Waiting in the car park that doubles up as a bus stop in Manzini, Swaziland, I passed an entertaining hour watching a master class in packing, with the luggage destined for Mozambique slowly, and seemingly quite precariously, being piled higher and higher. We'd left the hostel around 6.30am, catching a minibus that took us as far as the next main minibus stop, and from there we'd squeezed into another van heading for Manzini. There the van driver waved us off with instructions to 'head for the old KFC' - of course life would have been far to easy if the bus [View Full Entry]

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We'd left the hostel at Hluhluwe early in the afternoon, crossed the boarded into Swaziland and by nightfall arrived at the hostel - a few km off the 'main' road, down a bumpy unsealed track and seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The hostel I stayed at, Sondzela Backpackers, is within the Mlilwane wildlife reserve itself and turned out to be one of my favourites - located in a beautiful, tranquil setting everyone here was really friendly, and for a small additional cost you get a great meal each night (including a veggie option!!), cooked by the staff outside over an [View Full Entry]

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I'd stopped at St Lucia on the northern coast of KwaZulu Natal mainly because I wanted to see the Hippo's that live along the estuary here - so a few hours after arriving in town I found myself down at the jetty, clambering onto a tour boat and trying to decide on the best place to sit. What I'd somehow managed to miss when I was reading up on St Lucia is that in addition to the Hippo's these wetlands are also home to rather a large number of crocodiles. We'd only moved a few hundred meters when the captain suddenly [View Full Entry]

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It's been a while since I arrived back in the UK now so I really don't have any excuse for not having done this earlier... but I figured I should at least finish the last few blogs from my Africa trip before I head off again ;0) Eshowe is a small town and at first, when I realised I was the only person staying at the backpackers there, I was more than a little tempted to hop back on the Baz Bus and head on up to St Lucia with everyone else. In the end I was glad I stayed (and [View Full Entry]

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Lesotho translates as the land of the people who speak Sesotho; the people of Lesotho are called Basotho. It's a small land locked country - at @30,000 sq/km it's completely surrounded by South Africa and lies entirely above 1,000m - its lowest point is 1,400m, with over 80% of the country above 1,800m. And of its 2 million population around 29% have HIV/AIDS - recent estimates for the average life expectancy are @36 years old. I had just one day in Lesotho but soon realised I could easily have stayed much longer - like many tourists I was on a day [View Full Entry]

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Well I've been back in London for two months now and predictably its all been a bit of a blur - lots of nights out catching up with old friends I haven't seen in ages or new friends that I made along the way in Oz and NZ. And in between that I got a job and a found somewhere to live - yup, reality has hit with an almighty thump.. for now anyway ;0) A few peops have asked about my Africa photos so here's a couple of blogs about the last 6 weeks or so of my trip..... My [View Full Entry]

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After three very entertaining weeks down the east coast I finally found myself back in Sydney needing to make a few decisions about where to go next. The original plan had been to head to Tasmania, maybe find some work in Melbourne and then go over to the west coast for a while. But part way down I'd started to have a bit of a rethink.... the timing of which probably coincided fairly well with my first rainy day and I began to question whether going further south in the middle of winter was one of my better ideas. In fact [View Full Entry]

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In a bid to step off the east coast backpacker travellator for a few days I hired a car and headed south from Airlie in a little blue speed mobile, down to places where neither Greyhound nor Oz Experience buses go ;0) First stop was Cape Hillsborough and in keeping with my backpacker free plan I upgraded to a cabin.... en-suite bathroom, my own kitchenette, sole control of the TV remote and only me sleeping in the room... pure heaven! There are a couple of short walks to do here - the best took @ 2hours and saw me walking out [View Full Entry]

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The bus ride from Mission Beach to Airlie lasted about 8 hours and for most of it there were only 10 of us on the bus - having two seats to myself was luxury! We had a couple of of breaks on the way down and as most of us were staying on until Airlie I soon ended up chatting to a few people and trading travel stories with a Scottish guy called Harry. We arrived in Airlie to see the most amazing sunset over the harbour... by the time we actually got off the bus 10 minutes later it was [View Full Entry]

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Having read almost every brochure about trips to the Great Barrier reef whilst I was in Cairns I felt just about ready to open my own travel shop..... to compete with the other 5000000 of them that seem to line the streets of Cairns. There are heaps of reef trips on offer here to suit all budgets and schedules - in the end I opted to do one from Port Douglas with a company called Haba who were great. The day started at about 6.45am with a drive up to Port Douglas, this time in the sunshine and with a bit [View Full Entry]

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