The various places that Amanda and I visited during the second week of our trip have one thing in common…. well, the heading for this blog entry has somewhat given it away… yes, SAND. When we were planning this trip, the one area that I’d insisted on including was the Skeleton Coast. Amanda, fried from juggling what really amounted to two jobs at once (someone should do away with the concept of “part-time secondment” once and for all - there ain’t any such animal: you just end up doing your fulltime day job squished into whatever time is left from you [View Full Entry]

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What do you do with a free ten days in Namibia when the early appearance of the rainy season (6-8 weeks ahead of its anticipated arrival) makes driving on your own to the few parts of the country that you haven’t yet visited somewhat unwise? Faced with the option of kicking my heels in Windhoek - don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of the place: it’s just that there isn’t a vast amount to do and I feel as if I’ve “done” most of it - I arranged to go back to the Chee [View Full Entry]

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What do you do with a free ten days in Namibia when the early appearance of the rainy season (6-8 weeks ahead of its anticipated arrival) makes driving on your own to the few parts of the country that you haven’t yet visited somewhat unwise? Faced with the option of kicking my heels in Windhoek - don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of the place: it’s just that there isn’t a vast amount to do and I feel as if I’ve “done” most of it - I arranged to go back to the Cheetah Conservation Fund where I’d had such a [View Full Entry]

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For reasons that I’m not sure I’ll be able to convey to anyone who has never been to the big open spaces of Africa, I fell in love with Kaokoland during my work on the desert-dwelling elephant project there in August. Truly, to paraphrase, I can "never shake the ancient dust of Africa off" my boots. It’s not a kind environment. The adage “if you don’t like dust, don’t go to Kaokoland” is all too true, and that’s even when the afternoon winds aren’t whipping up the dust, obliterating the surrounding hills and getting it in your eyes and [View Full Entry]

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Sitting here at a keyboard on a muggy spring night in Outjo, unable to sleep thanks to the efforts of a particularly noisy mozzie in my room and a probable OD of caffeine earlier in the day, I feel as if I am back at school with an essay crisis (except for the fact that I wrote essays by hand in those days). Admittedly, this is an essay crisis of my own making: I want to get the blog for the most recent part of my trip written up before I go bush on Sunday and forget all about the last [View Full Entry]

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As you might have noticed, I have been very happy to put up with, shall we say, a variety of accommodation arrangements in the last few months. (I described one type of overnight arrangement as "basic camping", promting the question from one friend, "what's more basic than camping?".) However, I could not really expect Colin to enjoy other than a reasonable amount of luxury when he flew out to join me in Namibia for a snatched nine-day vacation at the end of August. And, it must be said, I didn’t resent the five-star treatment too much - though I found it [View Full Entry]

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Eight things that I didn’t know about the capital of Angola a week ago: (1) It is one of the most expensive cities in the world; I assume, the most expensive in Africa. US$10 for an iceberg lettuce, for example. And I’m assured that eating out in London seems modestly priced by comparison. (2) The US dollar is, effectively, a second currency, thanks, in no small part, to the booming oil industry here. (3) Along the coast, the most oft-sighted bird is the common egret; a curiously spectacular bird to be apparent in such numbers. Not a seagull in sight. (4) [View Full Entry]

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Sitting here in Luanda watching the fiasco that is the fourth day of the England -v- Pakistan test match (how I came to be here will be revealed in a later blog), I’m struggling to work out how to write up what have undoubtedly been a couple of the most interesting weeks of this year. Where to start? The beginning? Well, I suppose this’d be a reasonable - if slightly old-fashioned - option… When I took a year out in 1993-94, I looked into doing voluntary work abroad, but ran into a brick wall with VSO, the only option I believed [View Full Entry]

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Well, OK, this is just an excuse to send you photos of other stuff, including birds and, if not bees, then at least some curious insects, and some flowers and other things that I thought might be of interest. So, you can heave a great sigh of relief: there will be little text in this blog, and lots of piccies to look at. No excuse not to get back to work quickly after scanning this entry! Sorry, did I mention the "w" word???! Anyway, by the time you get this, I'll be off on my travels again. Fully recuperated from the [View Full Entry]

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After the non-stop thrills of the Northern Adventure with the camping and early-morning starts, it was nice to get a night’s sleep in a real bed without a tent companion - however well Yvonne and I had got on as tent buddies. The evocatively-named Rivendell Guesthouse in Windhoek (though I was disappointed that there was not an elf in sight, let alone an Orlando Bloom look-alike) also provided space and time to re-pack and re-organise my somewhat tired-looking backpack. So, by the time Sunday dawned, I was raring to go on the Southern Swing (I’m still a bit dubious about the [View Full Entry]

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