Africa Travel Information

A safari to Africa, especially a first time visit, is never complete without viewing African wild animals in their natural habitat – the national parks and game reserves.  There are hundreds of wildlife reserves in Africa, each of which offers a unique safari experience.  Any pick of the top five is therefore a subjective judgement. In my opinion however, there are some reserves that stand out from the crowd, and provide an excellent game watching experience. These are South Africa’s Kruger national park, Masai Mara national reserve in Kenya, Zambia’s South Luangwa national park, Selous game reserve in Tanzania, and Etosha national park in Namibia.

1. Kruger National Park – South Africa
Perhaps this game reserve needs no introduction. Some of the most amazing African wildlife videos and pictures come from Kruger, for example the pictures of a leopard killing a crocodile and the battle at kruger video (below).
Read the rest of this entry »

Your holiday in Africa does not have to be all about wildlife and safaris. In fact, I think it is often most appropriate to combine your safari with some other activity like a beach holiday, a cultural tour, or an adventure outing.

In this blog post, I highlight some of the adventure activities you can undertake during your vacation in Africa. You can do some of these activities as an add-on to a typical vacation package. Others however need more time, meaning that you will have to take them as a stand-alone package.

• Swimming with Sharks
Forget about the movie with a similar title, I mean literally swimming with the sharks. Well…not so literally, at least you will be in a “protective” cage. Read the rest of this entry »

The Great Wildebeest Migration

Besides several other good reasons, the Masai Mara game reserve remains the most preferred wildlife safari destination in Kenya chiefly because of the great wildebeest migration. This well-documented and dramatic natural event involves over one million wildebeest accompanied by a few other antelopes and hundreds of thousands of zebras.

Wildebeest crossing a river during the great migration. Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Connochaetes_taurinus_-Wildebeest_crossing_river_-East_Africa.jpg).

Some of the most thrilling moments of the migration are when the animals cross the crocodile-infested Mara river. These are the moments most tourists hope to witness when they book their safari to the Mara around July and August. Unfortunately, the migration is a very spontaneous event and therefore it is very hard to precisely predict when the herds will arrive from Serengeti national. Sometimes they cross into the Mara as early as late June, other times as late as September. This year (2009), the first crossing was witnessed in the first week of July (see this news article).

Read the rest of this entry »

The pyramids at Giza, Egypt. Image courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org

Arguably, nothing today is more symbolic of the engineering prowess of the ancient Egyptians than the pyramids. Most of these pyramid-shaped structures are believed to have been constructed between 3000 BC and around 1800 BC, a period between the old and middle kingdoms of ancient Egypt. Over 100 pyramids still survive today, though many more certainly existed before. It is believed that most pyramids were constructed as tombs for the Pharaohs and other members of the royalty.

The pyramids at Giza are the most known. The largest of these, the pyramid of Khufu (popularly known as the great pyramid of Giza), is the only remaining member of the “Seven wonders of the ancient world”. Read the rest of this entry »