A Moment of Zen in Zanzibar

Enjoy this tranquil moment to take you away for a moment.

Nungwi in Zanzibar is beautiful. The perfect place to sit back and relax your aching muscles after climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.  Eat plenty of seafood, catch some rays and go snorkeling. You won’t want to leave this island paradise. Get out of Stone Town and head to the northern tip of the spice island. Nungwi is chillaxin’, beautiful and serene.  Only a couple hours by minivan. Accommodations in Nungwi, vary from luxury beach hotels with swimming pools to basic bungalows. Restaurants range from trendy bistros, huts on the beach, cafes and small family run eateries.

Zanzibar has something for everyone….

You can catch a plane from Kilimanjaro Airport and be in Zanzibar in just a couple of hours.   We summited the Mount Kilimanjaro that morning, caught a shared bust to the airport, bought our ticket and were on a flight to Zanzibar a half hour later.  From the most brutal place on the continent at Kili’s Glacier Peak, to the most pamper me destination I can think of in the world. Zanzibar is Paradise on earth.

Africa. A land of extremes. Extreme beauty is what we see today.

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Travel for Months on a budget. Part 2, Staying There.

Ok, so we have given you a little step by step on how to get to your destination and what to do when you get there in Travel For Months on a budget part 1. Now it is time to time to learn how to stretch your money to stay at your destination longer.

Like I said before,  The Lonely Planet is our book of choice to find the accommodations that you need, we carry that with me wherever I go. You don’t have to follow their advice to the “T”, but The Lonely Planet is a great guide to give a hand.

Here are some tips that have worked for us in the past.

You need to really plan out your route.  In Central America, we made the mistake of not having a plan and ended up going through Belize 3 times paying for Visa entries way more than we should have.  Know where you want to go before you leave and plan the route that you want to take.  If you are traveling to several countries, make sure that you choose a direct path so that you minimize border crossings.  There are often entry fees, Visa’s etc, so the most direct route will save your money.

When choosing your hotel, know the area that you want to stay in and have a price in mind.  We aren’t young students, so we like to stay in the mid range hotels of our guide books.  Budget accommodations are always a little too rustic for us, so we like to step it up a bit.  In places like Asia, Central and South America, mid range is still very reasonable.  When you choose your guesthouse, you can barter.  If you are staying for longer than a couple of days, you can always ask for a discount.  And be sure to see if breakfast is included.

Staying at one place for awhile will also stretch your travel budget.  We spent 11 days on Gili Air in Lombok Indonesia just because we loved its chill atmosphere so much.  I am not saying give up your travel plans to save money, but if you are traveling for a long time, it is always nice to sit back and relax for a while.  When you stay at a place for an extended period, you get to know the locals better, make some friends and discover hidden gems.

Local bus in Egypt

Travel Locally.  Local buses are way cheaper than tour buses and they can be a far more fulfilling experience.  To give an idea, when we were in Bangkok.  The local boat on the Chao Praya River was about 9 baht.  The tourist ticket was 30.  Baht is 30 to 1.  So the same route is $1 for tourists, 33 Cents for locals.  If there is a savings of 60% on all transportation, you will save a lot of money.

As usual, eat where the locals eat.  You can guarantee if a place is filled with locals, the food will be fresh and delicious.  You will not only eat authentic food, you will also not be paying inflated tourist price.

Local Markets are great to shop at for food

Book your tours and treks on site.  When we climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kinabalu and the Pinnacles, we booked our treks the day before at the parks.  Kilimanjaro only cost us $330 for our guide, meals and support at Kessey Brothers Tours.  We paid the park entry fee right at the gate to the park of $660.  So we climbed for less than $1000.  For all treks we shared the fees with people as well.  Flying into the Pinnacles of Gunung Mulu, we met another couple that wanted to do the trek as well, so we decided to share the cost of our guide and the boat fees.  Same goes for both Kinabalu and Kilimanjaro. We literally saved hundreds of dollars by booking on arrival and sharing fees with other travelers.

Be flexible.  When it is time to move onto another country and you have to book a flight, shop around.  If you are able to get a great deal that day, take it. If you have to wait a few extra days. Do that.  When we were flying home from South East Asia, we saved hundreds of dollars because we were willing to fly the next day.  The flight a week later was way more money.

Chose ATM’s and cash over travelers cheques. I am not saying don’t bring travelers cheques, it is always good to have a variety of ways to pay.  But, ATM’s offer a better exchange rate, and if you take out the maximum amount of money, you only pay one withdrawl fee with the added bonus of having local cash.  As a Canadian, if we use USD or Euro’s we always end up paying exchange twice.  If we are in Asia, and need to exchange USD into Malaysian Ringgit we lose twice.  If we take directly out of our account, we only have one exchange rate from Canadian to Ringgit.

When shopping, barter hard.  Be nice, but barter.  Rule of thumb, cut in half what they are asking and then start the game from there.

Always settle on a price for taxis, rooms, guides etc. before accepting their services or paying for anything.

Some great sites we have found to help make travel easier is

wotif.com for cheap accommodation

airaisia.com and skyscanner.net for flights

There you have it, some advice and tips for saving money while traveling, it is pretty straight forward. If you are willing to work a little harder you can save a lot of money.

Let us know if you have any other advice or tips yourself, we would love to hear of them.

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Mount Kilimanjaro-How Hard is it to Climb?

I have to clarify a giant misconception about Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is not easy! We were climbing in a group of 7 strong individuals who had just finished cycling 4500 km in tough conditions from deserts in Sudan, to altitude in Ethiopia and we all agree, it was one of the most physically challenging experiences of our lives. However, also one of the most exhilarating. I am happy to say that we all made it to the summit. Congrats to Rod and Dave P, Connor, Bent, Kristen, Dave and Me! What a great fun group.

To give you an idea of what we were up against, there was another group of 22 people at our camp during our descent and only 9 reached the summit.  We past several parties on our way down after reaching the top who were throwing up, giving up and wanting to go on, but had no chance of making it because they just had too far to go. Bent saw the rescue stretcher being carried up as well, (don’t know what happened there), and we all saw this one guy literally being carried up by his guide. Crazy!

Dave and Deb on Mount Kilimanjaro Trek

Dave conquering mount kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa

I have to admit, we were a pretty solid group and our guide Coleman had great confidence in us. Leaving camp at midnight, we pushed slowly but steadily on through the night,  reaching the summit at our precise goal of 6:00 am.

It wasn’t a cake walk though. At about 5500 metres, we all started feeling it. We would gasp for air and collapse to the ground trying to catch our breath during what short breaks we had. A couple of us had diarrhea, Rod had an out of body experience, both Dave’s were literally falling asleep as they were walking and we all just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. But we carried on. Coleman would only give us a limited break, probably knowing that we wouldn’t get back up if we stayed for too long.

Reaching the summit was a quick and unglamorous event. It was -24 without the wind. We all decided that it must have been -40 degrees with the windchill. We snapped some photos by the sign as our hands quickly froze and then we headed back down ASAP.

Here is where the work began. We had already been climbing since midnight and we had 2 1/2 hours down to camp 1 where we were allowed a 1 1/2 rest before we had to pack up and head down again to our final camp at 3000 meters, another 3-4 hour hike. Unbelievable!

Deb tackling mount kilimanjaro's western breach in Africa

The day before our summit wasn’t easy either. We gained a lot of altitude then. We scaled the side of a cliff and were pretty sure that this was where quite a few people must fall. We walked for a total of 5 hours, ate dinner and had a fitful sleep while we waited for our 11:15 pm wake up call. So really, as Rod said, it was a punishing 30 hours.

The descent was steep and slippery. I must have fallen 15 times. The fatigue was huge and mis-steps happened a lot. Descending is hard. Hard on the knees, the calves, the thighs and the mind. You have already had the glory of summiting so you are so over the climb now and just want it to be done. We finally made it to our tents by 3:30 and were ready to collapse. OK, most of us collapsed, Dave P and Connor had some celebratory drinks with our guides.

15 1/2 hours of solid pain and fatigue. Literally one of the hardest things I have done in my life. We were joking on the way down that we must look like we didn’t make it. All of us just walked in a Daze. Even when our guides congratulated us, it was more like a quick “Oh, thanks, right, I just summitted” I was too worried about taking a nap and getting rid of my cough and trying to find a rock to crap behind- because yes, I was one of us who was suffering from diarrhea.

Sunrise over the glacier of Mount Kilimanjaro

We relaxed in camp for the night and had a little champagne and wine to celebrate and we were asleep by 8:00 pm. The last day was a quick walk to the park gate where we had a beer at 9:45 am. bought the T-shirt (“Just Done It” Kilimanjaro) and hopped in the van back to Moshi.

Yes it was hard and we all said “never again” but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dave and I are sitting at home all nice and cozy one day in the future forgetting all of the pain and agony and we say to ourselves…”Hey, let’s tackle another one.” Even now as I sit in paradise in the beautiful island of Zanzibar recounting my experience, It doesn’t seem like it was that bad. I am telling everyone, that it was amazing and no problem, they could do it. My legs have already recovered, I enjoyed my pina colada upon my arrival and waded in the turquoise waters as fishing boats rocked gently on the waves. Ahhh, Kilimanjaro was magical and now we feel like we could conquer anything.

But first, we must chill. Hakuna Matata (No Problem)

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