Korhogo Textiles Thursday, January 4. It was a treat to stay at our lovely and high standard accommodation of La Rose Blanche Hotel, where we enjoyed our first internet connectivity since we departed on the 19th of December. Having been offline for that long, I was nervous to check my email, messages, bank accounts – by this point, I don’t want to be reminded about anything that has to do with home. I am here, being present, and not futurizing/worrying. Luckily, upon checkin

Roof Surfing on the truck January 1, 2018 turned into the best transit day I’d had yet on the truck. We had been warned that it would be excruciatingly slow going due to the fact that the road from Nzekore to the border with Cote D’Ivoire had taken almost ten hours the last time the truck had made the journey. Lucky for us – the dirt road had been worked on somewhat and although not tarmac’ed yet, we made amazingly good time allowing us to cross the border a day ahead of sc

Vine Bridge in Guinea On the morning of the 29th, I woke up groggy and tired from a very fitful and restless sleep. That day we had some more heavy miles to cover before reaching the town of Gueckedou – only made famous as being the site of patient zero during the Ebola outbreak of 2015 when a young boy got bitten by a bat and came down with the virus. Additionally, we were staying at the Hotel Fatou Rose which was set up as the logistics central point for dealing with the

Beautiful Guinean Landscape On Boxing Day we were scheduled to drive west back to the main road between Freetown and Makeni and then head north-east toward Kabala, staying in a local guesthouse there. Unfortunately, the truck started making some very strange noises on the road and we pulled over several times for Sinead and Mike to get under it and assess what was going on. It seemed that it had to do with the drive shaft and some loose ball bearings (I know nothing of truc

Arriving by canoe on Tiwai Island Tiwai Island is home to the densest population of primates in the world. Red-tailed/black and white colobus monkeys, chimpanzees, and spider monkeys abound. I was looking forward to a respite from the traffic heavy city to a totally natural environment that we had to get to by boat. The drive, as is the case with any overland travel in Africa, was arduous. For those of you unfamiliar with overland truck travel – we travel in a 4x4 overland

River No. 2 Beach, Freetown Peninsula On the morning of the 20th we left for the 90 minute drive to the stunning beach at River No. 2, stopping en-route in one of the most frenetic markets I’ve ever experienced in Africa in a town called Waterloo. In spaces where people are so closely packed that you have to squeeze your physical way through…mini vans arrive blasting their horns causing the already tightly packed crowds to jam ever more tightly together in the space created

Slums of Freetown, Sierra Leone. Mass graves were dug here during the 2015 Ebola outbreak. My flights went without incident and despite being very tired indeed – I landed in Freetown on a hot and humid Sunday night. Having sat next to a very friendly native Sierra Leonean, I felt confident that I would have some help navigating immigration and transport on arrival despite being exhausted. We exited the aircraft and that familiar blast of heat hit me full on and I breathed i

Seattle Skyline A distinct and undeniable pattern has emerged in my life. A job loss precipitates a period of long term solo travel. This is an embarrassing thing to admit – but I have been fired or forced to resign 4 times in the last 3 and a ½ years. After each kick to the gut, I have booked a trip abroad for one to six months. I admire people who can jump right back into the job search after losing their job. For me, a job loss, especially one that is a result of a fi

The indomitable Silverback After my emotional day in Kampala we had a long drive to the town of Kabale located near the Rwandan border and the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park where we were going to trek deep into the jungle in search of the mountain gorillas. I have been slightly obsessed with gorillas ever since childhood when I first saw "Gorillas in the Mist" with one of my hero actresses Sigourney Weaver, as the passionate conservationist Dian Fossey. She spent the majo

After a couple of long days driving on the truck, I was beginning to feel better and had purchased an inhaler to help with my hacking cough that was now a month old. We made a nice stop in Nakuru at a lovely campsite that had a nice pool to lounge next to as well as an annoying and aggressive flock of geese. I had no plans specifically when we arrived in Kampala, but I decided to do the "Slum Tour" as I was interested in seeing how many poor Ugandans living in the capital dwe

Me on Lake Naivasha I was sad to leave South Africa. This country had really gotten under my skin and I wished I had a little more time there. The two days of high level activity had left me very drained and also very sick, so I literally took the Baz Bus to Johannesburg and had them drop me off directly at an airport hostel. I ate dinner at a posher hotel across the street (I ordered Malva pudding and hot custard for dinner...come on, I was sick, yar?) and then promptly wen

Apartheid-era bench Whenever you travel somewhere, you tend to pick up on the social norms/mores of the people and the extent to which you do, of course, has to do with the amount of time you've spent there and the quantity and quality of the time you've spent with the local people. South Africa is a confounding country, and I wanted to write this post merely as a way for me to catalogue the impressions that bore upon me of this land and its very complex treatment of race. Th

At the Amphitheater Escarpment I was well and truly ready for a day of rest on the bus as my body was spent from two days of hill climbing and I was well and truly hacking up a storm. We headed back up in the shuttle to Mthata where we managed to scramble a quick lunch before piling on the Baz Bus for my penultimate stop in South Africa - The Amphitheater Lodge in the Northern Drakensburg mountains. Drakensburg literally means "Mountains of Dragons" and they are one of the ol

The Wild Coast It took most of the next day to get to my destination of Bulungula on the Wild Coast. Happily I wasn't alone either - Jake was planning on spending a few night's at the same community-ran, 100% solar powered traditional hostel as well. Our Baz Bus driver that day proved to be an absolutel legend. As we entered the province of the "Transkei" (a formerly independent part of South Africa that white people mostly fled after apartheid ended, populated predominantly

Heading out on the Salt River Hike My next stop along the Garden Route was to be at a place called The Crags - close to Knysna, Storms River, and other small towns along The Garden Route and close to Tsitsikamma National Park. The hostel had been recommended to me because of its beautiful location - though I was warned that it was slightly "hippy" in atmosphere. Sure enough, there were drumming circles, copious instructions on composting/recycling, dreadlocked folk strumming

Heading out on our bike tour of Stellenbosch My lovely tent mate, Maud, and I headed out from Cape Town and met up in Stellenbosch for some girl time with wine. I had purchased a Baz Bus ticket that allowed me 14 days of unlimited hop on and off transport between Cape Town and Johannesburg. I had a rough itinerary already planned out ( I know, you're shocked by that!) but was open and willing to make changes along the way should the mood strike or I received a significant per

Gorgeous Cape Town's Skyline I visited Cape Town in the December of 2001 with Semester at Sea. It had made quite the impression on me then and I had counted it in the top three cities in the world, for me. I was so looking forward to returning and doing the activities that I hadn't had the time to on my visit fourteen years prior! Entering the city on our rented bus, I was sorry to hear Pete (who'd come instead of Tabby because she can't get a SA visa with a Kenyan passport

Spitzkoppe It was hard to believe but the 56 day coast to coast overland adventure I'd embarked on in Nairobi was coming to a close. We had three more days on the road after Swakopmund before we'd arrive in Cape Town and I'd start my independent travel in South Africa. I can't say I was sad that the trip was coming to an end. While there were numerous advantages to being on a truck with a planned route, and tour operators arranged for you in each destination; it was very c

Swakopmund just looks funny. It isn't congruent with any sort of mental image one has of a city in Africa. Granted, that initial image is often quite misdirected to start with, given the shamefully limited amount of exposure we Americans get to African news/culture/history. It's German influence was clearly visible; from its architecture and the manicured design of its streets to its cold meats at breakfast. The language of the predominantly white city population, howeve

View over the northern Namibian desert We were on the road staying in a different bush camp each night for several days following Etosha and preceding our stop in Swakopmund - a luxurious four days that we'd get to enjoy the luxury of a dorm bed. What was fast becoming apparent in Namibia was the difficulty of maintaining bodily comfort due to the excessive swings in ambient temperature each day. Mornings waking up huddled in my 15 degree F sleeping bag were cold, breath cr