They call Rome the eternal city, though I had considerably less time to explore this most glorious of cities: two days to be precise; a quick stopover on the way to Crete. The late night taxi ride from the airport into town was hair raising, especially as Italy does not yet seem to have enacted laws relating to the simultaneous operation of vehicle and non hands free mobile phone, though not hair raising enough to get me to the hotel before the bar there closed. No matter: I camped out at a local bar until it became obvious that they were [View Full Entry]

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Just after we crossed over the Orange River and back into South Africa, we came across a springbok in the road. Its instinct to run had no doubt served it well in the past but with wire fences either side an escape plan based on trying to run down a road faster than the Mercedes lorry following it was doomed to failure. After a few minutes in this unlikely chase the driver was eventually able to encourage what must have been an exhausted springbok to one side of the road. Unfortunately as we started to pass it the animal gave the [View Full Entry]

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There I was, minding my own business in the shower of our tree house that was set back from the banks of the Okavango River at Ngepi camp site in the Caprivi Strip of Namibia. The shower, like the tree house, was open fronted, granting splendid views of the river through the trees. It was as I was enjoying these views in this unique setting that those members of our group who had embarked on a mokoro trip started to return. I should point out here that a mokoro is the local form of river transport, a canoe traditionally cut out [View Full Entry]

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So, part one left us stranded in the hunting concession area of the Moremi Game Reserve. Did we escape the lurking dangers of myopic hunters? Did the tour leader explode? The answers are; 1. obviously, and 2. she was remarkably calm considering that the incident royally screwed the all powerful schedule. Some 90 minutes, a brief journey in the back of a tow truck and a kindly South African safari leader with more mechanical abilities than we could muster later and the vehicle was back on the road again. We sub [View Full Entry]

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Here’s something I didn’t know. Although if caught in the open a human/lion confrontation would go badly for the human, when we’re sat in an open sided safari vehicle, perhaps wondering as I was what there is to stop a lion simply reaching in to drag us out like food from a large can, they in fact don’t see us as distinct parcels of potential dinner. Instead they regard the vehicle as a single large, noisy, yet harmless and ultimately unprofitable animal. Elephants too tend to go round rather than over (or indeed, through) tents because they perceive such things as [View Full Entry]

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Well, here we are into our last days in the States, indeed the last days of our world tour. We’ve driven the US coast to coast, covering over 7000 miles (and counting), travelled through 20 states. Lately, sat in the car day after day has lost some of its magic. Quite frankly, in places it’s dull, and if we’re going to suffer this then so are you. So, some history… In 1649 Charles I of England carelessly ended up on the losing side in the English civil war, thus losing both the throne and his head. After eleven years of messing [View Full Entry]

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Having left off our last journal with the bombing in Oklahoma City we're going to be continuing our theme of doom with a journal bookmarked by two assassinations. For conspiracy fans the conspiracy museum in downtown Dallas is a must. The video we saw probably challenges many of the accepted explanations of what happened that day when President Kennedy lost his head to the assassins bullet, but some unnecessarily colourful images of the moment the fatal bullet struck home is the only memory I have of that particular visit. It's one of those things I wish I could 'un-see'. For a [View Full Entry]

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We're leaving the mountainous deserts of south western USA behind now as we travel south east through New Mexico. As a kind of leftover we do get the Bisti Badlands, just south of Farmington, but these proved less colourful than the roadside scenery of eastern New Mexico as we crossed the continental divide. From now on the rivers, like us, run eastwards, or at least they would if there was any water in them. Most of the water around here appears to be airborne, though as the day progresses more and more of it crashes to the ground in some increasingly [View Full Entry]

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6/6/06 - An auspicious date this one, the 62nd anniversary of the Normandy landings and the cleverly scheduled release here of the remake of The Omen at the cinemas. For our part we marked the evil day by travelling route 666 out of Utah and into Colorado. We were only mildly spooked by the number of ravens flying around though fortunately they were not the eyeball pecking variety. We had travelled up from Page Arizona via the superbly named town of Mexican Hat with an overnight stop in 'cone city Arizona' (actually Moab in Utah where the entire main street was [View Full Entry]

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I left an expensive raincoat on a bus somewhere in South America a couple of months ago. I left a favourite cap on a bus in Rio a month ago. I left way too much many at the roulette tables in Vegas a few days ago. And I left my soul in Lake Powell the first time I visited it many years ago. This time I left the tooth that was pulled in Buenos Aires there as well. I'm not sure whether this violates the 'pack out all that you take in' rules of visiting the park, but I'm pretty sure [View Full Entry]

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