Cards Take Winter Holiday Journey

My name is Peter Card. I am currently teaching and living in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This is the sixth correspondence to share my adventures living abroad. I am truly amazed at where life has taken me. I hope by sharing my experiences it encourages you to pursue your dreams as well. God Bless!

We (my wife Cheryl and I) chose to travel to both Kenya and Ethiopia because our flight to Ethiopia was scheduled to have a layover in Kenya so it just made sense to spend a few days there as well, as the price of the ticket is almost exactly the same when you have a natural layover (a trick I discovered when searching for flight deals as I now do quite often).

To my surprise, despite its close distance to the Middle East, many countries in Africa are still not as visited as much as the Asian and European countries that are slightly farther away. Even my colleagues who travel quite often were a little intrigued when I told them we would be traveling to Kenya and Ethiopia for the winter holiday. Africa is considered more of an exotic location than some other continents although this is more myth than reality in many cases.

Although Kenya and Ethiopia share a border, they are very different in many ways. Kenya is not nearly as old of a country as Ethiopia, as Kenya was developed as a railway was being built from the coast of Africa to Lake Victoria. Because it is not as old as some other countries, the capital city of Nairobi has in many ways the look of a modern city with high rise buildings and many American and European stores. Outside the city because of its relatively young age as a country, it has beautiful undisturbed lush green vegetation and teems with wildlife.

KENYA

Most visitors to Kenya come for wildlife safaris to see the Big 5 in their natural habitat: elephant, leopard, lion, rhino and buffalo. While we were interested in this as well, we did not want to spend days combing the countryside looking for them. Instead we chose to visit the National Park which is located just outside the city where we were able to see lions, buffalo, zebra, several varieties of deer relatives, giraffes, birds, and rhino.

While we did not see the elephant in the wild, we visited an elephant rescue center where orphaned baby elephants are kept until they are ready to be released back into the wild. We also visited a giraffe orphanage where you were able to feed the elephants by hand or mouth to mouth if you were brave enough (one of us was).

ETHIOPIA

Ethiopia was very different from Kenya. While its major city, Addis Ababa is almost twice as large in population as Nairobi, it does not have nearly the American presence as Kenya does. We did not see one American restaurant in the entire country while we were there, which is a first of all the places we have been.

Ethiopia is actually the only African nation to never have been ruled by another nation and is regarded by many as the birthplace of all civilization. It has a rich and deep history and we visited the founding place of the city as well as museums featuring relics of Haile Selassie, the ruler who is considered the founder of modern Ethiopia.

Outside the city we visited rock-hewn churches carved into the sandstone as well as the Portuguese Bridge that was used to cross through the mountains of Ethiopia where we had lunch on a cliff.

I’m glad we were able to visit both of these countries as they each revealed fascinating aspects of Africa.