Robinson World Tour Part 2

Thursday, 3 April 2014

Out of Africa

This now concludes our African adventure. The past 54 days have been a remarkable experience. The time has flown by and it is difficult to sum up all of the awesome times we have had. We are already missing our fellow travel companions. Nine of us made the entire trek together and have spent the past 2 months 24/7 with each other with no issues, no big problems, and many friendships have developed – we have become one big family.

We are now in Thailand (after a 46 hour non-stop travel adventure – this is a story in itself) having a vacation from our vacation, getting ready for the next two legs of our tour. I’ll have to share the story of the two Daniel Robinsons on our flight from London to Bangkok (it was extremely freaky and a bit scary - but I will share this at a later time)

We are spending a week on the island of Koh Larn 150 km SE of Bangkok 7 km from the shore of Pattaya, Thailands party capital. Lisa and I are some of the few white people on the island (the only white couple) and really stand out. We attended a Buddhist festival on April 1 where they had a big stage and performers in the square and many food vendors and everything was free. The locals were laughing at Lisa and I as we walked around and tried to figure out what the different types of food were. The one lady must have felt sorry for us as she had a box of Mc Donald’s chicken burgers and called me over to make sure Lisa and I got one. Soon after the Mc Donald’s lady wanted to give us what we thought were hot apple pies. I’ve included a picture of what they were so you can judge.

The beaches are great and the owner of the hotel (Suntosa Resort) has been lending us his scooter so we can get around the island. Parts of the island are friendly but others not so much. It is Thailand’s main vacation time and it seems we have found where they like to stay.

We are off to Bangkok later today to get ready for the Asian part of our adventure.

Thailand Family Robinson

Enjoying a sea side dinner

They really like their corn. It was creamed corn in a pie shell.
You be the judge of how good it tasted.

One of the many restaurants on the busy narrow streets.

This is one of the beaches. The water and sand are around there somewhere.
It was too crowded for us so we went to another beach.

We saw this and thought of our "Brewster" friends and their new dog and Murray's love of Spock.

I wouldn't want to work for the utilities company and figure out this mess which is everywhere.

Enjoying some food and the festival. It was that crowded.

Enjoying a book on the beach. This one was not so crowded.

The still happy couple after 60 days.

Our resort and deck.

Chilling with the owner and a few beverages with the city of Pattaya in the background.

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Unique Uganda and Quick Kenya

The final leg of our African tour had us cross into Kenya. There was a noticeable difference in the quality and quantity of housing. Kenya is developing a middle class and nowhere is this more apparent than on the roads as this country has a lot more cars than we had been experiencing. This lead to lots of traffic and traffic jams, especially in Nairobi (the country's capital). They have many roundabouts controlled by traffic lights and traffic police but no one pays much attention to them so it is survival of the pushiest. Heightened security was very evident in Nairobi. Everywhere we went you were airport type scanned before you entered (including grocery stores, restaurants, etc.). There was also an armed presence all around the city. This is all to be expected considering what has happened there in the past year.

We didn’t spend much time in Kenya and quickly headed into Uganda. This country was very surprising. It is very physically beautiful and the people are extremely friendly. As our truck rumbled down the “highways” –for lack of a better term- kids would run for a chance to wave at us. We felt like rock stars and this was very poignant as we passed this one school and hundreds of kids ran screaming towards the road just to yell out the all too familiar phrase “how are youuuuuu?” Even the adults beamed when we would wave at them.

The purpose of our visit to Uganda was to trek and track the mountain gorillas. We did stop first to do a chimp trek to break us into the trekking routine and we were not disappointed. We saw a mother and her baby. The only clear pictures we got were of the baby and those are below. After our trek we headed to our basic campground. I’ve included pictures of the facilities. The pit toilet (hole in the floor) and shawer. They try hard with the English but struggle at times much to our delight. As dinner was being prepped we were treated to a make shift performance by some of the local school children. Once the rest of the village found out what had happened they repeated the performance with almost all of the local kids participating. It was extremely entertaining. I took a video using the ipad and the kids were soooooo excited to see themselves. It took a lot of coercing to get them to leave and go to bed. They walk 2 hours every morning just to get to school and then two hours back. They left the next morning around 5:30am.

Our journey now had us at Lake Bunyoni, our base camp for the Gorilla trek. This lake is over 2 km deep and high up in the mountains surrounded by dormant volcanoes. Our group was split up to trek 3 different families of gorillas. We entered Bwindi National Park (The impenetrable forest is its nickname and for good reason – the slopes are very steep and covered in vegetation). Our group was lucky as we didn’t have to venture too far (only about 3 km into the park) before we ran into our family. The first part of the family of 9 that we saw were two large black back males (in the trees) and the very large (200 + kilo) silver back dominant male (he was on the ground resting beside a tree less than 7 meters from us). We have lots of photos but I had to narrow it down to just a few. Do you know why Gorillas have big nostrils – cause they have big fingers. Find the photo that verifies this. After sitting and admiring the silver back for a while he decided to get up and ramble straight towards us. The guide told us that if her charges we were to remain calm and stand our ground (he didn’t say anything about soiling oneself). Thankfully he didn’t charge but he did get very close. I’ve included a video of this occurrence (check out the expression of Maureen after the silver back goes by – this totally sums up the experience) and one of a black back climbing down a tree. After the silver back moved away we headed further into the forest and were treated to a viewing of the lone baby in the group. Trekking and finding these limited and amazing creatures was awe inspiring. I’ve included photos of our awesome mountain top views from our lunch spot after the trek.

Just when we though Uganda couldn’t deliver any more we stopped in Jinga on the shores of Lake Victoria which is the source of the Nile River. Here we took the opportunity to go white water rafting on the Nile River. Our guide was totally snapped and that’s what made the day even more exciting. I’ve included photos of the rafting (thanks Todd for the Go Pro it is really coming in handy) and the view from our river side tents. (G-Adventures upgraded us all to awesome permanent tents)

Our tour was coming to an end and we limped our way out of Uganda back into Kenya for our remaining four days. Our first stop was a game drive in Lake Nakuru National Park in western Kenya. I don’t know if it was all of the awesome experiences and wildlife we had seen so far but the excitement seemed to be waning for most of our group as we went through the park. The big thing we were looking forward to was seeing rhinos. Lisa and I had seen black rhinos earlier on in the tour but in this park we were treated to white rhinos and plenty of them. There were supposed to be flamingos there but the water levels have been unexplainably high for the past five years and they are no longer there. The last day in Kenya had us going to see the hippos and bird like in Lake Naivasha. It is here that we found out that six fishermen had already lost their lives to the hippos and it was only the end of March. The hippos may seem slow and nonthreatening but think again.

Getting out of Kenya was also an interesting experience as security was very intense. I’ll explain more when we get home.

Longhorned Africows

They carry so much on their bikes

Typical street mall in Uganda

This is the local football (soccer field)

Speak no evil

Baboons on the campsite

Cold Shower anyone (Those are butterflies on the side of the building)

Don't fall down the hole when using the toilet

Lisa sharing pictures of snow with our gorilla guides and guards (notice the AK 47 in the guards hands)

Getting ready for the gorilla trek

Enjoying a lunch with a view

Beautiful scenery in Uganda

They farm everywhere in Uganda

The local saw mill (no machines here)

View of the Nile River from the front of our tent

This is a blue balled monkey (can you tell why it is named that)

Our rafting group

Friday, 14 March 2014

Terrific, Terrifying and Terrible Tanzania

The Tanzanian part of our adventure has been interesting to say the least. It was a country of very long drives, hot weather, the worst roads we have traveled on so far, bad traffic, rich in history and amazing animals. The pictures are put at the end of the text as I don’t have time to organize them properly and the wifi is very slow here in Nairobi.

I will explain the meanings of the words in the title. Terrific were the game drives and camping in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater (much more on this later) and the history and views from Zanzibar. Terrifying were the camping in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater (more on this later). Terrible were the roads –both in condition, construction and speed humps (mini mountains)-, also the stomach issues in Zanzibar (Montezuma’s revenge in Mexico has nothing on this).

Our journey here started with an uneventful border crossing and a 12+ hour drive (bounced around a lot) which brought us to the outskirts of Dar Es Salam (the countries capital) which was very warm and traffic congested. It puts the Toronto traffic into the fast lane. There is no semblance of organization. It’s everyone for themselves with city buses doing whatever they wanted. Below is a picture of one of the buses in traffic (this is on the main highway and people just hop on and off since we are not going very fast). The temperature at the time was in the high 30’s with a humidex in the high 40’s. We didn’t even get to the campground. We ended up getting off the truck and took tuk tuks which moved much faster. The truck got to the campground 2 hours later. Racing each other through congested streets was the best part of the day. The drivers are nuts. (sorry no pictures – we were just hanging on)

The second day had us up early on onto the ferry that took us to the island of Zanzibar. This island has a very strict Muslim culture and the women had to dress appropriately (no visible shoulders or legs). They have had incidents in the past where women were attacked for not dressing appropriately. The first night in Zanzibar had us staying in Stone Town. This place has a lot of history and is very dirty. The slaves were sold here at the slave market in town. The buildings were very interesting and the street mazes reminded us of some of the areas in Europe and old Quebec City. We got lost a lot and were being constantly bombarded with shop owners trying to hock their wares. Our group definitely stands out in the crowds. The second and third days saw us drive to the north end of the island to a beach resort. We were definitely not expecting this type of travel but it was definitely welcome as we were able to recharge ourselves and slow down a bit. The last day on the island saw us back down in Stone Town and this is where I (Dan) had some real stomach issues ( I passed out in the hotel for hours and made many and powerful visits to the toilet)

After Zanzibar we made a big push the Serengeti (a very large grassland national park with an unbelievable amount of animals – I only set some of the pictures). Here are the highlights and terrifying times. We boarded our jeeps for the safaris. The leopard is one of the hardest animal to see and we were able to find three different ones (even our local guide said to seeing that many is extremely rare) We got up close (in the jeeps) to almost all the animals. The elephants, lions and leopards seemed to be the favourites of most of the safari trucks. I have a lot more to tell on this but will explain more when we get home.

Now for the terrifying stuff -well maybe not so terrifying as amazing. Our accommodations in the Serengeti and on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater were our tents. Keep in mind there are no fences around the campgrounds and all the animals roam free and we found out this included the area where our tents were. In the Serengeti we were instructed to stay in our tents at night but one of the ladies from our group thought it would be ok to go out at 5:30 am since this is when we were supposed to start breakfast. What she failed to hear was the sound of the lions in our camp. (We had been hearing the zebra and wildebeest all night long and only the lions from just before 5) She was quickly and loudly instructed to get back into her tent unless she wanted to get eaten. The lions left and we exited our tents and got ready for the day. As we exited the tent area we found out why the lions had left – they had killed a wildebeest right beside the road – right outside our camp - and were feasting. What a great way to start the day. The rest of the Serengeti was just as

amazing. That night we headed to the rim of the Ngorongoro crater (a large caldera formed when the volcano that was there erupted and left its mark). This is when the next two terrifying (amazing) things happened. We were milling about awaiting supper (they have caged in pavilions and for good reason we found out as this area also has many wild animals around) They have armed guards (not like in the Serengeti) here but not for our protection but for the animals. They hire Masai warriors to do the guarding and these guys mean business. Look them up to find out why they are so fearsome – if not wait till we get home and we’ll tell you. Enough on that and back to the animals. As we awaited supper a large bull elephant wandered into camp –some idiots thought it would be ok to go right up to it and take photos (the masai warriors were quick to react). We though the entertainment was over – wrong. The elephant came right up to the pavilion and then stole food from the kitchen area before they started banging pots and pans to scare the thing away. After supper we socialized for a bit and then went to our tents. Part way through the night

Lisa needed to go to the bathroom and we were getting ready to leave the tent when we could here munching sounds right outside our tent and smell was very powerful. We waited about a half an hour until the noise went away and went to the bathroom. There was nothing we could see in the area and thought nothing more. Later on in the night we heard the noises and had the smells again on the other side of our tents. It turns out we had a herd of cape buffalo grazing around the tents. As with the Serengeti if there are grazing animals then there will be predators and scavengers. We then heard the lions, hyenas and jackals in the area but nothing much happened the rest of the night. Morning had us descend the crater and go on our last game drive for a while. The first thing we saw was a pride of lions with a kill and a bunch of cubs. The day continued for the hunt for the last of the big five (the rhino). We eventually spotted two in the distance. Our safari was now complete. Those two nights and days have been an unbelievable experience that mere words cannot describe.

We are now in Nairobi, Kenya awaiting the next leg of our adventure. I am not sure about wifi for the next 14 days but will try and post when I can. We hope those of you that had March Break had a wonderful time and for those of you who did not, we hope you are well.

Kenyan Family Robinson