Places to Visit in Africa
Vacation Ideas

The ferry was very nice, with airplane-like seats and TVs playing various movies (I was treated to George of the Jungle on the way and a season of Prison Break on the way home).

After arriving and taking a quick trip through customs I was able to find my hotel and settle in.

Over the course of the next few days I spent a significant amount of time wandering the narrow and endlessly confusing streets of Stone Town.

The shopping was plentiful but the highlight was the Arab-inspired architecture that Stone Town is famous for.

In addition to my hours of wandering I arranged a number of excursions through my hotel. For US$13 I was able to go on a spice tour where, along with 7 or 8 other people, various spice farms were visited.

Our tour guide showed us cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla, and more being grown. Lunch was a homemade meal in a local house--all of the spices we had just seen made an appearance in the food. After our spice tour we were taken to an incredibly secluded and beautiful beach where we had the chance to spend a few hours swimming.

The other tour I arranged was a US$18 boat ride to the famed Prison Island, home to a colony of giant tortoises similar to those found in the Galapagos Islands.

After visiting the tortoises, feeding them, and being chased a few times (don't worry their slowness makes escape easy!), we headed back to the boat for snorkeling. Our boat driver and guide took us out to a reef, helped us get our snorkeling gear on, dumped us in the water, and told us to come back whenever we wanted.

After an hour or two in the water we went back to Prison Island for some sunbathing before heading back to Stone Town. The trip was an amazing experience and I can only imagine how beautiful the beaches on the other parts of the island are.

I was all too sad to leave our wonderful hotel and the beauty and peacefulness of Zanzibar to head back to work. If you are looking for Africa vacation ideas, I suggest a visit to Zanzibar. It will be an experience you won't regret.

I stayed at the Nyali Beach Hotel which is just next to the sandy beaches. The atmosphere was warm and the locals say it’s usually warm year round. The beach is approximately fifteen minutes to the shopping center which boasts of the renowned Nakumatt Supermarkets and the Mamba village (Swahili for Crocodile village) famed for its barbeque.

The locals are a friendly lot. Cruising is not a common scenario here. I took a flight to the Lakeside town of Kisumu which is so close to K’ogelo; Obama’s homeland. If anyone is thinking of an exciting adventure, Kenya is the place to go!

I decided to go for a vacation to an affordable country and something really interests me i.e the nature and jungles. After a lot of thinking and advices from various sources, I decided to visit Kenya. In Kenya I stayed in Nairobi and explored the famous Masai Mara.

The wildlife here was out of the world and had no resemblance to what I had experienced in India. I got the privilege of viewing a lion chasing the kill, loads of Zebra’s, baboons, the wild bull and the magnanimous African Elephant. It was a treat to watch heads of Hippo’s in Lake Nawasha.

After a few days from our visit to Masai Mara I visited the National Park, the only one located within a city. The wild life here was less in numbers but we could see many giraffes, heads of antelope, wild bulls and many bird species.

Other than the vastness I did not experience much difference in both the Jungles. The African people are very humble and friendly as opposed to the stories I had heard about wildness and cannibalization. The souvenirs of Africa are really amazing, be it the animal artifacts, tinga tinga paintings or the beaded jewelry and are worth a collectors delight. Masai Mara in Nairobi Kenya is one of the best places to visit in Africa.

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