JamesEvans

Hello All, Here is my last blog and testament. Tomorrow, I will be flying home after an incredible trip from London to Cape Town via Paris, Amsterdam, Northern Tanzania, Zanzibar, Southern Zambia, Johannesburg and the South African Garden Route. Cape Town has definitely been the icing on the cake and I will be coming back for sure one day. It was a long 6 hour drive from Mossel Bay to Cape Town, but it was well worth the view once we came over the last mountain road and saw the outskirts of Cape Town lighting up the night sky. A trail of ruby red and diamond white lined the main road below leading to the city centre - and to my final destination. As we arrived late on a Saturday night, there wasn't much to do ... read more

Hello All! I am well and truly settled into my third and final country in South Africa. Taylor has arrived and we are currently sitting in our lodge by the waterfront at Port Elizabeth, having flown in yesterday from Johannesburg. As you could probably tell from the ending of my last blog, I had my reservations about Jo'burg to say the least. And with good reason. I had met plenty travellers in Tanzania and Zambia with more than enough horror stories of being robbed from car windows, muggings in the street, and even being caught between gang shootouts. Having said this, I had also come across enough South Africans that were quick to tell me that the "City of Gold" was not as bad as others made it out to be. Furthermore, Taf, my Zimbabwean university ... read more

Well that was a mammoth of a journey! Since my last entry, I have travelled roughly 2500km from Dar es Salaam on the east coast of Tanzania, to the Zambian town of Livingstone on the Zambian/Zimbabwe border. After being in a place where a trip "down the road" is a 3 hour journey, the UK is going to feel like a very small island indeed. If it's still recognisable by the time I get back. Seriously, I leave home for 2 months and we're leaving the EU; we have a new PM whom every aspect of the media is insisting on comparing to Maggie T; and now the Welsh are officially better at football then us. I suppose it was expected for the country to descend into chaos in my absence. Anyway, back to the matter ... read more

Hello again, As promised, I am giving you a 2nd post about my Maasai adventure. Apologies that it's later than expected, after leaving the relative reliability of solar power in Ngorongoro, I am now trying to get used to the unpredictability of the generator power in Zanzibar. Power cuts are daily which means I have often had WiFi failure whilst writing this, causing myself to regularly re-write. I have never experienced a group of people that are so welcoming to strangers. From day one, nearly every Maasai man I came across wanted to know something about me, whether it was where I came from or why I was there (unfortunately, the women were always more subdued and shy, mainly due to the patriarchal society they had been raised in). Often I was also asked about my ... read more

I was not going to begin these posts until I reached Africa but I feel that I need to just to let friends and family know that I haven't drowned in the Paris flooding and that the wet weather has by no means dampened my spirits (although the continuous threat from Air France staff to go on strike has certainly tested me!). The floods are not as dramatic as other parts of France and Germany, the only affected areas are the riverside platforms where various canal boats, bars, and river boat cruises are now inaccessible. Taylor and I were lucky enough to visit the Louvre on Thursday morning, by the time we left they were starting to close it all down. Having visited Paris a couple times before, I was more intrigued this time as to ... read more