Kyoko and I have always wanted to go to Africa. We separately visited the continent before, as Kyoko went to Egypt in 2000 and I went to Morocco in 1997. We were very happy to go to a different country together. We chose to go to Tanzania.
We chose Tanzania because of its natural beauty and the many different types of people who live there. We were also interested to see some of the World Heritage Sites that are there. Tanzania has seven World Heritage Sites, which is a lot for an African country.
The most interesting of the places was Mount Kilimanjaro, which is almost 6000 meters high. We like mountain climbing and knew this would be a challenge. After we went higher than 4000 meters, Kyoko began to suffer from high altitude sickness. Her body began to swell (or get bigger) by about 20%! When we made it to the top, we saw a beautiful sunrise above the clouds.
We also saw many special animals in the national parks of Tanzania. We saw so many animals, and from a short distance. They were not shy of humans. The scariest one was a leopard who came so close to our jeep that I could have touched him.
We ended the trip with some snorkeling and scuba diving around the islands off the coast of Tanzania. The most famous of the islands is called Zanzibar. It was very beautiful, allowing us to see colorful coral and many big fish.
