My enduring image of Uganda, the pearl of Africa, is rolling green hills and banana farms.  After learning to love the scrubby bush and maize fields that dominate Zambia and Tanzania, I found these green hills of abundant bananas and plantains and the rivers and lakes in Uganda shocking. It seemed that they must be growing plenty of food in great quantity and variety. However, my observations were not the whole story, as we witnessed first hand that hunger and food security are still huge obstacles faced by Ugandans everyday. 

Our last day in Uganda we stood at the source of one of the world's most iconic rivers: the Nile. Outside the town of Jinja, at the juncture with Lake Victoria, the Nile is surrounded by Uganda's history in the form of huge rundown former colonial homes and even the former vacation home of Idi Amin. As with most tourist attractions in Africa we saw, there was much more thought to selling the trinkets than to marking the significance of the site. Slightly down river, a shrine to Ghandi stands, because part of his remains were scattered here at the beginning of the Nile. Just one of many things that surprised me about Uganda. We tried to balance tourism and experiencing local life here and found both to be even more rewarding than our expectations allowed. 

Yes, they actually use that phrase in Tanzania, and apparently not just for tourists.  I was constantly repeating it in my head when I arrived at the tiny "airport" in Arusha for our flight to the Serengeti. It was my first time on a small plane. I am a bit of a nervous flyer, so the 12-seater, single-engine propeller plane without a co-pilot made me uneasy. I felt even worse when the pilot began shooting pics outside the window with his iPad before we left. Then, right before we took off, he failed to mention our stop as part of the flight's itinerary! Risking a big eye roll from my significant other, I raised my hand and asked the pilot about the oversight. After some conversations with the ground crew and a double check of his schedule, he realized he was looking at the wrong date. Despite the precarious start, we made it to the Serengeti. These are the risks we take to see animals in one of the most famous parks in the world.

Fortunately, we arrived without a hitch and our stay in the Serengeti was quite a memorable event.  We expected this experience would be different from the game reserve in South Africa. but we weren't sure how. In addition to seeing different animals that we had not seen at all during our first safari (e.g. leopards, zebras, elephants, hyenas, buffalo, alligators, hippos out of the water, etc.), the wildlife was just much more abundant here (we saw herds of 50 elephant, hundreds of buffalo and thousands of zebra). The wide-open plain of the Serengeti landscape was also vastly different from the thick brush in South Africa. This was both an advantage and disadvantage. As an advantage, we were able to spot much more wildlife and a lot quicker in the Serengeti due to the wide-open spaces, but sometimes it was nice in South Africa to be rewarded with a view of lions after a 3 hour, boring trek to find them instead of just stumbling upon a pride. 

Highlights of our trip would include having giraffes stumble onto our campsite, rolling up to 5 ton elephants mating and then having others in the heard give us nasty looks and noises while they passed within feet of the car, a lion mother playing daycare leader for 11 cubs, giraffes fighting by lazily throwing their giant necks at each other and getting to check out a pair of cheetahs with some fresh kill. The variety of animals, density of the wildlife and giant herds I think truly sets the Serengeti apart from anywhere else in the world. Definitely an unforgettable experience. 




And for the best part, some pictures! Let us know which is your favorite animal...we love receiving comments on our blog! (BTW, mine is probably the Zebra. I was amazed at how distinct and impressive they look in person). 

Click here or on the picture below to see our full album!

It would be easy to make a post about how idyllically beautiful Zanzibar is: the smooth, white sand beaches, the clear turquoise water, the coconut trees everywhere. However, the culture and history of the place make it fascinating to explore and led us to experiences beyond the usual island paradise. 

The "friendly beach hustle" seems to be the way most people make money. There is a wide and deep network of people affected by our decisions to go snorkeling, take a taxi, or rent bikes.  Take snorkeling: one guy recruits you on the beach, then he goes and rents your mask and flippers from another guy in some random village house, then he hires another huy to take you out on his boat and pays yet another one to climb a tree to get you a coconut at the end. Seemingly, every transaction, we made involved 15 different people. It's fascinating to try and figure out what is going on behind the scenes, One guy, self-named Mr. Jambiani (which is the name of the beach), became our buddy. He made us cool island hats and we enjoyed hanging out with a local who was in it for friendship, even if he did make a few bucks off of us. 


See below for some more pictures from Zanzibar.  
For captions, hover over a picture for captions or click to 
open a gallery with bigger pictures:

Inevitably while traveling for a year, one needs to take care of some basics: I desperately needed a haircut. The hot humid weather of Dar Es Salaam coupled with not having had a haircut in 4-6 months brought things to a head (no pun intended). I'm not very picky about my hair but I assumed it would it be tricky to find a hair salon in Dar. Although there are countless salons, I really have no idea if a typical Tanzanian hairdresser has experience cutting frizzy, white girl hair. I only had a proper haircut in Africa once before, at a posh salon catering to ex-pats and wealthy Zambians, where the blow dry cost twice as much as the cut itself. I wanted to get away from that experience and also that price point.

I asked a pharmacist who appeared to be Indian, if she had a recommendation for a hair cuttery. Tanzania, as much of Africa, has a large population of people of Indian descent. Often, they own businesses and shops. Particularly in Tanzania you can see a lot of Indian influence in the culture, the cuisine, the religion and the styles of dress. The pharmacist gave me directions to a place a few blocks away. We found it easily, although it was odd that the all the windows were tinted so you couldn't see in. As we walked in, the owner frantically shouted “Oh there are no men allowed inside.” Oops. Strike one—cultural faux pax. We apologized and Jed left to find an internet cafe.

I returned and she took me back for a hair wash. I felt like I was in a secret ladies society behind the tinted windows. Not surprisingly, most women in the shop were Indian, except the two ladies washing hair. When the boisterous owner sat me down in her chair, and asked me what I wanted I said, "just a trim." She wrinkled up her face and said “You definitely need a change. You need to make your cheekbones more noticeable.” From her tone, I knew I would not leave that chair with the haircut I envisioned. The lady took out a haircut magazine that looked like it was from 1994. She thumbed through it for a long time and finally showed me a picture of a terrible haircut (think the original Jennifer Aniston) that I would never be able to style as we backpack through Africa and beyond. I tried to emphasize I wanted it long and easy and able to pull back. So she went to work. The first snip was already more off than I wanted.

We chatted as she snipped away. She assured me I would be very happy with the cut. 15 minutes later she was done; It was certainly the fastest haircut I'd ever had. It was pretty close to the '94 Aniston I was dreading. However, the damage was done and I faked my enthusiasm. The elderly granny getting a pedicure assured me it looked MUCH better. I paid only 10,000 TZ shillings, or $6. Hair grows back, so I'll chalk it up to a cultural experience. I will say its already growing on me a bit, so maybe my new hairdresser knew what I needed more than I expected. And for only $6 and 15 minutes of my time, I guess I can't complain too much... 

After our 30 hour train ride from Cape Town to Johannesburg went relatively smoothly, Caitlin didn't have much trouble trying to convince me to try another long African train ride, this time an alleged 40 hour ride from Zambia to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.  We took a bus from Lusaka, Zambia to the train station that was supposed to arrive at the train statino 3 hours before the train left, to ensure that we didn't have any troubles getting on the train (we still hadn't purchased our tickets).   After a 30 minute pre-departure sermon, broken tail-light (which caused everyone to have to switch buses), a car randomly pulling the bus over and one of the passengers having a seizure on the bus, we pulled into the train station at 3:58pm for the 4pm train.  As literally nothing has ever left on time in Africa, and we had read stories of the train leaving up to 19 hours late, we weren't that panicked.  However, people were yelling at us to get moving, but we assumed they were just randoms trying to hassle us, so we took our time.   But not later than 30 seconds after we got on the train, it was moving (we still hadn't even had time to buy our tickets yet!) As the train only leaves twice a week, we were 30 seconds away from a long, uncomfortable stay in the middle of nowhere.

Compared to the South African train, this train definitely was in rough shape: there were holes in the floor, most of the cars did not have running water and the electricity could only produce a flicker of a light in our rooms.  The train was also very, very bumpy. All through the night, I would be awoken by extremely violent shaking, screeching and large jolts which caused me to panic that we had just falling off a cliff.  Not surprisingly, the train arrived late...the whole journey ended up being over 52 hours.  Despite the long, arduous ride, it was actually a pretty enjoyable experience.  The scenery was beautiful (lovely mountains, villages and the train even went through a game park).  The food was surprisingly good; I ate the $2 roasted chicken for all 3 dinners!  We also made a couple of American friends on the train. Sipping down some beers with some friends helps make 52 hours feel like 48. 

Here's a brief look at how our nights went on the train (our first "Vlog", i.e. video blog)!