The morning we left the Drakensberg Mountains it decided to pour with rain so when we awoke our tents were already soaking wet. It is not much fun taking your tent down in the rain as well as trying to have breakfast in the rain - but we managed to get everything packed into the Mercedes and headed off. We have become so used to travelling in the ‘merc’ and do not miss the Red Fire Engine at all! Today we were visiting yet another African country, firstly passing through what is known as the Free State, to get to Lesotho - our next destination. After a very short while we were travelling on a very long section of really poor quality road - Albert said they had been fixing this road for three years now ... read more

As you can well imagine we were not sad to leave Mozambique and getting through the border crossing at the Giriyondo Border Gate and into South Africa was really easy, no queues and no holdups. Once we left the Mozambique border post, we walked through to the next building and got our passports stamped for entry back into South Africa. We travelled along gravel roads through Limpopo National Park and seamlessly into Kruger National Park, both these parks had their fences removed in 2006 to allow animals to wander freely. Kruger together with Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou National Park and Limpopo National Park in Mozambique have become part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. Thus joining some of the most established wildlife areas in Southern Africa into a huge conservation area - a cross-border conservation initiative between Zimbabwe, ... read more

Happy Birthday to our granddaughter, Maisie who is 10 today 28/10/13. We are sorry that we cannot be with you but you are always in our thoughts. Love Grandad and GrandmaX We arrived at the border of Zambia and Malawi and had no problems with obtaining our visas but our Swiss travelling companions disappeared into ‘an office’ and we had to wait for ages for them to return - Malawi seems to have a problem with Swiss tourist, not sure why but eventually they did return. Not sure what would have happened if someone in the group had not been able to get into the country though! Known affectionately as the ’warm heart of Africa’, Malawi is one of the friendliest countries in Southern Africa, offering a true African experience in terms of scenery, wildlife and ... read more

Once again I am afraid it is a rather long blog as we do not get many chances to link up to the internet so this one covers all our travels around Botswana. It was so much quicker getting out of Namibia than it was to get in and within 20 minutes we were entering Botswana, another new country and people. Botswana is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its border with Zambia to the north near Kazungula, Zambia is poorly defined but at most is a few hundred meters long which should make for an interesting crossing later in our trip. It is landlocked and extends 1100 km from north to south and 960 km from east to west making it ... read more

So it is time at last to start our journey into Africa and as our son-in-law, Geoff drove us to Dubai Airport the sun was coming up and there was a lovely view out over the desert. The roads had just started to get busy and we overtook a lorry and sat in the back was two Camels (mother and baby) - they were just looking around calmly at the desert sands (probably wishing that they were there) - as we passed all your could see were their heads peaking out over the top of the lorry - quite surreal. So we were off but we nearly didn't leave Dubai as Paul was initially refused exit out of the country.......... I had gone through the passport security check no problem just before him only to turn ... read more

Most of our subscribers are aware that we left the UK in 2010 after retiring to travel ‘around the world’ for a year! Well we are still living 'out of suitcases' and enjoying a variety of adventures in an ‘ever expanding’ number of countries. We have just had a delightful few weeks in the UK where the weather just amazed us with ‘wall to wall’ sunshine! We were able to visit some of our family and friends around the country and a big thank you once again to those of you who gave us a bed and to Bob and Elaine who gave us a house...... It was shame that we did not get to meet our new grandniece, Madeline Mason who was born just before we flew but wonderful to have both our daughters (Sharon ... read more