http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/CA/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from CA en-us Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:14:17 +0000 Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:14:17 +0000 BonjourWe dragged ourselves away from the hustle of Cotonou on Tuesday and in two legs first stopping at Abomey are now in Parakou.The journey north facilitated by the now mandatory Peugeot 504 was without hassle by African standards and we soon remembered how different things are up here as the thick forests petered out into harsh quite barren scrubland. Things are definately heating up w http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Benin/East/Parakou/blog-105588.html Got up today at 630 late for this part of the world and spent our first full day in the chaotic city of Cotonou and I can safely say that I love it.We arrived yesterday and were dropped by our Peugeot 505 taxi along with the 8 other passengers in the ultimate nightmare location with a backpack. Stood on a traffic island with roads on three sides it all bulging with battered cars and a million http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Benin/South/Cotonou/blog-101630.html So we left Ghana a while back now and after entering Togo on a riverbed type road where the delapidated border posts were filled with mountains of corn on the cobs don't ask I don't know we have headed south through Togo and then crossed at a slightly more uptempo border into Benin where we now reisde in the eastern most town and capital of Porto Novo.Togo was very small but very beautiful t http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Benin/South/Porto-Novo/blog-101078.html Well we have finally managed to prise ourselves away from the relative comfort of southern Ghana and are now residing in the hotter dustier less developed north of the country with our route on Sunday taking us east across the border into Togo.We made it here on the Yapei Queen a ferry which for the last 40 years has been the only boat to undertake the journey from the south to the north of Lak http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ghana/Northern/Tamale/blog-94782.html Since we were with you last and we are well aware that was an almost obcenely large amount of time we have done the followingBeen away for 100 nightsCrossed from Burkina to Ghana in a dugout canoeGot shouted at by Ghanian immigration officalsBeen in the road for 20 hours in one dayWaited 5 hours at the side of a dusty road for a liftWalked with a travelling salesman complete with a sack of http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ghana/Greater-Accra/Accra/blog-89980.html We have continued south west and after some fruitless searching for elepants near a small town called Boromo we have arrived in Burkinas second city Bobo.The biggest change is how the land looks. In what seems a ridiculously small distance the savannah which appeared around Ouaga has been replaced with lush forests and vegetation so thich you can barely see a few metres off the side of the road. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Burkina-Faso/Hauts-Bassins/Bobo-Dioulasso/blog-80832.html Well we succesfully made the crossing south and are now settling into a new city and a new country. Contrary to out expectations Burkina seems to be somewhat richer than Mali. Can't really find out if this is true or not but the paved roads reliable electricity and the fact that Ouaga Burkinabe capital makes Bamako Malian capital look like an oversized shanty town.We've enjoyed our time here http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Burkina-Faso/Centre/Ouagadougou/blog-79204.html Well we made it to Timbucktu and it only took 3 days by boat. Lying in the same position as our our slow moving heavily laden old pinasse chugged it's way up the River Niger to the sounds of radios blaring children crying and mosquitos buzzing.Timbucktu is a town which has been eaten alive by the desert. A guy we were talking to spoke mournfully of a time fifty years ago when the place was in th http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Mali/North-West/Timbuktu/blog-77265.html We safely arrived into Bamako international airport a 2 storey little building at the convenient time of 230am on Sunday. Luckily for us we met a French guy during the eight hour wait at Casa airport. He was going to visit his girlfriend who has been living in Bamako for some time. By some crazy chain of events we ended up at her house that night and now are renting a room in the next door apar http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Mali/District-of-Bamako/Bamako/blog-74047.html Don't be fooled by the exotic name this is not a city where Humphrey Bogart sits in a bar muttering of all the gin joints in all the world......et cetera. I haven't seen the film and I even have a mental picture what Casablanca is about smokey charm and men with strong jawlines.Casablanca is not about this. It is a sprawling filthy sweaty African city which is a product of that all to frequ http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Grand-Casablanca/Casablanca/blog-72642.html We spend a relaxing five days in Essaouria recovering from the mountain experience of woe. Essaouria was a really fab place busy but relaxed with a combination of artists and rastas who made the whole town have a very chilled out feel.Spent our time sitting and watching and learning to walk again. In our time there we managede to swim in the seam eat freshly caught sardines flood our bedroom ha http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Doukkala-Abda/Safi/blog-70166.html We took the train from Rabat to Marrakech and were sat with four art collegepiglets from the UK which made the journey long and tiresome we remediedthis by sleeping with our heads against the grubby glass for the 4 12 hourjourney.I pretended to know where the hotel was and dragged Alice with a heavybag several kilometres through the streets of Marrakech eventually we founda lovely little room http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Marrakech-Tensift-El-Haouz/Marrakech/blog-67707.html We arrived in the little villiage of Imelil a quiet place nestled in the foothills of the Atlas mountains. It was a strange place with a lot of men sitting around doing nothing but it was clean quiet and far removed from the tourist and Lonely Planet trails.Our room was cheap but was also cold damp and slightly depressing with no one else staying around the rather large courtyard. We spent th http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Souss-Massa-Dra-/Imlil/blog-68821.html Salaam and welcome to Rabat the capital of Morocco. According to the Lonely Planet this is a place where you come to undertake essential business and rest from life on the African road. We have found it to be more of a place where you can see how Morocco really works how people make their money and how rich and poor collide in a city deviod of the tourist scene that dominates both Fes and Marrake http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Rabat-Sal-Zemmour-Zaer/Rabat/blog-66827.html Greeting to all from Fez. So since you last heard from us we have left the little town of Chefchaouen and ventured to the big city of Fez. They are two quite different kettles of fish as the populations indicate Chaouen 45000 Fez 1.3 million.We arrived by bus which took about 6 hours and took us from the heights of the Rif Mountains down to the rolling farmland that seperates the Rif from the A http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/F-s-Boulemane/Fes/blog-65773.html BonjourWell we have safely arrived in Morocco and have ended up in a small town called Chefchaouen which is high up in the Rif Mountains.We started our journey with an EasyJet flight to Malaga on Sunday then we spent a night in the Hotel Zeus in the delightful city of Malaga. We left quite late on the Monday morning and walked to the bus station to catch the midday service to Algeciras.We were su http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Morocco/Tangier-T-touan/Chefchaouen/blog-64884.html For personal reasons we have had to delay our departure by two weeks. All things being well we will now leave the sunny shores of the UK on Sunday 4th June.Chris http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Hampshire/Alton/blog-59947.html So here it is the final day at MegaLab USA. I can barely believe it's actually come round and in just over two weeks we'll be leaving the familiarity of the UK jetting off to sunny Malaga.It seems like such a short time ago that it was the deepest bowels of winter when on some days I couldn't have wanted to leave more. Alice is right that we got the whole timing the wrong way round we should hav http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/Wales/Cardiff/blog-57087.html The contract on my house expires on the 10th May 2006 I've calculated that's 55 working days from now.I've put that into perspective for myself55 times I will curse my phonersquos alarm then press snooze105 incidents of dropping my 1.05 fare into the exact change only machine on the bus153 angered moments of pressing AltF4 to get Windows 2000 to respond220 bad white coffees consumed from the http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/Wales/Cardiff/blog-42159.html