East Africa (1 Viewer)

[mazzyianne]

Anyone been?
Like Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya (not right now I guess..)
Anything amazing, unmissable?
Anyone seen the gorrillas?
Thinking of taking a trip out that way.

 

[hugh]

Spent a couple of months in Tanzania a good few years ago. Awesome country. Unmissable stuff would be:

Ngorongoro crater is all your (well mine anyway) childhood dreams of lions and elephants and all the rest come true.

Zanzibar is the beach paradise par excellence.

Also, just sitting around drinking Tusker beers in container bars in Dar Es Salaam is pretty unmissable too

Always wanted to go to Ethiopia and Uganda. Kenya (leaving aside the present troubles) seems to have a lot of the same stuff that Tanzania has, but it seems to be more violent and dangerous.

 

[mazzyianne]

Spent a couple of months in Tanzania a good few years ago. Awesome country. Unmissable stuff would be:

Ngorongoro crater is all your (well mine anyway) childhood dreams of lions and elephants and all the rest come true.

Zanzibar is the beach paradise par excellence.

Also, just sitting around drinking Tusker beers in container bars in Dar Es Salaam is pretty unmissable too

Always wanted to go to Ethiopia and Uganda. Kenya (leaving aside the present troubles) seems to have a lot of the same stuff that Tanzania has, but it seems to be more violent and dangerous.

Thanks!
I was in Kenya one time when I was little and it stays in my head as being the best place ever! I remember rainforest and strawberries and many lovely fruits and green trees and animals.
If Tanzania is like Kenya I'd definately love to go there. I googled Ngorongoro crater, looks amazing!
My dad is in Kampala, he tells me it's t-shirt weather all the time, never too hot or too cold, plenty of rain to keep the place green but just for an hour or so a day. Think he might want me to visit

 

[hugh]

Thanks!
I was in Kenya one time when I was little and it stays in my head as being the best place ever! I remember rainforest and strawberries and many lovely fruits and green trees and animals.

Yeah, I feel the same way about Tanzania. It was my first outside Europe travel experience and nowhere I have been since came anywhere close to the whole "fuck-me-I'm-not-in-Dublin-anymore" buzz.

If Tanzania is like Kenya I'd definately love to go there. I googled Ngorongoro crater, looks amazing!

It is awesome. Spent a weekend on a real cheapo Safari in that area. It was simultaneously the best and worst weekend of my life. There was a car crash, we slept in a tent at the top of the crater in the freezing cold with unidentified scary animals running around outside and weird insects crawling inside but it was all worth it. It ended with an evening getting completely wrecked with a bunch of Kenyan rastas.

My dad is in Kampala, he tells me it's t-shirt weather all the time, never too hot or too cold, plenty of rain to keep the place green but just for an hour or so a day. Think he might want me to visit

Kampala is supposed to be good all right. Dunno what the score is in the rest of Uganda now. There are definitely parts of it (the north) which are very unsafe. I imagine you can go and see gorillas these days (if there are any left) - I think for a long time it wasn't possible because of all the violence around Rwanda.

Anyway, go! If you have a family member there to visit you would be insane not too ....

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Kampala is supposed to be good all right. Dunno what the score is in the rest of Uganda now. There are definitely parts of it (the north) which are very unsafe. I imagine you can go and see gorillas these days (if there are any left) - I think for a long time it wasn't possible because of all the violence around Rwanda.

Anyway, go! If you have a family member there to visit you would be insane not too ....

my sister went to uganda and rwanda a few years ago, 2004 i think. not sure if the situation in rwanda has changed significantly since then but i think it was safe enough to travel. she saw gorillas in rwanda, i think it was pricey but quite inpressive. there was some unease when one of the gorillas ran up to her boyfriend and picked him up and threw him aside.

 

[tigerclawskank]

Just back from a few weeks in Ethiopia. I really liked it, though the altitude can be a problem. On the other hand it means almsot no mossies. People were great and food is awesome.

We did the obvious tourist sites: Blue Nile falls, Axum, Gondar, Lalibela which were all great.

Maybe not so good for "charasmatic megafauna" but my wife did see a huge 3m phython.

Outside Addis the tourist and travel infrastructure is obviously not the mae west. Unless you've LOADS of time a few internal flights are nessecary.

 

[the strange guy]

Ethiopian food is amazing!
Those internal flights scare the shit out of me though.

 

[tigerclawskank]

The roads are more scary than the flights I reckoned. Saw some seriously scary wrecks on the highway between Addis and Wando Genet.

Flights scared me no more than the average Ryanair flight on a rainy day.

 

[damien]

any advice for cheapest flights to this part of the world?

 

[hugh]

Nairobi is usually the cheapest as it's the most well travelled route, but you probably don't want to go there, given what is going on at the moment.

On the other hand that might make it really cheap

I wouldn't expect any bargains. Or if there are bargains, they are probably routed through Moscow and involve three stop-offs in airports in the Middle East or something crazy like that.

If I were you, given that you know someone in Kampala, I would just fly there. Take it easy for a while and get settled in ...

 

[mazzyianne]

We booked them today (provisionaly anyway), did get pretty good deal, 700 each to fly into Kampala and out of Dar es Saalam with Ethiopian airlines. It does stop randomly in Rome (making it 3 stops) along the way but for such a short time it doesn't seem like we'd have to get off the plane or anything..
Were trying to get a while in ethiopia but even though it stops in addis to stay there a few days brings the cost way up.

Better to save the cash for when we get there, turns out the gorrillas are €500, they better be freaken worth it.
Apparently it all goes into conservation or something... still... jaysus..

Yay!!!!!!!!!

 

[the strange guy]

Yeh, the touristy stuff ain't cheap at all.
Expect to pay roughly €500 each for most wildlife related stuff.
Africa is occasionally cheap but absolutely nothing like S.E. Asia. Save up your pennies now!
I've got an East Africa Lonely Planet I can give you and Damo.
It covers Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Durundi and Tanzania.
I'M JEALOUS!
That part of the world is amazing.
Check out Malawi too if you have the time.

 

[hugh]

We booked them today (provisionaly anyway), did get pretty good deal, 700 each to fly into Kampala and out of Dar es Saalam with Ethiopian airlines. It does stop randomly in Rome (making it 3 stops) along the way but for such a short time it doesn't seem like we'd have to get off the plane or anything..
Were trying to get a while in ethiopia but even though it stops in addis to stay there a few days brings the cost way up.

Better to save the cash for when we get there, turns out the gorrillas are €500, they better be freaken worth it.
Apparently it all goes into conservation or something... still... jaysus..

Yay!!!!!!!!!

Sounds brilliant. How long are you going for?

As Strange Guy says, the safari stuff etc can be really expensive. A lot of it is geared towards extremely loaded people jetting in and out and staying in luxury lodges and so on. Really, people fly to Kenya from England for the weekend. When I was there, there were certainly budget options though ... you are talking sleeping in tents rather than lodges .... completely clueless people as guides etc .... but fine.

I imagine the Gorilla thing is really dear because it's so inaccessible, there's probably not much tourism there these days.

Anyway, sounds amazing. I'm green with envy. Try not to get malaria. Or car-jacked

 

[hugh]

Have you worked out how to get from Uganda into Tanzania?

I was just looking at a map. I'd guess the normal thing would be to go through Kenya via Nairobi. But now you probably won't want to do that which means you have to either get a boat across Lake Victoria (which is probably a spectacularly bad idea) or go by land around the West side of the lake. Or fly? From Entebbe? I bet there's a big statue of Idi Amin in Entebbe airport.

 

[damien]

we're going for 3 months (flying into entebbe and out of dar es salaam) and plan to go west overland around lake victoria, hopefully getting into rwanda as well.

 

[mazzyianne]

Sounds brilliant. How long are you going for?

Three months! Are we mental?

As Strange Guy says, the safari stuff etc can be really expensive. When I was there, there were certainly budget options though ... you are talking sleeping in tents rather than lodges .... completely clueless people as guides etc .... but fine.

Yeah I've been checking out the lonely panet (cheers oly!) advice about that, might look up some websites 2nite seeing as I'm stuck in work. There does seem to be cheap options but the cheapest way seems to be to show up and see if there's cancellations and/or meet other people so you have a group. I'm thinking about bringing my tent anyway.

Anyway, sounds amazing. I'm green with envy. Try not to get malaria. Or car-jacked

We'll try! Well we've no car after kampala so that should help with not getting car jacked...

ps tickets confirmed!!

 

[dirtyvicar]

Like Tigerclawsclank, I was in Ethiopia, in my case in August 2009. It is a fascinating place, full of interesting stuff to see. It is not a wildlifey place, more a place you go to look at funny old monasteries and the ark of the covenant - that kind of thing.

One thing to bear in mind is that Ethiopia is amazingly poor. It does feel a bit like the entire country has been thrown together temporarily, and could vanish at a moment's notice, like the market areas of a music festival.