Blogs from Africa - page 16

Dear All After a wonderful safari-style experience at the lovely Kudu Ridge Game Lodge and nearby Addo Elephant Park, I bade farewell to the former's very friendly and welcoming owners, and also to a lovely Dutch couple who had just arrived the evening before. While they were driving through Addo and then leaving their rental car at Port Elizabeth Airport to fly to Durban and pick up another rental from there, I was driving this long stretch of the road trip myself. I noted that most people seem to skip this bit out, and had a feeling that this part of my trip would be a bit different - I was not wrong. After having arrived at Kudu Ridge via a very bumpy, long and pot-holed dirt road, I was taking a sealed route back to ... read more

Today we head off on a two day overnight sojourn out into the Sahara Desert. Our guide introduces herself as Ouma, and we meet our travelling companions, a young Dutch couple and a family of three from France. We climb steadily up into the Atlas Mountains as we head south, passing through some impressively thick and extensive cedar forests. Our first stop is at the town of Ifran, the so-called "Switzerland of Morocco". We’re up at over 1,600 metres and most of the buildings look like Swiss chalets; they’ve got steeply sloping rooves which will hopefully stop them caving in in winter when the snow piles up. Ouma tells us that this is the world’s cleanest town. We haven’t been to every town in the world, but I’m still not overly sure about that particular claim. ... read more

We wake up seemingly alive and well … and it even looks like we’re in the same room we went to sleep in, so we appear to have survived the night … unless of course this is yet another elaborate ruse by our would be kidnappers …. We enjoy breakfast in the ground floor courtyard next to the pool and one of the fountains .… well we enjoy some of the breakfast. I’m not sure anyone could eat everything that’s been served up and still be able to waddle out of here - pancakes, roti, flat buns, a massive basket of bread rolls, yoghurt, large bowls of fruit salad, a cup of cheese, olives and scrambled eggs, all washed down with tea, coffee and orange juice. I think I need to go back to bed. This ... read more

Dear All I continue to drive along South Africa's Garden Route, the first leg of my epic Cape Town to Johannesburg adventure, from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. I hit the road again the day after my whale watching trip in Hermanus, and had very much another driving day - I think there will be plenty more of these to come as South Africa is such a huge country, and my trip is not a simple down-the-road one. Fortunately I brought a good mix of songs on my MP3 player which I could listen to along the way - lots of classic US "Road Trip Anthems"! After bidding farewell to my cute and cosy cottage in Hermanus, I drove two hours firstly southeastwards to Cape Agulhas, learning quite quickly not to religiously follow my "Here We ... read more

We discover that the activity of choice for young Tangierians at 5am on Sunday mornings is to tear up and down the main drag outside our waterfront hotel with their hands more or less constantly parked on their horns. At least now we don’t need to worry about our alarm clock not going off. And whilst on the subject of clocks and time, what time actually is it? I’ve got three “devices”, and at the moment they‘re displaying three different times. My iPad’s synced to the hotel wifi, so we think that’s probably right. Our phone company doesn’t do roaming in Morocco, but our phones occasionally detect a network across the water in Spain, and when they do they revert to Spanish time, which is an hour ahead ... and my Fitbit … it’s always been ... read more