Qatar and Muslims around the world have just celebrated the
end of Ramadan with Eid al-Fitr. In Qatar most organizations close for the week
to observe the holiday and it also offers a great travel opportunity for
ex-pats working in Doha. As Kristal and I tried to decide what to do with our
Eid holiday, we looked at some interesting things happening around the world.
We eventually settled on the Great Wildebeest Migration in Tanzania as where we
wanted to spend our holiday.
We spent 4 days and 3 nights on a camping safari with Sun
Splash Safaris (http://www.sunsplashsafaris.com/)
in the Seregetti and Ngorongoro Crater. The safari was incredibly well
organized with a great Land Rover safari vehicle and high quality camp sites at
both parks. The campsite in Ngorongoro even had a group of Zebras that welcomed
us to the site! While we were in both parks we not only got to see part of the
herd of 2 million Wildebeest moving from Tanzania into Kenya, but saw families
of lions, tons of elephants, giraffes, zebras, and more. I would highly
recommend booking with Sun Splash for any safaris in Kenya or Tanzania and we
found their prices to be some of the best available.
After the safari we decided to spend a few days on beach
holiday in Zanzibar. Although we did plenty of homework trying to find out the
best place to stay in Zanzibar, it was hard to decide where to stay on the
island. We ended up choosing a beach resort on the east coast of the island
called Pongwe Bay Resort (http://www.pongwebayresort.com/).
The resort was truly stunning and we got an amazing deal on booking.com for the
room. Pongwe was an incredibly quiet and secluded beach which had amazing views
and facilities. The tides on the east coast are quite extreme and during low
tide it went out hundreds of feet. Even during high tide the water was quite
shallow and didn’t have much for swimming. Our time in Zanzibar was great
because it was an actual vacation instead of the traveling we normally do.
Kristal and I have never spent 4 nights in the same place before as we tent to
move around. Our time in Pongwe was a great end to the summer and left us
feeling refreshed before kicking back into the school year.
So after the latest adventure we are back in Doha and
settling in for the start of the year. Classes start at the end of August and
we will be busy preparing for that. It was an amazing summer spending time with
family and traveling a bit as well. The next adventure is in September for Eid
al-Adha as we take a road trip from Capetown through South Africa!
In addition to photos from the trip we used a GoPro for the first time and put together this short video, enjoy!
