Longing For More

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Croydon 30/9/09

After a couple of days of being home I took out my guide book and looked at the notes that I had jotted down; not of the trip that I had just done but of the one that I wanted to take. These two months away in Africa have totally captured my heart as I have fallen totally for the region. What was in my guidebook was a plan to explore West Africa; well a plan was a overstatement, actually what it was was a line joining cities up with countries split in half. The line started from Yaounde in Cameroon (where I had actually had a job offer) linking up Lagos (Nigeria), Porto Novo (Benin), Accra (Ghana), Abidjan (Cote D'Ivoire), up to Bamako and the legendary Timba (Mali) back down to Freetown (Sierra Leone), Conakry and Bissau in Guinea and Guinea - Bissau respectivly into Banjul (Gambia) and Dakar (Senegal) and finally travelling across Mauritania into Morocco finishing in Marrakesh. A truely epic journey just waiting to be taken.

What made this trip to Africa speical was firstly the wildlife; getting up and close to beautiful animals such as Lions and Elephants in the Senegrati and being in a cage with a Great White prowling on the outside in Cape Town or snokelling with a Whale Shark in Tofo. Secondly, the people. Africa is seen as the dark contient, which indeed in some places this is true but the people are friendly and in the most case are contented with what they have; the ones that aint so are only made the governments in most countries are corrupt and have left the people to fend for themselves. Not only this I made some amazing friends that I will keep in contact with for a very long time!

This trip has taken me though 10 countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Mozambique), just under 8000 miles on 7 aircrafts, 1 truck, 1 4x4, 1 double decker bus, couple of minibuses, couple of cars and probably some other modes of transport ive forgotton about, ive had to get 5 visas and 27 stamps during my 2 month trip. I'm sad its over but as one door closes another door opens!

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