Life is good.

written by  Jason Kester on May 22, 2003 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates
from the travel blog: Middle East, 2003
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Check me out, I'm walkin' around in an African capital city at night, and I haven't been robbed, beaten or killed even once. Nobody is following me around trying to sell me jewelry and wood carvings. No crime, no hassles. Civil war is your friend.

Not to worry, I'm sure that this place will turn into another Arusha inside of ten years. But for now, everybody's just too happy that the war is over to think about exploiting the few tourists that are coming in.

So yeah, Uganda gets the thumbs up. Too bad I've got to leave tomorrow. It's off to Dubai and Cairo next. Here's the final Africa tally:

8 countries
75 days
20 hot showers
140 hours in busses
12 hours swimming in bilharzia contaminated water
30 rhino sighted
4 class 5 rapids rafted
2 flights
15 varieties of local beer

Good value!

written by  Jason Kester on May 19, 2003 from Kampala, Uganda
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
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For two weeks, I was convinced that both Kenya and Tanzania were lost causes. Anywhere you want to go is overrun by the tourist industry, and any westerner is just a big sack of cash for the locals to harass.

Zanzibar town is a definite step forward. There's still the full-court press in the market and near the tourist shops, but you can get away from it and get lost in the back alleys of a pretty cool town. It's like 4000 years old and all funky winding alleyways between ancient stone buildings with intricately carved ebony doorways. Sun and nice beaches on the shore, shade and cool breezes blowing smells from the spice markets through the streets. Yeah, I can deal with this.

The rest of the island is supposed to be your standard-issue tropical Paradise, completely ravaged by tourism. I'm bracing for the worst.

written by  Jason Kester on May 10, 2003 from Zanzibar, Tanzania
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
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Anyway, Africa still rules. I'm just not convinced that Kenya and Tanzania qualify as Africa anymore. It feels more like disneyland.

written by  Jason Kester on May 7, 2003 from Moshi, Tanzania
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
tagged Safari
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The only problem, if you can call it that, is that you're pretty much forced to stay at all the luxury safari lodges at all the parks. There's camping outside the gate but it's not really any cheaper since it's the low season, the lodge rates are way down. So everywhere I go, there's somebody handing me another mango juice and watching to see if I set my fork down so they can polish it for me. It manages to nicely combine the two things I hate most in this world: Being waited on, and feeling like a tourist.

Anyway, it's only for another week so I think I can survive.

written by  Jason Kester on May 2, 2003 from Arusha, Tanzania
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
tagged Safari
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Now, I have to intercept the Pop at the airport, before he hails a cab towards certain death.

written by  Jason Kester on April 24, 2003 from Nairobi, Kenya
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
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With only 3 weeks to make it from Jo'burg to Nairobi, I knew that I would have to move fast at some point, and probably blow right past some of the things I had wanted to see. I made it into Malawi with just over a week to spare, and a quick look at the map verified that I'd be spending most of that week in busses unless I took some drastic measures. In the end, it was an easy decision: Malawi is cool. I wanted to see it. I booked a flight.

Good idea. First stop was Cape Mclear, and a few days in Paradise, with hardly any other travellers. The few of us there were would throw a couple bucks at the local boys, who would organize a bunch of fish and a duck to roast on the beach after the sun went down. After a couple hours, half the village would be around the fire, passing around cartons of the Chibuku (the local, pulpy, shake & serve brew.)

Next up was a long haul up the coast, with a night stranded in a $0.75 hotel room, finally arriving in Nkata Bay. Yet another beautiful place, but with more of a tourist feel. There were bungalows right on the lake, good meals, good times, and I actually managed to spend more than ten dollars a day. Quite a feat for Malawi.

Anyway, I'm stuck in Lilongwe today, trying to verify that I do indeed still have this flight tomorrow. Next stop is Kenya and Tanzania.

written by  Jason Kester on April 22, 2003 from Lilongwe, Malawi
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
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There's too much happiness to relate from my perch here at the bar, so I'll give you the disaster story instead.

So after 12 hours crammed in the back of VW minibusses with 25 locals and their stuff, I pulled into this town for the first time. But I wasn't staying, so I jumped in the back of the last pickup headed out to Cape Mclear. Only maybe 15 of us, but no cage so it was plenty tight. And it was 4wd territory the whole way out.

Anyway, about 10k in, we're halfway up a long hill and the radiator finally gives out. No worries, right. We start rolling back to see what can be done, and that's when the brakes go. We pick up speed. People start hollering. People start jumping out. One guy goes over the hood is riding on it. I'm up on the rail, jettisoning my bag, when the driver cuts the wheel to the side. We slam into the hillside doing about 20, and I do my best flying leap over the side.

I land in a forward roll, and am up and scurrying downhill, expecting to see the truck cartwheeling towards me, but it has dug itself into the side of the hill and dispensed about half of its passengers off the back. Amazingly, nobody was seriously hurt.

But yeah, Cape Mclear made up for it all. Best place I've found yet in Africa. $1.50 for a room, $0.30 for a beer. Great beach and flat, clear, warm fresh water.

No worries.

written by  Jason Kester on April 18, 2003 from Monkey Bay, Malawi
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
tagged Pickup, Crash and CertainDeath
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I finally made it out of South Africa, one week after my visa expired. I spent those extra couple days out at Kruger park, checking out the wildlife. The place is cool. Animals everywhere. It got so that you wouldn't bother stopping the car because there were only 50 impala on one side and a dozen zebra, some wildebeeste and a few giraffes on the other side.

Yesterday was a travel day, so 8 hours in packed minibus-taxis, and a 14 hour night bus saw me across Botswana and up into Zambia this morning. Went and checked out Victoria Falls today, and was suitably impressed. The thing is so wide that you can never really see it all, and it drops along this series of gorges so you can walk out the side of one and have this giant waterfall spanning from as wide as you can see, but only 50 yards in front of you, with the spray dropping on you like a torrential rainstorm. Cool.

I've only got a couple weeks before I need to be in Nairobi, so I'll probably pull out of here tomorrow and start making my way towards Malawi.

written by  Jason Kester on April 10, 2003 from Livingstone, Zambia
from the travel blog: Africa, 2003
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