Our Favorite Trips Part 2: Africa

This next post in about my family’s trip to Africa last Christmas. The reason I waited so long to blog about this was because Dane was making a video and I wanted to include that in my blog post.

We spent a total of 17 days there, splitting our time between Tanzania and South Africa. 

We started with Tanzania and traveled to Ndtutu in the Serengeti. The company we stayed with was called &Beyond and they were amazing! We stayed in tents but they were the most luxurious tents I have ever seen complete with beds, sinks, a toilet and a shower out back. 

Our cars!

(ours and my parents tents had queen size beds)

We were woken up well before sunset each morning, but the wake up included hot chocolate and cookies. Best morning treat ever. 

We went on two game drives a day. One in the morning and one after lunch. Sometime we would eat breakfast or lunch out in the middle of nature and it was simply breathtaking and incredible that we were eating in the Serengeti. The food was delicious and I loved eating in our outdoor dinner tent. 

We celebrated Christmas at this camp and a Masai tribe came with authentic chants and dancing for us. They even had us get involved! You can see it in the video.

We saw so many animals which you can see in the video but I am in love with photo of a lion.

After we left the Serengeti we took a small plane to Lake Manyara. This camp was also beautiful. The game drives were a little different because we had to stay on the path and we couldn't go off road to find the animals. We also did a all day game drive at the Ngorongoro Crater which is pretty much a giant wildlife bowl that all of the animals were in. This camp had a lot of baboons and I discovered that I don't like/am scared of these guys. They aren't shy animals and they will come right up to you and take your stuff or your food. One even stole the cookies right out of our guide’s hands. 

Our next stop was in South Africa. We took a small plane to Kruger and stayed at the Ngala lodge. This was my favorite place we went to. If I could go back to only one place this would be it. We did two game drives a day here as well.

We saw so many animals here and we saw something that is hard to see in Africa. We saw a leopard hunt and kill a baby warthog. It was fascinating but it also made me sad to see and hear (We have some footage in the video). The food here was mouth watering. They had so many options but one of my favorite things was the waffles and ice cream. 

(our first dinner at this camp. It was beautiful!)

After leaving this lodge we flew to Cape Town, South Africa where we stayed in a hotel. This place was interesting because it didn't feel like we were in Africa anymore. We were surrounded by people, buildings and restaurants. Our first night there we went down to the boardwalk and enjoyed a nice dinner by the water. We ate all kinds of food here like Italian and Japanese. 

The three things we did here were watch the cheetahs run and pet them, cage dive with Great White sharks and hike Cape Point. Petting the Cheetahs was a incredible experience. We saw them in the wild and now we were actually up close and personal with such a powerful animal. The cage diving was a once in a lifetime experience. I am terrified of sharks and to be eye level with Great White gave me a slight panic attack but I am so glad I did it and I might even do it again. 

This was definitely one of our favorite trips and we would go back in a heartbeat. In fact Dane and I have promised ourselves that we will go back with our own kids someday.

Here is a link to the Africa Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShNaD3PQlJg

Here is a link to a music video my sisters and I made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qosQMB5cwE

 Cute baby elephant

This shows how close we got to some of the animals!

I love these trees!