Blogs from Africa - page 2969

Just a quick entry, we are so busy trying to fit in all the things we want to do before we leave. We came to the terrible realisation that we only have 8 days left and none of us are ready to leave. Life is difficult in many ways but for us as a family it has been really special. Anyway.... the dry season is really with us and the difference is amazing. We have not had any rain to speak of for about three weeks. That may not sound long but the effects are already very visible. The lush and green countryside has already turned brown with the only green being in the treetops. It is amazing how quickly everything has become dry. Though the worst is very definitely yet to come, everyone keeps saying ... read more

A short plane ride took me to the beautiful city of Port Elizabeth where I hired a car and road tripped to a little village called Port Alfred to meet Emma for a long weekend. (A lovely teacher friend from York who has moved out here with her South African boyfriend Steven) On the way I saw a wild heard of zebras! Very excited I turned the car round only to find out they were normal black and white cows. bummer! Port Alfred was a beautiful little seaside village where we enjoyed eating/drinking out. It was very strange though cos all our friends in the village were white in the pubs and there was a fair amount of racism. I asked one chap who told me "If you find a white man in this town who ... read more

At November 8 of 2003, our illiterate and now sadly re-elected president, made the following comment: "I'm surprised because if you arrive in Windhoek, it doesn't seem like you're in an African country. It's so clean and beautiful." I know he was extremely stupid making this comment, because to begin with, it offends all the African countries at once. But, in a way, we couldn't stop ourselves of doing the same comment when we arrived in Namibia. So Clean, so developed. The Caprivi strip, up north, beside its stunning beauty, wasn't much different from the other places we have been before (We still had to be careful with one crazy wild hippo that was running around our camping side at night). But, once we crossed the red-line (A fence though the north of the country that ... read more

Within three days of arriving in Africa we had already seen more amazing animals than we thought we might see in three months here. Kruger really deserves its reputation as one of the best wildlife parks in the world. We arrived in Johannesburg in the middle of a fearsome rainstorm and were too exhausted after the long flight from Sydney to do anything other than flop at our hostel. We didn't have any plans beyond that. Over breakfast we got chatting to a guy from Cape Town, Roger, who had picked his sister Pam up from the same Sydney flight and was planning to drive to a village near Kruger that morning if we felt like joining them. An offer too good to refuse and the beginning of a marvellous friendship! Roger is a tour guide ... read more

Just after we went to bed the hunter came back with a grasscutter he had caught. We all went out for a look and even dared to touch it. lol... read more