Blogs from Africa - page 17

Dear All I continue to drive along South Africa's Garden Route, the first leg of my epic Cape Town to Johannesburg adventure, from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. I hit the road again the day after my whale watching trip in Hermanus, and had very much another driving day - I think there will be plenty more of these to come as South Africa is such a huge country, and my trip is not a simple down-the-road one. Fortunately I brought a good mix of songs on my MP3 player which I could listen to along the way - lots of classic US "Road Trip Anthems"! After bidding farewell to my cute and cosy cottage in Hermanus, I drove two hours firstly southeastwards to Cape Agulhas, learning quite quickly not to religiously follow my "Here We ... read more

We discover that the activity of choice for young Tangierians at 5am on Sunday mornings is to tear up and down the main drag outside our waterfront hotel with their hands more or less constantly parked on their horns. At least now we don’t need to worry about our alarm clock not going off. And whilst on the subject of clocks and time, what time actually is it? I’ve got three “devices”, and at the moment they‘re displaying three different times. My iPad’s synced to the hotel wifi, so we think that’s probably right. Our phone company doesn’t do roaming in Morocco, but our phones occasionally detect a network across the water in Spain, and when they do they revert to Spanish time, which is an hour ahead ... and my Fitbit … it’s always been ... read more

A quick glance out the window into daylight suggests that things aren’t quite as chaotic as they were last night. And it seems that the immutable rule of driving with your hand constantly on the horn only applies during non-daylight hours, which probably explains why we were eventually able to get some shuteye. It seems much cooler here than in the oven that was Spain. I head cautiously out for a wander. This felt like a very intimidating place when we arrived last night, and my confidence isn’t helped by the hotel entrance … well actually that would be two entrances. One of them you just walk through like any normal door, but next to that there’s the red carpet entrance - it’s roped off at the sides with braid supported on gold posts in true ... read more

Dear All Amazing! I can't quite believe I'm here! South Africa has often seemed to be such a dark and forboding place given its recent troubles, yet at the same time wondrous and stunning. I'm so excited to explore, and so glad to have made this first step in simply coming here, after hearing so many not-so-good stories. Both my flights here were good - I took Lufthansa with a connection in Frankfurt, as at the time of booking it was cheaper than the only direct flight from the UK with British Airways. The first flight was a short one from Heathrow to Frankfurt, filled with not one but two large school groups. I always seem to end up with school groups on my planes! One group had around 120 young teenage brats from Spain, and ... read more

Arrival Our miserable flights with no entertainment or reclining seats from Malaga via Casablanca landed in Accra at 4:30 AM. After Peggy’s herculean month-long navigation of the visa process, we were expecting more red tape at entry, but the 10-minute immigration process was efficient and friendly. But they were by the book when it came to the yellow fever vaccines. We would never doctor our 15-year-old yellow fever vaccine cards to enter the country - because that would be wrong. We walked the km to the Marriott booked with Peggy’s platinum status. This sort of thing is always Peggy's idea. I was exhausted. And I was embarrassed stepping over people sleeping in the streets on our way to luxury. The breakfast was magnificent but Peggy was denied entry due to rule following, which is pretty funny. ... read more