Responsible travel

 

Aguaplano only suggests trips and tours with local agency. It is a way to achieve a beautyful yet true experience helping people who are working hard, in difficult condition in their own country or miles and miles away from home.

Tanzania – Mto Wa Mbu

Cultural Tourism programme

culturalIn Mto Wa Mbu, near Lake Manyara National Park, there is a local organization called The Cultural Tourism Programme, who’s been active for several years. Expert guides from local villages can guide the willing travelers through a walking tour into the villages to learn about the local culture of the many ethnic group who inhabit the surrounding area. This is a nice way to know directly the people who lives and work here. You can visit schools, handicraft laboratories, private homes, rice fields and bananas plantations, and at the same time give a little contribution to the local economy. It is a unique and great experience for whoever wants to learn Africa’s nature and culture, too.

http://mtoculturalprogramme.tripod.com/

Tanzania – Arusha

Il Maasai Expeditions ldt.

Loth MaasaiTheir motto is: “We are Proud of our Nature”. Loth e Praygod are pure Maasai , living in Arusha, wich is the ideal base for all the tours in the astonishing Tanzanian parks and for trekking the Kilimanjaro. They have founde d this little but extremely efficient travel agency using only local workers putting their deep knowledge of the culture and territory at your service. To travel with them it’s an experience that goes beyond the perfect service and constant attention you wil get, because nobody like them, born and raised in Arusha can show to you all the subtle details of what this marvellous and fascinating country is. You will find extraordinarily nice people, and more than a mere “driver” or “guide” you will have ” friends proud of letting you know how beautiful Tanzania is.

Trip Description. From the stunninglly beautiful Tanzanian Parks to the knowledge of the local culture, Travelling in Tanzania offers a way to get closer to these lands that really are the cradle of all mankind. Form the endless horizons of the savana to the deep green intricate forests, from the stunning basin of the NgoroNgoro crater to all the people who are struggling to achieve a better future for their children , a trip with IlMaasai Expedition tries to tell you about their beautiful Africa.

www.ilmaasai.com

Nicaragua – Granada

Centro Social Tio Antonio

Tio Antonio

The Social Centre Tio Antonio NICARAGUA is a Non-governmental-organization (NGO) devoted to make health, education and social care projects to people in need. Founded in 2007, work specially with children, women, and very poor families.

The social centre is in the city of Granada, old colonial city located off the coast of Lake Nicaragua. It´s one of the most tourist places of the country, though it has a very high percentage of people living in poverty. The association manages a nice hostal and a little shop in Granada, Nicaragua

www.hostaldorado.com

www.tioantonio.org

www.tioantonio.blog.com

El Salvador – Suchitoto

La Casona

La CasonaIn the beautiful and charming town of Suchitoto, El Salvador, you can choose to overnight at La Casona, Hostal. There’s bar and a social centre which is run by local guys with passion and ability. La Casona’s mission is to sustain and show the history and the local culture and to use alternative tourism as a means to change the wrong perception of El Salvador and Suchitoto’s recent bloody facts. La Casona’s project is born thanks to the efforts of a group of people who are deeply concerned with Suchitoto’s history and its tranformation, in harmony with the human and natural development.

www.lacasonasuchitoto.org

 

kenya-tanzania_I_26

This is a post to suggest Tanzania to all our traveller friends  as a possible trip destinations in the near or far away future. That’s because January and February are amongst the best months to visit this country together with June to October

Why Tanzania? For a lot of reasons. Extraordinary people, many different cultures and ethnic group to understand more about this immense continent – Africa, some of the most stunning parks and natural reserve of the world (Serengeti, Ngoro Ngoro), the chance of going easily off the beaten track to some remote destinations (Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganica), and, if you’re physically fit, the opportunity of climbing Kilimanjaro, being at 5,895 metres (19,341 feet) the tallest mountain of the whole African continent.

And then there’s Zanzibar Island, wich is gorgeous, but don’t fly straight there. this would be an offence to the magical African Skies, to the bright red dusty tracks, to the Bantu, Maasai, Sukuma, Nyamwezi, Chagga, Gogo, Kutu, Mwera…

If you want to travel helping the local economy avoiding the ugly western tour operators take a look at our page Suggestions – Responsible Travel. You will find detailed description of the local agency (our friends in Arusha) – www.ilmaasai.com – they could help you. Don’t forget to read info on the Mto Wa Mbu local association. It’s a beautiful project that we have personally experienced.

kenya-tanzania_X_17

This is a post to make you dream, in these rainy February days (at least in our town – Turin).

Suggestions

Images – Pictures

Maps and Itineraries

From the world: info & links

 

Info on visited countries

 

flags_of_IndonesiaINDONESIA


www.tourismindonesia.com - Tourism Site

www.thejakartapost.com – Best Newspaper

 

flags_of_Fiji-IslandsFIJI


www.fiji.gov.fj – Governative Site with a lot of informations

www.fijitimes.com -The historic Fijian Newspaper

 

flags_of_SamoaSAMOA


www.samoa.travel – Turistic portal

www.samoanews.com – Newspaper Samoa-Style!

 

flags_of_PeruPERU


www.peru.info - Institutional Site

www.elcomercio.pe – Founded in 1839

 

flags_of_BoliviaBOLIVIA


www.bolivia.com - Good information portal

www.eldiario.net - Bolivian Newspaper

 

flags_of_IrelandIRELAND


www.discoverireland.ie – Official touristic web portal

www.aranislands.ie - Info on Aran Islands

 

flags_of_TanzaniaTANZANIA


www.tanzaniaparks.com – Official site of National Parks

www.kiliporters.org – Responsible Trekking

 

CENTRAL AMERICA

flags_of_GuatemalaGUATEMALA


www.guatemala.gob.gt - Institutional Site of Guatemala

 

flags_of_BelizeBELIZE


www.belize.gov.bz – Institutional Site of Belize

 

flags_of_El-SalvadorEL SALVADOR


www.presidencia.gob.sv - Institutional Site of El Salvador

 

flags_of_NicaraguaNICARAGUA


www.intur.gob.ni - Official touristic web portal of Nicaragua

 

flags_of_HondurasHONDURAS


www.honduras.com – Info Site of Honduras

 

flags_of_Costa-RicaCOSTA RICA


www.casapres.go.cr - Institutional Site of Costarica

 

flags_of_PanamaPANAMA


www.presidencia.gob.pa – Institutional Site of Panama

 

dgflagflat_sm WALES

www.walesinfo.com – info about Wales

 

flags_of_VietnamVIETNAM:


www.chinhphu.vn – Institutional Site of Vietnam

 

MOROCCO:

 

www.maroc.ma - Institutional Site of Morocco


 

Beers!

 

In every trip, and in every country we’ve visited, we tasted different local brewed beers. We strongly encourage you to do the same. We’ve listed all of them here.

Some are good, some are passable, others absolutely gorgeous like Samoa’s Vailima.

The uniqueness of beer is that you can find it everywhere around the world, but this product has not been (yet) surrendered to the global market logic, so in every country you go, you will find its unique brand. Great!

Enjoy!

Bintang - Indonesia

Bintang - Indonesia

Pacena - Bolivia

Pacena - Bolivia

Arequipena - Peru

Arequipena - Peru

Cusquena - Peru

Cusquena - Peru

FijiBitter - Fiji

FijiBitter - Fiji

Vailima - Samoa

Vailima - Samoa

guinness - Irlanda

Guinness - Irlanda

Kilimanjaro - Tanzania

Kilimanjaro - Tanzania

Safari - Tanzania

Safari - Tanzania

Serengeti - Tanzania

Serengeti - Tanzania

Gallo - Guatemala

Gallo - Guatemala

Belikin - Belize

Belikin - Belize

Pilsener - El Salvador

Pilsener - El Salvador

Tona - Nicaragua

Tona - Nicaragua

imperial - Costarica

Imperial - Costarica

Balboa - Panama

Balboa - Panama

Halida - Vietnam

Halida - Vietnam

Hanoi - Vietnam

Hanoi - Vietnam

Champion - Scozia

Casablanca - Marocco

Thb - Madagascar

Tanzania 2006

 

Kilimanjaro and other stories

kenya-tanzania_I_04

Tanzania – Kilimanjaro

Well, after months of training in our mountains (the Alps) we’re ready to face the big mountain: the Kilimanjaro. From our point of view (we’re not mountaineers, only trekkers) it’s a lot. We’ve been preparing this adventure for months, we have choose to do one of the least followed of the 7 routes to Kilimanjaro: the Rongai Route.

It’s a 6 days trek starting from a small village near the Kenya border. Our guide Gabriel is great and so are the guys we hired from the local company  ilMaasai Expeditions (you can’t do this climb alone, by law you have to hire guide and porters). The first three days are quite relaxing, if you’re at least a bit fit. After 4000m /13100 ft of altitude, things are different, the nights are cold, and there’s only a tent for shelter. There’s nothing technical about this climb, not even ropes or crampons, it’s just very long, we’ve walked 6-8 hour a day to get to the last camp at 4800m. / 15738ft. for the last night before the ascent to the crater.

Then, from there, we started at midnight for the serious day: it’s about 1100mt / 3280ft ascent to the top of  Kili, then a 2000mt / 6500 ft. descent di Horombo Hut all in one day (it’s about 14 hours). The ascent seems infinite, it’s bitterly cold (to the top there were -20 celsius) , but in six hours we finally got to the top, and man, i cannot describe what we saw from there, the dawn from the crater is magical, although you can only stay there for a few minutes, it’s too cold, and so we left that fantastic vision behind and started descending fast.

A word about Porters

It’s been a beautiful adventure, thanks to the guys who brought us there, carrying everything including water up there. They deserve a better pay, some of them weren’t wearing  proper clothes or shoes for that altitude and coldness, so if you go there, please bring with you some extra jackets or boots (something you don’t use anymore). You can donate it to this association www.mountainexplorers.org. They volunteer on raising funds and clothes to ease the job of this guys that carry 20 kilos of gear or more somtimes for a dollar a day.

After Kili, we went to visit the National Parks of Tanzania : Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti. The pictures explain better than words the magnificent things we’ve seen, these are really the last wild areas were you can see planet earth as it would probably looked thousands of years ago.

Then we left the organized tour and proceeded from Mwanza on the Victoria Lake by bus toward south to Shinyanga and then east by train (a terrible train!) to Kigoma on Lake Tanganica. In Kigoma we finally found the real Africa: in town there was only another white person except us. Our intention was to go visit the Mahale Mountains National Park, which is one of the last reserve where you can see the Chimpanzee in the wild. But we wanted to go by boat and not by plane (far too expensive), but we made some miscalculation on the time we needed, so we had to change our minds and head to Zanzibar for the last part of our trip : relax!

In Zanzibar we stayed in a beautiful bungalows on the south coast (the least crowded) for 4 days, then we went to Stone Town for a brief tour and finally back home…

Africa is a special, special place. It catches your soul like no other place… so as you will see in the next year we had to return to see our friends there  and those unbelievable skies, African Skies

Here’s our:

Map and itinerary

Pictures of Tanzania

Map and itinerary – Kenya/Tanzania

 

map of kenya tanzania

30 august 2007 -  from Turin to Milan by car – hotel near the airport

31 august 2007 – British Airways flight – Milan – London – Nairobi, Kenya

1 september 2007 – from Nairobi to Masai Mara National Park – around the park by car

2 september 2007 – around Masai Mara National Park – Masai village

3 september 2007 – from Masai Mara to Nairobi by car – from Nairobi, Kenya to Arusha, Tanzania by bus

4 september 2007 – from Arusha to Tarangire National Park by jeep

5 september 2007 – from Tarangire to Serengeti National Park by jeep

6 september 2007 – around Serengeti National Park by jeep

7 september 2007 – Serengeti National Park – to Ngoro Ngoro National Reserve in the evening

8 september 2007 – around Ngoro Ngoro National Reserve – to Lake Manyara in the evening

9 september 2007 – around Lake Manyara National Park

10 september 2007 – Mto Wa Mbu – village tour – back to Arusha

11 september 2007 – around Arusha (market – school – town)

12 september 2007 – around Arusha and Moshi – Marangu – Kilimanjaro’s Gate – dinner in Arusha with our guide in a local restaurant

13 september 2007 – from Arusha to Nairobi by bus – British Airways flight in the evening – Nairobi – London

14 september 2007 – flight from London to Milan – from Milan to Turin by car

Pictures Kenya-Tanzania

Kenya-Tanzania – notes from the journey

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