ecotourism Africa – GringoPotpourri

Photo Locale of the Month – May 2018

A common theme of my monthly photo locale features is the concept of time. Namely, where has it gone? Of course, I haven’t traveled much these past few years, a reality that I hope to change as my salary grows.

With that in mind, it hardly seems possible that nine years have passed since my first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, during which time I took a whirlwind “taster” trip to several countries in the region including Botswana, home of the unforgettable Okavango Delta, and South Africa, home of the granddaddy of game parks, Kruger National Park.

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Photo Locale of the Month – September 2015

This month’s entry takes us to a new continent and hemisphere. Roughly one dozen nations across South and East Africa are home to lions, elephants, and gorillas (oh my!), and despite still-dwindling wildlife numbers, there are innumerable game parks to choose from for seeing these beasts, and others, in their natural environment.

I recently published a three-part entry about my 2010 encounter with mountain gorillas in Uganda. You can access Part One of that series here; it is a personal favorite among my 150+ blog entries so far. One of my companions from that trip, my friend Mark, requested that I write about another safari from that same trip. Mark – and others – here are a few pictures and anecdotes about Maasai Mara National Park, Kenya.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part Three

Speechless. Astonished. Flabbergasted. Those are just three superlatives that I can use to describe my elation at having spent an hour with mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. Uganda, neighboring Rwanda, and the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are the only places in the world where these great apes still roam free. And I saw them.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part Two

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park was just 50 yards from our lodge, Lake Kitandara Bwindi Camp. Our driver, Matthieu, escorted us to the park gate, where we signed in and met the park staff and other trekkers. We showed our permits – a whopping $500 apiece – and were led through orientation. The head guide was a female, something of a surprise in this male-dominated part of the world.

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Gorillas (Not Quite) in the Mist – Part One

I can hardly believe that five years have passed since my three-country safari and hiking trip to East Africa in August, 2010. I wrote about the trip’s climax – a successful summit of Mount Kilimanjaro – last fall, and thought you might like to hear about the Uganda portion of trip, in which my friends and I had one thing on our minds: gorillas!

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