2017/09 East Africa

Our big trip this year was to East Africa! We started by flying into Kilimanjaro, and then climbing the peak starting the next day. Overall the climb went pretty well, and we both felt strong. The only minor snag was that Lindsey had some altitude related symptoms after we summited (nausea, vomiting, headache), and so we ended up hiking all the way to the bottom rather than camping on the mountain our final night. A big thank you to our guides Ghalib and Eliakim from Fair Travel, who took great care of us and were much more safety conscious than the other guides we saw. Our next stop was Kenya, where we spent a week at the adventure camp in Ol Kinyei Conservancy near Masai Mara NR. This was amazing, and our guides Geoffrey and Josaphat did a fantastic job showing us the local wildlife (including lion cubs, hyena puppies, many thousands of wildebeests, a giraffe baby young enough to still have her umbilical cord, and a huge cheetah killing a wildebeest). After Kenya, we were off to Uganda for a week. Our driver Alfred was a great guy, and we were able to see the chimpanzees in Kibale NP, take a safari in Queen Elizabeth NP, spend two days trekking with gorillas in Bwindi NP, and check out the golden monkeys in Mgahinga Gorilla NP.