We did it! We're in Cape Town

After 216 days, 24 countries and countless good times we have made it to Cape Town. It seems that unless we turn around and head up the west coast of Africa (tempting) we've run out of Africa.

Our adventure has not come to an end though as we've been staying with Graheme and Colleen, who we met in Malawi, and who have shown us a very good time.

Sadly we will be leaving soon but we've still got one adventure to go - meeting our one year old niece in Australia.



They say it's 9,600 kms to London; we must've done at least double that


The end of Africa





Paul having a good time in the rain


Cape beaches


More of the end of Africa


At the entrance of Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and others were held in prison (this is for you B!)


Me jumping for Auckland


Looking back to the mainland


us on Robben Island


Paul entering the prison


Nelson Mandela's cell


In the winelands


A local artist on show


Playing in the dunes: The Smurf





Tilly & Harry


Real hard core backpakers do it with oysters and Methode Cap

Kimberly to Cape Town

It is impossible for a girl to resist diamonds... so when we had the chance to see a diamond mine in South Africa I was all for it! We had a lovely couple of days in Kimberly, looking at sparkly things, eating fab steak and reminding ourselves what proper wine tasted like.

Then it was off on the train to our final destination...


Me and the Big Hole where the diamonds came from


Thankfully this was not our train...


The view of the Karoo we woke up to


The coffee shot



WE MADE IT!!!

An email about Botswana

There was recently a series of emails between Paul and his father which went something along the lines of:

Dad: Are you going to Botswana?

Son: Yes. Why? (Son is thinking that in our travels there may have been some sort of political disturbance and maybe it's not safe to go there)

Dad: I've met a man who has some rellies there.

Silence. And then a few weeks later an email address arrives with very little other information. So we email the niece to see if she has any top tips for the traveller and the reply includes an invitation to stay with her family. You have to love the kiwi connection... and it turns out that this family have a bach just down the road from Paul's parents in NZ.

The Botswanan-Kiwis have a very interesting business. They have a fleet of large trucks to take fuel and supplies into the Okavanga Delta. So in addition to the usual tourist persuits of Chobe, and taking a dugout canoe into the delta for a wilderness camp, we sat in the cab of a truck for 5 hours into and then another 5 hours out of the delta. It was a very cool to see how supplies make it in and had the bonus elements of going through a national park teeming with elephants. We were also invited into the luxury lodge as the truck was unloading and got to see how the other half live.


Elephants in Chobe

Elephants in Chobe


Amy tending the fire in the rain at our wild camp


Paul checking for more rain


Delta views


The way to travel


delta views


Huck Finn


Kermit's homelands


In the speed boat back to Maun, just before being handed an ice cold beer, a far cry from the rains we'd gone out in.


The uber flash lodge


Elephants checking out the truck

Road block

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Money, laundering & Zimbabwe

Greetings from sunny Zimbabwe. Yes, that's right, the country where
hyper-inflation used to be King, there are more elephants here than
white people and about as many tourists as there are rhinos.

Yes Zimbabwe has a bit of a bad reputation in the west, and in part
rightly so. That said we're not the type of people to judge without
seeing. That and with Libya, Syria, Sudan and Rwanda all stamped in
our passports we seem to specialise in politically incorrect tourism.

We had planned to take the Zambesi Express train from Lusaka to
Livingstone (Victoria Falls), both in Zambia, however when it seemed
to be less than an express service and prone to serious delays we
considered our options over beer in a hostel.

The beauty of the type of travel we are doing is the ability to change
plans. Buses to Harare were cheap and frequent so it seemed like a
good idea. That and we were running short of US dollars and as it is
now the official currency in Zim we could restock there.

So off we went. First stop was Harare. We arrived after dark which
is always a bad idea. We were however picked up by three guys from
the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority. We initially took them to be
plonkers, or worse a taxi, but they showed us their cards, and all the
material from a trade fair which satisfied us they were genuine. They
took us around showing us various Lodges before we eventually settled
on the least frightfully expensive one of the lot. It did however have
a very clean bathroom which we then made very dirty by laundering -
yes there is a boring side to travel, it's not all Nile trips and
elephants in the camp.

Harare was a real surprise, clean, tidy and architecture straight from
the early eighties.

We planned to go to a wee town called Masvingo to visit the Great
Zimbabwe ruins. They are the largest ruins in Africa outside of Egypt
apparently yet somehow they have become a minor feature on our Zim
trip.

First night in Mas-vegas, as the locals call it we met a man called
Austen in the bar and he introduced us to a first class cricketer who
was about to play in a four day game in town. So the next day we
watch the end of the day's play. The locals could not have been
friendlier, the beer was flowing and there was general disgust that we
planned to leave the next day.

We were taken in by the couple running the catering at the club, they
fed and watered us, had their cleaner do (more of) our laundry and
took us to a game park the next day. All the locals tried to convince
us to move to Vegas too.

The caterers then called a mate in the next town we were visiting,
where we are now. It's been a great couple of days in Bulawayo
hanging out by the pool and watching more cricket.

Tonight we catch a sleeper train to Vic Falls. Apparently it's the
thing to see here in Zim, but for me nothing can beat the locals we've
met.

Still wandering round Africa

"I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up that I was not happy" Ernest Hemingway

In case you were starting to wonder what had happened to us in the past month, we are both alive and well and loving every minute of our African adventure (except for the 240 minutes we spent waiting for a bus yesterday).

We left Arusha and after a night in the hills made it to a wee place between Tanga and Pangani.  We could happily still be at the Peponi Beach Resort with our campsite right on the beach, fresh fish, a cute village and friendly locals.  But the oh so great owner manged to organise us a dhow (hand made wooden boat) over to Zanzibar, where we arrived after four hours on the crystal white sand.  Coming from NZ I'm not one to rave about beaches but this was just lovely - about the colour and texture of milk powder and made the clear waters so bright.

We stayed on Zanzibar a few days, diving in the north and eating in the south.  As we really are still novice divers we chose to do a couple of dives towards our Advanced Open Water and chose the two closest dives to falling off a boat and looking at fish - being "Boat Diving" and "Fish ID".

Back on the mainland we explored Dar es Salam doing the one main sight of the museum and the lesser known site of the fish markets.  We also had one of the best curries outside of India at the Badminton Association, watching the cricket on the big screen and enjoying the hospitality of the marketing director of Serengeti Breweries.

We then headed south into Malawi.  Malawi was great.  Being alongside the lake for so long I felt the cleanest I've felt in months, although sadly some of the tan washed away... We went to a national park which is technically rather accessable on public transport, although this did mean three different rides in the back of three rather full pickups.  It was quite a treat for us to be able to camp within the park and to sort our own cooking.  We also had a guardian elephant which was really cool.  We had a spot of diving in the lake one day which meant we got to see some of the hundreds cichlids which have populated the lake. In Malawi we were also adopted by the lovely Graham and Colleen who we hope to catch up with in Cape Town (especially as they are currently transporting all of our heavy things!).

Which brings us now to Zambia.  We made the trek up to South Luanga National Park thanks to some lovely Danes who gave us a ride in their truck.  I knew we were going to get on just fine when their matching t-shirts said "Danish Coffee Tour 2009".  The park was amazing, so many different animals in such a small space.  We saw lions eating a buffalo for breakfast, loads of basking crocs, hippos grazing and my personal favourite camp-dwelling-elephants.

We always knew that we would make it as far as Tanzania and being able to make it further south has been a real bonus.

Visiting Mbotukunga in Tanzania

While we are in Tanzania we have taken the chance to visit eight year old Mboa (who we sponsor through World Vision) and his family in the community of Magugu.

WV's work is about a third through as they have been involved in the community for 6 years, and plan to remain for a total of 15.

We had a really interesting morning meeting the family, seeing his home, playing football and having the village women sing and dance for us.

More interesting however was the couple of hours that we spent with the Field Team afterwards as Paul and I quizzed them on their goals, the progress and the vision for the community's future.

If you were ever interested in sponsoring a child then I would encourage you to look this community up on WV's website. Their aim is to see 10% of the children in the area sponsored and presently they only have sponsorship for 1570 out of 2500.

A view from the top of Africa

East Africa Epic

Wow we have been slack in the past few weeks in doing any sort of update.  Part of that is African internet, and the rest is we've hardly stopped!

 

After a few dramas in Kigali in sorting our gorilla permits we spent a couple of days in Gisenyi on the lake near the DRC. We did think to pop to DRC for lunch one day but sadly that would mean we had to get another Rwandan visa, and at 60USD each, that would have been a very expensive lunch… so we Didn't Really get to Congo.

 

It is not possible to rave enough about how cool the gorillas were when we went to see them.   The day before we knew that it took five hours to see the Susa Group so we went prepared for a very long walk to find them.  Our guide Hope had a great sense of humour so we thought he was joking when an hour up the hill he said that the silver back had called to say we were allowed to visit in 15 mins. 

 

He may not have been right about the phone call, but the gorillas were there for sure.  In masses.  In the hour we spent with them we were able to see some kid aged gorillas playing tumble, a mother feeding her newborn, sleeping silverbacks and the entire troop on the move.  It was impossible to stay seven metres away as to move in one direction only put you closer to another. 

 

Our animal kingdom adventure continued with a four day safari in the Serengeti and Ngrongro Crater, where we saw masses of elephants, giraffes, lions enjoying sun, cheetahs having gazelles for breakfast and all those other sights which would be at home on a BBC documentary narrated by David Atteborough.  We also had a very cool campsite where an elephant drank from the water tank, and the zebras gazed outside our tent waking us up in the night.

 

The most recent big event was or climb up Kilimanjaro. Led by a black man called White we made it to the top in time to see the sun rise over all the glaciers.  V cool indeed!

 

We have the weekend "off" before heading to the beach.

 

 

Uganda

After a couple of months where the travel has been in some respects
quite hard, Uganda was an absolute breath of fresh air.

We had managed to secure an overnight bus from Kenya, which was
spacious and not at all dusty which was an absolute luxury for us! We
had expected the journey to take 12 hours and that we would arrive in
Kampala at about 9am. So needless to say we were a little confused
when the bus pulled up in a carpark in the dark and everyone got off.
We had to ask about three people before I was satisfied that yes we
were in Kampala and yes it had taken three hours less than we had
expected.

Our first mission in Uganda was to find a tent. As far as we can work
out from here on in we will have a lot more options to camp (which we
hope will also help us save a little on accommodation). The poor guys
in the tent shop however must've been very confused as we hopped into
various sized tents, with our bags... and then even more so as we
asked if we could try to see which of the tents would actually fit
into our backpacks!

We have ended up with a good sized tent which has plenty of room for
both of us and our bags. The only down side is as it is a South
African design it has plenty of air vents for when it is warm. Might
not be so great using it for the slightly damp camping conditions in
Godzone.

We tested the tent at the backpacker haunt of Red Chilli Hideaway in
Kampala for a few days while we explored the city and used the camp as
a base for seeing other parts of the country.

In particular we visited Jinja where the Nile pours out of Lake
Victoria, and finishing our trace of the Nile through four countries.
Unlike our sedate Nile cruises we had had further downstream, this
time we were doing whitewater, and it was remarkably cool. We
managed a good balance between tipping out as we came through the
rapids adn holding on and just getting totally soaked. At one point
we got stuck at the top of a waterfall and once we were unstuck came
down the waterfall backwards. I'm sure that wasn't really part of the
plan, but we made it down and didn't tip out!

We then headed west to Lake Bunyonyi. The setting was beautiful.
Green green hills terraced cutting away to this deep blue lake that
weaves out under the hills. We had a prime camping spot on a raised
bank next to the lake. From our tent we could see the lake and in the
morning we woke up to the sound of the local men punting about in
their dugout canoes. Most of them singing.

It was a really great place to rest for a few days and we enjoyed the
company of other overlanders (in a 10 tonne truck, a landcruiser and a
couple on a 125cc Africa Single (all the way from the UK!)
respectively) and passed the evenings with beers, bbqs and tales from
the road.

We had planned to spend a few more days on the lake, but when there
was the opportunity to have a lift all the way to Kigali in Rwanda it
was an easy decision to move on a day or two early.

Now that we are in Kigali I am very grateful that we have the extra
time on this side of the border... but that's another story.

Kenya

It's hard to work out quite what the best bit about Kenya is.

I think it is fair to say that by the time we'd made our way from Southern Ethiopia into Kenya we had been left quite fatigued from all the additional effort required each day just to deal with the locals and the buses. So the best bit could well be that everyone speaks English or that there's no special prices for foreigners or that the hotels seem less like brothels or that buses (even the 17 hours on the dirty bumpy road from Moyale to Isiolo) seem spacious and leave at sane hours.

After an initial miss in the food department (being a diet of stews made from bad cuts of meat and other 1950's housewife staples) and a disaster in the coffee department (I saw Paul drinking instant, it was not a pretty sight), we have had a real hit by discovering what "butchery" means. Turns out it's a meat bbq restaurant; so the best bit could also be the vast amounts of grilled meat we have had in recent days.

Or it could be either of the National Parks we have been to.

The first was Lake Nakuru NP where the lake was pink with flamingos, the grasslands were teeming gazelles, zebras and buffalo, amongst others and in the safety of our van we got up close and personal with some huge white rhinos.

At Hell's Gate NP, we hired bikes for a closer look at the animals and to have the freedom to stop whenever we wanted to. The first stop was a wee premature as the chain on my bike broke. All was not lost however as this even slower approach meandering on foot, much to the curiosity of the animals. At one point we spotted a giraffe about 200m away and with some keen stalking we got within 20m of what turned out to be a family group of three. So that may be the best bit.

Or maybe it was camping on the lakeside, surrounded by monkeys, with hippos making nighttime visits to the camp.

It's all so hard to pick!

Ethiopia: In search of the Ark

Apologies for the delay in giving any sort of update on Ethiopia. The combination of internet and power supply is a little hard to come by…mind you not as rare as the combo of power, running water and a hotel room that I am happy to wander in barefoot.

Our trip in from Sudan, three weeks ago, was a lot easier than we had expected, and the immigration office, complete with resident chicken was a good laugh.

 
The next day, having decided that border towns are no place to linger, we had our first taste of Ethiopian public transport.  

 
As a general rule, no bus is allowed to leave until you have been waiting (with the engine on) for at least two hours and it is 125% full.  The roads are awful, the locals vomit as soon as you hit a sealed road, and the one tape (the only one in all of Ethiopia it seems) is played on a loop at speaker damaging volume.  At least the rides are long…

 
Our travels have taken us to the castle filled town of Gonder, the Simien Mountain National Park, Lake Tana & Bahir Dar, Addis Ababa (by mistake), Laibela (via some small towns where it is necessary to overnight on the two day bus trip there, and back), back to Addis and we are now traveling the Rift Valley Lakes (Ziway and Awasa so far) and then on to Kenya.  

 
I'm not going to go into any great detail about all the places, so I hope that these highlights help to give a small insight into this thoroughly confusing place. 

 
The Simien Mountains are just stunning and we had a very enjoyable three days hiking.  Unlike New Zealand national parks, people still live within the park boundaries and everywhere we went little shepherd boys would be tending their flocks.  The standard uniform for a shepherd boy, in fact any man in the north, is a blanket which at the start of the day covers your shoulders, but as the day heats up it migrates up until it just covers your head.  Paul had great fun trying to explain to our mountain guide, an ex shepherd boy, the merits of both fences and sheep dogs – neither of which are present in the Ethiopian Highlands.

 
According to the last Ethiopian census (the results of which I understand have no actual correlation to the real representation of the country), Christians far outnumber the Muslims.  Certainly in the north it feels like a Christian stronghold.  There are brightly coloured churches, wailing at all hours and people throw money from buses into the upturned umbrellas of priests in spots where new churches are to be built. Presumably this is to help build yet another protective sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant, which appears to be housed in every church in the country. 

 
The churches in Laibela were, in spite of the absence of the Ark, quite a visual treat, especially as it was St George's Day and there were lots of people scurrying with their white blankets (which moved headwards as the day progressed).

 
It seems that the three real options for a well educated person are to work in the Church, the Government or an NGO – or at least that seems to be the case in the north where there does not appear to be much wealth generating industry.  While there certainly are some very poor people here, 25 years after the famine that we are all familiar with, it is hard to tell sometimes how much of the begging and constant requests for money is learned habit as opposed to real need.

 

We had been warned about the culture of seriously inflated prices for farangis, and the constant requests for money, but this has not been as bad as we had expected.  We often get followed by kids yelling "YOU!", rather than hello, but for the most part they just want to shake our hands, or follow us wherever we are going.  The adults too are far friendlier than we are expecting and many people, from bus-driver's-mate to waiters are keen to shake hands and do the traditional shake-hands-while-also-bumping-right-shoulders trick.

 
Ethiopia has heralded the start of really cool wildlife – baboons in the north, colourful birds everywhere, and here in south monkeys and hippos!

 
In the coffee arena, expectations have been exceeded with my personal favourite being the upside down macchiato. 

 
We only have a couple more injera filled days before our visas run out and then it's on to Kenya!

 

 

 

 

Leaving Sudan

This morning we woke up to the sound of rain, something that we had not at all been expecting here in Sudan.  Maybe that was just a nice way to wrap things up here as so much of Sudan has been totally unexpected, in a very good way.

 

In the past few days we have made the journey from Atbara and then spent a few days in Khartoum.

 

Along the Nile, and inland in the desert from Atbara are some of Sudan's best ruins of various sorts.  We jumped off the bus in the middle of nowhere to see the pyramids at Meroe, the most famous of all of the ruins here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB).  You could tell straight away that it was the most visited site as we were soon met by a camel tout and there were tat sellers near the gate (the first gate we'd seen at an of the ancient sites).  As a total shock to the system as we were wandering around the tombs we found ourselves in the presence of one whole other tourist.  The first in a very long time.  Still travelling south we hired a boksi (a ute of sorts) and headed out into the desert to see the ruins of Naqa and Musawwarat es Sufra.  For these we really did have the place to ourselves as we wandered the very Egyptian looking ruins, only unlike Karnak and Luxor these were a more human size.

 

Rather than doubling back the 30kms to Shendi, we asked our driver to let our very dusty selves at a petrol station on the road to Khartoum where we hoped that we would be able to rehydrate and flag the next bus heading south.  We lucked in.  Not only did we manage to flag the next bus, but it was the private bus carrying workers from a local petrol company home to Khartoum after their month on the site, and they were happy to take us to Khartoum gratis (provided that we ducked as we went past security checkpoints).  So it was like a wee party bus, everyone was in great spirits and the coke and cold water were flowing freely, not to mention the box meals. 

 

We were dropped in what we thought was Khartoum 2 and flagged a tuktuk to take us to Sharia 47 to find the YHA.  We had a feeling that our tuktuk driver was lost but after stopping several times people on the side of the road assured us that we were in fact on Street 47 so we jumped out and tried to find the YHA on foot.  The locals we asked had no idea what we were talking about and the only logical thing we could think was that the YHA had closed.  Thankfully before it all got too desperate Paul met an ex-pat David who kindly took us in for a night (which has now turned into a week).

 

The mystery of Sharia 47 was solved the next day as we got hoplessly lost searching for the Ethiopian Embassy (which should have been about 500m south of this street).  A tuktuk eventually took us north rather than south as we expected to find the embassy, and although it had moved we were still able to follow the map back to the marked Sharia 47... north of the Embassy.  Turns out that, in great African style, there is a Street 47 and an Avenue 47 in about a 4km area, hence the confusion.  Oh, and we found the YHA too!

 

Having spent enough time lost and wandering we have spent the past few days enjoying more leisurely pursuits, and most enjoyably spending time with some of the locals. 

 

The Sudanese are unbelievably friendly and generous.  For a country that gets such bad press overseas (some deservedly of course) we have been overwhelmed by just how kind the people here are.

 

The best two examples of local hospitality here in Khartoum have been Willy and Raz.  Willy met us as we were having breakfast of ful and falafel while sitting on coke crates near to the house the other morning.  After a very brief chat and out of the middle of nowhere he came back to our crate with two bottle of coke and an invitation to spend the day with him.  We ended up meeting the next day, and in great contrast to our original introduction we had cafe au lait and croissant at one of the nice new five star hotels in town. 

 

Another generous local has been Raz, a member of the Blue Nile Sailing Club.  Late in the afternoon he took us, Trev and Jan out on the water.  We headed a long way up stream and floated back along to some reggae tracks and the sound of the birds - unbelievably cool.  We also had dinner at his house last night and Paul was very impressed with his music room and spent some time teaching Raz how to play the trumpet. 

 

It's always a little cliched to say that it is the people who make the trip worthwhile but in Sudan that really could not be more true.  We had been expecting a hard couple of weeks here with the heat, roads and the culture but in the end it has been a very enjoyable time.

 

Today, as our last day in Khartoum, we hope to see the famous Whirling Dervishes, and I hope to have another very special Sudanese coffee from the ubiquitous roadside tea lady. 

 

We will then be heading to Ethiopia.  All reports so far have told us that the roads are made of the finest impassable mud, the people are demanding and that it will be the rainy season... but the coffee is said to be some of the best in the world and no matter what it's bound to be an adventure.

 

Top Gear Challange: Sudan

We have been in Sudan now for almost a week, and for the most part it has been an enjoyable place to travel.

 

Our journey started with the boat from Asawn to Wadi Halfa.  We were lucky to be able to buy an upgrade to "first class" as we were waiting in the queue to get on.   It had no real frills, but at least our box like cabin had AC, so we could sleep rather than push our way to a flat area on deck class.  It seemed that every man woman and child was issued with a fridge, a couple of juicers, several rugs, some grain sacks, a pair of smelly feet and an elderly woman before being able to enter the boat so it was rather crowded.  You could tell the experienced ones as they had travelled with their own chairs, and used their issued supplies to create marked off areas for themselves

 

Although we are travelling on foot / by public transport we met Trev & Jan (Landrover), and Jase & Mark (motorbikes) in Aswan and our paths have crossed a few times since. As they had to wait for their vehicles to clear customs we got a head start out of Wadi Halfa, heading to Wawa and the Temple of Soleb.  We were winning the Top Gear Challence until about 6.50am the next morning when the bikes passed the town.  The Landrover passed at 7.30.  We should have left town about 7am but we discovered the first ever early African bus, and it zoomed past as we were heading up to the road leaving us to wait a few hours until the next boxi.  Still we met the Landrover just after they said goodbye to the bikes in Dongala that evening, so we were still in the game.

 

It would seem we are well behind now though.  Over the past few days we have been zooming through the desert roads (all nice an flat now thanks to the Chinese), staying in small towns and enjoying the ruins and most of all the local hospitality.

 

No matter where we go people are keen to say hello, shake our hands and buy us tea.  Everyone seems very interested in our travels and why on earth we are in Sudan in the hot season!

 

In Karima we were lucky to meet local businessman Shelly who invited us back to his home for Friday lunch with his family.  His wife was a great cook and his five children were all lovely. His eldest daughter spoke very good english so we were able share lots about their family and what we were doing.   In a bizarre turn of events, on the TV in the background was an episode of Taste NZ all about asparagus, so we even got to show them a little of NZ!  I think that the best bit of all of the was having fresh mangos by the Nile after lunch as the kids went for a swim - just bliss.

 

Karima has some great temples and pyramids on the outskirts of town so we braved the heat two days in a row to check them out.  It is quite a spectacle to see them rise out of the sand and for there to be nobody else about.

 

We are now in Atbara.  The is the main junction town on the Sudan railway and has the feel of a place that lots of people move through.  The market sprawls from one end of town to the other and there are so many people selling all manner of water carriers, goats, and slippers made from what looks like hyena skins.  The other noticeable thing here is other foreigners, not tourists but people from nearby countries here for a better life - now I like Sudan, but it's no place of mike and honey so just how bad does life in Eritrea or Chad need to be for this to be a better option?

 

From here we are aiming for more ancient sites along the Nile before a few days in Khartoum. 

 

For now we have treated ourselves to some AC to blow the budget and also the dust from ourselves so it is off to the hotel for a couple of hours during the heat of the day...

A little time in Aswan

Before leaving Britain, and during our journey, one of our consistent concerns was our ability to obtain a visa for Sudan.  There is very little official information available; anything published is probably out of date, and the experiences of other travellers seemed to vary.  In the end we decided that it seemed possible to obtain a visa at the Sudanese consulate in Aswan, rather than  take an unnecessary detour to revisit Cairo.

We still thought it was prudent to give ourselves a week in Aswan to sort things out before the weekly ferry to Wadi Halfa, Sudan, which leaves on Mondays.

As it turned out, it only took half an hour or so at the friendly and efficient consulate to get very impressive, hologram visas in our passports, so we've had most of a week to kill in Aswan.

Having a rooftop pool with Nile views has provided a good default option in the 45 or so degree heat, but we also found a few activities that we missed the last time we were here.

The Nubian museum was a thoroughly excellent introduction to the region we will be travelling through (covering the Nile all the way to Khartoum).  The nearby famous Unfinished Obelisk however is enormously underwhelming, and overpriced - had the ancient Egyptan actualy detached it from the quarry floor, it would have been the largest cut stone eve handled, but they didn't, so it's not (we had also already seen the actual Biggest Stone in the World, also in a quarry, in Baalbek, Lebanon which was actually fully separated from the quarry, and was also free to see).

We have spent a bit of time with Trevor & Jan, a South African / English couple driving their landrover from England to SA (www.gapyear4x4.com), who we met at our hotel - the Hotel Hathor, apparently managed by Abdul Fawlty.  With them, as a service to help empty the fridge in the landrover, we have had a picnic dinner in a nearby park, much to the curiosity of the Muslim locals may have been even more curious if they knew we were eating pork and drinking beer.  We also took an afternoon felucca cruise on the Nile with Captain Abduah, who had a good selection of anecdotes about previous passengers, including the immodest Canadian, the miser Aussie and non-swimming Japanese.

Less enjoyable activities have included waiting for days to see if there as room for us on the ferry (there is), posting a few items to NZ (3 visits to Customs, 4 visits to the post office, and about 3 hours of Amy's time), and Ali the next door bank security guard, and his quest for baksheesh.

All in all, it has been quite a pleasant stay, but we are getting itchy feet and are looking forward to heading to Sudan tomorrow.  

Luxor II

As this was our second trip to Luxor in as many years we felt that this visit was a chance to see some of those things that we just simply did not have the time to visit last time.  I'm pleased that we were not running about feeling like we HAD to do anything either as it has been pretty hot here - over 44 most days, if not hotter.

With Angel (who we met at Wadi Rum) we negotiated with a taxi driver to take us up to the Temple of Hapchesut (Deir El Bahri).  He was keen to take us further but the other site we wanted to see were so close it did not justify having him wait about for us to drive us another 500m along the road.  I really feel for the operators in Luxor, and all of Egypt at the moment, not only is it low season, but numbers really are down as people just aren't travelling at the moment.

The Temple looks quite modern as you approach, and we were worried that it was all going to be reconstructed and repaired, if not brand new, when we got there.  The archaeological work had been undertaken by a Polish group and having lived in the UK we knew just how good the Poles could be with their labour.  As we got closer however it was plain to see that while the front of the temple had been reconstructed a little, the inside was full of the ancient, and colourful carvings and paintings. 

After a good explore, finding all the possible shady spots in the Temple, we set about to do a cross country mission over to the Valley of the Nobles. This took us longer than we expected, not because the route was long, but more because a bored security guard and his friend invited us into his shady mud hut for some cool and some tea.  There was no way I was saying no to that!  Over the tea we learnt that, in the past 18 months since our last visit, that their local village had been relocated a couple of kilometres away.  The theory is that beneath their village there are bound to be more temples and tombs to be excavated and preserved, but all the same these local men did not seem happy about the move (although not a bad word was said about the government or the regime).  The plan is to turn Luxor into a great open air museum and it seems that a lot of relocation is required for this.

Valley of the Nobles was so different from our experience in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Artisans that we visited last year.  Smaller than the VOTK, and larger than the VOTA they were great examples of later tombs, with ornate designs and images of the Egyptian highlife.

Luxor seems to have changed a lot.  I can't figure out if it because we are travelling just the two of us, it is the heat of summer, we are staying somewhere different or because there are just so few travellers, but it seems very empty and quiet...

PS - Sorry for no photos... after 45 mins waiting for them to load I gave up, sorry...

Changes in Luxor

For the crew who did our last trip through Egypt with us, here are some photos taken near the hotel we stayed in Luxor. Not only have they taken down the Christmas decorations, but most of the nearby shops have been knocked down to allow for digging the Avenue of the Sphinxes. Given that Egyptian time can mean a two hour delay on a one hour bus ride, for so much to have been altered in such a short time is quite amazing!