So I was going to drive the Nullarbor (see https://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Western-Australia/Nullarbor-Plain/blog-1033220.html?fbclid=IwAR3BaUebANjJSC7SQIwGLv88xhkBpdttSZbyQ4nrqYDJcyVlOVb_TUKLHNU)... But, if I were starting from Perth, it would have been positively rude to drive straight across to Norseman, the western end of the Nullarbor, and ignore the much-vaunted picturesqueness of southwestern Western Australia. After all, it’d only add another thousand kilometres or so. From the manmade – lighthouses, jetties and treetop walkways – to the natural – cliffs and caves, beaches and hills, soaring trees and colourful coastal vegetation, malleefowl and cockatoos, and, of course, just a few kangaroos – southwestern Western Australia has it all. And that’s not even taking into account one of its biggest attractions, the Margaret River wineries, which I had already decided ... read more

The women painting the hoarding were wearing headscarves. Practical, maybe, keeping off the sun. But so too were the volunteers working in the Transitional “cardboard” Cathedral. And women in business suits out for their morning coffee. And women pushing prams and out with their friends. Scarves that would usually simply ‘accessorise’ an outfit were now draped over heads, regardless of the wearers’ ethnicity. One week on from a mass shooting that horrified the world, Christchurch was coming together again, as it had done in the aftermath of the seemingly never-ending spate of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011, the prime minister’s words, “We are one. They are us,” very much alive. This wasn’t some kind of ghoulish rubber-necking on my part, though I was painfully conscious of the potential accusation. Since planning my visa-driven long weekend away ... read more

The irrepressible moto-tricycle driver Abu would invariably reach our evening’s campsite before us, and, punters distracted by tea and coffee and the prospect of ‘ablutions’, he and the guides would put up our generous-sized lightweight tents, clipping the fabric to the poles so that the tents could be moved around as required. I hate to think how hard it would have been to try and bang a tent peg or two into this hard unforgiving ground. Usually the flysheets would be left to one side – anything to reduce the temperature in the tents by a degree or two – but one evening, cautious of the amount of lightning that had been flickering in the far distance all evening, we put them on. And only just in time. My recollection is that it then rained pretty ... read more

Burkina Faso. Not an obvious destination. Not a country that ever hits the headlines, good or bad. Neighbouring Ghana gets the good-news stories, the headline-grabbing presidential and royal visits, the glowing reviews as ‘easy’ Africa. Ghana speaks English, things work (comparatively), and, if not always a paragon of western democracy, it’s at least been free of civil war and third party altercations for much of its sixty years of independence. Nearby Mali and Nigeria get the bad-news stories, the kidnappings, the terrorism, the desecration of history. Burkina Faso is one of those countries in the middle, in every sense. Landlocked, unremarkable, unremarked. Most people needed a map when I mentioned it. And/or looked worriedly at me, wondering aloud or inwardly, “is it safe?”. In terms of pre-trip homework, there was remarkably little. Bradt’s country guide hasn’t ... read more

Look at a map of Ghana and you’ll soon spot a spiky body of water towards the east that seems to reach its fingers back west and north, as if probing the country for Ashanti gold. This is Lake Volta, the largest manmade body of water (by surface area anyway) in the world. And it was proving remarkably hard to find. After a couple of days in the lively and colourful Accra, I headed east to the hills that form the border with modern-day Togo. My immediate destination was the Wli Falls, thought to be the highest waterfalls in West Africa. The road there led close to the Lake, or so it appeared from the map, but neither during that journey nor on my unexpectedly arduous six-hour scramble up to (and, more wobblily, back down from) ... read more