Jake's Blog

In case anyone is looking and were curious we completed the trip in one piece and still talking to each other....

As the above heading would suggest Ethiopia failed to grow on us.

After spending 6 irritable days in Addis waiting for extremely slow car repairs and our Egyptian visas we headed north aiming for the town of Gondor where we would catch a flight to the famous Lalibela – a place where ancient and monumental churches were carved from and into the surrounding granite hills.

Unfortunately we were thwarted in this seemingly fail safe plan by a combination of some sloppiness on the part of our mechanics and aspects of the modern manufacturing processes found in the Peoples Republic of China. Or as someone considerably wiser than I put it – “Chinky shocks – Ethiopian c****ts”…..

The sloppiness on the part of the mechanics was that they told us they were going to use genuine parts, which they then didn’t. The ‘Chinky’ shocks which were allegedly made to go on Land Rovers such as ours lasted all of 250km on a tarmac road which goes some way to display quite how shit they were.

Returning to Addis with no rear shocks was not really an option, especially back through the spectacular but horribly winding and steep Blue Nile gorge and considering the general horrors of driving in Ethiopia we had already experienced. As such a flip of a coin decided that Keegan would take the 7 hour bus journey back to Addis to collect new (decent) shocks whilst I would do my best to amuse myself in a very small town with no discernable attractions and a hotel with no water and only occasional electricity.

Its still undecided who got the better deal – but the final result was a now inevitable missing of the rather expensive flights to Lalibela (no refund or alterations possible) and a growing hatred of Ethiopia so strong that we decided to simply get out as quickly as possible. All of our travails with the car combined with the stress of driving somewhere where people deliberately herded animals in front of you to facilitate begging, and then the rather unpleasant attitude of folk generally has made Ethiopia the first country I have ever wished to vacate without actually seeing any of the ‘sights’.

This is a real shame as Ethiopia is defiantly a country unto itself quite different from the ‘Arab-ised’ countries to the north or the more ‘African’ Bantu countries we travelled through to get there – but this simply wasn’t a good enough reason to stay. Everywhere we went people would run at the car shouting ‘you you you’ and ‘money money money’ genuinely expectant of some kind of hand out – which seemed odd as the country isn’t a traditional tourist haunt so there cant have been too many coach loads of well meaning package tourists doling out sweets which accounts for similar (yet less aggressive and irritating) approaches throughout many parts of the globe.

So with a great deal of disappointment and relief we rolled closer towards the border, past the abandoned ruins of tanks from any one of the many conflicts the country has suffered, over and through spectacular mountain ranges - all the way simmering ever more violently at the background noise of ‘youyouyoumoneymoneymoney’ wafting through the window as we went.

We did manage to have a couple of pleasant evenings on the way out as we bumped into assorted other ‘Over Landers’, mainly heading south but a few also going in the same direction as us. One night in a place called Bahir Dar was very boozy, whilst the next at a small camp on the northern shore of Lake Tana (source of the Blue Nile) was spent sleeping out on mattresses under the stars trying not to be alarmed by the whooping of hyenas scampering about in the near by scrub.

Crossing over into Sudan immediately brought huge changes – on one side of the border were lines of bars/brothels and squalor and then once past the slightly overly severe border officials we found space, emptiness and comparative calm.

To match these feelings the landscape opened up and very quickly became empty flat desert with only occasional settlements and a blessed reduction in animals and people wandering on the roads. Those people we did see simply waved and smiled or shouted greetings as we trundled past.

These welcoming sentiments and honest hospitality only seemed to continue as we ventured through the country – although a few days in Khartoum fiddling with minor car issues highlighted the quality of mechanical expertise remained low with the tool of choice for most repair jobs still being a large hammer…

Despite this though my overall impression of Sudan was incredibly positive. We experienced minimal hassle other than slightly over frequent road blocks and having to be extremely cautious about displaying cameras (photographing anything likely to put the country in a negative light such as poor people or any vaguely important building spells instant trouble). Once out of Khartoum though the mood lightened and we passed through long stretches of desert before the road joined and then followed the Nile. Following the river brought a welcome change of scenery as the river provided a slim strip of life and greenery through the otherwise barren and empty countryside as well as helping reduce the temperature to bearable levels. The heat in Sudan was some of the most extreme we had come across, rarely dropping below 40 degrees although oddly the lack of humidity meant it only felt really uncomfortable when you were out in the direct midday sun – the rest of the time it was comparable to the clamminess experienced whilst at the coast of Kenya or Tanzania. As mentioned though the cooling effects of the Nile along with a constant breeze meant that the heat wasn’t unbearable, but did tend to dry things out at a frightening speed, including us so we were both drinking in excess of 4 litres of water a day just to keep hydrated.

My biggest joy of Sudan other than friendly people was being able to camp out where we wanted unmolested and in comparative seclusion. Each evening as we moved north towards Wadi Halfa and the route into Egypt we would simply choose a spot next to the river away from a village and set up camp. After a quick dip in the rather muddy river we could light a fire and then settle down to eat and relax knowing our chances of being disturbed were minimal other than by mongooses and other beasties eating dates fallen from the surrounding palms. Our camping options if anything improved once we got to Wadi Halfa where we had to be several days in advance in order to arrange the ferry and barge for the Landy. Here we simply drove several kilometres out into the desert and parked up where our fancy took us. Here I dispensed with my tent entirely and simply slept on the roof of the car enjoying endless stars and a cooling breeze.

The downside to having to spend several nights in glorious isolation was that we conversely had to spend several days in Wadi Halfa which could quite possibly be the dullest town on earth. As we had employed a fixer (a hugely entertaining ‘Del Boy’ character I am sure Keegan will elaborate on) to help with our paperwork we had to fill our time as best we could which to all intents and purposes involved eating rather a lot of ‘fuul’ (unexciting dish of mushy beans) and drinking enough water to stave off total desiccation.

We did this for 3 long painful days until finally we could board the ferry whilst worrying that our car hadn’t actually made it onto the barge that was supposed to carry it north to Aswan and Egypt. For some unknown and deeply annoying reason we weren’t allowed to travel with the Landy which instead was eventually driven down a dodgy ramp onto a wobbly looking barge as we steamed off on a filthy and decrepit ferry which was made in Hamburg back in 1924 (capacity 480 – lifeboats for 240).

On the advice of some people we had met previously we booked 1st class tickets at $70 a piece for which you got a bed of soiled sheets full of what I at least hope were crumbs and presumably a place on the dingy if the ship went down….

The bed did at least mean some sleep was had before arriving in Egypt and dealing with our most irritating levels of incompetent and unpleasant officialdom yet. We actually got into the country fine – but getting the car in was a totally different matter. Despite using a fixer bloke and lubricating the process with large amounts of ‘Baksheesh’ (bribes to you and me) it still took over 2 days and a whole lot of barely contained rage before we could escape Aswan into Egypt proper.

In every other country I have been the paying of bribes is used to get yourself out of a problem or for someone to accelerate a process. In Egypt it seems you have to pay just to get someone to do the job they are already paid to do – and there is no guarantee it will be done quickly, if you don’t pay they simply wont do it and then your stuffed!

But pay we did and the car we finally got, and now we are most certainly entering the final stage of our journey. The level of infrastructure and tourism in Egypt is massively advanced compared to anywhere else we have been (in a quite horrid way to be honest), and we have had the delights of watching the sun go down over a Nile full of cruise boats and of using the Wifi in a McDonalds overlooking this most historic of rivers.

Which as you would expect is all a bit of a shock to the system.

As the above would suggest we escaped the torment of Ethiopia (which didnt get any better) and are now 'relaxing' in Khartoum. This is tricky as its 45 degrees or more nearly all the time which somewhat sapps your powers of wit and just about everything else.

As such I havent the will or inclination to write anything else at the moment - but will attempt to do so from Aswan in Egypt where there is apparently a McDonalds with Wi-Fi overlooking the Nile.....

We are in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. We yet again find ourselves waiting on a visa to be issued – and rather gallingly it’s a visa we (stupidly – when will we learn) assumed would be easy to acquire what with Egypt not generally being held in international contempt like Sudan currently is. This annoyance is made somewhat worse in that we managed to get our visa for Sudan in only 24 hours, despite all evidence suggesting it could possibly take up to a month to quite possibly have our request turned down with rather serious consequences. Thankfully though this didn’t happen. Through some contacts in Nairobi we managed to secure a meeting with the first secretary of the embassy and after a spot of grovelling over our desire to see the confluence of the Blue and White Niles and how we had heard the Sudanese are the friendliest people in Africa (both of which are true) we were promised our visas the following day! So a result of monster proportions there.

Having got this valuable stamp in our passports we packed up the car and headed off into the North of Kenya for a brief visit to lake Turkana and then onwards to the Ethiopian border. Lake Turkana is a huge lake known as the Jade Sea due to the colour of its waters that sits in the middle of some seriously inhospitable desert in the very far north of the country. To get there we travelled through places I hadn’t visited since I first went to Kenya over 13 years ago and passed the ranch I worked on at the time, as well as moving through landscapes I vividly remember from a safari we went on. These fringe desert areas are strikingly beautiful but seriously tough places to live and the people and tribes who inhabit these areas follow a very similar kind of lifestyle to those their ancestors have had for many hundreds of years. They are primarily nomadic pastoralists and move their herds of cattle, goats and camels around the countryside seeking water and grazing. We came across several groups of Samburu ‘Moran’, the unmarried young warriors whose job it is to protect the herds from wild animals and marauding warriors from other tribes. These young gents are hard as nails – but also utter ponces when it comes to their appearances, they strut about in all manor of beaded jewellery, luridly bright scarlet cloth wraps and improbable hair styles fashioned from clays, animal fat and coloured pigments. All this finery is then topped off with spears, swords, clubs and increasingly AK47’s with which to either protect your own herds – or with which to go off and raid others with.

As you would expect from a part of the world where people live as they have done for hundreds of years the roads aren’t up to much as not a great deal of vehicle traffic bothers moving up into this part of the world. We knew it would be tough going but were certainly not expecting the string of vehicular incidents that befell us during a somewhat trying few days as we moved through the deserts. Over 4 days we had a shock absorber fail which caused a spring to snap, then the rear brake lines got ripped off before an engine mounting failed and then 2 wheel bearings disintegrated – the second as we gingerly limped into Addis Ababa. These were only the main issues, with a number of other seals, fuses and other pieces also giving up the ghost and now needing repair or replacing.

But in between these mechanical annoyances we saw some amazing and brutal landscapes, especially around Turkana where the desert is basically made up of large volcanic rocks and the wind is powerful, hot and powerfully desiccating. We also camped far out in the Northern Frontier District - an area that until this year was considered too dangerous to pass through without an armed escort (although it is still recommended due to occasional bandit activity). We had met a Spanish couple that have been cycling around the world for over 2 ½ years just before the sun went down and set up camp off the road in a place that is about as in the middle of nowhere as you could possibly imagine. After a peaceful night I rose with the sun and wandered off into the bush to attend to an urgent evacuation of the lower colon feeling safe in the knowledge that I would be undisturbed in such a place. Imagine my surprise when on completion of my task I spot 2 gentleman not 50 metres away with a large herd of cattle. This was a touch off putting as they could have been there all night and we were all none the wiser, and just goes to show how hard it is to be truly alone – especially when you really want to be!

Being alone in Ethiopia would appear to be an impossible dream – the country is absolutely heaving with people and it was quite a shock moving from a (at least seemingly) empty northern Kenya into this mass of humanity. Annoyingly for us this enormous population seems to conduct the majority of their waking activities on or next to the road. All the way up from the south of the country we were having to take various and frequent evasive actions to avoid animals allowed to wander wherever it saw fit and people of all ages seemingly oblivious to the destructive potential of a large metal thing on wheels. This was nerve racking stuff and also extremely tiring for the driver as you must concentrate fully at all times – which is hard work after many hours on the road. At one point we had a very near miss when a little girl of about 4 ran literally out in front of our wheels. I saw her appearing and made enough of a shocked/horrified noise for Keegan to hit the breaks before he too saw her and swerved at the last second. We missed her by a matter of inches and from my position in the passenger seat was convinced she had gone under the car until Keegan told me otherwise – a sensation I would not wish on anyone and one that left me shaken up well into the following day. Equally alarmingly was the response of the village folk and the girls father – everyone was laughing at the near miss as the wee thing sobbed from the shock. It would have been a different story if we had hit her – not only would we have had to live with the horrible fact of killing a small child but could quite possibly have ended our own trip there and then as it is not uncommon for drivers in fatal accidents to be heavily beaten and even lynched, even if its not their fault. Not really worth thinking about, but a warning of how life can be in these parts.

Addis Ababa has also been an eye opener. I have frequented a large number of big cities in developing parts of the world, and although few are pleasant the charms of Addis are yet to become apparent. It is a huge sprawling place often covered in a thick smog, currently rather rainy and a very odd mix of the influences of Ethiopia’s medieval-esq feudal and more recent communist pasts and their attempts at pushing onwards into the modern world. The city of 4 million people is full of every conceivable form of unfortunate, and beggars are everywhere be they destitute single mothers, the very elderly, or people sporting every possible deformity, illness or handicap. We have been pestered by street urchins, gesticulated at by lepers and even bleated at by a women surrounded by handfuls of grass who seemed to be under the impression she was a goat.

Obviously this is all rather distressing to witness even if you have had prior exposure to such sights of poverty and misfortune and has done nothing to endear the city to me personally and I am very much looking forward to escaping into the north towards the historical sights and then Sudan as soon as our car and visas are ready.

Hopefully by the time we leave Ethiopia I will have been won over by some of the many things it apparently has to offer – most of the people I know who have been here have loved it and so hopefully our initial less joyous experiences will be replaced with happier ones that will allow us to leave wishing to return for more….

The last month has proved to be one of very limited communication or blog activity despite the fact we had settled down to a month of sedentary recuperation down in Kilifi on the coast of Kenya and one of my favourite places on earth.

The reason for the lack of activity in these areas is that I was stricken down with a highly debilitating ailment that renders the sufferer incapable of all but the most simple and pleasant of activities. The ‘illness’ in question is one that is well known to visitors to the coastal regions of East Africa and is commonly referred to as ‘Coastitus’. Symptoms are generally confined to a feeling of such utter contentment that the prospects of even small scale movement or intellectual engagement seem to be exhausting and therefore are invariably put off to a tomorrow that you hope may never come.

Additional symptomatic side effects often involve desires to drink booze at possibly inappropriately early times in the day and a fondness for idle floating in wonderfully warm Indian Ocean waters.

I have previously suffered from this malaise in various forms of severity during other visits to Kilifi and other coastal paradises, but this bout has been by far the most serious I have ever experienced.

In nearly 5 weeks I managed to basically do nothing other than ensure the house we were renting was stocked with appropriate levels of fine coastal fodder and appropriate volumes of the necessary refreshing liquids.

In some respects this was no small endeavour as over the month spent in Kilifi we had a large number of visitors who all invariably came down with the symptoms and were not as well equipped as I to carry out the daily visit to Mama Mary’s vegetable stall or to track down whatever aquatic life form was due to be on the menu for that day.

I did manage to fit in a spot of ‘big game’ fishing on a few occasions with varying success and then arranged a short safari for our chums fresh out from the UK. The safari was to be a 2 night affair in Tsavo national park – previously made famous by the man eating lions that harassed and consumed the workers building the railway up from Mombassa to Nairobi back in the 19th century. We didn’t see any of these famous Lions but did hear one roaring far off in the distance on our second night camping out. Luckily not everyone heard them as a few of our party were perhaps finding it somewhat difficult to adapt to the rigours of bush life and the potential proximity of a few of the larger beasties found in these parts and evidence of Lion may have been a step too far for some.

The majority of folk however seemed to enjoy the experience as one they would unlikely be able to repeat – especially as we were being somewhat naughty and camping out wild in the bush rather than staying in the approved campsites as your actually supposed to.

So safari, fishing, eating, drinking and floating aside the month of April passed in a dream like blur and I am now having some difficulty in getting myself back into the required state to take on the coming 2/3 months of arduous travel and huge volumes of dust that will no doubt be encountered.

We are currently in Nairobi trying to sort some visa stuff for Sudan as we are already in possession of our Ethiopian visas and intend to push northwards sometime next week depending on the outcome of a meeting with the Sudanese embassy sometime on Monday morning. So fingers crossed for that one as without the papers to get through Sudan we will be somewhat stuck.

Although we could always go back to Kilifi……

I am writing this somewhat overdue update/entry from the house in Zanzibar in which David Livingstone’s preserved body was kept prior to being returned to the UK and its final resting place in Westminster Abbey. Its not a house anymore – just a bar that happens to have free wireless if you buy the occasional coffee. I am not sure if this reduces its historical significance but it certainly reinforces to me how Mr Livingstone seams to keep popping into this trip, which if I was so inclined might make me develop some tenuous thought that our journey was in someway as arduous as his – which of course would be nonsense as I am sat here nursing an ice cold lime soda under a nice fan whilst he spent his time here in a box having been disembowelled and dried over a fire after finally succumbing to the malaria and chronic shitting of blood which had plagued him for years.

Dead historical figures and their fatal bowel issues aside I am pleased to report that all continues to go very well for the pair of us out here in lovely Tanzania. My last entry was written pre us heading into the wildebeest coated plains of the Serengeti for more animal observing action, so for the sake of chronological accuracy I should really return to this point and start back then.

Well we drove into the Serengeti and then oddly enough looked at lots of animals. We have seen lots of beasties in a number of parks now but really went to the Serengeti to check out the annual migration as previously observed on any number of David Attenborough programmes (and less well narrated imitations). The Serengeti and surrounds are a patch of generally dry grasslands about the size of Northern Ireland on which a couple of million grass chomping creatures depend. Every year it rains in different parts at different times which means that by wandering from point to point (or migrating if you want to use the posh word) the animals can generally keep themselves full of nourishing greenery. Sometimes these animals have to cross rivers and get savaged by huge crocodiles, but we alas had to make do with seeing hoards of baby zebra and wildebeest wobbling about on new uncertain legs whilst they start the process of fattening up ready for the croc feast in a few months time.

Despite the lack of gore and savagery it was still an amazing sight to see this almost endless plain dotted beyond all horizons with grunting and snorting examples of the bottom niche of the food chain. Up close wildebeest are pretty charm less creatures so I can only assume they gather en-mass to get some attention from all the khaki clad tourist folk that otherwise would only be looking at the more impressive park inhabitants.

We camped for 2 nights in the park and on both had animal visitors wandering about whilst we slept. Keegan was woken by Zebra chomping the cud around his tent on the first night whilst a herd of giraffe had eyed us with a pleasing lack of concern whilst we put the tents up, and then on the second night apparently elephant and buffalo were wandering about. I slept through all this having got used to noises of an animal nature emanating from Keegan’s tent I now simply assume they are him and go back to sleep….

After this bout of exposure to all things beastly we decamped eastwards towards the heights of Kilimanjaro which we had some ideas about climbing in a few weeks with our mate Bob. On arrival in Moshi which is the town at the bottom of the mountain I began the search for some suitable hiking boots to hire as I don’t own anything much sturdier than my running shoes having existed in flip flops for the best part of the last 5 years. My search rapidly became deeply irritating as assorted folk desperate for a sale attempted to persuade me that there was nothing at all wrong with climbing a huge mountain in shoes a size too big/small and that they would stretch/shrink into the most comfortable footwear imaginable.

I rapidly tired of this nonsense and decided that rather than spend well over a $1000 for the privilege of permanently crippling my feet and only getting halfway up the mountain I would instead head to the exotic shores of Zanzibar to do something I have been meaning to do for many years and have intensive Swahili lessons.

This plan was cunningly devised to serve a number of purposes. Firstly I would be able to improve my Swahili from a basic survival level to a degree that I could actually understand and communicate what was going on around me. Secondly it would free me up to spend a bit of time ‘mano a mano’ with my little brother Kriss who is coming out to Kenya for a holiday next week. Thirdly it would give Keegan and I a bit of time to ourselves after several months in very close proximity, and lastly would be a good excuse to check out the wonders of Zanzibar that had long been expounded to me by assorted acquaintances who had had the good fortune/sense to visit the island.

So we headed off down towards Dar and the coast with a bit of a pause at a place called Lushoto in the Usumbara mountains for a spot of very pleasant hiking (gentle enough for trainers) to help with Keegan’s pre climb physical preparations. In Dar we were very kindly hosted by friends of a friend who in the best tradition of folk living in far flung spots opened their house to us having never met us before and fed us up with Pizza and beer and gave us the low down on where to get the things we needed doing sorted before I boarded the ferry to Zanzibar the following day leaving Keegan to return to Lushoto for more high altitude lung preparing pre-Kilimanjaro climbing.

Zanzibar. A name evocative of ancient mysteries, exotic spices, tropical wonders and the adventures of Sinbad the sailor. The realities are not a thousand miles from this mythological imagery – bung in a dodgy historical influence in the slave trade and an interesting mix of influences from mainland Africa, various Arab and Indian cultures and the assortment of colonial powers that have passed through and the outcome is a pretty unique and amazing place. Zanzibar literally translated from old Arabic means ‘Land of the blacks’ and for thousands of years was a stronghold of sea trading Arab sultans from Yemen and the Oman. These early and highly entrepreneurial adventurers followed the rotations of the yearly trade winds around the shores of the Indian ocean in their dhows trading in spices, ivory, gold, fabric, timbers and slaves. This trade and Zanzibar’s position as a producer of many sought after spices and the main assembly point for produce and slaves from the mainland made Zanzibar a very rich place indeed. As such the old city of Stone Town is full of ancient buildings and just oozes history and shows some of the many influencing cultures that have made this melting pot of a place home.

For the most part Stone Town is a reasonably stereotypical old Arab city in that it is a confusing mass of buildings intersected by narrow wiggling streets with an obvious lack of planning that makes getting lost a non negotiable aspect of visiting the place. The houses and mosques that line these streets display an almost tardis like quality when compared to the narrow cramped impression the alleys give you – once through the doors of the houses there are large courtyards, high ceilings and other design features that help keep the places cool in what is an extremely hot and humid climate.

Zanzibar houses were famous for their large and intricately carved doors and some houses still have them which in their carvings apparently tell the story of the occupying families that first built the houses. Many of these doors however have been bought up and shipped abroad by interior designers and the like to make interesting and unique antique focal points to their latest projects.

Zanzibar is also the place where the Swahili language developed through the mixing of African Bantu languages from the mainland with elements of among others Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Dutch, German and English. I have wanted to speak it since I first visited Africa when I was 18, but due to being linguistically retarded, lazy and spending lots of time in Kenya where they speak a somewhat messy version I had never managed to get beyond the very basics of the language.

So in coming to Zanzibar I have come to the place where the best and purest form of the language is spoken – the equivalent of Oxford English if you need a comparison. I have spent 2-4 hours a day with my teacher ‘Mama Aunty’ who has been instructing me in the finer points of the languages grammatical rules that had previously eluded me entirely. When not in lessons I have been trying to concentrate on learning an entire vocabulary and on not making embarrassing mistakes in pronunciation. During the course of my studies I have mixed up drinking with defecating (Kunywa/Kunya respectively) and ten with vagina (Kumi/Kuma) which in both situations rather alters the gist of what one is trying to communicate…….

Halfway through my time here I made the monumental mistake of going up to one of the beaches towards the north of the island for a night. It was a mistake as I was supposed to be revising my vocabulary and instead found myself on one of the most idyllic stretches of coast I have ever visited – which is saying something for someone who has lived on some very nice beaches in some very beautiful places around the world!

The sand is super fine silver white dust, the sea fantastically clear, warm turquoise perfection and as a whole the two make somewhere entirely perfect for loafing about whilst indulging in doing a whole lot of nothing. Which is what I wanted to do rather than spend hours trying to commit hundreds of new words to my desperately inadequate memory.

I stretched my stay out for a further night unable to drag myself away – but the forceful beacon of learning that is Mama Aunty forced me to return back to my lessons and the attempted digestion of such anomalies of word class groupings that encompass names of trees, objects made by handicraft, some parts of the body, and natural things that don’t have blood…

Other highlights of my Zanzibar experience have centred very much on the consumption of huge volumes of seafood, evening runs around the boundary of the old town and the occasional beer with the presidents son who I met through a girl I last saw whilst getting over a spot of Malaria in Kampala about 6 or 7 years ago. So all in not a bad few weeks.

So next report coming at you direct from Kenya where I will am heading off to tomorrow.

We have been adventuring. Proper adventuring. For the first time this trip we have really been going off into remote and inaccessible wilds and exploring places that very rarely see the likes of two honky plonkers in a rattling old Landrover. This for me has been ace as I passed through Tanzania about 6 years ago on a previous trip and decided it was simply too big to really explore with the time I had available – especially as most of the really interesting bits are well off the into the nether regions of the country. So now that I am back with the means and time to have a proper look we have been braving long distances on some truly awful roads to investigate the rarely visited western regions of the country.

From the Malawian border we headed west towards the southern end of lake Tanganyika and off the tarmac for what would seem to be the foreseeable future. This southern area of Tanzania is at quite a high altitude so cooler than the lowlands, seems to be extremely fertile and has more than a passing resemblance to what I imagine Provance may look like. There were large fields of sunflowers among the maize and other crops which gave the rolling landscape nice splashes of colour against the masses of green, and it was only the heavily rutted red dirt road that reinforced the fact we were actually still very much in Africa.

The state of the roads is such that in places we have been averaging speeds of under 20 miles per hour as huge holes, lumps and gullies are navigated and this is clearly the main hindrance for people to come to these regions either for business or tourism. The fact that foreigners are not much seen is cheerfully highlighted when you pass through a village as everyone stops to stare and children more often than not scatter at the terrifying sight of Keegan giving them his royal wave.

Our first proper port of call was a place called Kipilli on the edge of the lake that looked like a pleasantly promising spot on the map. On arrival we found a lovely campsite in the grounds of a lodge being built by a South African couple which gave us a chance to rest up after several gruelling days of being bashed around the inside of the car.

The campsite and lodge look out onto the lake and a number of small islands with the dramatic backdrop of some huge mountains in the Congo thankfully far across the lake which the sun would set behind each evening.

We took a boat out on the lake to go and do some snorkelling around the islands one day as the lake is full of lots of unique and colourful fish and the islands themselves are very beautiful being made up of enormous piles of smooth boulders carefully rounded by millennia of rain. We stopped at one spot near a small fishing village and all the local kids ran out onto the rocks at the waters edge and stood shouting and waving at us. We cheerfully waved back as I donned mask and flippers and plopped into the water and started swimming about. The kids keep up their waving and were pointing at some rocks not far off from the boat. On closer inspection it revealed there was a crocodile having a bit of a sunbathe on the rocks. It turns out the kids had been shouting ‘Hatari’ (danger or warning) at us but we were too far off to hear properly. The croc itself was only a little one just over a metre long so not really a danger at all unless you were a frog or fish and it didn’t seem too bothered by me swimming up a bit closer for a proper look.

The kids were also very funny when I went to have a chat with them in my bad Swahili. They were amazed by my flippers and some of the braver kids had a go with my mask flinging themselves into the water from the rocks without hesitation for a quick circuit of being able to see properly underwater.

From Kipilli we headed north to Katavi, one of Tanzania’s least visited national parks – last year it had just over 700 visitors and a viewing of the visitors book showed we were the first people to visit it since the 1st of January this year. This possibly had something to do with it being the off season – after some early rains the grass in the park grows extremely tall which makes game viewing pretty difficult and also provides the ideal breeding conditions for the awful Tsetse fly. These flies are pretty nondescript looking but pack a really painful bite, even through thick clothes and are also rather unfortunately responsible for transmitting sleeping sickness which is a fatal disease if not treated. Because of the flies we had to drive about the park with our windows up which is far from comfortable in this heat when in a car with no AC, and still some would swoop in whenever you opened the window to take a picture and would then prove near impossible to kill – a mere swatting would simply stun them and they would be back crawling around looking for something to bite so only a proper crushing where you felt the crunch would suffice in dispatching these horrid little creatures. Despite the attention of the flies and some reasonably violent hay fever the park was very impressive with all the expected animals trotting about including our first lions of the trip, and in the dry season when the grass in thinner, the animals more concentrated and there are many fewer tsetse flies it would be a really amazing park to visit again.

Moving through more remote parts of Tanzania has meant we are encountering less people who speak English and so I am getting to put into practise my rather rudimentary Swahili which I have been trying to learn for years. My ineptitude linguistically has hindered me somewhat in getting in any way competent in the language, but it has been quite nice to see that I actually can get by quite nicely and make myself understood in most important situations – i.e. getting food and drink.

We have been eating rather a lot of a Tanzanian road side special called ‘Chipsi Mayai’ or simply chips and egg. Its kind of the Tanzanian truck stop equivalent of a Spanish omelette and probably the safest thing to consume on offer at these roadside places – other options tend to be questionable chunks of meat or wobbly charcoaled goat offal…..

So we moved up to a place called Karonga on the northern end of Lake Tanganyika which for years has been a hub for all the refugee traffic from the Congo, Burundi and of course Rwanda – but is also interesting because of its proximity to a little village called Ujiji.

Ujiji is where Stanley is supposed to have uttered the words “Dr Livingstone I presume” upon finding the former taking a break from his exploring and missionarying. We paid a visit to the alleged site of this encounter (there is also a place in Burundi which makes similar claims) and were entertained by a delightful old gentleman who is the sites caretaker and guide. He had been doing the job for nearly 20 years and had taken Michel Palin around when he dropped in whilst filming ‘Pole to Pole’. His English was very good but he had a strange habit of elongating every ‘E’ he pronounced in a strangely reverent yet squeaky manner. Thus ‘Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey’ became (and you will have to work with me here to get the full effect) Livingstoneeeeeeee was burieedeee in WesteeeeeMinstereeee Abbeeeeeeey. Possibly difficult to project the comedy provided through the medium of the written word, but a lovely funny old man well worth a visit should you for whatever reason find yourself in Kigoma.

So now we are by Lake Victoria after yet another 12 hour stint of traversing awful pothole ridden tracks as we inch our way towards the Serengeti. We have arrived just in time to catch the news that the International Criminal Court in the Hague has just issued a warrant for the arrest of the president of Sudan. This isn’t quite good news for us – Bashir is without a doubt a thourally repellent individual who certainly deserves to have something horrid done to his soft parts (outside the remit of the ICC I hasten to add) but this really is slightly shitty timing wise. We had hoped to be through Sudan before anything like this happened as getting a visa to cross the country was going to be hard enough in the first place – but now…. Anyway until we find ourselves spending many miserable hours loitering around Sudanese embassies being ignored by their consulate staff we will maintain some degree of hope that we wont be hindered in our trip by anything other than our own stupidity and mechanical ineptitude.

Until then I am simply going to focus on the prospect of seeing the wildebeest migration in a few days and then spending some lazy time on an Indian ocean island to the south of Zanzibar. Hellish stuff ideal for the preparation of the faculties required when working out what to do when international politics get in the way of a long planned adventure.

This morning I am itching. It is only through a significant degree of restraint that I am preventing myself from scratching the huge numbers of little bites that are all over my back and legs, received after the unwelcome attention of bed bugs. To make it even more annoying these horrid little blood suckers were encountered in one of the more pricey establishments we stayed whilst in Malawi – so should you be passing ‘Club Marina’ in Karonga I recommend you have a look elsewhere.

This particular hotel is also worth avoiding if there is any threat of heavy rain. We arrived early in the evening just before a downpour started, and by the time we ventured out in search of some form of nourishment a few hours later the grounds of the place were several feet deep in water making for an interesting wade towards the kitchens….

It is this heavy rain that has encouraged us to make a slightly earlier than planned departure from Malawi and push on up into Tanzania.

During our ‘planning’ for this trip we thought we were being super cunning by moving from summer in South Africa up through the continent to summer back in Europe – passing along the way through lots of countries also enjoying their own summers. This was however a bit of a balls up on our part, and especially so seeing as we have both spent significant periods of time cruising through these parts. Summer in lots of equatorial countries rather than meaning when it is hot and sunny as it does in the Northern hemisphere means when it is raining, as being equatorial they are always hot and sunny anyway… So we had a soggy Zambia, a increasingly damp Malawi, and a cancellation decision for an allegedly waterlogged Mozambique

So climatic annoyances aside we are now attempting to get a few steps ahead of the rains and instead will be spending a decent amount of time in a very large country having a look at a few of the less visited parts before having a crack at climbing Kilimanjaro. Hopefully we can do all we want to before seasonal waters ruin all the roads that assorted reports suggest may be on the shit side of things even when not churned into a thick muddy soup.