Tour Time

Unbelievably I am now up to Day 13 of my 42 Day tour.  I have really slipped into full on tourist mode and travelling Africa feels like a world away from my time in Uganda.  It is nice to see the tourist side of things, but at times I do find myself missing the volunteering as I most definitely have not got 'under the skin' of the countries I have visited in the way that I did in Uganda.

The tour has 24 people.  Largely Kiwis and Aussies (can you ever escape them?), plus a smattering of Americans and British and a couple from Dutch and Iceland each.  On the whole the group is really good, but there are the inevitable politics associated with a group of 20 plus people bundled on a bus together for long hours at a time.

The tour itself started in Nairobi and we headed straight to Arusha, Tanzania, our base for a trip to the Serengeti.  The Serengeti was incredible, we saw the Big 5 on the first day, plus all sorts of other animals including cheetahs.  Jo (the friend I am travelling with at the moment) and I had a close encounter with a hyena going to the bathroom one night and the whole experience was topped off by seeing part of the annual migration.  There were thousands of zebras and wildebeest as far as the eye could see.  Absolutely incredible.

After the Serengeti we headed to Zanzibar (via a 15 hour bus ride) for a few days of relaxing (and drinking).  Zanzibar was beautiful.  Stone town was lovely and the beaches were amazing too.  My tan is now fairly well developed. 

Christmas morning was spent on Zanzibar and in the afternoon we headed back to Dar el Salaam.  It was a pretty different Christmas for me.  Pizza for lunch, and I missed Christmas dinner as I had to go to the doctor on Christmas night to get antibiotics for an infected toe.  (A whole other blog post will need to be dedicated to medical services in Africa, thus far I have visited the doctor five times in three different countries.  I'm just hoping to avoid the doctor here in Malawi so that I have at least one country where I haven't had to go to the doctor).

Internet access is pretty hard to come by so no promises when my next update will be.  We are currently in Malawi and have three more nights here before heading to Zambia (where I will be ringing in 2013).