DAY 384 We both had a bad nights sleep, everything seemed to disturb us, not just the camper next to us that went to the camp kitchen at 11.30 and turned the TV on and left the volume turned up, that did not last for long, but then he went back to his camper and could not have made more noise if he tried. It was a warm night so most of the mosquito nets were exposed, a nice cool breeze started which was very pleasant but at some point turned into a fairly high wind then the wind turned quite [View Full Entry]

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Monday, November 23rd We spent the morning visiting the friendly people at the Karamea Holiday Park. We’d planned to say hi while we did our washing, but we ended up chatting till well past lunch time. While the washing was going (and between chatting sessions) we quickly popped into town to pick up a few supplies at the grocery store. We returned home with heaps of clean clothing and Talita made yummy cheese and mushroom toasted sammies. We washed down this delicious feed (what the Kiwis in this part of the world call a meal) with a beer which made us [View Full Entry]

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(Day 588 on the road) To get from Alice Springs in the centre of Australia to Adelaide down in South Australia, there are three main options if you don't have your own car: Catch the bus ($180, 20 hours), catch the train ($150, 24 hours), or catch the plane ($60, 2 hours). Well, that wasn't a difficult decision since I have long given up my self-imposed no-flying dogma, and so a mere two hours later Adelaide greeted me with temperatures of around 13 degrees. Nice in a way after 40 degrees around Ayers Rock, but freezing nevertheless, especially as I haven't [View Full Entry]

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The last 10 days have been incredibly tough. To say it has been one thing after another would be an understatement, so much so, that I need to do this over two blogs. Our impression of Vietnam has been for ever tainted by the previous week or so and unfortunately will not go down as one of our favourite places. Vietnam is a marmite country. You either like it or you don’t. Everyone I have talked to is 50/50 on it. Some love, others hate it. I don’t like marmite. The bus we got out of Saigon was nothing short of [View Full Entry]

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So… The United States. We count ourselves as being fortunate enough to say that we’re well travelled, so how come the USA or the North American continent for that reason have managed to escape our foot fall? To be honest, there was never anything we wanted to see that was high enough on our ‘list’. There were certainly places on the list, just not high enough to justify spending the money getting there. Faye is pregnant again and was just about to enter her third trimester so it was the perfect time to travel, I’m also being made redundant from work [View Full Entry]

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November '09: Newsflash: The Big Boy is tying the knot again - third time lucky, you might say. And this could be my chance to redeem myself - to offset the mordant humour and persecution of Namibian over the previous blog entries. It could have been, but where is the fun in that?… That terrible old curmudgeon ( my dear old friend, Namibian) is settling, once again, for suffering until death. Well, it shouldn’t last long, then - six more birthdays is the time span I estimate before expiry. Anyway, Namibian is finally making an honest woman out of long-standing partner, [View Full Entry]

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With Mbabane offering nothing in the way of information or things to do, I decamp to the nearby Ezulwini Valley. The valley is home to the Swazi royal family and features a mountain that apparently inspired the "Sheba's Breasts" in Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines". A further nod to Rider Haggard is in the fact that one of the nearby restaurants is called Quatermain's. My days in Ezulwini see a climate shift from cold and cloudy to sunny and absolutely roasting - the latter is apparently more seasonal. Having heard about a hostel with a swimming pool in Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, [View Full Entry]

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I left Shimla by bus, and endured a cramped but beautiful 11-hour bus ride through the hills and down to the relatively low-lying state of Uttaranchal. I was heading for Rishikesh, a small town on the holy Ganga river. Rishikesh is a major pilgrimage site for Hindus, being near the source of the Ganga and therefore home to several major temples. It is also known in the west as the place where the Beatles came when they went all weird and spiritual, and today attracts western tourists in their droves, who come to meditate, practice yoga or simply soak up the [View Full Entry]

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