Africa Travel Information

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).

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The Maasai Tribe: Africa's most celebrated tribe. Image by JaviC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/javic/

The African people and the impressive amalgam of African cultures is perhaps what makes Africa a truly interesting continent. Africa has such a diverse culture, from the very traditional lifestyle of the Masai and Samburu of Kenya, and the San of Southern Africa, to the unique Swahili culture in the Coast of Eastern Africa, the Arab culture of Northern Africa countries like Egypt, Libya, Northern Sudan, Morocco,  and Tunisis, to the more westernized cultures in most big African cities.

Apart from just being the world’s poorest continent, there are many facts about Africa that you may find amazing, some positive and some not so positive.

The African Continent in General

• Africa is the world’s second largest continent after Asia.
• Historians and archaeologists believe the continent was the original home of all mankind. Some of the oldest fossils of man’s prehistoric ancestors have been found in Eastern and Southern Africa.
• With 53 independent nations, it is the continent with the highest number of countries Read the rest of this entry »