Blogs from Africa - page 3037

Well day number three in Livingston and we embarked on one of the tours we had to actually pay for. This one was Livingston Island. We arrived at the Royal Livingston Hotel at the leisurely time of 10.30. This is the place where we departed by speedboat to get to the island, however I can't go on without telling you a tiny bit about the sheer opulence of this hotel. Basically it is a place for those with lots of money and no manners. Crazy Americans dressed head to toe in old fashioned safari gear including the pulled up, long socks and silly hard hat. It was luxury personified. We sneaked into the toilets and I have never seen so much marble and gold - I'm ashamed to admit I took a photo. So we caught ... read more

Its been raining here in Dar.... lots of rain and then sunshine. Also the water has been out and Im getting a little stinky. Our toilets havent flushed in a few days, and everyone on our floor has decided the stench is better than constipation. Next time the rain starts coming down again, Im going to hang a bucket off my balcony. I had stored a reserve bucket but i used that already for my "Bucket bath". Oh how I miss running water! Been eating out alot lately. Had a wonderful Middle Eastern dinner with Matt's family, lots of falafal and hummus and good vegetarian things, that was last night. Then I went to the historically white section of town, Oyster Bay, passing the famous Coco Beach where there were several shark attacks a few years ... read more

Hey y'all - So I've entered two new worlds in one week. I'm not sure which is more foreign - blogging or MBizana, South Africa. They don't even have a drop down box for Mbizana on this freaking travel blog web site. A little background on the project and then some extremely intellectual observations about my experiences so far. I'm here six months on a UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project. The UNDP's goal is to support infrastructure development (e.g. running water, power, sanitation) to help alleviate poverty. UNDP is focusing on two municipalities in South Africa because these areas are in very, very bad shape. The numbers (which we have been reviewing closely the last week or so) are pretty ridiculous - unemployment 75%, HIV/AIDS unknown, but at least 30%, illiteracy 50% and bucket sanitation ... read more

After leaving Zanzibar, we started our African Safari from Arusha. We flew from Zanzibar to Arusha in a really small aircraft - 20 passengers - no stewardess. We were sitting right inthe front seat and could see the pilots too. There was no closed cabin for them. At Arusha airport we had to walk out of the small plane inthe open field and walk towards the really small terminal building. Our first stop was Lake Manyara National Park and we saw lots of baboons,giraffes, elephants, pelicans, and one cheetah (our driver had seen a cheetah in Lake Manyara National Park only for the second time in 10 years). At night we stayed at a beautiful hotel in the park. We then travelled to Serengeti National Park and saw lots of elephants and giraffes and were lucky ... read more

Bonjour! Today we left Tunis for our big drive down to Djerba via El Jem, which is a big old colosseum 138m x 114m approx and 30m high and was the film set for Gladiator, seated 30,000 people in its hay day! Pretty incredible actually....also was where Amazing Race teams had to collect a clue so would be famimiar to those Amazing Race fans out there!! We headed off to Djerba via Gabes, which was nothing exciting, walked through their souq, lots of baskets in this region and also spices, but we were not up for a purchase of either of those things, so a quick bite to eat at the Minaret Cafe before we drove to our final destination for the day, Djerba or Jerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia which is famous ... read more