Blogs from Africa - page 2693

So, the movie Hotel Rwanda is based on Hotel des Milles Collines ( a thousand hills because Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills). But, it is one of the swanky hotels in Kigali and has received new found success and popularity after the movie, kind of wierd, I know. But, they have free live music and karaoke by their pool on thursday nights and I think I may be attending. It is strange that this hotel is one of the most populat places in town, as a hotel and as just a hang out place (they have a pool) because of everything that has surrounded it. But, if you think about it this is one of the most hopeful places in the city because this is one of the only places where there weren't ... read more

It was an Easy trip. I met a guy named Easy, a dude named Marc, someone named Christian who goes by Harry (harry Christina or something like that), and some random older people. On the way Easy and I, easily met an Aussie from Melbourne named Hellen . At first glance I thought she was a Swiss-German, however after allowing us to sit, it was clear that she was some type of Anglophone. Good times. The plane went fast. Our plane planted itself in the middle of the desert, without much more than a couple buildings and some little sand mountains. Pascal is the coolest guy in the world. We took a comfy bus about 40 min away to the “port.” All the boats were tied to a piece of land by two ropes. We ... read more

It was a relatively short drive from Dundee to the Central Drakensberg. We decided to do a day walk from Monk's Cowl to see the Nandi Falls. At only 6km and claiming to be relatively flat (relative to what we'd like to know!) we thought we'd have a nice gentle stroll. We must be seriously out of condition from sitting on our bums in an overland truck for weeks, because it was hard going at times and we are used to walking much further at home. The sun came out and it was rather hot walking around the mountains, especially charging up and down lots of steps. Jase was so hot he kept taking his t-shirt off, although he had to repeatedly put it back on as he was scaring the other hikers. The view of ... read more

Plan.. what plan..? that got thrown out the window along with my brown (no it was never red) hair color. So after my last blog the journey to Victoria Falls lasted a whole of about quarter of an hour. And instead of visiting the world famous, most incredible display of nature, not to missed etc etc Vic Falls... Heather and I found ourselves in the messed up, panic station, politically and economically unstable Zimbabwe. Ooopsie Here’s how the journey changed route. Carrying our 30kg rucksacks stampering km's down the main arterial out of Lusaka with one hand flicking the road for a ride and the other shooing away people trying to sell crap Heather and I managed to conquer the art of hitch hiking. Just when we were re thinking our strategy, and considering to ... read more

Q: What happens when you stick a visual thinker with a language learner and stick them in a car for twelve days? A: This blog Instead of detailing every single thing we did on safari, Shelley inspired me to trade in the pen for the watercolor pencil and draw mind maps (an activity we do with kids at work) of our days on safari in Africa. Admittedly, it's much better than trying to cram in every last detail about 12 days of events and instead, coming up with a visual rendering of our journey, even if it does look like it was drawn by a fifth grader. My initial plan was to have very little text, almost none. Just a few bullet points for highlights with the official stats of the journey (they are now ... read more