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Tags: Literary Travel / Africa Travel / Botswana Travel / → All Tags
Tourists Go Looking For Clues In Botswana With 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency'
Think of it as the 21st century's 221B Baker Street: Fans of the book series No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency have taken an interest in the country of Botswana, where the book's action takes place, thanks in part to a small-screen adaptation.
The ten-book series by Alexander McCall Smith follows Precious Ramotswe, the first female Botswanan P.I., as she and her assistant Grace solve cases of missing girlfriends and blackmail, among others. Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella shot a TV adaptation of the books in Botswana starring singer Jill Scott last year before his untimely death after surgery; in a documentary called "In the Footsteps of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective," author Smith visits Minghella on set as well as other locations he used in his books.
Tags: Medical Travel / Travel Health / Ghana Travel / Africa Travel / → All Tags
Medical Tourism Booms In Ghana, Of All Places
The west African country of Ghana hasn't been too high up on our list of wanna-visits, although its position improved a lot when we heard Ghana is the second highest producer of cocoa - maybe that chocolate bar we just downed came out of Ghana. Anyway, Ghana is actually going for a different target now: the health tourist.
It turns out that quite a lot of Ghanaians get medical degrees overseas, and one way of enticing them back to Ghana has been to open a bunch of top-class medical clinics. Sadly, of course, the average Ghanaian citizen can't afford to visit such a clinic—but a tourist can, and for a normal tourist, the prices are bargain basement while the care is excellent.
Cosmetic surgery is high on the list of tourist-wants, although simpler treatments like massages and detox are popular too. So far, the foreign visitors seem to be mostly the wealthy from other African countries, but when celebrities start getting boob-jobs in Ghana, you can say that you read it here first.
Related Stories:
· Ghana Targets Health Tourism Boom [BBC]
· Ghana Travel Guide [Jaunted]
[Photo: bagaball]
Tags: Travel Warnings / Africa Travel / Sports Travel / Sports / Soccer / → All Tags
UK Warning Soccer Fans To Take It Easy In Angola
There’s only a few months left until the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament hits the field. Starting in January, soccer fans from around the globe will travel to Angola to check out some heated competition, while patiently awaiting the arrival of the World Cup tournament. However, British fans of the football are being warned by their government to be extra cautious regarding their travel plans.
Crime levels in the capital city of Luanda are high according to the British Foreign Office, and they are encouraging fans to attend only if they are traveling with someone familiar with the local conditions. Angola only ended a long civil war in 2002, so things over there are still a little touchy. It might be a good idea for the British fans to keep their hooligan antics to a minimum, or at least save them for the games of the World Cup in South Africa.
Tags: Lufthansa / Brussels Airlines / Africa Travel / New Routes / → All Tags
Find Your Way To Africa's Nooks and Crannies With Lufthansa and Brussels Air
Want to vacation in Gambia, Burundi or Liberia? Lufthansa and its subsidiary Brussels Airlines have just announced some codeshare flight combos which make getting from Europe into many different corners of Africa quite a bit easier.
Basically, the increased routes are all heading out of either Frankfurt or Brussels, and it doesn't matter whether you book your ticket with Lufthansa or Brussels Airlines. There is a huge range of African destinations; from Brussels you could get to exotic spots like Douala und Yaunde in Cameroon, or into Nairobi for a spot of safari adventure in Kenya. From Frankfurt, options include Ghana's capital Accra (where you can retrace the trip Barack Obama took earlier this year) and the more traditional destinations of Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa. Basically, if you've got the travel bug bad and want to see Africa, there are now a few more ways to do it, and that's gotta be good.
Related Stories:
· Lufthansa and Brussels Airlines Expand Flights To Africa [TravelTips]
· The Obamas Make A Solemn Stop At A Ghana Slave Castle [Jaunted]
[Photo: openDemocracy]
Tags: Quirky Travel / Animals / Bats / Africa Travel / → All Tags
Are You Batty Enough to Vacation in Zambia?
Plenty of people go to Africa to see animals, but most are looking for exciting safari animals like lions or maybe rhinos. But if you head to Zambia in November, you can experience something that the experts consider to be near the top of the wildlife calendar for unique experiences.
You might be surprised to learn that this wildlife fantasy come true is actually the migration of a million fruit bats. Apparently they show up every November in Kasanka National Park in Zambia at just the time the fruits on the local trees ripen – smart bats.
Tourists get to climb to a 60-foot high tree-top "hide" to watch the bats, and sunset sounds especially creepy – the sky becomes black with bats as they head off for their evening meal. There are expensive-sounding tours run out of Britain for £3,599 ($6,000) per person just for the week, and at that price we wonder if the tourists might just be a bit batty already.
Related Stories:
· Rhino Travel: Kenya is Back in Black [Jaunted]
· Minimal Impact Lion-Spotting in Botswana [Jaunted]
[Photo: Shek Graham]
Tags: Adventure Travel / Safaris / Discovery Channel / Luxury Travel / Africa Travel / Peru Travel / Mexico Travel / Historical Travel / Tour Packages / → All Tags
The Very Rich Can Hop On Discovery Channel's New Hardcore Adventures
Is this the recession or what? Guess not: Discovery Communications is teaming up with travel provider G.A.P Adventures to launch dozens of luxury trips based on Discovery Channel programming. With prices starting at $2,000 per person for trips ranging from 3 to 24 days, these are not for the faint of wallet.
Locations range from common tourist destinations like the USA and Mexico to places like Botswana, where you'll probably always need a guide. All of the packages come with their share of intriguingly esoteric Discovery Channel twists; one of the USA tours revolves around historic parks in the Southwest. What travelers will see on the 12 day tour, though, ranges from rock formations to deserts to dwellings abandoned thousands of years ago.
The other USA destination is even more nature-oriented, taking travelers all the way up north to Alaska. Adventurers spend 10 days observing wildlife in their habitat, which can be both mindblowingly fascinating and straightforward deadly.
Tags: Obama-Around-The-World / Presidential Travel / Barack Obama / Ghana Travel / Africa Travel / Michelle Obama / → All Tags
The Obamas Make A Solemn Stop At A Ghana Slave Castle
After a happy few days in Italy, making gelato and visiting with antiquity, the Obamas headed south to Ghana for President Obama's first official visit to Africa. It was a solemn trip, and Obama chose Ghana over Kenya—where he has family ties—because of Ghana's dedication to democracy.
The whole family made the trip along with Barack, and Michelle and the girls even accompanied him on a tour of Cape Coast Castle, which, in the 1600s, "served as Britain's West Africa headquarters for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which saw European powers and African chiefs export millions in shackles to Europe and the Americas." It's not exactly a tourist attraction either, unless you're set on re-tracing your own family history through the slave trade.
Obama's visit not only to Ghana but to the slave trading headquarters is poignant; it illustrates, in one stop, how far the world has come in shedding racism and taking up equality.
Related Stories:
· Obama's visit to fort a 'full-circle experience' [MSNBC]
· Dear President Obama [Globe and Mail]
· The Sort-of Return of the Prodigal Son: President Obama Arrives in Accra, Ghana [Obama Foodorama]
· When In Rome, It's Gelato And G8 For The Obamas [Jaunted]
· Presidential Travel Coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: AP via HuffPost]
Tags: Movie Set Travel / Earth / Africa Travel / Disney / → All Tags
See 'Earth's' Elephants in Botswana
Just in time for Earth Day, Disney’s "Earth" opened in theaters Wednesday. This G-rated documentary traces the journey of three animal families across the globe. One of those families was a herd of elephants captured in their homeland, Botswana. We predict "Earth" will renew interest in this small African country. If you want to beat the crowds, here’s a few tips for visiting Botswana.
What to See:
The elephant sequence in "Earth" was filmed in the world’s second largest game reserve, the 200,000-plus square mile Central Kalahari. The reserve’s terrain ranges from sand dunes to bushy plains and is teeming with wildlife. Several companies offer safaris through Kalahari including Getaway Travel who has a six day safari where you’ll participate in a nature walk led by local Bushmen trackers, visit the game reserve, and camp in the wild. Prices for six nights begin at $1,500.
Tags: Adventure Travel / Africa Travel / Safaris / Horseback Riding / → All Tags
Get On Your Horses, Kenyan Style
On those days when we figure we've spent much too long with the Tivo, it's time to dream us up a bit of adventure travel. The crew of Bailey Robinson have a motto of "travel without compromise" which seems to fit our mood, too, and our eye's been caught by a trip through currently-not-too-dangerous Kenya.
We should mention that this gang is obviously obsessed with horses, and riding features in a lot of their trips; this one in the Maasai Mara is no exception.
Tags: Adventure Travel / Africa Travel / Lonely Planet / Bicycling / → All Tags
Cycling Through Africa: Not So Lonely
We don't mind pedaling around town or even between wineries, but there are crazier cyclists out there who want to ride the entire length of Africa. So many, in fact, that the annual Tour d’Afrique race is attracting more entrants every year, along with a bunch of riders who know they're not going to win but want to make the expedition at their own (slower) pace.
The 2009 race kicks off in Cairo on January 10 and the plan says cyclists should arrive in Cape Town--ten countries, 7,375 miles and four months later--on May 9. It includes sections along the Nile, crossing Ethiopia's Simian Mountains and skirting the Kalahari and Namib Deserts. Presumably there will be time for giraffe and zebra spotting.
This time around, the Lonely Planet publishers are entering a team which even includes one of its original founders, Tony Wheeler. We hope they're lugging a few of their increasingly-heavy guidebooks along to give them a thorough road test.
Related Stories:
· Tour d’Afrique [Official Site]
· Lonely Planet coverage [Jaunted]
· Africa Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: birzer]
Tags: Where Is / Guinea Travel / Africa Travel / → All Tags
The Republic of Guinea
The president of Guinea, who took power in a coup d'etat in 1984, has died, and a military-led group says it's taking over for him. It's hard to say which is worse, the president who mismanaged the resource-rich country for more than two decades or the shadowy group that, at least according to one report, is rolling tanks toward the presidential compound in the capital, Conakry.
About the size of the UK, Guinea is one of the many former French colonies in Africa, and it was the first to gain complete independence on October 2, 1958. Most of the population is Muslim, and French is still the primary language. Flying in? You'll likely land at Conakry International, which Air France, Brussels Airlines and Royal Air Maroc all serve.
Though the country only has a limited amount of coastline, you can get a beach fix at the Iles de Los just a short ferry ride from Conakry. Inland, hiking and waterfall hunting are the things to do.
Related Stories:
· Q&A: Guinea [Guardian]
· Military Group Claims a Coup Attempt [NYT]
Tags: World's Wildest Bungee Jumps / Bungee Jumping / Celeb Travel / Africa Travel / Bungee-Jumps-Map / → All Tags
A Royally Good Jump In Uganda
Choosing a scenic spot like the Nile River in Uganda sounds like a good way to combine a death-defying plunge with some camera-happy moments.
The Nile High Bungee (five out of ten for the pun) has a platform about 140 feet above the river, and jumpers can choose to use a bungee cord long enough to dip them in water or just to dangle above it.
Perhaps the most famous tourist to ever jump here is Prince William who did a tandem bungee jump with a mate here a couple of years back. Wills only jumped once, but if you do two jumps ($75) then you get a third jump within the same 24 hours for free--just in case you haven't got the whole jumping thing out of your system by then.
Related Stories:
· Nile High Bungee [Official Site]
· Wills Takes a 140-Foot Bungee Jump [Daily Mail]
· Uganda Travel coverage [Jaunted]
[Photo: kscshearon]
