Blogs from Africa - page 3038

Distilling some kind of message for future historians while offering entertainment at the same time is not as easy as I'd once thought, or maybe it will be after I get back from the Kalahari as I have been persuaded by my AD, Mike, and my best friend, Mike, (USA botanist), to take a 'quick' trip up to Augrabies Falls, tomorrow morning, to the Southern edge of the Kalahari desert, for 6 days. The Kalahari is reputedly the 'cradle of mankind', or it was last time I looked, but things change and anyways, the kalahari, 'is' one of Earth's most desolate and primordial places, whatever your scientific belief, so I'm taking extra fuel and water just in case. We'll shoot some scenes in the desert, and also of the falls. There may be beautiful flower displays ... read more

Known in the backpacker grapevine as “scam-land” and housing the world’s most corrupt government - Nigeria was not a country we looked forward to enter. But the bad reputation is undeserved. Never before had we met such openhearted hospitality throughout a whole country. And every day we were amazed by the country’s dramatic and beautiful nature. With huge rocks rising from the open savannah in the north and mountains draped in fleshy jungle in the south. After some minor difficulties with the border police at Katsina we went by bush taxi down south to the relentless bustle in Kano - the biggest city in northern Nigeria with some three million people living in a hot conglomeration of car fumes and mud. After a few days of paranoid behaviour (Due to Nigeria’s bad reputation, we got scared ... read more

Saturday the 9th and we crossed into Namibia headed for Etosha via Windhoek. Unfortunately, this is more than a day’s drive in our truck so we had to bush camp for 2 nights on the way there. Bush camping basically involves finding a rarely used road, which is not difficult in Namibia, and setting up camp alongside it. It’s fun to do the first time but the lack of facilities doesn’t appeal to most, especially when using the big outdoors toilet means you need to take a shovel with you… We got to Windhoek mid-morning on the Sunday and were given a few hours to kill. On the weekends, most of the shops in Namibia close at 13:00 on a Saturday, so there wasn’t a lot to do. We did have a nice big lunch at ... read more

Day 100: Wednesday, August 30: Kande Beach to Zambian Border Today was a pretty early start. This was a good thing, we ended up having a tire blowout on the road (it wasn't a true blowout, but still took us over an hour to change it.) We then headed to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi to do some dinner shopping, last minute gift shopping and the post office for people that have bought too much stuff. From there, we got to the border of Zambia and got a visa waiver because we are only going to be in the country for a couple of days. Our campsite was right on the other side of the border, we made dinner and called it an early night. Day 101: Thursday, August 31: Zambian Border to Lusaka, Zambia Today ... read more

The Farm to Tembu Beach Lake Victoria A full day driving ... read more