people buy drinks made in plastic bags but this was the first and only time we've seen factory processed drinking water not in plastic bottles but in cute little plastic squares. The idea is you rip one corner with your teeth and suck away.
• Harmattan winds. More like a lack of sights because of this. The sky becomes hazy with dust from all the Saharan sands being blown south this time of year. When you add in the seasonal burning of fields, there can be no visibility. The sun 'sets' (i.e. disappears) long before it reaches the horizon.
• Beaches used as toilets. Probably one of the more disturbing aspects, with so many beaches and so little facilities, people often use them as toilets. And not just as emergencies, every evening we'd see men come down to do their evening business, complete with digging holes and toilet paper. (if you doubt me, see the picture for yourself of the man on the beach squatting away with his pants down)

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Catherine  --  We've just landed in Canada for Christmas.  (Ouch it's cold here!)  As to be expected, we packed in as much as possible on our way home from West Africa: somehow we slipped in a trip to Morocco and Paris before the long flight over the Atlantic.

First it was a 7 hour stopover in Casablanca so that Daniel could get a taste of Morocco. It was amazing how after West Africa, Morocco felt very tame and quiet, with very little hassle (not the way I would have described it after my first Moroccan trip). We wandered through the market in the old town browsing at all the clothing and groceries and spices. We gaped at one of largest mosque in the world which was unsurprisingly both huge and awe-inspiring. And best of all, we enjoyed watching street life over traditional Moroccan coffee and mint tea.

Then it was on to a night in the romantic “City of Lights”. Since Daniel and I had both been to Paris many times before, the pressure was off to see and do everything. Instead, we wandered through some of the prettiest neighborhoods, enjoying the Christmas lights while checking to make sure the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph and Champ D'Elyse were as beautiful as ever. And they were. Somehow eating crepes and relaxing by a street-side cafe sharing a carafe of wine was the absolute perfect way to celebrate heading home for Christmas.

(There are still a few blogs still to come on West Africa, so I hope you'll continue to check back over the next little while.)

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Catherine – During this trip we've been happy to learn that we've inspired friends to travel to places they would never have gone before. Since Africa can be an intimidating continent and we've seen our fair share (16 countries over 5 trips between the two of us to be exact) I thought we'd give some recommendations for any of you debating on a possible first or second foray into the "heart of darkness".

Of course, it all depends on you. What you want out of your trip, how much money you're planning to spending and what kind of travel your willing to do. And obviously your interests in what you want to see.

If you want to backpack through an easy, enjoyable region with good infrastructure we'd suggest:

#1: Malawi – friendliest people, lots of ex-pats, volunteers plus a fair share of backpackers that have eased the way for you. Plus, it's a small country with small distances to take public transport over
#2: South Africa – diverse country, most westernized with lots of tourists who've created a healthy tourist industry that supports backpackers. It's physically huge, but transport links are easy.
#3: Uganda – can't compare with the above two for history of tourism or development, but for central Africa the people are friendly and generally honest, English is wide-spoken and there is a lot to see and do.

If you want to go a step up like staying in mid-range hotels and driving yourself in a rental car:

#1: South Africa – again, as the most developed with the best roads and widest range of hotels, it's an easy kind of place to travel provided you avoid inner city crime-ridden spots like Johannesburg
#2: Rwanda – this fairly well developed but tiny country is easy to travel around. Tourism is more established, so there's more mid-range hotel and restaurant options available. And the roads are generally great.
#3: Malawi – small country that's easy to drive around and has a little bit of everything going for it

Packaged tours. You can really go anywhere since you'll be wined, dined and cared for. Every country has their secluded luxury resorts and all-inclusive tours. We haven't personally experienced this option, but your best bets are probably:

#1 Botswana – expensive, exclusive, with the amazing Okanawagan delta national park. I wish I could say I stayed longer in the country, but we couldn't afford it.
#2 Kenya – with some of the best safaris available, this is another classic way to blow lots of money to “see” Africa (Tanzania would likely be similar, although we haven't been so we can't say)
#3 South Africa – again understandably popular with lots of activities and sights to keep you busy.

Not on the Above Lists:

Zambia, Burkina Faso and Swaziland – all are a little more work than the others, often because they have worse roads and fewer tourists. But the people are usually friendly and we found the countries pleasant to travel through so if you're feeling adventurous – go!

Benin, Togo, Mozambique and Ethiopia – unless you want to challenge yourselves, I would avoid these for your first taste of Africa. They are (generally) harder to travel through with things like really bad roads, corrupt police, aggressive locals, extreme poverty, high crime rates, or difficult transport links. And some of them don't have the classic sights that you may be coming to Africa for (i.e. safari) to make up for all the headaches.

(Morocco, Zimbabwe and Namibia weren't included since we're pretty out of date on what travel is like there these days)

And as per our usual disclaimer, our ratings are completely biased and based purely on our own experiences. We tried to think of things like... level of English, ease of transport, ability to research activities or accommodation online, level of corruption, range in accommodation options, numbers of other foreigners to talk to, etc.

Hope that inspires some future ideas!

Catherine – There's really no getting around it. West Africa has a bad reputation for violent crime. Since nothing bad has happened to us yet, it's hard for us to say with any authority how much these warnings are well-deserved. But when your own guesthouse staff tell you not to leave the compound after dark and insist they send their own night-guard to go across the street on your behalf, well, that's usually a bad sign.

My parents recently told me a horror story about a friend of the family who narrowly avoided being mugged (and worse) by the other passengers in a bush-taxi in West Africa. Bush taxis, a common form of transport and often the only way to get around, are small sedans packed with random strangers that ply fixed routes around a city or between towns. You stand at the side of the road, wave when one passes by in your direction, and cram yourself in.

When piling into a small sedan with random strangers, there is always the possibility that they'll be in cahoots and will rob us along the way. Nevertheless, we figure that bush-taxis are probably safer than doing long distances on motorcycle taxis and so Daniel and I have developed the following strategies to minimize bush-taxi risks.

• We like to pick taxis that already have women passengers. However sexist and unfair it may be, mothers with babes don't give off the same threat level that a group of young men do. If all else fails, we like getting in with well-dressed older gentlemen.

• We make friends early on. We try to buy some snacks to share around to all the passengers and driver. It doesn't guarantee that they'll intercede if anything bad happens, but it makes us feel better to have friendlies on our side to hopefully look out for us and help if we run into trouble. And at the very least, it's an easy way to make people like us.

• We look for taxis that are already partially filled. It means that some of the passengers got in before knowing we'd be joining them. And it also means that we'll be picking up more people along the way who are less likely to know or be in league with the originating passengers. Thankfully, most people are honest and not interested in getting involved in a crime.

• And of course, we take taxis during the day and along busy routes to minimize the opportunity for a secluded robbery.

So far, it's worked. Whether it's because the situation is grossly exaggerated, we've been lucky or we've been just good at recognizing and avoiding bad situations... well, it's hard to know. But so far, so good.

Catherine – Whenever you travel with friends, you get a chance to experience travel through someone else's eyes. Sometimes it's really positive (like the amazement of being on safari), kinda funny (like getting super excited to see cows on the road) and occasionally a little negative. 

A friend of mine recently wrote down his experiences of his trip to Africa with us. In it, he talked about how much he was affected by the levels of dishonesty and outright lies the locals sometimes did to try to extract money from us tourists.

Although I was there for many of the same incidents, it did not stand out in my mind as being a particularly ruthless place. Maybe Daniel and I have just come to expect that people will try to cheat us to make a quick buck – whether its inflating the price by 200% or by exaggerating how far the walk is to convince us to hire their taxi. Over our trip, we now get the warm and fuzzies when we visit a country where the locals don't try to charge us an inflated tourist price, rather than getting outraged at countries that do. 

Maybe our lack of outrage comes from the fact that as foreigners we are comparatively so much richer than most of the people we interact with. There are so many poor people in the world. And as an obvious westerner (where we're all millionaires, didn't you know?) there is the inevitable section of the population that makes their living off of us.

It doesn't excuse the lying, deceiving and scamming. But criminals and dishonest people exist in any part of the world, even at home. And just like here, they tend to target the more vulnerable – whether it's a lonely elderly individual trusting a letter in the mail or a hapless tourist just arrived off the plane. Of course not speaking the local language, being an obvious outsider, and being unfamiliar with the local pricing puts you at a disadvantage.

The good news is that you do get smarter the more you travel. Maybe a little more skeptical of over-friendly locals, maybe a little less quick to hand over your money, and maybe more eager to find out the true cost of basic items early into a new region. You never get perfect at it and once in a while we still get cheated, but at the end of the day it's a part of travel and something that shouldn't make you hate the world, the country or people you're visiting.

p.s. It's hard to capture these experiences with photos. But I did find one semi-relevant photo... it's of a couple we met getting off a bus and being immediately surrounded by taxi drivers who are in the process of trying to insist the couple to pay them grossly inflated taxi fares.

Catherine – One night last week, we found ourselves in the pitch black of a moonless night following a man we had just met an hour before. He led us down a dirt road through farmers fields to his mud hut. At the entrance a collection of animal skulls and mandibles hung to protect the home as per their voodoo beliefs. Here we were welcomed by one of his seven children and shown to the roof where they had set up a little cot and strung up a mosquito net for us. Below us, the families' goats and chickens were stabled overnight. After showing us the bucket of water which we could wash ourselves with, and the bin of mulch we could empty our bladders into, he left us for the night.

There, we lay awake, looking up at a million stars, trying (unsuccessfully) to get the camera to change its settings enough to capture all of the sky's bright lights. In the morning, the farmer shared a cup of the traditional home-brewed beer with Daniel before heading out to his fields. His eldest son showed us around the family farm sharing some raw peanuts he'd just dug up from the field and bringing us to the well where they walk every day to get water. He explained how the decorative lines scarring his face show which family he belongs to. And despite having almost nothing in common, he was eager to become our friend, giving us his phone number so that we could keep in contact.

It would be an understatement to say that it was a magical experience which reminded us of why we do what we do. This crazy thing called travelling.

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Rwanda – Hey Uganda, how's my next-door neighbor doing?
Uganda – Hold on a sec!! You've learned English! Finally made the switch from French?
Rwanda – Yeah, it's time to forget our old Belgian colonizers. You were lucky you got the British. Anyways, how are you?
Uganda – I'm good, just wanted to drop by and say hi.
Rwanda – Heck no! Not with those disposable plastic bags! Better dispose of them before you cross my border. I only allow paper and cloth bags here.
Uganda – Seriously? Well maybe I don't want to drop by anymore. What do you have going on there anyways?
Rwanda – Loads! I've got gorillas to visit, a big lake and one of the last primary forests in Central Africa with wild chimpanzees and loads of different monkey species. I even have a small safari park, albeit a modest one.
Uganda – Whatever. I have all those things too. Plus, I've got the Source of the Nile with wicked rafting.
Rwanda – Well, I'm way prettier with lots of green hills. And I've got more facilities for tourists.
Uganda – Yeah, and you charge double for them! At least I encourage backpackers to visit.
Rwanda – Keep 'em, I prefer older, richer visitors. Anyways, people want to come here to learn about and see the memorials from the 1994 genocide.
Uganda – Genocide is depressing. No-one comes here to learn about my crazy dictator Idi Amin from the '70s.
Rwanda – That's because nothing compares to a population turning on itself and killing around 800,000 men, women and children in 100 days often by hand with machetes and clubs.

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After all, those conveniences of home and the high standard of living that we enjoy in Canada are not always available when you go overseas. And, especially when travelling through developing countries, there are times you deal with little discomforts because you don't have much choice.

You can't afford to be a picky eater when it's the only restaurant in town and it's the only dish they serve. So what if the food is cold, there's a hair in it, the meat is just gristle, or there's sand/grit/pebbles in your meal. Are you going to send it back? Wait another hour for them to try and cook something better? Insist they take it off your bill? Try explaining that to someone who doesn't speak a word of English and probably eats a lot worse. As much as that chicken may be all skin, bones, and a few stringy tendons, it's the only way chickens here come when they run free all day. They've never heard of “boneless skinless chicken breasts”. And it's not likely you'll find it or anything better, even if you do spend another hour searching for another place to eat.

Similarly, you can't always afford to be a princess when it comes to crashing for a night. Even if you have all the money in the world (which we don't), if you want to travel off-the-beaten track, that inevitably means going to places that don't have the infrastructure set up for big spenders. So what if the room is dark, tiny, smelly, moldy. So what if the bed is lumpy, thin, rock-hard and the sheets on the bed are a foot too short. So what if you've seen a couple cockroaches skittering around or a huge spider on the ceiling. Or the toilet is merely a hole in the ground and bugs fly up from the depths when disturbed. Or that the shower you've been waiting for days for only gives out icy cold water. Again, if you've got limited options, you have to deal with what you've got.

And when you want to get from A to B, you may just have to put up with that long bus ride. So what if it's bumpy, uncomfortable, overcrowded and breaks down a couple times in one journey. Sure, a person standing in the aisle has their elbow in your head, but given you've got a seat and they don't, what can you really say. The bus may leak when it rains but at least you're mostly out of the downpour. The air-conditioning may break in the 40 C weather but at least the bus is still moving and the windows are open.

So you distract yourself on that 30-hr bus ride, you kill as many cockroaches as you can, and you pick away at the most edible food from your plate so you won't starve.

Back at home, we'll be able to be picky again. We'll have expectations to be met when we go out to dinner. It's unlikely, but we may even send our meals back if they're underdone, overdone, too cold, too hot or not exactly what we ordered. But until then, we'll just have to tough it out. Because as hard as it may be to believe after these horror stories (all of which have happened too many times to recount), the rewards are usually worth the occasional discomfort.  

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Catherine – Again, I have to admit my complete ignorance. Prior to planning this trip, I'm not sure if I'd even heard anything of the small West African country of Burkina Faso, let alone knew where it was on the map or what it would be like on the ground.

My first impressions weren't a great start. Even before I had arrived, I was treated to typical West African cultural customs like pushing, mob-like rushing, and blatant budding to board the airplane. Then, the moment the airplane had touched down, passengers were up in the aisle grabbing bags. I was physically pushed out of the way so that two men could stand right in front of me for the couple of minutes while we waited for the airplane doors to open. Then, while in line for immigration we were again budded repetitively. A man would just walk in front of us even though we were at the front of an obvious line and ignore any muffled angry noises we (a.k.a. I) made. Customs officers made half-hearted attempts to get people to wait behind a dotted line, but most passengers would ignore any instructions.

All together it was pretty ridiculous. By the end of it I started to doubt our decision to travel to this region, known for its excruciating heat, higher costs and difficulty backpacking on public transport. Admittedly, I'm also not the most patient person at the best of times, never enjoy line-ups, and go absolutely nuts when there's any hint of budding involved let alone flagrant unapologetic cases.

Thankfully, it's gone up from there. We've settled into our little cheapie of a guesthouse where Daniel is getting to use lots of French, which will be the language of communication for the remainder of our trip. That will be great for Daniel but challenging for me. Who knows, maybe I'll finally learn some.

Bon arrive au Burkina Faso!

I admit I didn't know all that much about Ethiopia when we were first discussing the idea. I wasn't sure how dangerous it was or what it would be like at all. I had this impression of a nation of tall light-skinned Africans beset by famine and war. Not surprisingly, in the last week I've learned more about Ethiopia than I'm guessing most of you know.

Like, did you know that Ethiopia was the only nation in Africa that was never colonized? (it was only occupied by Italy for a couple years pre-WWII).

Or that it is one of the oldest Christian states? They adopted Christianty in the 4th century, after Armenia and Georgia.

Or, did you know that their language is most closely related to Hebrew and Arabic? They also have their own alphabet / script.

Or, that they also have their own unique calender which has 13 months, not 12 and they have their own clock / time system (they consider dawn the start of 24 hours, so a 8 am meeting for us would be referred to as a 2 am meeting by them).

And for those of you with the same questions I had, Ethiopia is considered safe to travel to (by Canadian, US, and UK travel advisories), as long as you avoid the border regions where there is still banditry and risk of armed conflict.

As for what it's like, the capital Addis Ababa is both a mix of modern and ramshackle. Ethiopia feels a lot poorer than the other African countries we've been through so far. I've found the sheer number of beggars and the abject poverty they live in a little overwhelming. Outside the city, little mud villages dot the landscape. Children and adults run outside to wave at us as we drive by. We wave back while wondering when we'll be returning to Ethiopia next.

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Catherine – You'd think that having a computer engineer for a husband would mean we'd never have any computer woes. But alas, backpacking with a laptop for over 9 months doing some pretty rough travel on bumpy buses and leaky ferries through some of the hottest and most humid places in the world taxes even the best electronics.

It's actually kinda amazing they've lasted this long. We'd replaced our external hard drive a couple months ago since it was showing signs it was on its way out. But otherwise, we've had no real issues with our gadgets up until a couple weeks ago.

First, our laptop took a fall thanks to the power cord getting snagged. The power input twisted and broke so before we knew it, we were performing surgery on the laptop and super-gluing all the parts back together while overlooking the Nile River in Uganda.

Then later in Rwanda, we noticed our computer starting to freeze after a couple minutes of running. Thanks to Daniel's diagnostics he realized it was the internal hard drive this time slowly dying and so our first few days in Ethiopia were devoted to getting replacement parts and again taking the laptop apart.

Sadly, the computer parts we wanted aren't available in this country, even its capital city, so we've had to compromise with parts that are slower and may not last as long. And it'll be a while before our computer is back to where it started with all our old programs and settings.

All in all, it's been oodles of fun. That said the computer is up and running again and hopefully we'll be able to catch up on this blog of ours soon(-ish).

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Catherine – We felt after our two weeks of safari and beach life that we were relatively detached from the 'real' Kenya - the one that many Kenyans live day in and day out. So one day while in Nairobi, Daniel and I decided to visit Kiberia, purported to be the largest slum in East Africa at over 1 million inhabitants.

For those who've never seen a shanty town, it's a lot to take in. Picture a million people, on average living in 3m by 3m shacks with 4 other family members. The “streets” are narrow alleyways of compacted garbage lined by homes made of scraps materials – plastic sheets, corrugated metal and cardboard. Children run along in bare feet. The smells of sewage and the sights of rotting trash floating along little canals follows you as you wind your way through. Walking along, you have to keep a constant eye on where you step in case you accidentally slip into the muck.

We didn't venture in alone: we arranged our walk through a non-profit organization that contributes its earnings to various development projects within the slum. Our two guides grew up here and so as part of our tour we visited their childhood homes as well as the different projects we were supporting. As well as helping contribute some income to the community, it also meant that we were ensured our safety as this neighborhood is considered pretty rough for residents, let alone valuable-packing tourists.

It was a great experience and one in which we wish we could share with everyone. There's nothing like seeing how the truly poor live to humble you.

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Catherine  –  It had been a while since we'd enjoyed beaches in Asia so with the heartfelt approval of our visiting friends we made a detour to Kenya's coast after our safari to lap up some sun and waves.

We braved the threat of kidnapping by Somali pirates (long story) to visit the northern island of Lamu. We enjoyed its gorgeous beaches, the old town with its tiny winding medieval-like streets, and the lack of vehicular traffic (their only taxis were donkeys). The island has an interesting twist of Islam thanks to the Arabian traders that historically plied Kenya's coast giving it its Swahili flavour. It was beautiful and other then the incredible heat at nights, it was an enjoyable break.

After our time enjoying a historical side to Kenya's coast, we shamelessly opted into an all-inclusive resort halfway back to Mombasa. It was a brand new resort with a capacity of 320, but only filled with 20 guests. We guessed the staff outnumbered us 3-1. It was a blissful couple of days soaking up the sun, luxuriating in the pools and stuffing ourselves with delicious Italian food. Since this area of the coastline gets almost exclusively Italian tourists, all the vendors/beach boys speak fluent Italian and all the children would call out “ciao!”. A little weird, but kinda endearing.

And to round off our trip together, we popped into Mombasa to experience big-city Kenya in all its dirt and chaos, before heading back to Nairobi to part ways.

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Catherine – Not the safari park in Southwestern Ontario. Although I'd be lying if I didn't say that I don't hum their theme song everytime I go to Africa (thank you, Grade 5 school trip).

We recently made the jump to Africa mid-September and spent two weeks travelling around Kenya with friends from university. We spent our first four days on a safari going through two national parks before heading to the coast. Instead of writing all about the safari, you can just take a look at some of the best of the hundreds of photos we took while on safari.

As I had hoped, it was amazing. Kenya more than surpassed my expectations and probably had the most prolific wildlife compared to the many national parks I've been through in Southern Africa before.

Pictures:

Carnivores: lioness (we saw others but always too far away for a good shot), spotted hyenas, black-backed jackal, some kind of eagle, marabou stork, some kind of lizard

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Omnivores: baboons, vervet monkey, starlings.

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Herbivores: elephants, buffalo, unknown gazelle, wildebeest, helmeted guinea fowl, thompson's gazelle, zebra, geruneck gazelle, hartebeest, kudu, giraffe, ostrich, dik-dik,

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Gorgeous Landscapes (self explanatory): the mountain is Mt. Kilamanjaro of course

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Just Us: mostly goofing off, but there's some serious ones like us of searching for animals, and napping ;)

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Catherine – No, I'm not talking about a fantasy book or an action movie. I'm talking about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or more shortly referred (internally) as, “the Kingdom”.

As much as I wish I could say we nipped in on our way to Africa, we only had a chance to see this country from an airplane window, the runway tarmac and through the windows of an airport. But, even if we didn't technically visit this country, we did experience a little bit by just doing a layover here on our flight to Kenya with Saudi Arabian Airlines.

Our flight's passengers appeared to be mostly Saudis. Majority were businessmen in suits, but there was the occasional family groups and couples with the women in the full "abaya" plus "niqab" (traditional black cloak plus facial covering everything but the eyes). The music system was 8 channels of Arabic music and readings from the Qu'ran (at least it sounded like it, but I'm guessing on that one). Before the flight began, there was a video prayer that the Prophet Mohammed would do before travelling. Apart from that, there was no televised entertainment. At the back of the plane, there's a curtained off prayer room that has a monitor updating the direction to Mecca as we fly. Not surprisingly, alcohol was not available on the flight.

Our first stop was a city that non-Muslims are forbidden to enter. Medina is the second most holy city in Islam after Mecca. Needless to say, we didn't make it out of the airplane. Our second stop, Jeddah, does tolerate infidels and so we enjoyed a couple hours waiting in the airport lounge (I found it fascinating to watch the women in the niqabs, constantly readjusting their clothes and eating by passing food under their face-coverings).

Saudi Arabia doesn't make it easy for non-Muslims to get a tourist visa. When such a visa is obtained, women must be accompanied by a responsible male relative. We heard one story of an acquaintance there on business who couldn't be admitted into the country until a man from her company came to escort her. If we were ever to actually get in, I'd have to cover myself. This is the place after all where there are agents of the “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” roaming the streets to ensure you follow the rules (regarding dress code, strict separation of unrelated men and women, prayer during prayer times for Muslims, etc).

If this doesn't appeal to you as your next vacation destination, I don't blame you. But it was fascinating and I'd be lying if I didn't say that all this kinda makes me want to come back and experience the Kingdom for real.

(I've included some pictures that I snapped from the national newspaper – I didn't want to be insensitive and take photos of the people around me).

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