Blogs from Africa - page 2

Today has been so eventful I really don't know where to start. I guess I will start this morning. Leslie (my roomie) and I walked down to the market, I wanted to buy a couple of things. She had to leave for an ocean safari after 30 minutes or so, at which point every guy in the market bombarded me. They need to eat, feed their kids, they are my friend, they make good price....omg. It went on and on. And yes, I bought. I also ran away, down the road to Fatimas, a sort of beach bar/restaurant. Two guys followed me, but when I shook my head they left. I guess they didn't want to get the Fatima staff upset by hassling their customers. Fatimas is nice...a lovely place to sit and just watch the ... read more

Carmen and I got off of the plane at 10.45am, I had never felt so hot in my life. The sun was so bright and i could feel my skin sizzling straight away. We walked through security and the guard gave Carmen a frisk search. She was clear and we made our way. Wed tried to hail a cab but other passengers from the flight took all them. We were waiting for 20 minutes for the taxi company to send one out, so we just walked. On the way to our hotel we saw a lot of the beautiful features of the islands capital. The locals were very friendly and welcoming to us and showed us around and even walked us to the hotel. When we arrived we said good bye and then gave them all ... read more

Morning! Yesterday we travelled on a felucca to Philae Temple which is an island which has three temples on it. One roman, greek and egyptian. Its amazing to see how big they are and the detail of the carvings is awesome. Even after thousands of years u can still c the quality of the craftsmanship. The whole site actually needed to be moved piece by piece from its original location due to the danger of flooding from the nile. The whole process took 8 years. The heads of the egyptian kings had been ruined by the french or british i think. They thought that if they destroyed the holy sites of:the local egyptian religous sites that they would become christians. After this we went to a market. We just bought some water n snacks. We have ... read more

May 16-22 Central Kalahari Game Reserve Penduka Safaris - Mobile Safari Richard writes: Early morning starts (up at 6 AM and away at 7 AM) were the normal for this safari. The temperature at dawn kept us in warm fleece jackets until 9 AM and by 11 AM we we putting on sun screen in 30 C heat. The blue sky has no clouds horizon to horizon, dawn to dusk. This is late fall in the Botswana. The central Kalahari is very, very dry so the plains are brown and the grass is sparse. Rivers are on flood from rain in Angola but it is all underground by the time it reaches the Kalarhi. Wildlife congregates each at their own time around water holes from deep pumped wells powered by solar panels. We see some dry ... read more

We set off for Tarifa, both now on F800GS, via the superb A-355(?) which swooped around the foothills of Marbella, winding slowly through its descent of the hills. As we approached the coast you were rewarded with pristine vistas of the med, dropping away far to your left in an azure blue sky and you could clearly see Gibraltar sat up proud and arrogant. Once we hit the coast motorway there was less interest until it again climbed near to Tarifa and at last you could see Africa looming as close as the Isle of Wight. Surely even Vince’s stomach would hold for that? Err no. We messed up the ferry times so had a 2 hour wait at the dock, but finally the catamaran got underway. Once Vince’s yawn rate exceed more than 2 a ... read more

hey hey! Yesterday we went to visit the egyptian museum which has over 100 thousand artefacts. Tutankamen wasnt as famous as some of the other pharaohs however his collection of treasure that was buried with him has been preserved and kept together. He had three massive rooms of treasure. It makes you wonder if the more famous tombs of pharaohs like ramses ll hadnt been piliged how much treasure there must have been. The most fascinatingpiece was Tutankamens famous mask which was solid gold and perfectly hand crafted. Next we were off to see the great pyramids of giza. The sheer size of them is overwhelming, to know that no modern cranes were used during construction. Each block depending on its size was approx 2.5 tonne. Shama got to go into one of the pyramids. The ... read more

I was asked to go to Senegal for my work, which was to find out about how weather forecasts are used by agriculturalists and local forecasters. So I boarded a plane to Lisbon, with a connection to Dakar. The flight out was fine apart from North West England’s finest flatulent Scouse Stag party on board (replacing Manchester’s trumpiest between said city and the airport on the train) and the loud middle class family with screeching brats. The plane arrived close to midnight and then the fun began. Dakar airport is full of hustlers, including the staff. Outside was confusing, dark and hassle. My transfer driver to the hotel disappeared and I was getting hassled for changing money by people who appeared to be connected to the hotel and they insisted I had to change before getting ... read more