Clever Trevor

Volunteer Work for the Cheetah Conservation Fund Namibia Arrived 11 May 2008. The journey was fine and dandy. No real hiccups. On the flight between Johannesburg and Windhoek all that could be seen as far as the eye could see when coming in to land was brown, brown, brown. Windhoek Hosea Kutako Airport is on the Trans Kalahari Highway (how evocative is that!?). A worker from the Cheetah Conservation Fund was there to meet me and we picked up a few more volunteers from Windhoek. The Cheetah Conservation Fund is about 40 km east of Otjiwarongo and it took a few hours to drive there from Windhoek. The rondavels where we were to stay were fine and home for the next two weeks; I shared one with a young lad, a graduate zoologist, from Jersey in ... read more

At Lake Naivasha I had a close escape. I'm partially sighted and while I was sitting in the lodge one of the group came in to say that a large hippo was outside. I asked where and was told to look for all the people gathered outside. I wandered outside, saw where the people were gathered and walked along the stone path towards them. Unbeknownst to me (the darkness and the spotlights and the fresh rain made it difficult to see) the path passed a couple of metres away from a very large hippo that was (apparently) standing in front of a hedge. The guards started shouting at me to stand still and began firing off blanks and firework crackers to scare the hippo away and came rushing over to where I was standing. All the ... read more

So an intermission from the southerly direction of my retrospective travel blogs in Indonesia…I decided that I had to revisit Bali after my last visit 10 years ago when I had kidney stones and thought I was going to peg it! So, after 24 hrs of travelling I arrived in Tuban just south of Kuta. It wasn’t very busy but it wasn’t yet the full season. One surprise though was the number of obese Aussies - was it my imagination but were they competing against some Americans for the prize of largest Caucasians?! The day after my arrival I had a complimentary Balinese massage. Never having had a massage before it was a marvellous introduction. Face down looking at a bowl of flower petals, listening to a Gamelan orchestra playing a gentle melody and being massaged. ... read more

So, a hop skip and a jump down through the Sunda Shelf. After Thailand and Peninsular Malaysia the next area I wanted to visit was Northern Sumatra. I was supposed to have visited the area in the late 90's but the smoke from the forest fires in Sumatra meant that the trip was changed to West Java - earlier chronologically in these entries but later in the geographic journey along the Sunda Shelf. This time my partner joined me. We flew into Medan and, thankfully avoiding the city, hired some transport to take us directly to Bukit Lawang, our entry point into Gunung Leuser National Park and the site of the Bohorok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre (now sadly closed). we were immediately set upon by touts and boy were they a nuisance. They tried every trick ... read more

OK - so…. THE BIG TRIP!!!. Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Melbourne and Canberra. I’d just been made redundant from a charity after 4 years and offered a job that started three months hence so I paid my rent to the end of the year and high tailed it out of London to Bangkok with plenty of money in my pocket and only a vague idea of what I wanted to do over the next three months. Bangkok was a bit of a culture and heat shock. Got into a really down and out B&B with hookers outside some of the doors. The walls between the rooms were heavy cardboard partitions. Managed to sleep even though the noise was unbelievable. Woken up in the morning by the Police and the B&B manager wanting to get ... read more