Gorf

Christmas is a bit of a turn around one for us, unpacking from our last trip and organising for the next. It's very quiet on the streets of Diego with all the shops closed, the locals in their Sunday best and lots off to church. We celebrate with a restaurant lunch of chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans and even splash out on some dessert. It's great to chat on the phone with family back home and hear about their Christmas day thousands of miles away. Luckily by the time evening rolls around the market is bustling again and we stock up on supplies and pack for a few days camping in Ankarana National Park. Next morning our trusty guide, Laudea, arrives, we fill a couple of large water containers and locate a taxi-brousse heading in ... read more

We're off to a roaring start. Bags packed for four day's camping, food bought at the market, appropriate taxi-brousse stop located, all very efficiently. Then it all comes to an abrupt halt. The 'imminent' arrival of the taxi-brousse actually occurs after three hours wait in the heat. Plenty of opportunity, then, to watch the comings and goings on the busy market corner. Eventually when the aging modified Peugeot 404 ute rattles in, our bags are thrown on top of the canopy and tied down. We're allocated the vazaha seats in the front while the locals pile onto the bench seats on the back. And we're off - on a few hours circuit around the town, that is. Picking up everything from bags of fertiliser to timber to corrugated iron. The taxi-brousse is positively groaning by the ... read more

Another late arrival sees us haggling yet again over a taxi fare, this time in French outside Antananarivo's Ivato airport. We settle on 30,000. Sound a little expensive? Fortunately we're dealing in Ariary and 10,000Ar is about NZ$7. At this time of night its a fair price to the central city. We're staying in the slightly seedy part of Haute-Ville and apart from a few girls of the night on the street its pretty quiet. Madagascar was a French colony and along with the language it has obviously retained various other aspects of French life. Old Renault taxis and baguettes are everywhere. We catch one (taxi that is) to the Rova, an old Royal palace on a hilltop overlooking the city. Unfortunately its closed for renovations but we get an informative guided tour of the local ... read more

We've decided that self drive safaris are the way to go. Armed with a road map, guide book, advice from local friend George and a rental four wheel drive we are off in search of more wildlife at our own pace. Driving is very exciting in Nairobi, the roads full of fume-belching buses, darting minibus matatus, motorbikes, bicycles and tuk tuks all tooting and aggressively jostling for position on the densely packed roads. At least they are driving on the side of the road that we are used to. Amongst it all pedestrians duck in between cars and an array of wooden handcarts claim the sides of the road. Outside of the city on the open road inject speed, heavily laden trucks and buses, unpredictably potholed roads and drivers overtaking on blind corners and the exciting ... read more

From the airport our friend Nadim's coordinator, Ahmed, takes us to our exotic accommodation in Luxor - a felucca moored on the bank of the Nile river. The Nile Breeze is a classic Nile river sailing boat that sleeps up to twelve people. It's companion motor boat is used for ferrying, as a kitchen and is complete with a chef and a boatman who doubles as a waiter. Already set up for us is a romantic cabin on deck. Perfect. We spend a couple of hours lounging and planning our attack on Luxor, before meeting our local guide Heba. We start on the east bank of the Nile where she takes us to the remains of Karnak and Luxor temples both built over three thousand years ago and situated in the middle of the city. They ... read more