Bon Voyage: African Safari in Kenya & Tanzania - A Dream Comes True

I'm now back from my fantastic holiday! Want to know how it was, and what it look like? I've published my best photos in the post African Photo Safari!!! (1/07/12)
Today I'm SO excited. I'm all packed up for my trip to Africa. I'm going on a 2 week safari in Kenya & Tanzania! How exciting!

I've been several times to North Africa: Morocco (I lived there in 2005), Tunisia and Egypt.
But I have never experienced "L'Afrique Noire" as we call it in French. It's for me a dream about to come true!

Preparation
We've been planning this trip since January 2012. We will be doing a tour through an Australian company called Gecko's Adventures. The travel agent confirmed yesterday, we are the only two persons booked in the tour (could have been up to 24) so it will be like having our own private tour! How awesome is that!?

Vaccination
Last month we had injections for Yellow Fever, Typhoid and Hep A (costing a total of $250 per person). We will also be taking a malaria prevention treatment (Malarone, $125 for 24 days). 

Visa
Our visas were processed fairly quickly. We sent the applications along with our passport first to the Kenya High Commission in Canberra, then to the Consulate of the United Republic of Tanzania. All the paperwork was done within a couple of weeks!
Cost: tourist visa (single entry) for Kenya: $55, tourist visa (single entry) for Tanzania: $95

Where we are going
Our plane departs from Sydney on Thursday 24th May. We've a short stop over in Abu Dhabi and will lands in Nairobi (Kenya) about 20 hours later. We will spend a week travelling through Kenya and a week in Tanzania. Return to Sydney is planned on June 12th.

Why are we going there

The vast open grasslands of East Africa support the largest concentration of wildlife in the world. Massive herds of wildebeest and zebra roam through the Serengeti National Park plains and the Masai Mara, along with elephants, giraffes and various predators (ie: lions, cheetas). 

This trip will take us deep into spectacular wildlife arenas, up and down the Great Rift Valley, through highlands, tea estates, along lakeshores (including Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa) and into traditional tribal communities.

 

Helping the locals
One of the hightlights of my trip is that by participating on this tour I will be assisting two worthy causes and visiting:

1. The East African Mission Orphange (EAMO) in Kenya: "A new home...a better life"

East African Mission Orphanage is the result of one family's dream, which arrived in Kenya in 1997 with nothing more than two suitcases each.

EAMO is a charitable institution registered with the Kenyan Government, currently caring for over 200 homeless orphan children (boys and girls, aged three month old to 17).Many of these children would end up either dying a premature death through malnutrition, or walking the streets in search of food, where the desperate child turns to sniffing glue to suppress the hunger pains, or to prostitution as a means of survival. East African Mission Orphanage is taking up the challenge of finding these poor little children before they reach the streets of Kenya. Kenya being a developing country is in need of outside support to deal with these very real issues.

Source: The World Effect

2. The School of St Jude in Tanzania: "Fighting Poverty through Education" 

In 2002 a young lady, Gemma, from a sheep farm in Australia, opened a small school in Northern Tanzania with the help of her family, friends and local Rotary Club.
What started with only three students and one teacher is now a thriving school of approximately 1,500 students and around 350 local Tanzanian staff. 

Over 90% of the children at the school receive a totally free education as local and international sponsors individually cover the costs of not only the educational fees but also the uniform, stationery, transport, hot meal, snacks and drinks of each child. 

I look forward to meeting all these wonderful people and to spending time with the children. I wish I could afford to take a 6 month break to volunteer in Africa. I think it must me the experience of a lifetime. I actually strongly considered it about 16 months ago when I was in between jobs, but didn't end up doing it. Well at least, I'll still be doing something to help and I know I'll learn heaps from the experience. 

While I'm away
I obviously won't be posting here while in Africa (I'm actually not taking my phone nor laptop and as strange as it might sound  I'm kind of looking forward to not having electronics with me), but please take the time to maybe read my older posts! You can find a full list in my ARCHIVE. I'll also be posting links from my archive on Twitter on a regular basis. If you like my posts, I would love you to share with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, they might find the articles  interesting too!

Also I wanted you to know that I'm already really looking forward to posting photos from our trip when we get back. Mister Slimalicious has invested in top-class (way too expensive) photography equipment especially for this trip, hence I'm expecting to get some amazing shots of wildlife, flora and locals!  

Finally, I'll miss you my dear readers, you've all been brightening my days over the last 6 months - Speak to you all when I get back on June 12th!

Is Africa a destination of interest to you?

Why or why not?