2nd October - 14th October Hilux All-terrain 4 x 4 - check Full tank of petrol - check Road map of Namibia - check Tents, sleeping bags, pots, pans and all camping accoutrements - check 2 cool travel mates to share the laughs and costs - check Evangelical Born Again Christian guide.….hang on a second……. After a fruitless couple of days in Botswana trying to organize a car hire that would take us all the way to the west coast of Namibia, we found a local option in the form or a 4x4 hire with all equipment - the only catch [View Full Entry]

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27/09 - 2/10 I must confess that my main reason for wanting to visit Botswana was because of a beautiful photo I had seen in a guide book of a Mokoru boatsman poling a dug out canoe through the Okavanga Delta. Other than that, I'm ashamed to say how little I knew about the culture and history of the country (ok....and also the precise location...yikes). Anyway, I guess this is what travelling is all about - putting something tangible to a name and fleshing out a point on the map with faces and colours and sounds. We had found Zambia [View Full Entry]

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The 7 hour journey from Lusaka to Livingston was an absolute doddle after some of the smelly , cramped, rattly journeys we’ve taken in recent times. For one thing, the roads in Zambia are infinitely better than those in Kenya and Tanzania …apart from one section just before Livingston. Anyway, we arrived at our end destination feeling relaxed and rested and ready to try as many of the extensive activities on offer at Vic falls as possible. So, Livingston is the Zambian base for viewing Vic Falls. Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe used to be the main base but because of [View Full Entry]

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18/9 - 21/9 So going back a step to our train booking in Zanzibar. We had no idea how difficult it would be to organize transport from Dar es Salaam. There’s only one official train representative on the island and he said the train was booked up (or at least the Zanzibar allocation was). When we went to Africa House for a drink, we saw that there was a travel agent that worked for them and when we asked at reception, they called him and he whizzed on over in his car for some after hours business. At first he tried [View Full Entry]

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9/9 - 18/9 Our 7 hour bus trip from Arusha to the coast was going relatively smoothly (well, as much as is possible in Tanzania …lots of unsurfaced roads, driving on the other side for no apparent reason and hair raising overtaking) until just outside Tanga when the bus gave up the ghost. We waited for a while but lost faith in the guy wielding a rusty looking wrench so decided to jump on a dala dala - a kind of mini-bus that drives even more crazily than the main buses and takes anything that breathes - ie people, chicken, goats… [View Full Entry]

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Matt has almost finished his war and peace Kilimanjaro account so in the meantime I’ll try and come up to date with what we’ve been doing. This blog account is for Aug 18 to Sep 9th While Matt was up the mountain, I organized our Ngorongoro Crater trip. I looked at the camping option but after 7 days in a tent in the cold, I figured matt would probably want some comfort so we stayed in the Ngorongoro resort instead. The crater is about 4 hours away from Arusha and is hailed as a natural wonder as it contains a perfect [View Full Entry]

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After a pretty hairy bus journey across the border of Kenya and into Tanzania, it was with huge relief that we reached the sleepy little town of USA River and met Justice - the driver who works for Matt's dad's friends Dick and Dolores. We were to stay with them for a few days until we set for either Mount Meru or Killi or both! We have ended up staying with them for over a week now and gosh they have really looked after us amazingly :o) We had a lovely couple of days relaxing with Dick and Dolores and after [View Full Entry]

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Gosh so much has happened in the last couple of weeks. It feels like we’ve been here for months! We're actually in Tanzania now so have to think back and remember kenya! We arrived in Nairobi on 4th August. Our hotel had sent a driver to pick us up and we had a crazy one hour journey through the centre of Nairobi to Wildebeest Camp on the outskirts. It’s a cool place where you can camp, take a very basic room or a very plush fixed tent. Through Matt’s excellent negotiation skills, we managed to upgraded from the basic no frills [View Full Entry]

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I didn’t really have a plan for what I was going to do in Ireland. I just knew that I wanted to pop over and see my gran in Boyle (in Roscommon in the west of Ireland) before heading on our big trip. I couldn’t have picked a better time to visit - it was Boyle Arts Festival and my lovely aunty Martina had a whole schedule planned. She picked me up from the train station and said “right - you’ll have your dinner with your granny and then I’ll pick you up at 7.30 for a photography lecture, then maybe [View Full Entry]

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So, back to England in time for Matt’s bro’s wedding in Sussex. He and Gemma got married in Gemma’s old boarding school chapel. It was so lovely and traditional…apart from the helicopter at the end! Nobody knew about that except for the newly-weds. They had decided to get back as quickly as possible so that they got their photos out of the way before everyone arrived. The weather had really been playing up but managed to stay dry for when we left the church and for the Champagne reception back at the very stately country house where the reception was held [View Full Entry]

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