Adventure of the month

When is a pink lake not a pink lake? Before addressing this riddle, I should probably clarify a couple of things. When I say pink lake, I am not referring to the ones in Australia, Canada or Azerbaijan . My focus is on Lake Retba aka Lac Rose in Senegal. This is because I was recently spending some time in Dakar and thought it might make for a worthy outing. A Google maps search revealed it was less than a 30 minute drive so I thought it was strange when the hotel concierge booked our driver for 3 hours. Maybe there was a lot to see along the way. The truth is that Google maps has no idea what Senegalese roads or traffic look like. In theory, I guess you could cover twenty kilometers in 20 minutes or so but that theory would have to discount dirt roads, traffic and the occassional goat. It took us about an hour to arrive at Lac Rose's shores but I had seen enough vibrant Instagram pictures to know that it would be worth it.

I realize that this blog is full of typos, grammatical errors and the occasional straight-up unintentional fabrication. I am not really keen on the whole 'proof-reading before hitting publish' thing and it shows. Therefore it is only reasonable to think that the title of this post is simply another one of my fuck-ups. Swimming with shurtles? What the hell is a shurtle, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Swimming with shurtles is simply the trendiest new multi-island activity.  It's quite simple, really. Famed nightlife and travel guru, Stefon, describes it thusly: It is when you have been in Barbados on a cruise and then a year later, you return there for work.  By virtue of having already been there, you already have the contact info for super cool man-about-town, Neville of Swimmin Wid Nevil fame.

As both of my regular blog readers know, I am a stickler for the rules in this lifelong game of Count the Countries. Merely landing in an airport doesn't count; a territory and its motherland only count as one and I don't care if a country is barely larger than the average shopping mall (I'm looking at you Vatican and Monaco, little commercial enterprises that you are), if the UN recognizes it as a country, it counts. The fact that my latest conquest, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, fell within this very specific set of criteria was probably the best thing about my less-than-ideal visit to this north African nation. However, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I should mention that it wasn't the oft-mentioned threats of crime or flesh-eating bacteria that dropped the turd in the proverbial traveling punch bowl. It was a pair of much more intractable foes that thoroughly and mercilessly stymied our every attempt at proper sightseeing.

Our last day in the Serengeti began exactly the way a last day in the Serengeti should, with a pair of giraffes calmly eating leaves right outside our tents. They were the perfect animal to wake up to.  Any of the smaller creatures would not have been nearly as exciting and none of the more carnivorous ones would have been quite as welcome. And speaking of flesh eaters, I mentioned to Olly, our tour leader, that once again I had not heard any lions during the night. I had, however, heard baboons left and right with their deep, guttural grunts sounding as if they were coming from pretty close by. Olly let me do my best baboon grunt impersonation a couple of times before explaining to me that baboons make no such noise. Those were, in fact, lions. I, the viewer of many MGM films, disputed this assertion and even threw in some inspired roaring noises by way of persuasive argument. Well, it turns out that those impressive roars are only one note in the lion repertoire, used mai...

You know you are camping in an unusual campsite when the morning discussion goes something like this- Everyone else: "Did you hear the lions last night?" Me: "No! I missed lions?! All I heard were frogs and hyenas. Oh, and baboons. I heard a lot of baboons." The others: "Yes. There were definitely lions. And the group over there thinks they saw a cheetah in the campsite." Me: "Balls!" We were camping inside of the Serengeti National Park and unlike other predator-inhabited game parks I'd been to, there is no fence separating us and the more ardently carnivorous mammals. How this works is still a bit of mystery to me. We were told not to worry, that we're not appealing to them since we generally don't yield a lot of meat, particularly when compared to a buffalo or wildebeest, which is true. But I'm pretty sure I have a good 20-30 pounds on an impala and they're called the 'McDonald's of Africa' by vir...

I have just typed and deleted at least a half dozen paragraphs, all of them trying to express how spectacular our time in the Serengeti was. It is not working. Everything I have written sounds cliche and trite and blah, which I guess would be fine if the Serengeti was any of those things. But it's not, it is so very, very....AAARGHHH (must keep finger away from the delete key, must control impulse, MacBook not so aerodynamic) You know what? I took photos. Lots and lots of photos. They have a currency of approximately one thousand words each. How's about I just share some of those and let them speak for themselves. M'kay?

Throughout our tour, there was some debate as to whether we were heading in the right direction. Not that we were lost, it was more that some people, mainly our crew, thought it was preferable to begin the tour in Nairobi and travel southward (as opposed to our more northerly route). Their reasoning was that with the more commonly run itinerary, you begin with a dusty and sweaty safari, followed by a series of early mornings and countless hours on a bouncy truck. By the end, you are nice and tired and are thus more excited at the thought of leisurely sipping cocktails on the beaches of Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. I get what they're saying and I thought they were all really nice guys, therefore it pains me to be the one to point out how completely and utterly wrong they are on this one. The safari in the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti is, bar none, the highlight of this tour. This is simply a fact. Doing the safari first means your 14 day tour has already peaked by day 5. ...

Moving right along on what was really the Road from  Zanzibar , we continued on to the small town of Marangu.  From best I could gather, there is only one reason people come here.  They are either coming from or going on a climbing expedition that ideally results in their reaching the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Seeing as I would prefer smuggling a nest of angry cobras in my underwear to climbing Africa's highest peak, thankfully, this is not why we were camping there. To be honest, I'm not totally sure why exactly this is one of the stops.  I imagine it has something to do with the logistics of getting us closer to the Serengeti but since that does make for a very sellable itinerary, we were also treated to another orphanage stop and village walk.

Finally, we were on our magic bus, er, I mean truck and pointed north in the direction of the Usambara Mountains. By tearing down camp early enough to be on the road by 5am, we had successfully avoided the truly frightening fate that is Dar traffic and were now speeding past small villages and vast empty stretches of land. Cruising along, enjoying this scenery with plenty of room to stretch out, not feeling like I have to keep an eagle eye on my belongings (as I did on the chicken bus) or worry about getting left behind on any stops- these are the some of the things I did not think I could pull off, traveling solo in Africa and were  amongst the top reasons I signed up for a group tour.  Now that our first real Overland day was finally happening,  I was loving it.

It was day 2 of our Overland Truck adventure and we were already ditching the truck and come to think of it, the land, as well.  We were taking the ferry to a place whose very name conjures up mystery and exoticism, we were heading to Zanzibar. Our destined archipelago has been a part Tanzania since 1964, only before that time, there was no Tanzania. The mainland nation was called Tanganyika and only changed its name as a result of its merger with Zanzibar. In other words, Tanganyika + Zanzibar= Tanzania.  I imagine this is something that Tanzanian schoolchildren learn pretty early on.  Therefore, I am baffled as to why we had to undergo the full customs and immigration process both on entering and exiting Zanzibar City.  It's still the same country!   You would think that a nation that borders seven different countries would have sufficient real border crossings without having to implement an unnecessary fake one.

Although it may not seem like it, there was actually a method to my madness. There was a reason that I voluntarily boarded a local bus for the 13 hour bone-jarring ride from Mombasa to Dar Es Salaam. It is not for naught that I spent more time sitting across from a woman whose carry-on was a cranky and vociferous rooster than I did on my flight from Miami to Amsterdam. It is not without cause that I put myself in a situation where, as the only non-African passport holder, I took the longest being processed at the Kenya/ Tanzania border and subsequently had to run like a crazy woman lest the bus continue on without me. Like the proverbial chicken (but not the one on the lady's lap), I simply had to get to the other side. This is where I would begin my first Intrepid/ Dragoman overland trip.  I confess that in the past, when planning my own travels, I have cribbed many an itinerary from these companies.  In many countries, this is actually pretty easy to do, relying on pub...

On my 3rd day in East Africa, I witnessed one of the odder race demarkations I would see in the course of my stay.  I arrived at the Nairobi railway station, surprised to see a line of people standing to one side of the entrance, animatedly screaming at the passing commuters.  A closer glance revealed they were selling train tickets!  No counter, no computerization, just a bunch of people waving ticket stubs and yelling.  Concerned, I turned to the cab driver and asked him if I had to go get my ticket from them.  He smiled and said "No, the white people go to the office inside on the right".  I did as he said and entered the office that was officially designated for long distance travel.  Sure enough, there was an unmistakeable consistency in skin tonality.  We were all lily white and were all there to board the Jambo Kenya Deluxe  overnight train to Mombasa. After receiving our cabin assignments, we were sent to a roped off part of the...

People often ask me if I get nervous traveling on my own.  My answer is usually not.  I try to do research beforehand so that I don't find myself staying at the intersection of Murderer's Alley and Pickpocket Place.  I try to exercise 'city sense'.  I try not to look like I'm packing a ton of cash (this one comes really easy, somehow).  And I always try to look like I know where I am going (this is one: not so easy.)  Yet none of these made me feel 100% confident heading into a city, affectionately known by friend and foe alike as "Nairobbery".  Tales of general lawlessness abounded and seeing as  I was set to start a safari in two weeks, one that required a large cash payment, I felt like a veritable walking ATM. To allay these concerns, I initially based myself in the 'burbs.  I went straight from Kenyatta Airport to the Bush House and Camp , a lovely guesthouse located in the Karen district. This area, named after Karen Blixen, the au...

Roman Amphitheater The Pillar of Pompey The New Library of Alexandria Prior to arriving in Cairo, my friend and I had concocted a remarkably ambitious plan for our third day that would have us taking a 9 hour night train to Luxor, seeing everything in approximately 12 hours and then taking a ride across the desert to Hurghada to catch our flight the following afternoon. Heat, exhaustion and the realities of Egypt all collided to persuade to us to reconsider. Instead, we happily accepted the suggestion of Mohammed, the night manager at our hostel and now, our travel coordinator and opted to do a much more civilized 2-3 hour day trip to the ancient capital city of Alexandria. The day started off as was now the norm. Tusin, our driver dropped us off at an ancient Roman ampitheater, we bought the tickets and then lacking a tour group to shadow, found some Americans with a Lonely Planet guidebook we could borrow to try to discern what we were looking at, all the while avoiding ...

The Nile: not just a condition characterized by the ability to disregard reality Morning at the Pyramids of Giza The Pyramid of Khufu Pyramid at the Saqqara necropolis And inevitable vendor at the Saqqara necropolis Statue of Ramses II at the Memphis Museum The Mosque of Mohammad Ali at the Citadel Abolution fountain within the its courtyard It is a lso known as the Alabaster Mosque for its interior The Sultan Hassan Mosque Outside the Church of Saint Barbara in the Coptic quarter Note the Pyramids way in the background . I think I need to come up with some shorthand way of saying that I had some time off, a chance at cheap airfare and not much else, because there is definitely a pattern to be discerned here. This past Monday, after a nano-second of thought, the last-minute destination chosen was Cairo. Without sufficient time to plan an itinerary, Diana and I put our fate in the hands of a tour operator who...