Our Adventure In Africa - 2015

A month of safari and exploration

This is the story of our 2015 holiday in Africa (itinerary), which we arranged via African Safaris entirely by email, and who we thoroughly recommend having enjoyed our well organized and reasonably priced trip.

This trip was excellent. We were well cared for by each and every company / person waiting for us and everyone provided us excellent service through out.

Currently I am preparing our photo's for presentation - that'll take me a couple of days given how many I took. To begin with I'll simply have a straight dump of unedited images. Watch this space.

Where We Went, What We Saw…

These links are to raw dumps of images which will change as I prepare content

Videos

Re-considerations?

What could have been better?

We went without considering jet-lag and any time to adjust. That may have been an error although we only realised how exhausted we were after visiting the meer-cats, so it didn't stop us enjoying the trip and may even have contributed to the over-all positive effect by cramming more experience than relaxation in and leaving us feeling we were away for longer.

We were offered a trip to the Walking with Elephants experience when planning our adventure, which we declined. It turns out, from the reactions of people we met who did go that may have been a mistake as everyone reported the close experience with the individual elephants was very rewarding.

We visited The Travel Doctor for vaccinations and health advice. In retrospect we ought to have told them we were being guided all the way because on reflection we realised they gave us advice that assumed we might have been travelling on our own - so the water purification, first aid and disease prevention measures we took were a little over-kill. Turns out we needed far fewer preparations than we took, and even what we were legally required to take (Yellow Fever vaccinations for Kenya) was never checked by officials.

Don't buy anything from hawkers when you're tired, hot, and bothered. I ought to know this - I've survived the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul with my wallet largely intact for heaven's sake - but for some reason on this trip I spent foolishly and irrationally several times after a days effort. Don't do that.

Equipment

Some things I took that I recommend…

I bought Lowa Renegade boots expecting a need for good footwear trekking to Gorillas and was very satisfied with these synthetic boots. Easy to put on and take off while providing good support and comfortable wear.

I bought a Sony DSC RX100 for this trip and while I haven't checked it's results I've been impressed with it's ease of use, features and the video I've seen so far. The only thing I'd maybe reconsider in retrospect is that it's a 70mm lens at best and I'd have liked to zoom in more for some shots. But it is compact and easy to carry and have to hand. You can judge it's merits in the photos and footage found here.

I'd link to the bags we bought from Kathmandu but they seem to no longer carry them. We were instructed to take small bags for the limits on small plane travel and those we selected turned out to be superb.

Once more when travelling micro-fibre clothes proved their value in durability and ease of cleaning while drying quickly.

I bought these 20x50 binoculars on the chance they might be worth it for nature spotting. They absolutely were, in particular they just suck in the light at twilight. They arrived misaligned but once collimated are excellent.