Yet more bus trauma So the bus didn't actually crash, but it did break down after travelling at 20 kmph for about an hour through the jungle. So we decided to do something that was clearly very un-Indonesian, and hitch. Due to the lack of anyone else taking the initiative we got a ride very quickly and, oh lucky us, the driver not only spoke good English but was in fact going exactly where we were, so we stayed with him all the way to the ferry, across to Bali and down to the capital Denpasar. From there we just about [View Full Entry]

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The "Rules" of Indonesia 1. If a traffic light turns red (STOP!) this means that you should "consider" stopping within five seconds of the change..... unless of course you are a BUS in which case, there is no such thing as a red light. 2. All roads, including inter-city roads are single lane in both directions. Cars drive on the left. Buses however may use both the left and right side of the road, in both directions and usually at night time on blind corners. For motorcyclists there is no such thing as a side of the road. Or more [View Full Entry]

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Dirt smugglers Thursday night, 9pm, and after 3 weeks of flying (or so it seemed) the lights of Auckland finally appeared on the horizon. It wasn’t just that Auckland, via Sydney was a long way, it was more the fact that on our first leg the in-flight entertainment system was faulty and not showing any new movies. Arrrrrrrrrrrgh. Not that the cabin crew really cared. Then on the second leg we had a pretty tatty old plane with just a single movie screen. Get with the times Qantas. Having flown around the world many times with Singapore Airlines, their service, food, [View Full Entry]

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Oh the irony 6 months ago the idea of meeting up with Tracey’s parents somewhere in Africa seemed great. They picked the safest country, Kenya, and everything was booked. Skip forward to Christmas and thanks to some questionable elections Kenya’s reputation as a tourist haven is ruined. Suddenly our trip through Zimbabwe and South Africa seemed tame compared to the violent images of Nairobi in the news. We predicted it would calm down in time for Sherrie and Ian to visit and luckily it did. No more trouble So, with the Foreign Office giving Brits the [View Full Entry]

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Family Time Heading south to Durban we hit problem number 1. Having made it across the whole of Africa with no mobile phone, limited public phone facilities and intermittent e-mail supply we found ourselves needing to contact Tracey’s relatives who we were staying with, to arrange a meeting place. Having located a working public phone we met problem number 2. When would we be arriving? Well, how long is a piece of string? We had to be at our bus at 5.30am and the journey apparently took anywhere between 4 and 10 hours depending on whom you asked. Add in to [View Full Entry]

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The best things come in small packages We arrived in Swaziland by bus, changing our minds en-route about where exactly we were going. Having been used to the HUGE distances between towns in Mozambique we hadn’t quite down-scaled our thinking properly when it came to tiny Swazi and the travelling time between towns. So we ended up in Manzini, not actually the capital, but the busiest city in the country. Although it’s quite possible to spend a bit of time in Swaziland we really only had one reason for stopping on our way to South Africa - Rhinos. They had eluded [View Full Entry]

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No falo portugues Crossing into Mozambique we left behind empty shops and multi-million dollar bus tickets and returned to a country where English is not the first, or even the second language. After the ease of English speaking Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe it was a bit of a rude awakening to encounter customs officials who could not speak English. Portuguese is the mother tongue here but with her reasonable Spanish and high school French Tracey bumbled us through into African country number nine. Continuing with the kindness of strangers theme we were offered a lift from the b [View Full Entry]

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But first a re-cap A while back, just after New Year we crossed to the Zimbabwe side of the Victoria Falls. The falls themselves were just as great from this side as the other, but the spray was stronger so the view wasn't as clear. The town of Victoria Falls was a sad sight really. We had prepared ourselves for the situation in Zim and expected to see empty shelves in shops, but what we weren't ready for was the way the whole town was falling apart. While we were there we saw a helicopter doing tours over the falls [View Full Entry]

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Revenge And so to Zimbabwe whose border we strolled across without incident. This was the second border where a visa for Tracey was TWICE the price of David’s. A little revenge against the old colonial masters! In fact David joked about this to the immigration guys (as only he would) and they all agreed that this was the case. Zimbabwe was fantastic and depressing all at the same time….… but all of this will be described in greater detail in our next blog, for this visit was little more than a short cut across the north western tip in order [View Full Entry]

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Two engine fires and a baby Getting to Nkhata Bay in Malawi to catch our ferry turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than we thought. The great bus company we booked with to get from Dar Es Salaam to the Tanzania/Malawi border decided to put on its crappiest bus for us and of course leave late. We then went through the expected bumping and jolting across Tanzania's central and western regions. It was sad to see a sea of blue and white plastic along the roadside as we drove through a beautiful national park. Africa still doesn't [View Full Entry]

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