Phil and Monica

Bon Jour, We are still here in Djibouti, and decided to have another tour around town (short tour). We are including pictures of some of the tour highlights. A bit of shopping was done at what passes as the local shopping mall (pictures included). Shopping is always an experience here, since we soon find that we are a very popular couple. It must be our outstanding personalities and appearance. The local vendors always swamp us, when we stroll around the shopping area. They all believe that they know exactly what we want, and that we should purchase it from them, at their favorable quoted price. An example of this concerns a decorative dish that we purchased. The price was originally quoted at 8,000 Djibouti Francs ($45.20). After about 5 minutes of haggling, we purchased it for ... read more

Greetings, Another day in Djibouti, and thankfully, the temperature has been reasonable. We are told that come the end of April and beginning of May, the temperatures will be on the way up. In June/July/August, the temperatures go up to 130. We had a bit of excitement a few days ago, when a French Aircraft Carrier came into Port Djibouti, along with a support ship. We had hoped to get a tour of the Aircraft Carrier, but we didn't have time to arrange it, since it only stayed in port for two days. There was a small demonstration in town by a group of military retirees. It seems that their pension payment was late in arriving. The Embassy put out a notice advising that personnel avoid the area where the demonstration was taking place. However, since ... read more

We have been taking a walk around town and the port area every day. Yesterday we took some pictures, and I am going to attempt to attach a couple to this blog. So far the temperature has been warm, but not hot. One of the Embassy drivers advised us that we were lucky, in that we would be gone before, or just after the hot season begins. This hot season usually begins the end of April/beginning of May. By hot season, they mean humid and 130 degrees. I guess that's what you can expect being so close to the equator and being at sea level. We do enjoy our walk which primarily takes place around the port area. We do walk past the President's Residence and I was tempted to try to take a picture of ... read more

Hello again, We decided to visit Camp Lemonier, which is a US Military base on the outskirts of town. It is a joint base, in that there are Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force service personnel assigned there. It is a quasi permanent base, and one military fellow said that there are plans to make it a permanent base. That means barracks, and all the facilities that you would find at a up and running military complex. As of right now, the barracks consist of air conditioned tents, and a lot of temporary buildings. Of course we visited the Commissary and PX, to do a little shopping. The items available are quite limited, but adequate for our needs. We saw one sign in the PX that stated "Djibouti is so nice, they named it twice". This ... read more

Well, Here we are in Djibouti, Djibouti. Not many countries that have a capitol city named after the country, or is it the other way around? We arrived here on 2 March after a 2 1/2 day trip from Washington, DC, and didn't travel over the international date line. We could have flown to Australia in less time. We will be adding pictures (hopefully) to the notes that I put in our travelblog, as soon as we feel more comfortable here. We are staying in the Bellevue Hotel, which is about a 10 minute drive from the American Embassy, where we are working. The Embassy compound consists of approximately 10 acres, which run right down to a beach. Djibouti is located on the Horn of Africa directly across the straits from Yeman, which is on the ... read more