julianturtle

So, travelling across Africa by public transport has it's moments. Sometimes it's fun, other times, it's not. There are a couple of bus journeys that stand out above the rest though. Firstly, on my 2 day mission from Nkata Bay in Malawi, to Arusha in northern Tanzania. The first day, I left the campsite around 6am, and caught mini bus's, mid sized bus's, taxi's and even a bicycle to get to Mbeya in Southern Tanzania. It took about 13 hours. Then getting back to the bus stop at 5:40 the next morning to catch the bus to Arusha. I didn't realise there were time limits on bus travel, and either the driver was crazy, really wanted to arrive quickly, or some other unexplained reason, but he drove the pants of that thing. We left at 6:00am ... read more

The joys of Africa Yes it's been a while between drinks, but I'm finally in Botswana and have a semi reliable internet connection. Something I haven't really had much of since I left South Africa. The overnight bus from Johannesburg to Maputo was fairly good, all things considered. We arrived at the Mozambique border around 3am and had to walk between check points while a million people were trying to exchange money at a bad rate, or sell us sim card's for about 33cents each, or steal foreign passports. I passed on these and got across the border without any hassles. After a day in the capital, a bunch of us caught a bus to Tofo, on the coast. This was not such a comfortable bus ride but after 8 hours of dust and bumps and ... read more

Hmmm... Picture this. I'm staying at a university house, with a bunch of various students who come and go, and there's a big tall fence with even taller electric fence on top of that. It feels like a prison, not that I know what that's like but I can imagine. Over night there's a security guard who sits out the front in the freezing cold, to make sure we don't get robbed. Or molested. Or whatever happens here. The residents of this house are all university academics who are into politics, and religion, and, despite the conservatism, they love their booze and cigarettes. I wasn't planning on writing a blog about these people, because on the whole they may seem boring, but I thought I should share the conversation that I've been listening to for ... read more

Ok, so I've been thinking about doing this for a while, maybe 2 years, but I had to wait until I was travelling before I could legitimately write a travel blog. I never got around to it last time, and well, it seemed no one missed it anyway. This time, I'm off to south eastern Africa for a while, and hopefully some fun shit will happen along the journey. Unless you've actually been somewhere, or have a specific interest in somewhere, it's not very exciting to listen to me rabbiting on about it. Stories need a hook, and then a punch-line. Much like this doesn't have. I've looked at a few different people's blogs, and to be honest, they can quite easily become boring and repetitive, unexciting and tedious, uninteresting and bland. I'll try to ... read more