We Wander — Mark & Meghan's World Travels

After a few more days of driving through Uganda, we finally crossed the border into Rwanda on June 27th. Rwanda has been a country that we’ve been looking forward to visiting for a very long time now, primarily because we’d booked our permits to go trekking with the mountain gorillas months before we even left Ottawa last July. With each passing day, Rwanda and our gorilla encounter was getting nearer and nearer, and it was foremost in my mind — so much so that the country’s very dark and recent past was not in my thoughts as we crossed the border. It was surprisingly easy to forget that we were heading into a country where over a million people died in the 1994 genocide. On our way to the gorillas we made a stop in Kigali for a half day visit to the Kigali Memorial Centre, dedicated to this genocide in Rwanda and the memory of the victims, both past and present. I have to admit that I had a certain na√Øvety about the specifics of Rwanda’s genocide before visiting the centre, but I left three hours later profoundly affected, and deeply saddened.

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Watching the BBC in the lobby of our hotel in Addis this morning, we heard some shocking news of bombs going off last night in Kampala, Uganda. One of them went off in an Ethiopian restaurant, where people were watching the final World Cup game. Suspicions are on a Somali rebel group, but nothing is confirmed yet. It’s devastating news and our sympathies go out to the people of Kampala, where we so recently visited. We just wanted to post quickly to let everyone know that we were not affected: moms and dads: try not to worry, we’re ok.

Our teams didn’t fare well in the truck pool, but it was still a blast watching some of the matches. We watched the final game on a projector screen in a large, dark room filled to the brim with people in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The power kept flickering on and off, but thankfully managed to stay on for most of the game. Mark and I were rooting for the Netherlands, as were most of the people we were watching with. It just wasn’t meant to be. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Congratulations to Spain, and to South Africa for being such a great host! How cool to have been in Africa for this World Cup.

We’re back in civilization, in Addis Ababa, after going off radar for a week, traveling up through Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Yes we were ragged and filthy, but it was phenomenal. Over the course of seven days, on one long, straight road, we passed through the lush foothills of Mt. Kenya, along escarpments looking out over the Great Rift Valley and crossed the equator. We crossed dry savanah and volcanic desert. In Ethiopia we climbed up and down through coffee-growing highlands scattered with beautiful grass huts and villages to taunts of children shouting “you you you!”

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We like to camp. We’ll gladly go into the backcountry for a week at a time, cook over an open flame and sleep on our inflatable sleeping mats. By the end, a soft mattress and hot shower is always in order. We have been on the trans-African Oasis truck for 73 days now and have slept on a soft(ish) mattress just seven times – thankfully we’ve showered a few more times than that! The other 66 sleeps have been on our inflatable sleeping mats in a heavy duty canvas tent. This is by far the longest stretch of camping we have ever done. It is also what is making this journey so memorable, not to mention affordable.

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Game drives through Africa’s many national parks have been some of the highlights of our overland journey. Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya offered yet another chance to get close with some of this continent’s most famous wild beasts, and it was one of the last parks that we’d be visiting. It didn’t disappoint! We spent about six hours driving through the park in 4x4s, spotting more zebras, buffalos, hyenas, and birds than you could shake a stick at. But two animals in particular were the highlight this time around: flamingoes and rhinos.

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We arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 16th, 54 days after leaving Cape Town on the Oasis Overland truck. Nairobi is the approximate halfway point of our journey through Africa, and we had a few days’ break in the city to do as we pleased. Fortunately for us, we were able to get in touch with my dad’s cousin Lori, who was just finishing several months of work in Nairobi. I’d never met Lori before, at least not since I was old enough to remember, and I was very excited to make a family connection so far from home.

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While staying outside of Arusha, Tanzania, we had a chance to visit a nearby Maasai village, and to learn a little bit about their culture from our guide. We opted to ride a camel to the village instead of walk, simply because we’d never ridden camels before, and they were offered. It struck us after deciding this that we’d never actually seen any camels around the area before. There were plenty of donkeys and cows and other beasts of burden, but no camels. It turns out that the camels were brought in by the owners of our campsite specifically for tourists to ride on this tour. Authentic it was not, but fun it was! Luckily, the rest of our day proved to be much more informative and interesting, as we visited a small Maasai village, a snake-bite clinic, and a small museum on Maasai culture.

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Pizza in Naples, Khmer curries in Cambodia, falafels in Egypt — tasting the local flavours is essential when traveling, in my mind. Although you can find pizza in Cambodia these days, it just seems so wrong. Sure, many a-time I have craved bread, coffee, beer, and occasionally even chocolate. It feels like I can’t go on without them. Yet I can go on without them; I do get on without them. And it’s really not so hard.

Life on the truck is different in that we are cooking for ourselves. Three meals a day. The passengers are divided up into ‘cook groups’ of three. These groups rotate through a 7-day cycle so that you only have to cook once every seven days. The groups operate autonomously. Andi gives us some money and then we are on our own to plan, shop and execute our three meals. This can be easier said than done.

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It’s World Cup time! Although we’re not in South Africa, it’s still exciting for us to be in Africa — the buzz is felt throughout. We’ve started a World Cup pool on the truck, which makes watching the games more interesting, especially since there is no Canadian team. Our picks were drawn at random. We’ve got Slovenia, Mexico and Ivory Coast. Go Ivory Coast!