Martin
After finally getting our big behinds in gear, we've packed our bags and headed off to Africa, Asia and South America. Hope you enjoy reading the entries and viewing the photos, Martin and KimMarkim Gadabouts
Travel Blog Posts
April 20th 2006
As a stopping off point on our way to China, it was pretty hard to fault Hong Kong. A fusion of British capitalism and Chinese culture, the city has skyscrapers and shopping malls that sit alongside Chinese temples and food markets, whilst down in the harbors, traditional Chinese Sampans (albeit now just for tourism) ply their trade alongside luxury private yachts. We took in most of the main sites in Hong Kong, although none of them seemed to have the impact of the great outdoors we experienced in Africa. We took the cross harbour ferry, we took a Sampan ride at Aberdeen harbour, we took an old tram through Central and we took the peak tram up to Hong Kong's highest point. The overwhelming feeling you get is that Hong Kong is still an incredibly dynamic ... read more
April 13th 2006
So much has been talked about the Okavango Delta in Botswana, often called the jewel in Southern Africa´s crown, that we did wonder whether the place was actually deserving of the label, especially after our unforgettable experiences in some of the less fashionable parks in Africa. As the thought of being stuck at our campsite in Maun, Botswana surrounded by backpackers reading about Mme Ramotswe´s latest adventures in her ladies detective agency wasn´t exactly appealing, we thought we would go for it and booked ourselves on a 3 day safari trip out into the Delta. Getting to the Delta involved a 2 hour truck ride across an unpaved track made difficult to negotiate by deposited sand from the encroaching Kalahari desert. We caught sight of a few Zebra along the way but little else. Arriving at ... read more
April 7th 2006
From the parks we headed to Victoria Falls where the falls as you would expect were very impressive. A little too impressive actually because there was so much water going over them that the spray was really bad and obscured a lot of the view. Getting soaked is of course half the fun but I would have liked to have been able to take a few decent photos. On our last day at Victoria Falls Kim decided to do a skydive. I think I was more anxious than her when she jumped out of the plane at 9,000 feet. Visibility that morning was fantastic and I could just make out through my binoculars a tiny spec fall from the plane. I was mightily relieved a few seconds later to see the shoot open.... read more
April 4th 2006
Continuing our adventures in Zimbabwe we headed out to a couple of National Parks for a few days which we will remember most for the two guides that we met there. At the first park, Matapos, the strangest animal there was definitely our guide Ian. His legs were so long and his shorts so short that you felt he could blend in with a herd of giraffe with ease. Ian had grown up in the park and was passionate about it and it's rock formations, kopjes, that were over 300 million years old. Every five minutes Ian would stop the jeep to point out an eagle or show us how a various plant could be used for medicine, food, soap or narcotics etc. Ian took us to a cave to show us some ancient cave paintings, ... read more
April 2nd 2006
Kim's birthday was spent at a place called Antelope Park. It's a bit of a wildlife park in some senses, but not like Whipsnade, this is a wildlife park Zimbabwe style. They have a lion breeding program there and on Kim's birthday we were able to go on a walk with three 18 month old lion cubs. The lions were quite playful and one started to grab my knee at one point with its claws. It was as they say just a scratch. There's no other way to describe the experience other than amazing. Kim finished off her birthday with a horse ride and an elephant swim, where she seemed to spend more time under water than above it. Altogether a pretty cool way to spend a birthday. ... read more
April 1st 2006
'Lits git *ing rit arsed' shouted our new friend Tonto in a bar at Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe. His sentences were were laced with nearly as many expletives as his brain was with cheap beers. In between the odd wobble and a drag on his joint, he proceeded to tell us quite where Zimbabwe was going wrong. Tonto seems to be typical of a lot of the whites who have decided to stay in Zimbabwe. Still comparatively rich and able to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, he had become hardened to the corruption and intimidation from President Mugabe and his merry band of 'yes' men. Putting his obvious racism aside, Tonto was bang on the money when he said Zimbabwe was and still could be a fantastic country, but at the moment it's heading in a downward spiral ... read more
March 29th 2006
When I was a kid I remember that my mum had lots of interesting spices in her larder and occasionally, when my hunt for Wagon Wheels proved fruitless, I would pick up the spices and give them a good old sniff. in particular I remember there being a box of cloves in an old green box. On the box was a painting of an exotic island with a dhow boat sailing pat. It sticks in my mind because it also had a rather freaky picture of a sultan on it. The island was Zanzibar, the spice island, and it was Zanzibar that Kim and I found ourselves heading towards on a ferry from the mainland of Tanzania. Stone Town, the capital has probably changed very little over the last 100 years. The slave traders and spice ... read more
March 22nd 2006
Some people say that when it comes to Africa, the only positive thing to sy about it is the animals, so to help test the theory we went on safari, and safari and safari. Heading back into Kenya from Uganda we visited Lake Nakuru National Park in the Rift Valley. Flamingos filled the salt lake in their thousands and we were lucky enough to see elephants, baboons, zebra, pelicans, worthog, waterbuck, bush pigs, giraffe, impalas and rhino just on our first day. We bushed camped in the middle of the park at night surrounded by a colony of baboons. Just as we were going to bed I shone our flashlight into the darkness of the bush. The eyes of a few hyenas reflected back at me. In the middle of the night the hyenas moved into ... read more
March 17th 2006
Rwanda is one of those countries in the world which has an image problem. For may it sums up many of Africa's long term problems - poverty, corruption and civil war. The events that took place in the mid eighties that led up to and included the mass genocide of 1 million (10%) of it's own people is still remembered by most even though wasn't reported about that much in the West, mainly because we (especially the UN) chose to leave Rwanda to it's own devises at the time when it needed outside help most. Over the last few years the situation has been stable enough for tourism to start again. Our main purpose for going to Rwanda was to try and trek the mountain Gorillas there and spend some time at a Rwandan orphanage. What ... read more
March 2nd 2006
There are only 700 or so Gorillas left in the wild, so how cool would it be to be able to trek to see some of them? The Gorillas live on a mountain range that forms the intersection of the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. We wanted to try and trek to see the Gorillas from the Rwandan side, the side that Diane Fossey worked on who you may remember from the film Gorillas in the Mist. The night before we were due to set off my stomach had been in knots, the repeated visits to the great white telephone brought on by the dodgy goat curry I had scoffed the night before. I popped a couple of imodiums and hoped for the best as we hoped into a 4x4 at 6.30 in the morning to take ... read more
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