Africa travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa, also emerged as Nyasaland. Behind the shores of lake Malawi known for boutique eco-resorts and rich international tourists is another Malawi with green hills, tea plantations, high mountains and game parks free of safari jeep traffic jams. The country covering about 400 miles in total and every traveler will find an extraordinary experience.

Despite of the fact the roads could sometimes be rough, in general the country provides an easy trip. The widly spoken language is English. The other language is Chichewa. The main point in Malawi is Blantyre. Blantyre is like Malawi’s New York. It’s a centre of finance and commerce and is the second largest city. During daytime in Blantyre you will bump into vendors hawk, avocados, bananas and cellphones card ending up to the window of your car; traffic police try to stop wild drivers.

As well as Blantyre boast several ”Out of Africa” restaurants, where you can sit on an open -air terrace and sip a late afternoon Malawi style gin and tonic.

Then from Blantyre, lies the Thyolo region about 25 miles southeast though winding road. Everywhere in Malawi is recommended to hire a car and driver (for about $30 a day). So Thyolo is a home to tea plantations, reminds very much of Sri Lanka. The roads there have winds and meanders up through rich green hills. Several of the plantations like Satemwa Tea Estate welcome overnight visitors offering them traditional planters’ bungalows.

But if you going north from Blantyre in a trip you will come across the biggest attraction of the country: the famous lake and Liwonde National Park. The park is very wild and animals have become almost conditioned to seeing tourists. If you are not on a paid safari tour, the best way to explore the park is to take a boat, provided by Mvuu Camp, the main lodge in the park, along the Shire River.

Just 80 miles north of Liwonde you will come to lake Malawi, which has the widest diversity of fish in the world and shore with its rocky outcroppings reminds of the Indian Ocean beach.

 Shamwari Game Reserve is a 20 000 hectare private reserve boasts Africa’s five eco-systems – elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard. It is able to support a wide variety of plant, animal and bird life. The reserve is situated along the Bushmans River, 45 minutes drive from Cape Town, South Africa.
 
 
You are will offered of 7 different lodges on this private game reserve. Choose a lodge for your ideal African experience. The features are spacious verandas overlooking the Bushman’s River, mini bars, air-conditioning, hair dryers, electronic safes, coffee making facilities.
You can fill your time with relaxing, reading, spa treatments, swimming, enjoying delicious cuisine. The wellness centre ensures that your stay here leaves you feeling relaxed and refreshed. 
   The park offers its guests a host of activities to make your African safari experience even more memorable. Guests can to see lion, elephant, buffalo, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, springbok, bushbuck and etc. All game activities are accompanied by experienced and knowledgeable guides.
For more information visit – http://www.shamwari.com

Grand Daddy is a very interesting hotel situated in Cape Town, South Africa. The Grand Daddy’s big talking point is its trailer park, where a collection of vintage Airstream caravans sited on the rooftop. Each of the 7 two-sleeper caravans have been designed by local artists.

The hotel is part of Daddy Long Legs Group. The philosophy is simple, excellent service, clean and comfortable rooms. The hospitable staff of the hotel will help you through the gentle journey about the surroundings of the hotel and the history of the city.

The vintage caravans were designed by studio Whatiftheworld, which tasked local artists with decorating a space with a motif of their choice. They ended with a concept ranged from The Ballad of John & Yoko, adorned with a guitar and simple white interior, to Goldilocks and The Three Bears, which has a quaint storybook feel to it.

The two-person Airstreams are situated neatly around the rooftop bar, which is open for afternoon drinks to guests and just the plain curious alike.Rooms in the hotel start at 945 rands ($90) and can be booked through Tablet.

Alexandria is a tremendous city situated on the north coast of Egypt. This is where Euclid sired geometry, Aristarchus deduced that Earth revolved around the sun and of course, the young Alexander the Great founded the city as his capital in 331 B.C.

The city developed through the 19th century as the place of Egypt’s commerce, especially the trade with cotton drawing a cosmopolitan mix of Greeks, Italians, French and Jews, who brought their languages, architecture and food. The picture shows the Roman Amphitheater.

White and Blue Restaurant, also emerged as the Greek Club, is in the Hellenic Nautical Club at the end of the Corniche by Fort Qaitbay. A full dinner including grilled sea bass, served the Egyptian way (with tomato and basil) or Greek (with potatoes), is 120 Egyptian pounds.

During the last years preservationists and the government have made an effort to restore its luster after the city’s cultural grandeur began to crumble [around the 1950's]. The first sign of the city’s renewal was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the glimmering vision in steel and glass that opened on the Corniche in 2002.

There is wildness to Cape Town – the big skies, the rugged canyons, the jagged outcroppings of sandstone and granite that rises over the icy South Atlantic at the tip of Africa. Today in Cape Town you can enjoy penguins waddle across white-sand beaches, elands wander the dunes, hungry baboons jump on unsuspecting tourists pifer apart their stuff.

Cape Town is a place, which can amused a visitor with its grand-scale landscapes. Besides it’s all became very cheap to explore  with the South African rand. You can stay in a good hotel room, rent a car, eat excellent meals and stroll in spectacular wilderness, all for a total of $300 per a day. The picture displays Kalk Bay – a funky mix of tidy Edgartown and rough-edged New Bedford — hug the coast.

In this image Table Mountain National Park, a tremendous area that encompasses the Table Mountain range and extends from Cape Town’s Signal Hill to the southernmost tip of the cape.

The neighborhood of Bo-Kaap, also emerged as its colorful architecture and large Muslim community.

Baboons scavenge for food in Table Mountain National Park.

A view of Cape Town.

Asilah is a town on the northwest coast of Morocco, where sounds of waves drift over the town’s brilliant white architecture and down its freshly swept alleyways.

Asilah had once been rundown, but an annual arts festival, the International Cultural Moussem, renewed and cleaned up the town, turning it into a fashionable place.

Today Asilah is emerged as the cleanest cities in Morocco.

A view from a three-bedroom house that faces the sea, with housekeeper and chef, for 600 to 900 euros a week.

A henna tattoo.

 

The Gambia is the fourth most densely populated country in West Africa, with around 1.2 million people population. Banjul is the capital and chief port of The Gambia, which is located where the Gambia River enters the Atlantic Ocean. Also Banjul connected the country with Senegal by a ferry across the river and holds the country’s economic center including the Central Bank of Gambia.

 

Banjul’s principal export is peanut processing but also palm wood and oil, and skins and hides are shipped. The brewing and tourism also are available. The Gambia charms its guests with sunny beaches and natural reserves where they cans watch monkeys, birds, hippos and hyenas in the wild. The major resorts are Bakau, Fajara, Kotu, and Kololi.

 

The attractions in the Banjul are the Albert Market – one numerous bustling market, Banjul Court House, the Gambian National Museum and several major mosques. Albert Market is a great place to start leisurely walking and shopping for exotic local crafts, batiks, silver jewelers clothes, shoes and etc.  The major attraction in Banjul is Arch 22, which is the most impressive building in The Gambia. The Arch was built to commemorate the 22 July 1994 it’s a historical monument that also houses a modest textile museum. Standing high at 35m it affords spectacular views over the city and coastal areas.

Malawi is a small country in central southern Africa that offers a true African safari experience. It is surrounded by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. Delightful lakeside beaches line the western shores of the 375 mile long Lake Malawi. Several large rivers flow into the lake in the area, creating large marshlands, which produce excellent birding. 

The park diverse habitats are a plus here. The lovely reserve in northern Malawi spans 986sq.km. Wildlife includes elephant, sable antelope, water-buck, hippo, lion and leopard.

By travelling by vehicle, one has a very personal insight into the land and its wonderfully warm people. Guests can enjoy visits to local villages, excellent mountain biking trails.

The scenery you will experience on a Malawi Safari holiday is diverse and the habitat . This safari is one of the best ways to explore Malawi’s finest wildlife .  The April to October dry season matches the ideal time for game viewing in neighboring.

Mauritania is a country in North-West Africa. Chinguetti was founded to serve the caravans crossing the Sahara. The old mosque was constructed 700 years ago and is the main mosque of the town considered to be number 7 most sacred town of Islam in the whole world.

The wooden doors are amazing and many have an excellent hand work carved on them.  The sanctuary is best known for its massive square minaret, which towers over the town and is built of rubble masonry without mortar. The minaret is capped by four acroteria, or pedestals, each topped with a stone ostrich egg. The nature is totally wild.

Chinguetti is really venerated as one of the most holy cities in Islam. This remote place is the most frequently visited tourist spot in Mauritania. In the 1970s the mosque was restored through a UNESCO.

Victoria Falls, also called Mosi-oa-Tunya or ”the smoke that thunders” are magnificent falls in Zimbabwe. The Victorian Falls sits on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe, so travelers must choose which country will be their spot of arrival.

The falls Boiling Point is the bridge which links Zambia on the left and Zimbabwe on the right. They are paradoxical places. Geologists describe them as among nature’s most destructive forces, place, where fluid water destroys solid rock, carving canyons so slowly to be predicted.

Livingstone Island.

The destructive power of the waterfalls is mostly marked by beauty: a heightened awareness of, and exculation in, the more fact of being present.

But all the glory of this place and of any other waterfall on earth has just natural purpose: it’s river’s way of getting back to normal.

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda. The sun is shining, the air is cooling, the baobab trees in bloom, the hawks circling and a miniskyline of anthills rising in a distance. Beautiful isn’t it?

The roads in Tansania are smooth as in the States. The temperature is no more than 80, and doesn’t change much. But it is best in September, when the tourists season is past its best! The bad period is from April till May, when it’s raining all the time.

Tourists can choose to travel to Tanzania from United States. But there aren’t many flights from there. Most airlines requires a change in Europe.

It’s good to stay in Dar es Salaam, because of the dozens of hotels with mosquito nets, modest furnishing and no air-conditioning. In the countryside there’re ‘’guestees’’ private homes with simple rooms most around $15.

Kenya is a splendid country in Eastern Africa. It is frontiered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east and Tansania to the south. The Indian Ocean is running along the southeast border.

The capital of Kenya is Nairobi. Today many tourists use the capital as a place to stop for a night, and then leave at first light for a safari or outing to the beach. The city also had great restaurants, plenty of shops, classy hotels and huge wildlife. You can play with baby elephants and spend a lot of time with giraffes or to have a glance onto the ostriches and crocodiles. To be honest Nairobi is not so safety place, but if you are careful and avoiding strolling around late at night, you shouldn’t have any problems.

At David Sheldrick elephant orphanage near the Langata neighborhood, about 25 minutes from downtown tourists can have a contact with baby elephants. It is open every day from 11 a.m. until noon. The elephants are highly intelligent but needy, too. The workers here actually sleep in the stalls with them until they get too big. Then they take them back to the wild and stay with them for six months in the bush until they are ready to live alone.

Not far from the elephant orphanage is the Giraffe Center.Giraffes keep straight right to you to eat from peanut pellets from your hand.There’s also a cafe, a gift shop and a tortoise pen. If you’re really fancy giraffes, Giraffe Manor is right next door, a colonial-era home that has been turned into a luxury hotel where you can feed the animals from your room.

If you’re still not exhausted, go to the Nairobi Safari Walk inside the headquarters of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Follow the winding stone paths and suspended boardwalk for glimpses of lions, leopards, rhinos, ostriches and zebra. There are cheetahs, too, some quite friendly, and for a few extra shillings, you can pet a very large cat.

Mozambique is a Portuguese colony and home to over 1, 500 miles of undeveloped Indian Ocean beachfront. Some of the finest diving and deep sea marlin fishing in the world and a unique Afro-Iberian-Brazilian culture with one of the most relaxing tourism destination.

The capital of Mozambique is Maputo which is one of the safer capitals in Africa. The city sits both on the Indian Ocean and at the confluence of the three rivers. The primary language is Portuguese and many young Mozambicians speak English.

In Maputo, inside many of the older structures Mozambicians have built cafes and restaurants with great Mozambician food, one of the world’s original cuisines. Because Mozambique wasn’t influenced only by Portugal but also by Arab trades and migrants from Portugal’s Asian and Latin colonies, Mozambique’s cosmopolitan cuisine mixed Brazilian spices, local seafood and tropical fruits.

The ideal time to visit Mozambique is May through October, the cooler, drier season. January through April is hot and rainy, which also can be a fine time to visit, as long as you’re prepared for occasional wet spells. October through January is brutally hot and uncomfortable.

From New York, the fare to Maputo, on a code-share flight between American Airlines and South African Airways, with stops in London and Johannesburg, would cost roughly $1,835, based on a prices being quoted for a 21-day advance-purchase ticket in mid-May.

Ethiopia is a country with deep connections with Jerusalem, because of the Judaism and Ethiopian Christianity which combines belief in the Holy Trinity with myths and symbols of the Old Testament. In some Ethiopian rites is still used the 2, 500-year-old language.

These days half of Ethiopia’s 70 million people are Orthodox Christians. For decades, however the access to historic sites of Ethiopia had been banned in general because of the war and the vagaries of politics. Over the next seven years mostly humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and journalists trickled into Ethiopia.

In Ethiopia the capital income is $120 a year. The country was among the first societies in sub-Saharan Africa to develop a written language.

Under President Zinawi,who has begun to show some dictatorial tendencies of his own, significant development has come to Ethiopia including cell phones, hotels, Internet cafes, reliable electricity and asphalt-roads things that were unheard of in the outlying provinces a decade ago.

And it is now possible to travel across the country to some extent of comfort.

Today Kilimanjaro is an exotic destination, which is threatened by degradation from climate change. Every year travel industry sends about 30, 000 climbers toward Kilimanjaro’s summit.

To reach the great summit, there’re six routes established, some of them however demanding mountaineering routes. The most difficult and also short used route is the Marangu, the others routes take a little longer to reach the summit.

While climbing in the moors there’re weird plans such as olonnade-like, eight-foot lobelias and clusters of tree-size senecio kilimanjari, or giant groundsels, with clumps of cabbage-shaped leaf clusters atop withered-looking trunks.

The population of Kilimanjaro is called Chagga — which are the people who can carry up to 50 pounds on their head. WOW. Kilimanjaro has two main climbing seasons: January through February and mid-June through mid-October, typically the most stable weather periods. Kilimanjaro is the tallest mountain rise in the world, and includes the highest peak in Africa at 5,895 meters providing a dramatic view from the surrounding plains.