After the excitement of the last ten days in Kruger it was time to chill out and recuperate in Cape Town before heading up to Entebbe to join up with our forth coming geckos tour of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania. We arrived in cape town on the evening of the , after catching a flight from Hoedspruit to Jo'berg and then Jo'berg to Cape Town. We'd arranged to stay at the Big Blue Youth Hostel for our four nights in Cape Town and they were ready and waiting for us at the airport which was good to see. The hostel [View Full Entry]

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We were pleasantly surprised with Sophie's as it had been described in the trip notes (we were at the start of a three week overland tour of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania with Geckos, the tour group we used for the Galapagos and the Inca Trail) as 'quite basic by western standards' and didn't really think that it was fair to call it basic. We had a large room with 3 single beds, good mozzie nets around each bed, a t.v. (although it was quite temperamental) and a bathroom with all you could need, even hot water. The rest of the [View Full Entry]

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After the success of Makalali we decided to put our tracking/game finding skills to the test and try our luck in Kruger National Park, some 70 km to the east of Hoedspurit. Kruger encompasses an enormous area of land averaging 65km across and 350 km long with further private game reserves located around its borders. The terrain ranges from open Savannah to thick bush and from completely flat to mountainous with a series of major rivers running through it.. Navigation around the park is via a network of good tarmac roads with further dirt tracks branching off into the more remote [View Full Entry]

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Hey Guys, Sorry for the long delay but we are still alive and well. We’ve got quite a lot to write about so I won’t waffle on any more….. Our flights from Brazil to South Africa (Rio to Sao Paulo to Jo’berg to Hoedspruit) ran pretty smoothly considering our previous flights and we arrived in Hoedspruit on the 1st July extremely jet lagged but very pleased to be there. Our last flight in a 50 seater propeller plane had been a little bumpy so we were glad to have our feet back on the ground. After a little wait at the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived at Rio airport around 8pm on the 26th and got a taxi to the Ipanema area. We´d had a look in the LP about where to stay and were given the choice of about 5 or 6 different areas and we really had no idea about the best or safest place to stay. By luck, we seemed to have chosen the right place. We headed to the Hotel San Marco which was a little more expensive compared to what we´ve been paying but we always knew Rio would be a little expensive in general. We had a very [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in a cold (by Brazilian standards) and wet Foz Do Iguacu around 11am on the morning of the 24th after a 16 hour bus ride from Campo Grande. Needless to say we were pretty knackered from the previous weeks excursions and so set about finding ourselves a hotel sharpish. We ended up at the Hotel del Rey which was very smart, if a little expensive, and after making a few enquries about visiting the falls, crashed out for the rest of the day. We had hoped to visit the falls using the cheapest way possible, but to see [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Campo Grande at about 5.30am and were luckily met by the tour operator who we´d booked our next Pantanal trip with. He rushed us off to his office to pay him then took us to a very nice hotel around the corner where we were able to get showered (with hot water!) and have breakfast for free. He then put us on another bus at 7.30am which we traveled on for another 4 hours before being dropped off at the entrance to the Pantanal. We weren´t really too sure what was happening or what we were supposed [View Full Entry]

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After arriving in Cuiaba in the early hours, we promptly checked into the rather dreary Hotel Samara and bedded down for the night. Eduardo our guide for the next 4 days arrived on time at 8am in a pick up and whisked us off to the pantanal, a massive area of wetlands, considered to be the best wildlife viewing area in South America and also the best place in the world to see Jaguars in the wild. We´d booked a tour through a company on the internet, called open door tours, and had arranged a 3 night stay at the [View Full Entry]

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We finally arrived in Manaus at around midnight and caught a very fancy taxi (probably the nicest car we´ve been in in the last six months!) and arrived at our hotel about half an hour later. We picked the hotel, Hotel Continental, from the Lonely Planet as per usual, based on it´s description as ´a good value for Manaus, with amiable staff, big air-con apartamentos, hot showers and a fine breakfast´. Well, the LP let us down this time. The room was skanky, the a/c barely worked, there was definitely no hot water and the mozzies were plentiful. We didn´t [View Full Entry]

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We left Lima on time at 9pm with little indication of the trauma to come. The forecast was set fine, and we were expected to land in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at 6am the following morning, before catching a connecting flight to Salvador at 9am. Everything seemed to be fine initially, and we landed around 6ish at what we thought was Sao Paulo Airport, however after much confusion we realized that we were in fact at another airport (don’t recall the name) as the it was too foggy to land in Sao Paulo. Fair enough we thought, can’t be helped, I’m [View Full Entry]

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