Are You Well Traveled?

The prestigious Travel List Challenge. Have you seen it? Done it? The tag line barks “Are you well traveled? Prove it!”

Challenge participants simply indicate which places they have been on the list of 100 power spots. Once you’ve completed the test (wipe brow, crack knuckles and sigh with relief here), you can compare and share your results. 426,976 Facebookers “like” this, so, clearly, in Martha-speak “it’s a good thing.”

Margarita Island, Venezuela

Apparently the “average user” hits 23 matches on the list that scatters the latitudes and longitudes from Big Ben to Bora Bora. But Teotihuacan, Mexico? Kiyomizu-Deru, Japan? Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India? I had to Google each one, which is also a good thing.

I discovered the Travel List Challenge when my Nashville pal Heidi posted her results a few weeks ago via Facebook and clocked in with an impressive 37 out of 100 (which earned her a shiny bronze out of my travel-centric friends). I’ve seen her expired passport books, and they unfold like the rest of my life’s dream trip itinerary. She has earned some bonus points for her travel as a videographer with World Vision, but her other destinations have been pure pleasure, not biz.

My own sister punched in a score of 15 (I’m sure she cheated somewhere during the ‘test’). Melinda Merkle of Memphis took silver with a proud 42 (despite her homing instinct for the beaches of Destin, Florida). Rachel Croft, ironically living la vida loca in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who I met at a bar in Toronto one random night with my friend Michelle (on shore leave from Nunavut), took gold at the podium with a sweeping 47.

My score was a pissy 11 out of 100, which was reminiscent of my grade 11 math test scores (on one particularly stellar geometry test I almost had 11, but I was docked a mark for doing the test in red pen).

Cantina Loredo, The Gulch, Nashville

My consolation came in the form of learning that the editor and lead faculty of the travel writing program at Matador U, Julie Schwietert Callazo, scored 23. She and her husband created an iPhone travel app for crying out loud! She’s written for National Geographic Traveler! I can come to terms with my mark of 11 if Julie only scored 23. And when I say “only” we both know that 23 checkmarks on 23 places is no easy feat. There was probably diarrhea involved, a flat tire, an overpriced airline ticket, corrupt police, a delayed flight, bed bugs, stolen sunglasses, a busted flip flop and an ATM with no money in it.

(And, to not be such a sore loser, much praise to Laura Koepnick (37), PJ Moore (35), and Mark Picketts (28). It’s with pure green envy and applause that I type this.)

BUT. This Challenge forced me to consider all the places I’ve been and long to visit. When I re-examined the Travel List Challenge it was very Euro-centric, and our mighty Canada made brief appearances. The only additional places I would pro-actively go to would be Victoria Falls, Easter Island, Ngorongoro Crater, Glow Worm Cave (NZ), Death Valley, Redwood National Park and Bora Bora. So, really, I would only ever score 18 on my own travel accord.

Congo kids hamming it up

Which leads me to this. Here is my redesigned perfect 100. Of course, it’s not for the faint of heart, or faint of stomach. But, if I were to customize a list of places that I thought every responsible human being should see, feel and do, this would be it. And this is what the true challenge is, isolating our desires and meshing them with those of our partner, friends and family.

My parents are surprisingly symbiotic despite very diverse pulls: my mother’s perfect itinerary would include a road trip stuffed with antiquing, used bookstores, cemetery visits and a nice pint after looking for long lost relatives names on headstones. My dad would prefer a ballpark tour, a round of golf and a $2 hotdog with maybe a soft serve cone to follow.

My brother is an aquarium, museum fiend and whiskey hound who would bitch at the thought of my sister’s ideal day, climbing some peak in Nepal with dried fruit and 10 gallons of water. I know my friend Kelly would choose a week in Nashville, her days rammed with Titans games, deep fried pickles and pulled pork nachos, foot massages and karaoke.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

I naturally lean towards extreme landscapes and fauna over architecture, but this makes for a beautifully balanced relationship where I get to experience my partner’s top 100 places too. While I suggest jungles, deserts and birding hotspots, she will counter with ruins, walled cities, hidden pubs and historical landmarks that I might have bypassed. And, better yet, now I’ll have 200 places to visit! We have a solid agreement to not scuba dive, cruise, visit China, India, Cuba (again), Vegas or Disneyland. We’re a perfect match–let’s see how you match up below!

1. a night at The Ice Hotel, Quebec City

2. Camping overnight at the very active Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica

3. Gorilla trekking at Bwindi Impenetrable Park, Uganda

4. Cobh, Ireland: where the Titanic last set sail from the White Star Line pier

5. Bolivian Salt Flats

6. Jig-fishing on the Atlantic, Charlottetown, PEI. After a tough day fishing, reclining on the red brick sands of Cabot Beach.

7. Newfoundland—a tour of the most absurdly named places: Come-By-Chance, Dildo, Pothead, Blow Me Down, Heart’s Desire, Heart’s Content, Nick’s Nose, Conception Bay, Cupids, Witless Bay and Cow Head for puffin-sighting and screech

8. Roslyn, Washington: where Northern Exposure was filmed. Roslyn was the guise for “Cicely, Alaska.”

9. Microbrew tour of Portland, Oregon: Green Dragon, Full Sail, Lucky Labrador, Mia & Pia’s, Rock Bottom, Big Horse and Vertigo Brewing among others http://oregonbeer.org/mapport2006.html

10. Sheikh Zayed International Camel Endurance Race, Queensland, Australia

11. Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship somewhere authentically cold like Finland or Sweden

12. The Treehotel, Sweden. Instant resurrection of childhood awe & magic: http://www.treehotel.se/

13. Free Spirit Spheres—sleep in an orb suspended in a tree! Qualicum Bay, Vancouver Island, BC. http://www.freespiritspheres.com/

14. Camp in Masai Mara National Park with local residents: lions and elephants

Sunrise in the White Desert, Egypt

15. High tea at the Fairmont Empress Resort, Victoria, BC

16. Sleep under the stars and catch a killer sunrise in the White Desert, Egypt

17. Sleep in a 13th century Shali fortress, Siwa Oasis, Egypt

18. See the epic 9,000km Dakar Rally finish line

19. Iditarod Great Sled Race, finish line—Nome, Alaska

20. Just done cinnamon buns & caffeine at the Gumboot Restaurant & Cafe, Roberts Creek, Sunshine Coast, BC

21. Hayward Lake Reservoir Trail (preferably with wet dogs in tow), BC

22. Harrison Hot Springs Sand Sculpture Competition, BC

23. Marathon Du Medoc, France. 42 km, 23 wine-drinking stations en route and foie gras, oyster and entrecote steak food stops. http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/event-editorial/marathon-du-medoc-a-marathon-drinking-session/3716.html

Blue Footed Booby, Galapagos

24. Training your binoculars on blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos Islands

25. Bartolome Island, Galapagos. Described by Neil Armstrong as the closest landscape to the moon, on earth.

26. Snowy snowshoe to Boom Lake, just outside Banff, Alberta. Addition: hot toddies and a night at the Storm Mountain Lodge.

27.Wreck Beach, Vancouver, BC. Nudists, tequila shots, empanadas, moose burgers and banana muffins. True travel challenge: making it back up the stairs of the 200 foot cliff.

28. Grouse Grind, aka “Mother Nature’s Stairmaster,” Vancouver, BC—2.9 km trail up the face of Grouse Mountain, 853m elevation gain, 2,830 stairs.

29. A night at the Gladstone Hotel in the so-hip-it-hurts bleeding arts section of Queen West, Toronto. Mac n’cheese at the Drake down the street.

30. Arrington Vineyards, Nashville, Tennessee. Buy a bottle of syrah and out-do the picnic spread of your neighbours on the idyllic vineyard property. Best: sunset, tree swing, fire lit. http://www.arringtonvineyards.com/

31. Media Luna Resort, Half Moon Bay, Roatan, Honduras. All-inclusive, posh cabanas, sunsets that paint the sky burnt orange and cotton candy pink.

32. Haida Gwaii, BC

33. Gately Inn on the Nile, Jinja, Uganda (plus pancakes with crushed peanuts and honey in the morn)

Gately Inn on the Nile, Jinja, Uganda

34. Angel Falls, Canaima National Park, Venezuela

35. Piranha fishing, Orinoco River, Venezuela

36.Bicycle built for two, across the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California

37. Finger Lakes, NY by day, fireside with s’mores at Watkins Glen or Leitchworth State Park by night

38. Sundance Film Festival, Park City,  Utah

39. Picnic in Vondelpark, Amsterdam with warm Heineken, blank postcards, girlfriend

40. Polar Bear Dip, Lake Ontario

41. Pride weekend, Reykjavik, Iceland

42. Wildebeest migration by hot air balloon, Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

43. Visit home of Isaak Denison, author of Out of Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

Sunrise balloon ride, Luxor, Egypt

44. Hot air balloon over Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt (preferably without diarrhea)

45. Kiss the Blarney Stone! Blarney Castle, Ireland

46. Rent a beach hut on car-free and carefree Caye Caulker, Belize

47. See the painted dogs of Zimbabwe

48. The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to see folk artist Maud Lewis’ tiny & quirky 13 x 12 foot cottage on permanent display

49. Emily Carr House, Victoria, BC. A provincial historic site dedicated to an iconic writer and artist.

50. Easter Island

51. Medium-fat, house-smoked brisket at Schwartz’s deli, Montreal, Quebec

52. L’Oncle Antoine stone cave cellar bar in Quebec City. One of the city’s oldest surviving houses (1754). Order the Dieu de Ciel Route de Epices (peppercorn beer) and steamer dog.

53. Skate the Rideau Canal (Ottawa, Ontario) with a flask and a maple syrup-dripping Beaver Tail to Dows Lake (7.8 km or, 90 Olympic hockey rinks long!).

54. Yukon Territory for the aurora borealis gone wild

55. South Georgia, Crozet and Kerguelen Islands to see the comical macaroni penguins

56.Hanlan’s Point, Toronto Island with gossipy mags, beer and sandwiches on ice

57. St. Paddy’s Day in Savannah, Georgia. You ain’t seen nothing like it. And you won’t remember 80% of it. Go back for the plantation homes and old man’s beard moss.

58. The limestone pinnacles and lemur habitat of Tsingy de Bemahara National Park ( Tsingy means “where one cannot walk barefoot” in Malagasy) in western Madagascar.

59. Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

60. The surreal hexagonal basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway, northern Ireland (Bushmills Distillery en route)

61. Whale watching, Kennebunkport, Maine

62. Wine tour of Prince Edward County, Ontario. Restoration of soul easily found at the Waring House Inn with a jacuzzi, Karlo Estates merlot and a wedge of something great from the Black River Cheese Company.

Karlo Estates, Prince Edward County

63. Ice fishing somewhere genuinely North & genuinely teeth-chatteringly cold like Jumping Caribou Lake, Limberlost or Magog Lake, Ontario.

64. RCMP graduation in Regina, Saskatchewan in January when it’s -58, just to feel Canadiana at its best

65. Nunavut, to see the place that has shaped Michelle’s heart like it was mere wet clay. And, to see where the caribou and arctic char jerky she has supplied me with has been sourced from.

66. See the pyramids and Sphinx by camel, Cairo, Egypt

67. Grizzly Paw beer in the Lakeview Lounge of the Fairmont Lake Louise Hotel, Alberta, watching the pink-cheeked skaters whirling about outside the Palladian windows.

68. $30 cup of Doi Chaang Coffee at the Bean Brothers Cafe in Kerrisdale, Vancouver (the famous wild civet shit/shat coffee beans) after a butterscotch root beer and $100 cognac-infused hot dog at Dougie Dogs on Granville.

69. Haggis in Scotland! After combing the powder white sand beaches and secret coves of the Hebrides.

70. Fried grasshoppers & termites at the Tuesday night market in Entebbe, Uganda with a 500ml Bell beer, all for less than $3.

Breakfast of grasshoppers

71. Murchison Falls, Uganda boat safari to the falls. Hippos, crocodiles, chocolate-backed kingfishers and elephants, oh my! Boat trip in Queen Elizabeth National Park close second.

72. Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick

73. Inuvik, Yellowknife: Summer Solstice Madness Marathon. Run in the midnight sun!

74. Bora Bora, French Polynesia for totally obvious reasons

75. Grand Canyon, Arizona

76. International Pow Wow, Albuquerque, New Mexico

77. Soupy tromp through Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica and addition: a week volunteering at the Aviarios del Caribe Sloth Sanctuary

78. All 280 km of the winding Grand River, from Elora to Lake Erie by canoe, Ontario

79. Conch fritters at the Soggy Dollar Bar and guava rum punch at Ivan’s Stress Free Bar on Jost Van Dyke Island, British Virgin Islands

80. Bracken Bat Cave, near San Antonio Texas. Home of the world’s largest bat colony.

81. Thunderstorm on Lake Victoria, Uganda with three dogs and two cats stuffed into your mosquito net.

82. Northern Ethiopia

83. Papua, New Guinea: the birds, oh, the birds.

84. Cabo Sao Vicente (Cape St. Vincent), Western Algarve, Portugal

85. Cinque Terre, Italy, because of this picture alone, although it may never appear like this again.  http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Italy/Liguria/La_Spezia/Cinque_Terre/photo705929.htm In October 2011, Vernazza was wiped out and evacuated due to torrential rains that triggered over a hundred mudslides and massive flooding.

After the Brazil vs. Holland World Cup match

86. Amsterdam during World Cup Soccer Finals, pit stop at the Bulldog Cafe

87. Cougar’s Crag dog-friendly B&B in Sooke, Vancouver Island, BC after a sloppy walk along misty French Beach.

88. Jigokundani Valley in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, to see the Japanese snow monkeys in the hot springs

89. Botswana, Africa

90. Back to Lubumbashi, Congo to see how the young chimps have grown into handsome adults at J.A.C.K. sanctuary where I volunteered in 2009

91. Burning Man Festival, Black Rock Desert, Nevada

92. Volunteer for a week scrubbing elephants in the river at the Elephant Nature Park, Chiang Mai, Thailand

93. Two nights at the Samboja Lodge in Samboja Lestari, Borneo, Indonesia to see the orangutans

94. Ko Phi Phi Leh, Maya Bay on Thailand’s east coast where The Beach was filmed

J.A.C.K. Sanctuary, Lubumbashi, Congo

95. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

96. Petra, Jordan—a night at the Feynan Eco Lodge where “jift” (Arabic term for waste from olive pressing) or olive pit charcoal is used as a heat source during the 60-90 cooler “winter” nights

97. Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, Punakaiki, New Zealand

98. Anna Creek Sheep Station, Southern Australia. This place is so remote that children attend “School of the Air” broadcast from the Royal Flying Doctor Service via shortwave radio since 1951. Now students “attend” class via one-way live video feeds. The sheep stations are so massive that the nearest neighbour is sometimes being hundreds of kilometers away.

99. Sinop Harbour, Black Sea coast, Turkey

100. Barbados. Average temperature 26 degrees Celsius. 8.3 hours of sunshine per day, 3,028 hours per year.

How did you score on my customized Challenge? (I score much, much higher on my own rigged tests).

More importantly–where have you been? Where do you want to go? What’s your Top 100 places of gravitational pull?

Here’s the original Travel List Challenge: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Travel-List-Challenge/232751413466599

Dung Balls and Flies in My Eyes

January 11, 2009

Dear Diary, it has been a month since my last confession.
I am writing from the reliable internet connection that is Canada, wearing more layers of clothing than I packed when I left for Africa. My skin is finding the air temperature that speaks of snow a bit alarming. And so I dream of those days when…

December 20th, Wanda and I board a cramped Kenyan Airlines flight to Nairobi. Contrary to popular thought we are not carjacked, pickpocketed or held hostage by machete-wielding rebels. Instead, we are welcomed by a smiley population who believes us to be from America, and are quickly brought into intense conversations relating to all things Obama. Kenya actually had a beer called Senator (in Obama’s honour) that has now been proudly renamed President.
Wanda had made arrangements for our accomodations through the mayor of Mission, BC, our sleepier neighbouring community. The mayor is Kenyan, and his brother James still lives in Nairobi. Rapid emails back and forth led to a connection through James to stay at his friend’s property, The Klubhouse. I am generally leery of places that should start with the letter ‘C’, but have been somewhat creatively changed to ‘K’ for koolness. Like kafes and krafty korners and klubhouses. The Klubhouse in the shiny midday sun seemed impressive and promising. Hell, it was a karwash, a dance klub and a hotel to boot, what more could one want? Oh, karaoke apparently. We soon learned that the Klubhouse was Nairobi’s premier dance destination spot for twentysomethings. There were three disco-balled dance floors that pumped music so loud my intestines vibrated. There were signs warning of speed bumps ahead so you didn’t spill your Tusker beer between the Karwash and dance floor. Our hotel room, all 6′ by 6′ of it, was situated nearly beside the DJ’s turntables. That night I awoke to a abysmal karaoke version of ‘We Be Jammin” completely convinced that someone had slipped something into my drink, and that I had fallen asleep on the dance floor.
Wanda was still a bit furry from 19 hours of flying and took a magic sleeping pill that left her snoring through Lionel Ritchie ‘Dancing On the Ceiling’ and Mariah Carey on repeat. For the Mission mayor discount, I could handle the soundtrack as the bar did eventually close at 3 a.m. The parking lot that was a showcase of BMW car alarms sounding off petered out into the thin night air.
The following morning, after an African trucker breakfast heavy on the watermelon and pineapple, we were picked up by a slick army green Landcruiser by Elijah, our intrepid safari guide. We had a guide, a driver and a cook, and the open ‘road’ of Kenya before us. The drive to Masai Mara would be 6-8 hours of a dust-choked landscape. Looking out at the arid expanse, we would see a dozen ‘dirt devils’ spinning in tight cylinders towards the sky. Twisters of dirt followed us, and made Uganda seem as emerald green as Ireland.
Our first night was spent with two Masai warriors keeping watch by the flames of a fire. We were in lion country, and there were elephants to contend with too. We heard both, at a comfortable distance, and in the morning we came upon evidence of the elephants very nearby. Wanda was a bit wide-eyed with all the sounds of Africa just outside the not-so-protective nylon walls of our tent, while I fell dead asleep after the first roar of the lion.
The campsite was idyllic, and we were gently awakened by the tinkle of cow bells as a herd made their way past with two warriors pulling up the rear. We had tea with flies around the fire and soon found the idyllic surroundings unbearable. Flies were landing on our skin like we were covered in honey. I poured a second cup of milky tea and had five fly bodies backstroking across the surface. They stuck to my eyelids and buzzed in my ears. “They’re of biblical proportions,” Wanda commented, retreating to the no-fly-zone of the tent.
Luckily, the flies didn’t join us on our walking safari. We followed the heels of the cattle with Elijah pointing out dung of different species. It was Shit I.D. 101, and I was fascinated by the elephant crap the size of soccer balls. In contrast the dik dik (a tiny knee-high antelope) left behind a trail of dark chocolate Glosette raisins. Even cooler was stumbling upon a dung beetle ball—a perfect baseball-sized gift that he would present to the dung beetle gal of his dreams. I marvelled at how rock-hard and white hyena shit was from a scavenger’s diet of bones. It looked like golf balls and I was tempted to stuff one in my pocket for my golf-crazy father. Oh, what a laugh he would have with the boys when he passed around his lucky hyena poop golf ball on the ninth hole.
Wanda, wilting like a potted plant in the African sun, had turned into the paparazzi. Armed with a new Canon Powershot 9.0 MP with 40X zoom, she took over my role as Chief Photographer. We were on the world’s greatest scavenger hunt—and Wanda found the ultimate treasure, a zebra tooth. Our eyes were always on the ground, as a sloppy misstep on a ball of elephant shit would bust an ankle for sure. And there were leg-swallowing aardvark holes to dodge too. We discovered a giant porcupine quill the size of a cocktail stirrer and chewed sap from a tree that made my molars stick together in a frightening lock-jaw sensation. There were fruit bats in flight, helmeted guinea fowl scurrying across the ground, bounding impalas and stunning lilac-breasted rollers (I was in a bird-fuelled narcotic state. There are over 1,000 species of birds in Kenya, while all of Canada boasts around 600).
Walking through the dusty scrub was like stumbling across an abandoned graveyard. Not only were we avoiding an ankle roll on giraffe turds, but we had to be aware of tumbles on wildebeest jawbones and zebra vertebraes. The oppressive heat was already creating a wobbly oasis on the horizon, the zebras and water buffalo seemed smudged and greasy against the horizon.
And, everywhere we walked, it smelled distinctly like canned Vienna sausage.

Following the hoofprints of hundreds of impala, we arrived at our destination, a Masai village, population 56. The cattle and goats outnumbered the Masai tenfold. And the god damn fly numbers made me wonder if we were about to experience an apocalypse.
Thorny acacia tree branches were used as effective fencing against lions with a midnight craving for a beef entree, but I figured the flies were the best army the Masai had in keeping anything away. Babies were covered in flies and lice, and trachoma (an infectious eye disease causing blindness)was rampant. (Blinding trachoma epidemics occur in areas of poor hygeine, proximity to cattle, flies, lack of latrines and water).
The Masai children approached us in loud little crowds, and it is customary for them to bow and present their heads to you. When they bow, you are to touch their head. I felt awful chanting Purell over and over inside my head, but Wanda felt the same self-protective reaction. I had been to many impoverished villages in Uganda, but the Masai village was a startling exposure to the link between unsanitary living and the greedy hands of disease. The village dogs seemed dead, scrawny and raw with open sores. They barely raised their heads when we passed.
A warrior (who was busy text-messaging on his cell phone, spear in the other hand)invited us into his home, a mud shelter with a window/smoke hole the size of a grapefruit. I felt the strong pull of a panic attack coming on, as the narrow entrance gave way to thick, suffocating darkness and very cramped quarters. As our eyes adjusted we could see two simple thatched bed frames, and an enclosure for the young goats who slept inside at night (to protect them from the equatorial cold nights). There was a kitchen that consisted of a small fire pit, a few pots needing an SOS pad, and a 3′ by 3′ space in the centre. A family of five lived in the space of a GAP changeroom.
When we emerged from the hut, enterprising women in the village had laid out colourful beaded bracelets and necklaces that we could buy. They fidgeted as we examined the beadwork closer, pulling on their ear lobes, long and spaghetti-noodle like from years of wearing guages. They were far less aggressive than the Masai at the national park gate who used intimidation tactics and dangled bracelets in the Landcruiser window with angry glares and persisent barking to buy or else.
We left the village, crawling with unseen insects and suspected lice, feeling more than disturbed. Wanda wanted to save the children. I wanted to save the dogs. The debate around the fire that night was about the happiness of the Masai. Wanda believed that under such trying, survival-mode conditions, that they couldn’t be happy with their lives–when everyday was such a chore. Walking miles to gather water in a jerry can to boil and drink, labouring to keep fires burning to make rice, and following slow-moving cattle across the lonely plains. She felt there were so many things that could make their lives simpler. But there is always that initial confusion, that our western way is better, easier. Wanda asked the young Masai boys if they became bored watching their cattle all day. They didn’t, and they couldn’t even comprehend the word ‘bored’. It’s what they did. Life was about following the cattle, they were herders. And text-messagers.

On our second day we pushed on to the national park for a game drive. I couldn’t believe the abundance and diversity of wildlife before us. Eye spy with my big eye: giraffes, ostrich by the dozen, zebra, a serval cat (pygmy cheetah), a non-pygmy cheetah, a family of elephants in a mudhole (so close we could see the blink of their flapper-girl eyelashes). The youngest rubbed against it’s mother, and the sound was like that of grainy sandpaper on wood. Baboons scampered off the road, hippos poked out of the surface of water, their beady eyes like submarine periscopes. Harpy eagles pulled the bleeding guts out of a leggy African hare, crowned cranes and secretary birds slipped in and out of the sun-bleached grasses. We slowed to watch seven feamle lions stretched out in the shade like drowsy housecats.
Later in the day, when we came upon three male lions with bedhead manes, we were convinced that we wouldn’t see anything else that would top the awe of sharing breathing space with lions. Or watching the tender touch of trunks between the elephants. Electric blue and red agoma lizards skittered off hot rocks and the ground glittered with sparkly quartz stone. Long-faced hartebeest stood in quiet herds with topi and impalas. There were birds with startling, irridescent feathers every colour of a Crayola crayon box, piles of bones of lives long gone, dirt devils turning and spinning upwards, termite mounds of industriously-built columns, warthogs with erect tails on the run and gazelles like Bay Street commuters.
We watched a goshawk down a long-tailed starling in three swallows, a la National Geographic.And the cheetah, as elusive as the black rhino (which we didn’t see), was a rare sight that we embraced. But then, as elated as we were, a sickening weight was felt in our stomachs. Wanda tapped my shoulder and I turned to see the rush of safari vehicles roaring across the savannah. When we had pulled up, there were three vehicles, and when we asked our driver, Sammy, to pull away, seventeen vehicles had circled the cheetah. It was in obvious distress, panting and low to the ground. There was nowhere for it to escape. I actually had tears in my eyes, thinking of how wrong all of this was. This was not how I wanted to see a cheetah. Cameras clicked and zoomed. I was part of the ignorance, and hated it. Cheetahs are predatory and can’t climb trees. Safari trucks often interrupt their feeding, as they have to abandon their kill (which is quickly eaten by scaengers). Elijah explained that grazers like gazelles and elephants are less disturbed by vehicles and tourists, but often, in parks where tourism and game drives aren’t strictly enforced, cheetahs and lions can starve.
Already, Masai Mara has established a ‘recovery area’ where safari vehicles are not allowed to traverse. Even though vehicles are supposed to keep to the designated roadways, the cheetah-spotting resulted in several safari companies abandoning the road in hot pursuit of a closer sighting. Would a glossy picture of a terrified cheetah surrounded by 17 vehicles be worth it? I didn’t want that memory.
As we drove off, rangers were arriving at the scene to break up the glut of vehicles. In Botswana, only three vehicles can be stopped at the same location at one time. Masai Mara is hoping to implement this same ruling. Because the daily park pass is only $40 per person, it is largely accessible. In comparison, to track gorillas, a one day permit (allowing one hour of tracking) is $500 US. Only 32 gorilla permits are made available each day, and the one hour (spent with one of four gorilla families in Bwindi) is strictly enforced by the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
We left the park with mixed emotions, thrilled for what we had the opportunity to see, but tasting the repercussions of our blatant invasion. A group of Masai boys waved wildly at us as we passed, their hair dyed copper red (with clay and animal fat) for a circumcision ceremony. The tallest boy wore a real lion’s mane on top of his head, which Elijah told us indicated that he had been the first one to spear the lion in the hunt. Their red shukas against the barren landscape were arresting. After this initiation ritual (which happens around age 14-15) the Masai boys will spend two to three years alone, learning the survivor skills necessary to be a Masai Warrior. Hell, Outward Bound only dumps you for an overnight solo experience—imagine three years!
Driving out of the park, we stopped for cold Tuskers at Keekorok Lodge, a posh place that most certainly has been splashed on the cover of GQ Travel (with an off-season rate of $450 a night). With the buzz of an afternoon beer and the endorphins of a game drive percolating inside us, we returned to our more modest accomodations at Mara Springs: a permanent canvas tent with cockroaches as big as Tic Tac boxes, an almost entirely hot shower, a toilet (with a seat!) and resident vervet monkeys who threatened to break-in with little hands accustomed to undoing tent zippers. Not exactly GQ-worthy, but more square footage than the Klubhouse/Karwash/Knightclub in Nairobi. Here we fell asleep to nattering hornbills and barking baboons, not Billy Ocean and Celine Dion at concert-levels.

All too soon we were back in the sour stink of the Nairobi airport. The public washrooms had no running water, and the clothes I had on had developed a smell of their own (Vienna sausages?), and were almost in a disposable state.
At a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, Kenya became microscopic under our feet. We topped the clouds and I closed my eyes,already anticipating our next safari. We had been spoiled in Kenya, travelling by ourselves. In a few days we would meet a grumpy Swiss, a saucy Swede, three brassy Americans and a controversial Vietnamese French-Canadian and make our way across Uganda. It already had the making of a bad reality TV show. Twelve days, and we couldn’t vote anyone off. Wanda and I hoped the group would be mildly cohesive. If the travellers were annoying, we hoped they would at least be annoying and non-English speaking. If all else failed, we would become non-English speaking quite quickly.
Stay tuned for Unbridled Uganda.