Maggie's Summary

This summer I made so many amazing memories with my family and I am so grateful for each and every experience. I’m going to write about each of the ten countries we visited.

Firstly, we spent a lot of time in Morocco and my favorite city was definitely Chefchaouen. There were stray cats everywhere in Morocco but Chefchaouen had the most. Chefchaouen is known as the blue pearl of Morocco and we saw a beautiful view of the blue houses after walking to the Spanish mosque on the top of a hill. My favorite part of being in Chefchaouen was the dinner we had on a patio overlooking the valley where we were surrounded by kittens the entire time. After seeing so much of Morocco I can confidently say that it was the most diverse in landscape out of the countries we saw. We were in the mountains, the desert, cities, and the middle of nowhere and it was always beautiful.

Next we flew to Egypt where we spent each day sight seeing, we saw temples primarily as well as the great pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. My favorite thing we saw in Egypt was the Valley Of The Kings where we entered the tombs of kings including King Tutankhamen’s and we saw his mummified body. I liked seeing all of the design work that went into those tombs and learning about their discovery. Egypt was very interesting for me because of the ancient history we learned about and saw.

Jordan was our next country which had the best hotel accommodations of our first 4 countries. We went sightseeing in Jordan but we also had activities planned. We went to Petra which was one of our most memorable days in Jordan, the caves and carvings were amazing and I liked the hike we did that day as well. I also really enjoyed floating in the Dead Sea and even though I got the salty water in my eyes I thought that was a very interesting experience. My favorite activity that we did in Jordan was spending the day on a boat where we went snorkeling in the Red Sea. I had a lot of fun that day primarily because I love snorkeling. The balance of sightseeing and activities made Jordan one of my favorite countries that we visited this summer.

The last country we visited before we re-entered Africa was Israel including the Palestinian controlled areas. In Israel we spent the majority of our time visiting churches that served as historic landmarks including the place of Jesus’s birth, crucifixion, burial, and several places he was thought to have lived. Despite seeing all of these religious landmarks, the most powerful part of our time in Israel for me, was crossing the wall into Palestine. I didn’t know what to expect when we were told about the Palestinian controlled territories so when we were driving through a security checkpoint to a city surrounded by a thick cement wall, I was decently shocked. We spent the following few hours learning about the relationship between the people in this community and the Israeli military surrounding the wall outside of it as well as the rights that the people inside did or did not have. That was one of our most valuable experiences in Israel in my opinion because of how much our perspectives grew and how much we came to understand about that specific political dispute.

We started our overland trek in Kenya where we spent two days in Nairobi before we left with our tour. We spent the first day replacing the necessities that were in the luggage we lost before we located and picked up our bags that night with the help of the hotel staff. We also went to a church service on Sunday. We didn’t spend very much time in Kenya but my favorite memory was seeing apes on the side of the road on the way to the mall on our first day because it made me realize how different the rest of our trip was going to be from anything we’d experienced earlier in the trip.

Our first stop on our overland trek was in Tanzania where we spent 10 days. We had our first game drive there in the Ngorongoro Crater and then several more in the Serengeti National park which was the highlight of my time in Tanzania because of all of the animals we saw. My favorite thing to look at were the lion cubs we spotted. We also went to Zanzibar and back  by ferry during our time in Tanzania. We saw Stone Town where we did a city and a spice tour and we also spent time in the northern beaches which was very beautiful. Tanzania was my favorite country that we visited during the overland trek because we were able to spend more time there than anywhere else which allowed us to see so much more of the country and do a lot of fun things.

Malawi was our next stop where we only spent a couple of days, however one of my favorite days of the entire trip was spent in Malawi. We were staying along the beach of Lake Malawi and we spent the day on a walk around the community. We were each greeted by a local along with our tour guide. When the guide wasn’t talking to us I spent my time talking to a 20 year old girl named Jenny, we got to know each other, I listened to the guide, and we were accompanied by children in the community as well. After the walk around the community where we saw where they get water, the schools, the farms, and how and where they make resources like bricks and flour, Jenny taught me how to play the Malawi Bao Game. My family also purchased 2 Bao Boards, paddles for a game, a custom painted map of our trip, and 2 wooden sculptures from various locals. This day especially stood out to me because of the kindness we were shown by the locals and the curiosity of the children in the community.

We were in Zambia next but not for very long once again. My favorite part of Zambia was the game drive we did the morning of our first day there, we saw 2 male elephants play fighting in the river and then later on there were at least 15 more crossing the river including 2 babies, one of which was under a year old. I loved watching the elephants and everything they did was so interesting, it’s safe to say we had the best elephant sightings in Zambia.

We then drove to Zimbabwe, we saw and walked around Great Zimbabwe and then the next day we went on a “Rhino Walk”. All I knew was that we were going to have an opportunity to see rhinos but we ended up learning a lot about them, their behavior, and their risk of being poached. We tracked them on foot after leaving our vehicle on the main road and then once we spotted them we were all relatively surprised that our guide kept walking us closer and closer to them until they were no more than 10 feet away. We watched a male rhino first and then we found a female with a baby whose father was the male we saw first. This was an amazing experience and I was very glad that we saw rhinos after not being able to spot them on any of our prior game drives. We then drove to Victoria Falls and had a group dinner with our tour group as a goodbye. The next day we toured Victoria Falls itself which was gorgeous and very misty, we also walked to the bridge and then had lunch at the lookout restaurant where we watched people zip line between Zimbabwe and Zambia. The next day we went to church with our driver from the tour which ended up being 3 hours long and we had the opportunity to come back after lunch as well. And then after a relaxing rest of our day we flew out the next morning.

We landed in South Africa and got to our hotel which was right across from the Nelson Mandela Square which was very convenient for meals and is also where we got birthday presents for Dagny. While we were in Johannesburg we toured a prison, the current judicial building, Soweto, and the poorest community in Soweto which after seeing a large amount of Africa wasn’t as shocking as it would have been had we seen that first. My favorite thing about Johannesburg were the meals that we had in the square, the food was really good and was more familiar than any of the other meals we had on the trip but just spending quality time with just the six of us was a really good way to spend the last days of the trip.

As excited as I am to be home, I am going to miss spending all of my time with my family and I am so very grateful that I was able to spend so much time with each of them this summer. Naturally, I missed everyone in Denver, but it was so worth it, this summer was such an amazing experience for me and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Thank you to my parents for making this possible for our family and for instilling a love of travel in me as well as giving me an opportunity to spend so much time with our wonderful family.

-Magnolia