Output Stream of Consciousness

The big safari is nearly upon us!

I must admit, I'm getting nervous, although I feel a little better knowing our tickets are available for pickup (I thought I'd picked them up and forgotten where they were; we booked this quite a while ago!) I'm going to start calling hotels and making sure the bookings are solid as well, just to calm my nerves.

We're doing a tour-de-force. Before going to Africa, we are making a stop in Dubai (it's cheaper going London->Dubai->Nairobi, so we thought we would take advantage of it). It's going to likely be above body temperature outside there, though, so it's going to be interesting, but I don't think we're exactly going to be beach bunnies for that part.

We're taking an extra day in Nairobi, Kenya, to get acclimatized to Africa. This is their winter time (I don't have an immediate explanation as to why, since Kenya has the equator going through it) and the temperatures are actually supposed to be quite comfortable. Cooler than our summer typically is. (Take a look at the forecast)

We're going through quite a bit of Uganda for the first part of the trip. Reason being that the gorillas are in the southwest tip of Uganda. (For those keeping track of the geography, Uganda is to the west of Kenya, and Kenya is totally on the east coast of Africa, below Sudan and Somalia) Lake Victoria is partly in Uganda, and we'll be spending some time there as well.

We do a little bit of Kenya and a fair bit of Tanzania (to the south of Kenya), seeing things like the Ngorongoro Crater (you should see the crater using Google Earth - it's quite an amazing big circle from orbit), and the Serengeti, passing by (but not climbing) Kilimanjaro. (Odd bit of trivia: mlima = mountain in Swahili, kilima = hill - I guess it's like calling a big guy "tiny" :) )

We spend some time on Zanzibar, the Spice Island (not to be confused with the Spice Islands of Marco Polo and pirate fame in Indonesia) and in particular in Stone Town, which is a leftover from the ruling days of the Sultanate of Oman on this island.

Ought to be spectacular!

I'm going to have to get another memory card and battery for my camera, I think. I think I'll need to finally put that new hard drive in this computer to hold the pictures ;)