THE GREAT MIGRATION

No, you are not seeing things. This is a new blog only a matter of a few days after the previous one.

Jan and I left UK on 5^th June 2015, a year ago today, to come to Zambia and work with Beyond Ourselves for a year or perhaps 15 months but here we still are exactly 2 years later. Unfortunately our time here is coming to an end as we finish working with Beyond Ourselves and the fantastic schools near the end of July and travel back to UK mid December. We have almost exactly SIX months left

For most of our time here in Ndola we have lived at Cherry Farm, about 8 Kms outside the town in the most wonderful house you could wish for. It was not the biggest home we have had but certainly the one with the biggest grounds. We had a huge garden to ourselves along with access to the rest of the farm which has been left to grow wild. We are saying this as we left Cherry Farm towards the end of May and moved to the other side of Ndola. Our Directors, Dan & Melissa with their family have gone back to UK and Canada for a well earned rest and to catch up with their friends and family. A while ago they asked us and if we would house sit for them, so here we are. We are already missing Cherry Farm, the fantastic staff we made friends with and of course the three dogs that lived as much with us as they did with our landlords, Kaz and Andy. The day before we left we gave all of the staff a pizza party as most said they had never tried pizza before. 6 different large home made pizzas were made and instantly devoured along with beers, wines and softies. One that went down well was rose wine and coke. Not something that Jan and I would try but many did.

Our house at Cherry Farm

Some of the families and children at Cherry Farm

The Pizza is going down well

Having Fun

All the staff up and dancing at our home

We will miss the wildlife at Cherry Farm including this Long Crested Eagle

The family out walking the dogs

For those of you that have been carefully reading this, you will undoubtedly have noticed that we have a gap of some 4 months or so between finishing here in Ndola and returning to UK. Well we can now reveal our plans that have been in the planning for some time.

Jan and I will leave here in the final week of July and undertake a mammoth road trip in our trusty home from home on wheels.

Have a look at the map below and we start and finish in Ndola and do a clockwise route

Our "Great Migration'

Some Highlights with references to the map

     1     Start and finish in Ndola

          2  Mountain Gorilla trekking high up in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda

         3   The Great Migration, Masai Mara in Kenya

         4   Arusha Tanzania where we pick up our friend Sarah

          5  Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti in Tanzania

        6    Eastern Highlands and Great Zimbabwe Ruins in Zimbabwe

         7   Kruger National Park, South Africa

        8   The Garden Route, South Africa

          9  Cape Town

      10   Namib Desert in Namibia

      11   Etosha National Park, Namibia

         12   Windhoek, Namibia where we say goodbye to Sarah when she flies home

      13  Moremi, Savuti and the Okavango Delta in Botswana

      14  Liuwa Plains in the far west of Zambia

The trip as planned amounts to some 19,000 kms driving but this does not include all the driving in the parks etc on game drives. I suspect that the total distance in just over 4 weeks will be around 24-25,000 kms or some 15,000 miles. We both are looking forward to it knowing it will be the longest we will have spent in our trusty Hilux with the tent on the roof. We should see some amazing things on our journey through Africa and certainly hope to Blog as often as we can.

Some of the places we have travelled to in the past such as Gorillas and the Masai Mara in Kenya back in 2006. We were going to trek with the Gorillas in Rwanda but as we were about to book the cost of the trekking permit doubled from $750 to $1500 per person so at those costs we reverted back to Uganda at $600 per person. We will still visit Rwanda though. Many places are completely new to us such as Rwanda Swaziland and Lesotho.

The Gorillas are booked for August 11^th  and we have a booking on a camp beside the Mara River for a week from 25^th August. The Great Migration will be in that area around then and most years make the Mara crossing end of August/very early September so we have a prime spot and perfect timing. This we booked months back to get the place and dates we wanted. All we now need is the herds of Wildebeest and Zebra to play ball and make the crossing while we are there.

Sarah, who has already been out to see us twice, is joining us on part of this trip which we have also named Our Great Migration. She will join us when she flies out to Arusha in Tanzania on 7^th September and will be with us through the southern part flying back to UK mid November from Windhoek in Namiba.

After Sarah going back we will cross into Botswana and through places that must be the best in all of Africa to see wildlife and camp totally wild. The Okavango Delta, Moremi and Savuti are fantastic 4x4 driving areas, no roads just tracks in the sand and we have now been through it 4 times. Our final part is up the west of Zambia to be in Liuwa Plains for the last week in November and back to Ndola for around 1^st or 2^nd December. A week later we will be on our way home to UK

Take a look at the map and see the route. Please feel free to comment and ask any questions. We will be adding more details before we go along with as we travel

Mike and Jan