Adventure Africa – a dream come true
When I was younger I really wanted to visit Australia. And I still do. I had wanted to visit the country long before I started travelling. It was my childhood dream. So why was my holiday of a lifetime in Africa?
To be honest, I don’t remember when the idea of visiting Africa occurred to me for the first time. But I remember wanting to go there for some time. Sometimes I have these moments when I look at the map of the world or browse travel websites and see all the places I could go to. And I get carried away. A few years ago I was reading about Africa, its beautiful national parks, magnificent scenery and abundant wildlife. And I was daydreaming about going there and crossing the whole continent from north to south or south to north passing all the amazing places on my way. Back then it was just a dream that I thought would hardly ever come true. Well, I didn’t know I would go to Africa even six weeks before actually going there.
When I was thinking about where to go in the summer of 2014, I set my mind on going to South America. I had wanted to go there with my friend Joanna for ages, especially after having seen ‘THE SIGN’ when we were celebrating the New Year’s Eve in Munich back in 2012. We knew what our destiny was. PERU! Because of ‘THE SIGN’. But it took a while before we decided when to finally go there – the summer of 2014. We even took up Spanish to be able to interact with people there. So the plan was to learn some Spanish, book a cheap ticket and enjoy three weeks of amazing holiday in Peru.
But things were meant to change. In the autumn of 2013 I was having a hard time at work. I vividly remember sitting in the office on Friday afternoon, my eyes glued to the computer screen as I was going through the motions of carrying out some mundane reporting tasks. Something was terribly wrong. After more than four years, I had reached a point where I simply could not go on. Or should I say: I DID NOT WANT TO. It was at this very moment that I decided to quit my job. I did not want to be a part of the rat race any more. However, I took my time because I did not want to do something stupid on the spur of the moment. I thought it through over the weekend, but the first thing I did on Monday morning was to call my boss to tell him I was quitting. But why am I telling you this? Because it was the moment when I took the first big step towards making my dreams come true. Not a single dream, but MANY!
And one of those dreams was a holiday of a lifetime. Or the longest trip I have ever had. This is when my plan of going to Peru for three weeks was upgraded to a three-month trip in South America. And I started doing research, reading about places, asking people for advice and more importantly, looking for that cheap flight. My mind was set on visiting Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
But things were meant to change for a second time. After realizing July and August were winter months in South America meaning Patagonia was pretty much off limits, I started looking for other options. Options were unlimited. Canada, the US, Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco. And after having spent months looking for flights, it didn’t look like I was going to South America. It was just too expensive considering I was going to be jobless. I did not want to spend all the money on a flight ticket. It was in the middle of May when I stumbled upon a reasonably priced flight ticket to Africa. It only cost 600 euros. The great thing was that it was an open-jaw ticket meaning I would fly to one country and return from another one. I talked to my friend Joanna who wanted to join me for one part of the trip. She was up for going to Africa. We booked tickets on 25th of May. On 3rd of July, I was going to fly from Munich to Entebbe, Uganda and come back from Lusaka, Zambia. I was psyched. My holiday of a lifetime was about to happen.