Monkey See Monkey Travel

Not to be too harsh, but I can describe The Gambia in one sentence: it’s a charmless, rusty, dusty, crumbling trash heap that would be absolutely pointless to visit were it not for the birds. Lots of Europeans, particularly Brits…

On our second day in The Gambia, we assembled with four Brits who were scheduled to join us on our trip upriver, and getting to know them turned out to be the best thing about our Gambian experience. Today’s guide, also…

Upon hearing the word Uganda many people think of Idi Amin and his terrible regime, but the days of political turmoil are thankfully over. However, I did notice on the map that several areas were marked “roads here may be mined”…

Flying by bush plane to Fort Portal, the landscape as we flew south grew greener, more tropical and more mountainous, and we landed on a grass strip on a hilltop where a crowd of locals had gathered to greet us. This is banana…

We drove to Queen Elizabeth National Park, crossing the equator near the mining town of Kasese surrounded by cotton fields, and drove up to the rim of what looked like a mini Ngorongoro Crater, stopping the jeep frequently to check out new birds. The…

Continuing south towards the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, we stopped off first at the Maramagambo Forest to check out the famous bat cave with its colony of roosting fruit bats. The cave was warm and smelly from piled-up guano but we…

One evocative sound during our time in Marrakech was the haunting call to prayer. Half a dozen mosques’ minarets poked above the rooftops within earshot of our riad, so each day before dawn and at sunset when we were in…

We headed to the garden city of Marrakech, a bustling burgh of pink walls in the shadow of the High Atlas Mountains. Our final four nights would be at another riad in the medina, the Riad Kniza, which had a…

Leaving Skoura the next day, we drove out of the desert and into the snowy High Atlas Mountains. The road twisted impossibly up and over the Tichka Pass at 2,260 meters. Dennis refused to sit in the front seat because he…

We drove on the next day through canyon country into the dry mountain town of Tinerhir and on into the Todra Valley rich with date palms and clustered houses following a shallow river. The Todra Gorge is a long, twisting canyon…