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You are here: Home / Archives for Destinations / Africa

Malaria: Our Decision

August 4, 2010 By Jillian

If you think something small can’t make a difference in life, think of a mosquito. One sleepless night, ruined picnic or one sore arm, a single mosquito can be the cause of so many of life’s displeasure’s. Unfortunately for travelers and many in the developing world, it is a little more serious. Mosquitoes carry two serious vector borne diseases: dengue and malaria. While there’s no vaccine or cure for dengue, there are chemical prophylaxis to help prevent malaria.

We’ve gotten a lot of questions over the last 16 months about malaria medications and we’ve asked plenty ourselves. Here’s how we came to our decision.

To drug or not to drug, that is the question.

The ever growing global discussion on vaccines, use of pharmaceuticals and immunizations is alive and well in the world of travel. We met several long-term backpackers in South America who took no prophylaxis against malaria. On the other hand, we didn’t meet a single traveler in Africa not using a chemical prophylaxis. To put that in perspective consider this: approximately 90% of deaths due to malaria occur in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We began researching our options and speaking with our doctors regarding the different drugs. We wanted to take a chemical prophylaxis for a few reasons: 1) we didn’t want to get malaria, 2) we believe that the potential side effects of the drugs are less damaging than the disease itself and 3) we did not want to contribute to the spread of malaria across regions. Spreading Malaria is no joke, if we were to be infected with a particular strand in one region we risk spreading that strand to another region when we travel there. In some countries malaria accounts for over half of hospital admissions and public health spending. We try to be responsible in our travels and for us we didn’t want to take the chance that we could carry a new strand to a previously unaffected region.

We based our decision on where we would be, the potential side-effects and the convenience of the drugs. We knew we didn’t want to carry a daily drug with us, the storage space aside, its never good to show up at a land border carting around boxes of pills. Also, we wanted to take a drug that’s effective in nearly every region on our itinerary. I wish I could say my regular doctor was helpful in leading the discussion about the options, but she unfortunately was not. Although Danny’s doctor was more willing to educate himself on the possible side-effects and have an informative discussion with him, I think the situation I faced is probably more normal. If your regular doctors is unfamiliar speak with someone at a travel clinic who can guide you through the options.

Besides taking a chemical prophylaxis, we also bought an insecticide treated mosquito net. Although most places we slept in had mosquito nets, it was good to have our own for the few places that didn’t.

The Options

There are several chemical prophylaxis options on the market. You should discuss with your doctor which one is best considering your time frame, travel locations, risk of transmission and medical history. No matter your choice you should always take precautions against mosquito bites, especially dusk to dawn when transmission occurs.

Chloroquine
COST: inexpensive
FREQUENCY: weekly
AREAS: Central America
OUR EXPERIENCE: 5 months in Central America, no problems.
 
 
 
Doxycycline
COST: inexpensive
FREQUENCY: daily
AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa
OUR EXPERIENCE: None. Doxycycline was impractical for us, it upsets Danny’s stomach and we didn’t want to carry 365 or more doxycycline pills each. We’ve met several travelers taking this and the most commonly side effect seems to be sun-sensitivity. An added benefit of Doxycycline is that because it is an antibiotic, it also helps when you come across a questionable meal or two. If we had trouble with Lariam this would have probably been our backup.
 
 
Lariam (Generic: Mefloquine)
COST: expensive
FREQUENCY: weekly
AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa
OUR EXPERIENCE: Lariam is probably the most controversial anti-malarial on the market. We took Lariam for several consecutive months in South America, Africa and Asia and have experienced no negative side effects. For us this was the most practical choice: weekly, effective and not as outrageously expensive as Malarone.
 
 
Malarone
COST: very expensive
FREQUENCY: Daily
AREAS: South America, Asia and Africa
OUR EXPERIENCE: None. We’ve met other short-term travelers taking it. Most frequent complaint we hear is the cost. For us this drug was impractical because of cost and frequency; too many pills to carry and too expensive at that.
 

Immunity?

Several promising vaccines are under development around the world, however none has yet been proven to develop immunity to the disease. You cannot build up immunity to malaria by drinking the local water. Seriously. People with sickle-cell disease or carriers of the trait have a substantial protection against malaria. Because the disease causes a deformation of the red blood cell, the malaria causing parasite attached to the red blood cell is destroyed before it has a chance to reproduce.

Filed Under: Africa, Central America, Featured, Guides, Headline, South America, Travel & Planning Tagged With: medicine, travel&planning

Tobias Index: Africa & Levant

August 2, 2010 By Jillian

It’s taken us a little while to get this list together, but here’s our Africa Index. Interested in a statistic we haven’t listed here? Just ask!

Countries Visited: 15

Visa cost, in USD per person, of visiting those countries: $595

Most expensive visa process, in USD per person: $250 (Sudan)

Countries where boarder guard waved his rifle at us and told us to go back: 1

Time spent in months: 5.5

Nights spent sleeping on a bus: 3

Airplanes flown (for a side trip): 1

Airplanes boarded where our name or ticket was checked: 0

Total e. coli infections between us: 1

Number of times e. coli was fun: 0

Number of laughs at Danny’s expense due to e. coli: immeasurable

Total gastro-intestinal lab tests: 1

Number of weekly malaria tablets consumed: 46

Number of crazy dreams, psychotic episodes, or other side affects: 0

Time, in years, until the Red Cross is interested in having our blood: 1

Number of times “Dr.” Jill diagnosed us as having malaria: 5

Number of times we’ve actually had malaria…so far: 0

Number of languages we learned how to say ‘hello’ in: 7

Visitors from home: 1

Boxes sent home via mail: 3

Boxes destroyed via mail: 1

Tears shed: Unknown

Photos taken: 9,182

Amount of space, in gigabytes, needed to store our African photos and videos: 40

Weight, in kilograms, of an Elephant’s penis: 25

Elephants, in heat, who charged our car: 1

Leopards spotted: 2

Cheetahs spotted: 3

Lions spotted: 50+

Dorky references to Lion King: Immeasurable.

Distance in km, when driving directly, from Cape Town to Cairo: 12,000

Mileage in km, driving around South Africa, put on our 6 week rental car: 12,000

Number of bribes requested of us: 2

Number paid: 1

Number paid with money: 0

Number of nights spent with bed bugs and/or fleas: 1

Percentage of nights spent killing mosquitoes before bed: 50

Sleepless nights spent listening to wild animals immediately outside the tent: 3

Most expensive campsite: $55

Length of time we went without a real shower: 4 days

Cheapest pint of beer: $0.05

Highest Temperature we saw: 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit)

Really big mountains we were happy to have climbed: 1

Number of really big mountains we intend to climb again: 0

Longest time we waited for our Gmail Inbox to load: 30 minutes

Filed Under: Africa, Headline Tagged With: index

Country Guide: Egypt

June 27, 2010 By Danny

Egypt may be a touristy place but it is also extremely backpacker friendly with a rather large selection of budget accommodation options in all major tourist spots as well as 50% student discounts at most attractions with a student ID, including an ISIC card.

Transportation: Getting up and down the Nile is best done by overnight train. Egyptian security conditions, or at least the Egyptian Government’s opinion of those conditions, is always changing meaning that other options may or may not be available. For planning purposes best to expect to use one of the more expensive trains to travel between Cairo, Luxor and Aswan. Sinai is connected to Cairo by daily bus service.

Aswan: Aswan does not hold the same ‘must see’ status that Luxor does. If you have extra time by all means it is worth including as it does hold some fantastic sites but if you’re a bit short then you won’t miss out too much. The Temple of Isis is truly magnificent, if not completely rebuilt in the modern era, and the region is covered with various Nubian artifacts and restored temples from when Nubia was downed under the rising waters of Lake Nasser. A trip to Abu Simbel could be a way to top off any trip to Aswan, and might even be your entire reason for going, but choose wisely as most trips depart Aswan at 3am, leaving you a bit tired for your big tour. Get to Aswan from Cairo via either overnight train or a short flight. Transportation options to Luxor will likely include either bus or train; at the time of writing, caravans are no longer used by the police along this route.

If visiting Aswan from Luxor you will also have the option to book a Nile cruise to take you to and from Aswan. These typically are all inclusive and run anywhere from $50 to $500 per person per night, quality naturally varies immensely.

Luxor: The ancient city of Thebes in all its glory. This city just bleeds Egyptian history from the impressive Luxor Temple right downtown to the incredible Karnak temple that even played a role in a James Bond flick. Just outside of town are the valleys of the Kings and Queens (home to some rather impressive tombs and more tourists Disney) as well as more temples than you can shake a stick at. The options abound and you could feel quite satisfied after only a couple of days, but even if you spent a full week you probably couldn’t see everything. Lodging options abound, as to tour packages so be careful when booking.

Cairo: A big and bustling city but you probably came here for more than just the shwarma… you came here for the Pyramids and the Egypt Museum. Unless you are the first in line at the pyramids there isn’t much reason to getting up early as they will be packed from 8am on till closing. We have been told the extra money one must pay to enter the pyramid’s is not worth it so if you are considering this, do think twice. The Egypt Museum is rather impressive to look through but if you’re the type who likes organization and the ability to learn something you will either need to hire a guide or be prepared to be disappointed.

Sinai: Dahab and Sharm el Shek are the two main attractions on the coast. Both offering all you could ever want in the form of beach and underwater excitement with some of the best diving available on the planet. The difference between the two is that Sharm is where the nice hotels are and Dahab is where the backpackers go. Tours to Mt Sinai can be booked from either location but for our money it is better to base yourself in St. Catherine’s and climb Mt. Sinai by day rather than to take the package trip and climb by night…cheaper as well. There is also a ferry service across the Red Sea but we were told that the bus through the canal zone is actually faster, more reliable, and cheaper.

Onward Travel:

Israel: The only land border open to US citizen and most others without prearranged visas, this is straight forward but can be nerve wracking if you have any other Arab visas in your passport.

Jordan: The ferry to Acaba is straight forward if not always running late. Be prepared to spend the day dealing with this two hour crossing. If you want to get to Petra the same day you should prepare to put a group together while on the ferry to share a private tax.

Sudan: The Aswan ferry to Sudan runs a bit more according to schedule but it is long and uncomfortable. Choose a spot on the port deck (Northbound) if planning to sleep outside so that the morning sun doesn’t hit you dead on.

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Filed Under: Africa, Egypt, Featured, Guides, Middle East, Travel & Planning Tagged With: countryguide, isic, tours

Report Card: Budget for Africa

June 21, 2010 By Danny

Africa was shockingly expensive. We expected that the touristy activities would be expensive but we underestimated the degree to this expense. True, eating in Africa can be cheap, lodging too, but that’s about where the cheapness ends.  We definitely could have spent less here, but we wanted to do the “big” Africa things: safari, Kilimanjaro, mountain gorillas.

IMGP3300A reminder of how all this works. Every dollar amount represents how much the two of us, combined, spent on the average day in a given country. Airfare to and from the continent (very expensive to get to Africa) is included in transportation in the totals line and aren’t applied to any specific country. As always, visa fees are included in miscellaneous. For more information visit our spending page.

A couple of generalizations about Africa before we go into detail about each country. Most people in Africa do not travel long distances, that means transportation exists only for people of means and people with money. In most cases the buses we paid for in Africa cost more money than their counterparts in Latin America but were less comfortable, more crowded, and more commonly broken down. The roads were awful meaning more trips to go shorter distances and very few routes had service available at night. Then the expensive fees (Park entrances mostly; to see wild game and hike Kilimanjaro for example) are extremely high….These fees basically annihilated any sense of “budget” we had for Tanzania and Uganda. Visas also add up, we spent $645 each in visas.

IMGP7805South Africa: We rented a car and took that through the entire country, Swaziland, Lesotho, and even Namibia. Having a car did increase our transportation costs but seeing as we traveled 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) I still think the expensive car worked out to be far cheaper than public transportation would have worked out to be. Additionally the backpacker friendly Bazz-Bus would have been even more expensive and greatly restricted where we could go. Having a car also allowed us to carry a tent and our own food, drastically reducing our lodging and food costs. Even still this was not a cheap country and prices felt very similar to prices back in the US. Internet was also expensive but the presence of a domestic middle class who enjoys their own national parks just as much as the foreigners means that those parks, and all our activities are that much cheaper.

IMGP3541Mozambique: We went here for one reason….to hide from the hoards of X-mas while soaking up rays of sunshine on a nice beach. We went there, stayed put, and even managed to hitch a ride back with some South African’s we met while there. Scuba diving did us in on the overall budget but most everything else was pricey on account of our location on a tourist beach. The expensive visas to enter didn’t help the budget either.

IMGP8855Namibia: Namibia was expensive because we spent the better part of every day in the car, driving and burning gasoline, and then sleeping in National Parks. On one park, Etosha, camping with our own tent cost about $55….quite absurd by our standards. This was an extremely expensive country to travel in with huge fees at the attraction you’ve already driven hundreds of miles to see. Even still, having our own car saved money and our little 2 wheel drive car handled the dirt and shale roads without a problem.

IMGP9845Zimbabwe: We managed to Couchsurf here in two of the four places we visited, joining our host and friends for a trip to Great Zimbabwe and traveling to Victoria Falls on our own. Traveling and staying with CSers helped our budget out immensely, especially with lodging. http://ishouldlogoff.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.phpTransportation was still high where it was on our own, quite high actually, but it was quick and efficient when the police weren’t looking for bribes. Fees at Victoria Falls were significant but not awful. Our largest expense here was the purchase and shipment of beautiful soapstone artwork that was pulverized before reaching the US. 🙁

IMGP4188Malawi: Super cheap country and the only expensive thing here was the Scuba we did in the crystal clear waters of Lake Malawi.  We had a great time here and really enjoyed the chance to relax a bit. The reason miscellaneous is high is that we had to cross through Mozambique to get to Malawi from Zimbabwe and needed to purchase new visas; we applied those fees to Malawi rather than Mozambique.

IMGP0297Tanzania: Everything here is low except for activities. While on Safari and while climbing Kilimanjaro 100% of our food, lodging and transportation were covered in the overall fee for these activities. The true cost driver of these things were the park entrances (about $700 each just to climb the mountain in fees) so they throw our averages off a good bit. If we ignore the $100 visa fees and these activities we are closer to $90 per day, still high but in line with the rest of Africa.

IMGP0498Uganda:  Seeing the Mountain Gorillas is an expensive activity, period. (At least the gorilla pictures and videos are cool)You have to pay $500 per person just to see them and then because you have to book that permit with an agency you need to either pay their fees on top of that or buy their transportation package…due to a series of events we ultimately had to do both of those things. The rest of the country is super cheap though, one of the cheapest places we’ve been to and still a pleasure to travel in. Bummer that the waters of the White Nile are due to be dammed and there won’t be any more Ugandan whitewater in the future.

IMGP4472Kenya: Things could have been cheaper here but trying to keep to a schedule, treating ourselves nicely on the island of Lamu, and taking advantage of the presence of my cousin who could fly home from Nairobi with gobs of souvenirs led to us spending far more than necessary. There really isn’t anything wrong with any of that though… At least the corruption makes for a nice travel story.

IMGP1192Ethiopia: This is a very poor and a very cheap country. There is a reason it features prominently in hunger porn commercials and South Park jokes. We treated ourselves nicely while staying in Addis Ababa and even still this was our cheapest country of the entire trip thus far. Traveling in the backseat of an overland car rather than paying for buses probably contributed a bit to low transportation costs but not as much as moving slowly and relaxing a bit while waiting for visas to be processed.

IMGP2679Sudan: This is a cheap country, cheaper to travel here than in Ethiopia. We spent ten days and spent $88/day, that means $880 for the whole ten days. Five-hundred of that was paid to the government for visa fees and foreign alien registration. That means it really cost us about $38/day for two people. Everything was very cheap and Sudan had the cheapest gasoline we’d seen anywhere until we entered Egypt. A very filling meal could be had for two for less than one dollar but that didn’t stop us for cooking for ourselves when we were bush-camping in the desert.  Traveling with over-landers allowed us to do this and this country would have been a good deal more difficult without our friends in Kaspuur, the landy from London.

IMGP4915Egypt: We expected mass tourism and we absolutely found it here but were quite surprised at how budget friendly Egypt was. The sites were not outrageously priced to begin with but then we were given a 50% discount on pretty much everything thanks to our ISIC cards. Comfortable lodging was cheap, private, and generally included breakfast. Had we taken the train from Luxor to Cairo this would have been more expensive than driving but it would have saved two days of travel, one night of lodging, and a very annoying police escort.  There is a lot to do in Egypt and truly something for everyone and ever budget. Seeing the pyramids and then climbing Mt. Sinai were absolute highlights. We passed on the beaches and diving of Dahab because we really didn’t feel like beach time.

Jordan: This isn’t really Africa but we’ve grouped it in here as part of the ‘Levant.’ It was an expensive place and we made it worse by paying for expensive transport to save a couple of days getting between the border and Petra. Additionally, the boat to Jordan from Egypt was not a cheap excursion. This was our 29th country and the first where a unit of currency was worth more than one US dollar.

Israel: Just like Jordan, this is a super expensive place and really is not backpacker friendly. We spent 100% of our time visiting with friends and staying with them as well so our price figures really aren’t worthwhile to anyone traveling there independently. If you do plan to travel here with a backpack be prepared to pay prices that would be considered average to high in Western Europe or the USA.

Filed Under: Africa, Featured, Guides, Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: budgeting, money, spending

Blogging from Africa

June 14, 2010 By Danny

Keeping this blog alive through Latin America took minimal effort beyond just writing up the posts. We might pay a few extra pesos for a hotel with wifi where we could upload photos overnight or need to spend a few hours here or there sitting in an internet cafe to make sure things were running smoothly, but all and all it was easy to find decent internet connections and the electricity was pretty regular. Africa however was a whole new ballgame.

Starting in South Africa we were shocked to find some of the worst connection speeds we’d experienced on this trip. Ecuador, Bolivia, and even Guatemala, all had better connections than what we generally found in South Africa. In Latin America we used flickr as a backup for all our photos, but in South Africa at more about 10 minutes per photo to upload and with thousands of safari and animal pictures, this just wasn’t possible. We were forced to sort through our photos before uploading, spending more time on the computer and with fewer photos backed up online.  At one point we uploaded only three pictures from all of Namibia.

We struggled to keep the blog going as our site is rather “heavy” to load on a weak connection and as you may remember we posted lots of articles without pictures. After a full week passed with no blog posts we began to keep a ‘time-lag’ on the blog of about three weeks, so that we’d always be ahead of the game and have plenty of time to get them online.

These efforts proved to be good ideas but still, we found difficulties. It wasn’t until Nairobi that we found a connection that could match what we were accustomed to having in Latin America. We managed to get all our Tanzania and Malawi pictures uploaded and get ahead on the blog again. The whole country of Kenya has pretty strong internet, thanks to a cable that comes from the Arabian Peninsula.

Ethiopia, I expect, will take the cake as the worst internet of this entire trip. We called it the black hole of internet.  We’ve yet to visit the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, but fully expect that nothing will be as difficult as Ethiopia in terms of internet access and stable electricity. On several occasions we waited as long as 15 minutes, watching as our email box loaded, ultimately giving up without seeing it. This was in the capital, Addis Ababa, which also serves as the diplomatic center of the entire continent. We did find better internet outside the capital, but it was still relatively awful.

With Sudan, and then Egypt, we were again benefiting from a fairly stable internet connection and in Israel we suddenly felt as though we were at home with fully western connections.

Here are some tips we’ve come up with to overcome the hurdles of writing in a developing country:

1) Work offline. We write all our posts offline, edit, format and prepare them for upload before actually getting online. We try to upload and schedule an entire week’s posts at once so that the blog is covered in case we lose electricity or can’t find internet. This saves us time and frustration at the internet cafe, in many places you are charged per minute.

2) Plan B. Although we prefer to connect with our laptop, we save our posts on a data key as backup in case the laptop can’t connect.

3) Stock Photos. We uploaded pictures to our server to use as “stock” photos for thumbnails and even posts to tide us over when the connection speeds aren’t great.

Looking for more tips?  Here’s a great article from Matador.com on blogging in the developing world.

Filed Under: Africa, Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: blog, challenges, internet

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