Eastern Africa in Two Months
We are done 🙌! Our Eastern African trip is finally/sadly over. Let’s try to close this chapter.
Memories
I am amazed by all the things we’ve been able to do. For most of it, we did not have any plan. I wanted to do the Maasai Mara and I read about this lava lake. And that was it. We kinda just lived day by day. Here is a quick list of the things we did.
Kenya 🇰🇪
- City tour of Nairobi,
- Biking in Hell’s Gate National Park,
- Hiking the Longonot volcano,
- Walking on the shore of lake Naivasha,
- Walking around the Mahinga crater,
- Hiking Mount Kenya,
- Safari at the Maasai Mara,
- City tour of Mombasa,
- Chilling at Diani beach,
- snorkeling in Wasini,
- Scenic flight over the south coast of Kenya
Uganda 🇺🇬
- Sipi Falls,
- Boat tour at Murchison Falls National Park,
- City tour of Kampala,
- Habituation with the chimpanzees in Kibale,
- Top of the world viewpoint,
- Chilling at lake Bunyonyi,
- Coffee tour in Kisoro,
- Canoeing at the lake Mutanda.
Rwanda 🇷🇼
- City tour of Kigali,
- Hike the Bisoke volcano,
- Chilling in Musanze,
- Walking on the shore of lake Kivu.
Democratic Republic of Congo 🇨🇩
- Trekking Gorillas,
- Hike the Nyiragongo volcano (lava lake).
Culture?
Long story short, it was a disappointment. Apart from tourist shows, good luck finding something authentic. Although, we did not stay long enough in DRC where it seemed more traditional. Here we could hear people singing in the middle of the night (quite frightening the first time I have to admit 😅).
Money Money
If you did not read the previous stories, you could think that this trip must have costed us thousands. Luckily for us, we managed to stay below $3000 (per person) 👍. Here is a quick layout of our spendings:
- VISA $300
- Cash (most of the food and stuff) $900
- Activities $1500
Roughly, for $1 in sleeping we spent $2 in activities. My princess drew two possible conclusions: It’s either we could have had fancier places to sleep or do less activities.
As you can see from the magnificent picture, I do not count the flight nor the other things common to the rest of the travel.
Sleep
We almost always managed to have a decent private room for less than $15. Since we are traveling as couple, it was cheaper to go for smaller BnBs than hostels, as most dorms have prices around $10 per person.
Keep your love one close. As our dive master used to say.By decent room, I mean clean and safe. But don’t expect hot water all the time for this budget. Also, the room is not always “self-contained”. Meaning with toilet and shower inside. We just splurged us with a $40 room once.
Eat
We both like food 😋. Those who know me could confirm that. And we also like to discover new things and tastes. So we ate in the street almost everyday. If you stick to the local food, you can eat good for less than $5 per meal. Here as well, we did maybe one or two extra going to restaurants. The food itself was not very varied… I read lots of things about the amazing cuisine buuuut… It’s quite basic.
Isn’t It Too Hard?
Our goal is to experience as much as we can. Missing some zeros in the bank, we have to choose how to spend our budget. If we would have only been traveling in Eastern Africa, maybe we would have been less cautious.
Being on a budget does not mean that all we ate, and our places to crash were crap. Not at all. If you are ok to live simple, it’s all good. Of course, sometimes it’s annoying to wait hours in a bus to do just a few kilometers. Or after a though day, when you would like a hot shower or a bath, and you end up having a shared bathroom with cold water 🥶. But it’s also part of the experience.
No the real trouble comes from the planning/looking into things. The country we visited are known to try to rip off tourists. It’s really the case. But there is always a better/cheaper way around the corner. You just have to have time (a lot), patience (more than a lot), and start digging.
But I am upset about the activities. In my opinion this 2 to 1 ratio is wrong. Most of the thing we did would have been free or super cheap in Europe (even in South America where I am writing from, spoiler 🙊). So yes, it’s amazing and bla-bla-bla. But you know what? It’s as amazing as everywhere else in the world. Why the hell should we pay thousands!?
Sum Up
It was great! Traveling on a budget here was tough and such an experience. Eastern Africa is said to be expensive for tourists, can’t agree more. But you can manage. People there are living on a few dollars a day, if you adopt to their lifestyle, you can do the same. The only exception comes to the activities where you always have a foreigner price (like a times 10).
As always, seeing just a few countries cannot be representative of a whole continent. Still, we have a good overview of the area in my opinion. As for the rest, I guess we will have to come back to explore more 😃. But time is running and we already moved to South America! We started with Peru 🇵🇪. But no more spoilers 🙊.
