Chris and Alice

CA

Chris and Alice

Africa part deux - Africaharder

Fly into Cairo, out of Dar es Salaam and enjoy a few East African countries between the two. Six months to ourselves in less than three weeks!

Indian adventure.

Nothing is booked but fingers crossed we will fly into Delhi or Mumbai the first week in November 2010 then travel East towards West Bengal, after than who knows. Only downside is that Indian visas are only for 6 months some come the end of April 2011 we will have to leave.... Sad face.

African Odyssey.

Our flight tickets are booked to Malaga on the 21st May 2006 we will then bus down to Algeciras where we will take a ferry to Tangier in Morocco.
After that there only exists a very general plan to travel south through Mauritania then possibly on to Senegal, The Gambia, Mali and Ghana.
Later on there is a desire to see East Africa again but, as usual, it is all dependent on money.

African highs and African lows...

Africa » Tanzania » Centre » Dodoma March 9th 2013

One great ape to another

Well here we are again, been far too long since blogging and we've done a fair bit of traveling since then. Spent a month in Uganda all in all, fantastic beautiful country with great things to do including tracking wild chimpanzees where we amazing luck and saw 50 of the beautiful and slightly unnervingly humanoid beasties. We also chilled for six days where all we did was sleep, drink beer, munch guacamole, swim and learn to be dugout canoe masters. We then crossed into Rwanda, learned too much about the horrors of 1994 and were somewhat taken aback by how different the place was, developed, quiet and maybe a little bit sad? Lake Kivu is a stunner however, forms the border between Rwanda and DRC and with it's alpine vibe and turquoise water is truly beautiful. ... read more

Uganda express

Africa » Uganda » Northern Region » Murchison Falls NP February 8th 2013

Off the rails

Bonjourno, OK, this is going to be a short one as it's just taken about 98% of my patence uploading the photos so I will let them do the story telling. Essentially we've made it into Uganda since last time narrowly avoiding some aggrovation with a very stern immigration officer. Since then we have been loving the country and, I'm aware I keep saying this, but the Ugandan people are so friendly it is almost unbelievable. We have seen the start of the dusty plains in the north, climbed up to the foothills Mt Elgon on the Kenyan border, explored the three waterfalls at Sipi and chilled in our hut with outrageous views, been to the source of the Nile and done a day white water rafting. We then, bruised and knackered, headed to the capital ... read more

Kenya believe it? We made it!

Africa » Kenya » Nyanza Province » Kisumu January 18th 2013

Lake Awassa

OK, been a long time since we blogged from the school at Christmas and the weeks since then has been split into three main parts: 1) Awassa Ethiopia was lovely, escaped the dust of the school town to a nice lakeside setting where we gobbled fish, watched the birds and drank freezing beer. We chilled for a couple of days and got used to being back on the road. Celebrated a non-New Year, it being the 22/04/05 or whatever it was in Ethiopia then be headed off for the road to Kenya 2) The road to Kenya. Now I don't mean to moan or being ungrateful as I know we're lucky to have this time away enjoying ourselves but the road to Kenya wasn't the most fun we've ever had. It took us basically 5 days ... read more

School and the anti-Christmas

Africa » Ethiopia December 25th 2012

Teachertime

So here it is merry Christmas everybody's having fun......except that isn't quite true as due to the Ethiopian calendar it's 16/04/2005 and Christmas isn't for another 13 days. As a result we are volunteering in school for the whole of this week which, in fairness, it out of choice and better than festering in hotel lamenting the loss of turkey and associated trimmings with absolutely nothing going on in the town. We will have been at the school for a month by the end of the week and it's been a great experience which has allowed us to understand Ethiopia a little better as well as meet some very funny children and recover from the two months on the road. We are ready to roll now though and have our sights firmly set on the Kenyan ... read more

Up and back (the big update)

Africa » Ethiopia » Harari Region » Harar December 1st 2012

Smile

And the blog returns...... So we have now completed the 'northern circuit' which took us up to the border with Eritrea in the north and then returned us to Addis Ababa. The trip took about 20 days and around 80 hours of that was on the bus covering the 2300kms. It was a great trip, highlights included endless, stunning views across the mountains of the central ethiopian highlands (including perilous dirt roads with 500+ metre drops inches from the side of the bus). The chilled town on Bahir Dar on the edge of lake Tana. The castles of Gondor - castles in Africa is pretty unsual. The stelae of Axum (big tall pillar things built by the Axumites) see the pic for what they look like.The unbelievable rock hewn churches of Lalibela where they decided to ... read more

Water, water everywhere

Africa » Ethiopia » Amhara Region » Bahir Dar November 11th 2012

Shiny happy egg

Hola, Photo success and our plans have gone well. We have moved north to Bahir Dar via two long days of rattling bus travel, were going to head further north via the lake Tana ferry but the uncomfortable passenger boat had been replaced by an even more uncomfortable cargo boat so I think memories of the long boat to Timbuktu and stinky lake Volta boat got the better of us so we vetoed in favour of the bus. We are in the swing of things now though and having a good time and meeting lots of lovely Ethiopians drinking lots of Bedele Special beers. Saw the Blue Nile falls - (5% of water here ends up where we were three weeks ago in Egypt - FACT). Gonder next for castles aplenty then hopefully some trekking in ... read more

Touchdown Addis

Africa » Ethiopia » Addis Ababa Region » Addis Ababa November 2nd 2012

Back again and we have safely arrive in Addis Ababa. Things have slowed down quite a lot for us since the rushing around of Egypt and we haven't achieved a great deal since we last blogged. We arrived early morning and got visas etc fine, after being betrayed by 5 cashpoints we finally got a wad of Ethiopian Birr in our hands and got some emergency sleep at the hotel. Suffered a bit from culture shock on arrival after the comparative ease of Egypt. It's been a while since we were in sub Saharan Africa and we needed to adjust our eyes once again. I'm pleased to say we have settled in and have embraced the lack of time keeping, slow pace and cool clean (away from the roads) air of Addis. So far we have ... read more

Four thousand years BC

Africa » Egypt » Upper Egypt » Luxor October 24th 2012

Camel by persuasion

Hello, Since the last bog we headed back to Cairo by sweaty non ac desert bus to Alexandria then the train to Cairo, we then tried to push on to get tickets for the night train south to Luxor / Aswan but failed miserably after two hours of queuing an being redirected from no less than 6 windows. We gave up, having been on the road for 16 hours we decided to cut and run so with brows gritty and sweaty and tempers slightly frayed we escaped to the lovely old fashioned pension Roma for some much needed kip. Next day we headed to the Pyramids early, it was a nice place to be and I think we both thought them bigger that we expected. We wandered aimlessly in the cool of the morning as the ... read more

Operation Desert Rats

Africa » Egypt » Lower Egypt » Cairo » Mohandessen October 18th 2012

Desert

Well we have completed our desert mission and done our first meaty travelling across Egypt. Siwa was great, totally different from Cairo, small, dusty, hot and as many donkey and carts as pickup trucks. We had a relaxing trip milling around the town on foot and battered pushbikes, ate plenty of nice food (especially fire grilled chicken) and drank a lorra lorra water. The highlight of the trip was an excursion by jeep into the desert where we saw dunes as you'd want them to be and were scared (me more than Alice) by some very fast, very steep descents of dunes 40+ metres high in the Landcruiser. We slept out by a fire under a million stars and woke up cold, damp and mosquito ravaged but pleased to have seen the edge of the sea ... read more

Walk like an Egyptian

Africa » Egypt » Western Desert » Siwa Oasis October 14th 2012

Egyptair

So here we are, underway once again. We've been in Egypt a week so far and it has been great, absolutely manic in Cairo with late night, bright lit commercialism gone mad but friendly people and a chaos that just seems to work. We used the tram, bus and metro to go to all corners of the city and see thousand year old mosques, hundreds of cafes and the odd McDonalds and KFC (nothing purchased, promise). We then headed by train to Alexandria which was less congested but no less full of shopping madness, the sea cleared the air and cooled things down which was nice relief from the petrol headaches we've had. We also had more than our share of loooooooong tea stops in waterfront cafes. The bus then took us the 9 hours west ... read more

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