A romantic start to the day with Ed making Gemma Heinz Baked Beans on toast on the campfire - the tradition of cooking a meal on 14th Feb continues even when we're camping. A slow morning with a visit to the snake park again to see them a lot more active: a Green Mamba shedding its skin; lots of scary movement when we put our faces to the glass; a gecko-shaped bulge being digested inside one snake. But the undoubted highlight was the realisation that even tortoises know it's Valentine's Day. One tortoise was certainly in amorous mood and we captured [View Full Entry]

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A very welcome lie-in this morning as we weren't going anywhere in the truck today. The majority of our group left at 8am to go to the Serengeti for a day before we were scheduled to meet up with them tomorrow evening at a place called the Ngorongoro Crater. After a late breakfast we caught a Dala Dala into Arusha, 26km away. It's quite strange being cramped into these little vehicles, and today we got to share one with a fully-dressed Masai warrior with bits of old car tyres strapped to his feet as shoes. We had a frustrating attempt at [View Full Entry]

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Not a great deal to say about today apart from that we got up at 3:30am and then spent about 12 hours on the truck. We did get the back seat though which partly mitigated the misery, and passed the time firstly mocking Karen's new book "Your Best Year Yet" before then writing our own best year yet plans. There were a few things going on outside, including an incredibly lush landscape. We saw the outline of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, but cloud stopped us from seeing it properly. On a different note, we were glad not to see [View Full Entry]

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After breakfast we began the journey back to Stone Town. Being a Sunday we were expecting a long wait for a Dala Dala but got lucky and one turned up after about 3 minutes. This one was a small minibus and there were already over 20 people on board but someone they made room for us and remarkably we even got a seat. The journey takes a little under 2 hours but that was enough time for us to be stopped 3 times by the police for speeding and overcrowding misdemenours. Gemma also spotted a very rare sight - a Manchester [View Full Entry]

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Today's plan was to travel to the east coast of Zanzibar island to a small village called Paje. There are various choices for a mode of transport: a chartered tourist transfer for $35, a minibus or taxi for $5-ish, or a Dala Dala (shared truck) for about half a dollar. We opted for the latter and had a great, if cramped, experience. We got dropped off by the roadside with no idea where to head so we just went to the beach and walked along it until we found a place to stay - and ended up in a bungalow [View Full Entry]

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Today we woke up in a proper bed and with air-con and Sky News. All relative luxuries for us these days. We had a day where we could do as little or as much as we pleased, and being able to decide for ourselves was a refreshing change after 5 weeks on the truck. We chose to wander around Zanzibar's main town called Stone Town. It's very rich in heritage, having been an important trading post in days gone by and with significant Omani influence, but these days it's in a poor state and is mostly just crumbling down. And the [View Full Entry]

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And yet another early start, up at 4am. Some holiday this is turning into. And it begs the question why didn't we go to Zanzibar last night. The ferry to Zanzibar is a funny thing - although Zanzibar is part of Tanzania they like to retain some autonomy and even insist on stamping visitors' passports. Due to group slowness we had to stand for the 2 1/2 hour crossing, unsuccessfully trying to figure out a good way of sleeping whilst standing up. Once there we left the rest of our group as we'd decided to treat ourselves to a nice [View Full Entry]

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Another early 4am start, but at least this time the temperature was refreshingly chilled. We had a 10 hour drive to Dar es Salaam on Tanzania's East Coast. An amazing drive through Iringa and huge teak plantations and green everywhere. Gemma spent a few months here back in 1999 studying the impact of these teak plantations on the native forest so it was interesting for her to see the changes since then (more tarmac roads and more litter). In Dar es Salaam we had a couple of hours to wander around before catching a ferry across the river to our [View Full Entry]

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Up at 4am, which was about 3 hours after we stopped drinking. Needless to say, the truck was quiet today and in fact the 10 hour drive went remarkably quickly as we slept through most of it. We crossed into Tanzania in the morning, paying $50 each for our visas. The campsite we stopped at today was great, for one thing it was up in the mountains and so was quite cold and gave us the rare treat of using our sleeping bags. The showers were almost too hot, which was great and which made the shampoo actually work like it [View Full Entry]

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The day began with a guided walk where we got to learn about village life in Malawi. Rather sadly the main lesson was that everyone knows white tourists have money. We visited an orphanage where one little girl just wouldn't stop holding Ed's hand. Then we went to a school which was okay until the kids found a brightly coloured mini-football in the pocket of Ed's raincoat, that we'd brought along as a present (you'll just have to trust us that it wasn't as seedy as that description sounds!). It turned into utter bedlam so we threw the ball to [View Full Entry]

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