Month: January 2020

Jambo! As we say ”hello” in Swahili.

Our next stop was at Lake Naivasha, which is a freshwater lake in the Great Rift Valley. The campsite was quite nice, and there was also another group staying there, which was a nice change as so far we’ve always been the only people staying at campsites. After setting up the tents most of the group went on a hippo cruise at the lake, I stayed behind to catch up on transferring photos from my cameras and uploading pictures on social media. Also I didn’t want to spend 30$ to see hippos as we’ll have plenty of chances to see them for free later on.

The next day we hopped on a minibus and headed to Hell’s Gate National Park, where we went on a guided bicycle ride. It was nice to get some excercise and we saw some zebra, gazelle, eland and giraffe, but unfortunately the famous gorge (which was the inspiration for the stampede scene in Lion King) was closed due to a flash flood accident a few months ago which killed seven people. I had been looking forward to seeing the gorge so that was a bit disappointing.

We stopped for lunch at the the entrance to the gorge, which turned out to be a mistake, as we immediately caught the attention of the monkeys! They forgot all about being shy as soon as we got our food out, and did not hesitate jumping on us as they tried to grab food from our hands. I managed to eat a couple of biscuits by stuffing them quickly into my mouth before the monkey could grab it, but I thought it better not to attempt to eat a banana. One of the monkeys actually had a tiny baby clinging on to her chest and she still managed to jump high up in the air while trying to grab our lunches!

The next morning most of the group decided to relax while me and Marié went for a game walk in Crater Lake National Park. It was a really nice experience and I was really eager to do it, as there are not that many places where we are actually allowed to get out of the vehicle and go walking among the wildlife. The weather was beautiful, as it has been every day so far, and it was wonderful to just walk among the zebras, impalas and even the giraffe! The impalas also gave us a demonstration of their running skills, and they surely are impressive, one leap can be up to nine metres! Our guide, Chris, told us they are sometimes called the ”McDonald’s Deer” due to the markings on their backside looking like the letter M. They certainly are the fastest food in the safari!

Our guide had an impressive amount of knowledge of the animals and birds and was eager to share it, I learned so much! For example, the warthog always backs up into a burrow in case there is a predator hiding inside, so it can get out quickly. They are also called the ”safari express” because they always run in a line.

After the walk we drove to Lake Nakuru, which is a salt water lake with several inlets but no outlet, which has now led into it growing and growing each year, and it has already drowned the previous main entrance and the buildings around it! It has also become too deep for the flamingos, which have now moved elsewhere.

Our group was divided into two minivans, and my group got really lucky as our guide was just the best ever! He was called Kamaro, and was very knowledgeable, passionate about his job and absolutely hilarious, not to mention a total DILF 😀 We had an absolutely fantastic day driving the full circle around the lake. The day got in to a perfect start at 7am when we got sight of our first rhino!

We had very exciting moments with baboons climbing on our van, and got very lucky when we managed to find a ranger that agreed to jump into the van with us to show us where the tree-climping lions were napping, and gave us special permission to go off-road right next to the tree they were in. That was really something special! I never expected to see a lion up a tree, and now we got one male and four females all up in the same tree!

The other highlight of the day came toward the end of our drive, when we found a group of six Eastern White Rhinos calmly grazing right next to the road. It was amazing to see those huge animals from so close, and they really couldn’t have cared less that we were there. We stayed there just quietly watching them for nearly and hour, something I’ll remember for the rest of my life!

That was the perfect ending to a perfect day. We saw so many incredible things that by now the only thing that could’ve topped them would’ve been a leopard on a bicycle… The next day we had a cold but very scenic drive up to Eldoret. I hadn’t expected to see thick pine forests in Africa, seems like they have all kinds of scenery in Kenya. It was very, very gorgeous! The camp site was very nice, it had an underground bar and a pool bar and nice hot showers, and there was a sign saying Bill Gates stayed a night there once!

The next morning we crossed the border and drove to Jinja, where we are staying for three nights, but that’ll be a topic for the next post.

It was a few hours drive from Nairobi to our next destination, Maji Moto in Masai Mara. We were greeted by our Masai hosts with a song and a dance, then shown around the camp site where we had a lovely shaded spot for our tents. Our hosts took us for a visit at the nearby widow’s village and then on a walk up the surrounding hills, and afterwards impressed us with their fire-making skills.

The widow’s village was a place where women, who have become widowed, move to live with their children as according to Masai tradition they are not allowed to re-marry and can’t live among the rest of the villagers. Their houses, which they build themselves out of cow dung and clay, are set in a circle in a middle of which is a pen for cattle. The houses are small and simple but quite cosy comprising of bedrooms and a room with a fire pit.

Bedtime came early again as the women in the widow’s village wanted to show us how to milk cows in the morning. It turned out to be lots of fun, although my cow was reluctant at first to have a stranger milking her and kicked my cup over a few times. One of the Masai was certain that I had milked cows before back home, so I guess I did quite well!

We then went on a long walk with our hosts around the surrounding hills, had a bit of ”warrior training” and then visited a local private school, which had started as a sort of rescue center for girls to give them an education instead of being married off too young.

It was then time to say goodbye to or hosts and start driving towards our next destination, the Masai Mara National Reserve. It was easy to tell when we were getting close, as the scenery turned into rolling hills and lush greenery as far as the eye could see. A bit different from what we’re used to seeing in natural documentaries, that are typically filmed in the dry season when the grass is short and yellow!

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At camp we quickly put up our tents and went for an introductory game drive. In only a couple of hours we managed to see giraffe, elephants and even the elusive leopard! Back at camp we had quick dinner and got ready for a very early wake up.

The following morning we drove in complete darkness to the famous Masai Mara Natural Reserve. As the sun rose we drove around and saw animals in their thousands! Dozens of different species all grazing side by side peacefully, spotting the occasional predator here and there. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the amount of animals we would come across in just one day, at home I get excited if I manage to spot a squirrell every now and then! We saw at least: elephant, zebra, giraffe, thompson’s gazelle, great gazelle, impala, jackal, hyeena, lion, leopard, buffalo, warthog, wildebeest, ostritch, crowned crane, secretary bird and a bunch of other birds whose name I don’t know, just to mention a few. There were animals everywhere you looked!

Our drivers were local Masai men and they were amazing! We went off-roading quite a lot, and they were incredibly skillful in getting us through the most challenging spots. And you could tell they were loving it, I noticed that often to get from a to b they chose the more difficult off-road route instead of the shorter and easier route available. And off-roading was just so much fun!

After about nine hours of driving it was time to go back to camp, and everyone was pretty exhausted at that point. Tired, but happy!

After breakfast the truck arrived and we got to meet the others in our group, 16 in total, some more to be joining later. I think most of us will be doing the 77 day trip, so we’ll probably know eachother pretty well at the end!

Our first stop was the Giraffe Center in Nairobi, where we got to meet and greet these gracious long-legged and -necked creatures. They were rather friendly, apart from one called Selma, who liked to headbutt people if they didn’t offer treats fast enough.

After the giraffes it was time for baby elephants. We headed over to the nearby David Sheldrick’s Elephant Orphanage, where they rescue baby elephants after they’ve got lost from their families or their mothers have died. They keep them there until they are around three years old, after which they are re-introduced into the wild, a process which takes about five years to complete.

Needless to say, those baby elephants were absolutely adorable! They could chuck down a big bottle of baby formula in mere seconds, in fact they need about 24 litres a day! The formula they use is actually the same that is used for human babies. At the time of our visit the orphanage was looking after 17 baby elephants in total.

After the elephants we headed down to a big, modern shopping mall where we stocked up on food and other essentials. I tried to buy a sim card, but it turned out you need to have your passport to buy it, they don’t accept ID cards from foreigners. From the shops we drove out to our first camp site nearby, pitched our tents, relaxed in the bar and had dinner. I was happy to find out they served cider in the bar as well! We also had the luxury of hot showers, and everyone went to bed early due to an early wake up the next morning.

It was finally the day I had been waiting for! And boy was it a looooong day… I couldn’t really get any sleep the night before due to the excitement and ended up getting up before 5am, and as my flight wasn’t until at 22.40, it was a long wait. I tried to nap during the day, but I couldn’t. Initially I had thought it would be a good idea to book an overnight flight so I could sleep on the plane and arrive in Nairobi at a comfortable hour. In reality, I couldn’t sleep at all during the flights and although it was nice to arrive in the afternoon, I was pretty exhausted after having been up for about 36 hours by the time I arrived at the hotel!

The journey itself was pretty uneventful. I flew with Qatar as they had the cheapest rate at the time of booking, and as they’re a part of Oneworld I could get Finnair flight points from booking with them. I had a changeover in Doha, Qatar which meant that I would be flying over Middle East, Iran to be excact. As most of you probably have heard, there was the unfortunate incident of the Ukrainian flight being shot down by missiles near the Iranian capital Tehran, after which air carriers left and right were re-routing their flights away from the area. Not Qatar though, because the country has some problematic relationships with it’s neighbours, and their only possible route to Doha is through Iran, as they are not allowed to enter the Saudi Arabian airspace. Initially I was quite worried, but after it became clear that it was an accident and it was very, very unlikely that something like that could happen again, I stopped worrying.

Arriving in Nairobi, the passengers are transferred straight through to Immigration, where I was given a couple of forms to fill, stood in line for about an hour and paid 100$ for my East African Visa. I later noticed that they got my name wrong in the visa, and used my surname as my first name and my third name as my surname. Hopefully that won’t be an issue.

After immigration it’s straight through to the luggage hall, where I picked up my bag and headed to the bank counter to change some money. I had intentioned to buy a sim card at the airport as well, but I forgot to do this. Outside there were a lot of people trying to get you to take a taxi, but I quickly located the person who was there to pick me up. She wasn’t holding a sign like I had expected, but she called me by my name so I knew it had to be the person. We get in the car and as we’re pulling out of the parking lot, the driver points out into the shrubbery around the airport and asks ”can you see the giraffe?” and I’m like WHAT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! And there they are, four or five long necks sticking out from behind the tree tops only a few hundred meters from the road. Welcome to Africa!

I stay the night in Wildebeest Eco Lodge, which is a lovely little garden compound with ponds, lots of greenery and birds, and a lot of frogs that provide a lovely soundtrack through the night. I join a couple of girls from the tour for dinner and head to bed exhausted at around 8pm, only to wake up at 1.30am and not being able to sleep anymore. At 3am I give up and start writing this blog post instead of trying to sleep. I haven’t really been able to sleep normally for about a week now, I fall asleep easily at night as usual, but I wake up early hours in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. I part blame the malaria pills and part the overall excitement of the upcoming trip. Anyhow, so far the lack of sleep hasn’t had any effect on my overall energy levels, and I’m sure I’ll get back to my usual sleep cycle as soon as I get into routine. It’s 4am now and breakfast starts at 7, after which the adventure gets really started!

I had been saving for the downpayment for a flat for nearly two years, when I started getting increasingly anxious about actually buying one. I had just moved back from northern Finland, where I had been studying photography, to my parents house in southern Finland, where I was going to stay for the summer and buy a flat in the autumn. I wasn’t feeling comfortable with taking a huge loan, especially since I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in the next few years, and having big loan payments to pay every month would not be helpful in saving money for traveling, which I had been missing a lot while I lived in London.

I think it was around July when I decided that I would take a break in saving for the flat, and instead save to go traveling. I was thinking about going to Spain for the winter, when I suddenly remembered a trip I had been dreaming to do years earlier, but always put off because the timing was never right. Overlanding in Africa.

I didn’t have any rent to pay, and my parents could take care of my dog while I was away, so it was the perfect opportunity to quickly save a lot of money and make the dream come true. It was time to start budgeting. I figured I could save about 1000€ every month. I compared different overlanding operators, and decided to go with Absolute Africa. I was also considering Oasis Overlanding as both of these companies had tons of experience and a budget that was right for me. The reason I chose AA was that they had front-facing seats on their trucks, which I figured would be much more comfortable than the ones on OO that were sideways. Small, but very important detail when you’ll be spending hours and hours on the truck each day for three months!

I had already decided years ago that I wanted to do the Nairobi-Cape Town tour. It was priced at £2670 including the optional Zanzibar stay, which had to be paid beforehand, plus 1260$ that would be paid in cash in Kenya. There was also a long list of optional activities listed, and after carefully considering what I would want to do, I calculated that I would need about 1000$ for these. It worked out quite cheap for me as I don’t really like any water sports as I can’t swim, and those were the most expensive things on the list. I’m quite happy with walks, village visits and sunset cruises!

About 300$ would be needed for visas. I booked flights from Helsinki to Nairobi through Doha with Qatar Airlines, those were about 600€.

Then there was the spending money. That was tricky, how could I know how much money I’ll be spending on lunches, souvenirs, internet connection and drinks? Absolute Africa has a helpful article on budgeting at the website, where it says that 1500$-1800$ should be enough. I decided to aim for 1500$ and if I managed more, great.

I would need to get yellow fever vaccination and malaria pills, they cost me about 150€. I already had traveler’s insurance, so I didn’t need to budget for that.

That was about it. Adding it all together I figured I needed roughly about 7500€. That meant I would need to save for about seven months. I then booked the trip to start in mid-January. In hindsight it would’ve been better to book it 2 or 3 weeks later, as I ended up spending a lot of money on things that I would need to take with me on the trip, including a last minute decision to buy a 700€ teleobjective for my camera. Got to get those close-ups of the elephants… I managed to meet my target, but I think I would’ve been much more comfortable to have some extra, just in case.

Well, there are always credit cards…

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Now that the financials had been sorted, I had to figure out what I would need to bring with me. After hours and hours of googling and reading packing lists on different overlanding operators websites I finally came up with a pretty comprehensive list. A lot of the things I already had, but a lot of things would still need to be bought. I ended up spending a lot more money than I had thought, as things like solar-charging powerbanks, head torches, first aid kits and medicines are not cheap. I ordered a lot stuff on the internet and picked up things from shops little by little.

I also had to get a new passport as mine was expiring – another 100€ expense. I had to book an appointment for getting the yellow fever vaccination and the prescription for malaria pills. I checked that my insurance was sufficient for the trip, read the 42 pages of the pre-departure pack over and over again to make sure I had done everything I needed to get ready, and counted down days for the big adventure. When I got my final paycheck before the trip there was just one final preparation to do, changing my €uros into dollar$.

This turned out to be more expensive than I had anticipated. The instructions were to bring most of the money in US dollars, as this was the preferred currency around Africa. Even though I pre-ordered most of my dollars online beforehand, which gave me a lot better excange rate, I still had to change some money at the shop as my last paycheck arrived just before the start of my trip. I bought a little over 3300$, which cost me about 3250€ when with the ”proper” rate I would’ve got about 3600$. Ouch!!! I would’ve saved about 100$ had I changed all the money beforehand rather than the last 1000$ at the airport, but unfortunately that was not an option.

That was it, everything was quite simple in the end, as the tour company gave very specific instructions, and were always happy to help if I had any questions.

One week. One agonising week while I still have to go to work every day, before it’s time for take-off. I’ve been trying to snatch as many shifts as possible, but work hasn’t always been available so I haven’t saved as much money as I would have liked. I’ve met my minimum target, but it would’ve been nice to have some extra so I wouldn’t have to count every cent so carefully. I do have a credit card with me if money gets tight, but hopefully I won’t have to use it too much.

I would be lying if I said I’m fully confident that the trip will be nothing but epic. I’m used to traveling on my own so I worry that I’m going to get frustrated with following a pre-organised itinerary all the way through, and that I might get annoyed with being around the same people all the time. I also worry that we might be trodding along a very beaten path with tons of tourists around all the time, but then again it is not the busy season now and we do venture into the bush quite a lot too, unlike the package tourists who stay in hotels and are shuttled to safaris and back.

In the end, I do believe that there is no better way for me to see Africa. I’ve been dreaming about this trip for years, and it’s finally happening!

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I did quite a lot of research around the internet to compile a list of items I would need on an overlanding trip. Although I’ve traveled to over fourty countries on trips varying in length, from a few days to a couple of years, I have no previous experience on this type of travel, of changing locations daily and camping in remote campsites, often going on for days without access to shops and such amenities. Also the tour company told us to pack light because there is very limited space for luggage in the truck, so packing was going to be tricky.

I’m used to always traveling with hand luggage only, so this concept of having a lot of stuff with me all the time was alien to me. However, I managed to come up with a list that seems quite comprehesive at the time of writing, though only time will tell whether there is something I could’ve left out, and other things I should’ve brought.

Lists are boring, so I’ll show what I have in pictures. On the top of this post is the 60l sports bag that I had to fit everything in. I would’ve preferred an 70-80l bag, but unfortunately in my price range it was a choice of either 60l or 90l, so I chose the smaller one.

Most of the items were really straightforward. I’ll need this, everyone says so, it makes sense, I’ll bring it. The most difficult bit was the clothing. It will be really hot in some places, yet I need to cover myself from the sun, because I’m one of those people that burns time after time after time, and tans only slightly. In Australia it took my skin three months to learn how to produce melanine, until then I only burned again and again. I’ve since learned my lesson. Sun screen is not enough, I need to cover my skin. So what would be lightweight, yet bring enough coverage? Also I live in a country where winter lasts for eight months, so my closet isn’t excactly full of light summer clothes. In the end I decided to bring just a few essential items, and hoped to find more suitable options once I get there.

My 60l bag ended up being packed to the brim (even without the pillow, which I will carry in my hand luggage so that I can sleep on the plane, as my flight leaves late at night). I couldn’t take a small backpack in my handluggage because I was carrying my camera backpack, so I had to fit all my stuff and the day bag inside the 60l bag. It was only just big enough, so I’ll probably have to buy another bag for all the souvenirs for the return flight! 😉

I didn’t take pictures of the clothes (because I kept changing them until the last minute, but what I had were: two t-shirts, two tank tops, one light long-sleeved shirt, one pair of shorts, one pair of light pants, one pair of hiking pants, one summer dress, five pairs of socks and six pairs of underpants and two sports bras. I also packed a rain jacket, a hoodie, a tube scarf, a cap and a fishing hat and two pairs of sunglasses.

Bag is now ready for check in!