Uganda. Winston Churchill called it the "Pearl of Africa". He was not wrong. It is a beautiful country with so many fabulous sights and activities as well as warm, friendly people. We didn't know for sure if we would even enter Uganda, but in the end we are having a hard time leaving. Leaving Rwanda, the drive to the border took us through valley after valley of lush tea plantations and other green fields. The scenery in Rwanda is stunning. Even the Uganda landscape isn't quite as dramatic as Rwanda. Once again the border crossing was smooth, with friendly officials on [View Full Entry]

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We arrived into Kigali at night - again. Arriving into a major centre late isn't too bad, as there are always lots of taxi's waiting to take you anywhere. The trip from Kigoma was long as we had to change vehicles several times and of course had the usual delays. The border was easy to navigate, and the border guards friendly - YAY! The very next morning Mike was up early and had already visited the National Park office and found out that we could get three permits for two days later. When he came back we were just getting up, [View Full Entry]

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What a pleasant change from Mozambique. We left Liwonde at 9 am and arrived into Zomba by 10:30 am. We had checked into our resthouse, had breakfast and were starting to wander the town all by 11 am. Not only are the distances so much smaller in compact Malawi, but the landscape is completely different. The climate is more humid and the environment is much more green. There is also much more farming going on in Malawi, even from one border to the next, you can see that Malawi works the land more than Mozambique. Zomba was once the administrative capital [View Full Entry]

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Truth be told - we are tired. The punishing bus journeys of Mozambique exhausted us. In one case, we were on the bus at 4 am and arrived to our destination at 6:30 pm. In hindsight (good ol' hindsight), we would have headed for Malawi after Vilankulos. The soul-crushing bus trips to the north and Ilha de Mozambique just weren't worth it in the end. Don't get me wrong, Mozambique Island is nice to visit, but only if you fly up the country. The journey to Nampula was very much like the rest of the bus trips - long, hot, uncomfortable [View Full Entry]

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If you read the comments from the last blog, you will see that we made some omissions and errors. Personally, I think we weren't too far off on the parrot, at least it has a green back. We could have called it a purple-headed dove or something :). Thank you to John and Roger for setting us straight and hopefully they will continue to correct us on our bird mistakes. The biggest omission was the hippo! How could we forget about sitting on the back of a hippo! (Okay, not exactly sitting on it's back, but pretty close!). One of our [View Full Entry]

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We were told all along in Cape Town that the weather in Durban is the best in winter time. Hot and sunny, but not too hot to handle. We were looking forward to a little sun, surf and sand time. Unfortunately, as our luck would have it, it rained buckets the entire time we were in Durban. Well, that's a little exageration ... we did get a reprieve on the Sunday, but it was still windy and cool. Even though it chucked rain all day on Saturday, we did venture out to the beach to watch the surfers (apparently the water [View Full Entry]

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Good grief! We have had the hardest time ever leaving Cape Town. After returning from our road trip, we were planning to leave on the following Tuesday or Wednesday because our time in South Africa is quickly running out. There is still so much to see in South Africa, and we are feeling short of time, we even visited the "Home Affairs" office to see if we could extend our visas. Apparently, just because they let you in the country with no hassles, it doesn't mean a visa extension will be easy. We didn't meet most of their criteria, so we [View Full Entry]

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****WARNING **** LONG BLOG ENTRY **** Sorry! :) We were excited and a little nervous about renting a car and heading off on our own, but we knew that once we got going we would be fine. We packed up our ever-expanding luggage (a real negative side effect of staying with family and not having to shoulder our packs for two months) and hopped into our tiny rental car - who we called "Daisy" (guess who suggested this name ...). I started off the driving as Peter was not sure he would be comfortable driving on the wrong side of the [View Full Entry]

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After being turned away from Robben Island, we got smart and bought our tickets the day before and returned the Waterfront on Wednesday. We were incredibly lucky as the weather was perfect for a boat trip and visit to the island. Robben Island housed a prison for many years, similar to Alcatraz, it is now a museum. Nelson Mandela spent 19 of his 27 years incarcerated on Robben Island. The island was home to mostly black political prisoners like Mandela, but there were also criminals held here too. I found it interesting that they used to hold the criminals and political [View Full Entry]

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They call Cape Town the Mother City. I don't know the official reason why, but most locals will joke with you and say it's because it takes 9 months to get anything done. We have been lucky and we know it. We are so grateful for Peter's family and the extended time we have been able to stay and enjoy delightful Cape Town. As you can see from the amount of photos that we are posting, we enjoying the sights of this beautiful city! With it's gorgeous beaches, mountains and sunshine it is easy to see why almost 4 million people [View Full Entry]

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