As I sit here, writing these electronic journal entries, I sometimes think to myself - why the hell do I do this? I mean, it is a bit strange, really. When I first went travelling back in 1998, I didn't even have an email address. Communication with home was via very expensive - and infrequent - phone calls from international call centres, or poste restante in big city post offices. Sometimes news from home - or from me - would be weeks old when either end received it. Dad would send me newspaper clippings, so I knew what was going on in Australia the previous month. Then, in 2001, I had an email, and I started sending 'groupies', fortnightly updates on my progress. If I was adventurous, I could even scan some images into a PC ... read more

After visiting Rwanda, it is almost impossible to believe that this is the very country which tore itself apart just 13 years ago. I arrived here with images of machetes, bullet-ridden corpses, intertribal warfare, and societal breakdown - instead, I arrived in an efficient and orderly country, where the people are quick with a smile and a greeting, and harmonious living is the order of the day. Now, forgive me for lapsing into teacher mode, but let me refresh you on the basics of Africa's worst genocide. Thanks to divisive rule by the Belgians, centuries of latent mistrust, various episodes of intertribal violence in the decades after independence, and a simmering civil war, by 1994 Rwanda was a country set to explode. Members of the majority Hutu tribe were just looking for an excuse to eliminate ... read more

Ah, Kenya - that most quintessentially African of countries, with a heady mix of big game, big country, and big corruption. Not to mention plenty of banditry, petty theft, and tourist rip-offs. But did I enjoy it? Goddamn, yes. The journey from Addis to Nairobi was about as epic as they come. 1600-plus kilometres, by bus and truck, along crumbling roads, dusty bush tracks, and the occasional paved highway. It took two days just to get to the Ethio-Kenyan border, all on one bus, but with an overnight stop in the coffee-growing town of Dila. On the second day, the Ethiopian highlands gave way to dry savannah country, and all of a sudden everything looked East African - flat-topped acacia trees, baboons, hornbill birds, grass huts. At the border town of Moyale, I enjoyed dinner in ... read more

Right, first things first. Leave your stereotypes of Ethiopia at the door. Get those images of barren deserts out of your head. Eliminate any lingering images of starving, hungry villagers. Try to blink away that picture of Addis Ababa as a small collection of mud huts, surrounded by goats. Ethiopia has bad PR officer working on its international image. The reputation and the reality couldn't be more different. The vast majority of Ethiopia is a huge highland plateau, covered in a patchwork of verdant meadows, crashing rivers, and alpine flowers. The cuisine is some of the best on the continent, and great food - and even better coffee - is cheap, available, and comes in huge servings. And Addis is a big, developed, bustling, capital city - the third highest in the world, actually. But yes ... read more

First of all, a massive thankyou to all of you who helped out during the great Travelblog Server Crash of two weeks ago (when 40,000 Travelblog entries were lost into the ether), by saving and submitting copies of the 29 lost blogs. As I write, 31 of 33 have been restored, thanks to you guys. Cheers - I am really grateful. Secondly, this is my first blog in a while written without Susan at my side. My brave young lass returned home in the wee hours of this morning from Accra, and now it's just me and Africa for the next two months, until I meet my next travelling companion. In a whirl of emotions as I write this, so excuse me if I don't make much sense. We left Accra two weeks ago, after Suze ... read more