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Our Next Adventure: Nairobi To Cape Town Through 7 Countries
Yep, that’s what we’re doing next. In the middle of July we’ll be flying out to Nairobi, so making Kenya the first of seven countries on our slow journey from there to the continent’s southern coast. We will be starting with only an outline plan of our route, a framework which contains a number of definites and several “must sees” but with a variable plan which is likely to evolve and change as we make our way southwards. All seven countries will be, for us, new African ground. Together we have previously visited Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Cape Verde and Tanzania including Zanzibar, and Michaela has also visited Gambia and Senegal,…
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Exploring Santiago: Northwards To Tarrafal
Language is interesting here: the tongue spoken by Cape Verdeans is known as Krioli, but due to the variations between the different versions spoken on each of the islands, there is not really an accepted definitive strain, either written or spoken. It certainly sounds more than a little unfamiliar to us, and even the Portuguese spoken here is uncharacteristically choppy to our ears. Fortunately, a degree of English is understood and, with the majority of the population being of Senegalese descent, French is pretty widespread. I think you could say we’re talking Babel most of the time. Makes a change from Drivel, I suppose. Monday morning we collect our nicely…
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Michaela’s Favourite Photographs: #1 The Lost Tomato
Marrakech, 2015. This one was a stroke of luck, Michaela had no idea that she had caught this tomato in mid-flight until we looked at the photo much later. It was intended to be a shot of the contrasting types of transport ahead of us as we drove back to the airport – only to capture the moment when one solitary tomato made its bid for freedom.
- Africa, Belize, Central America, Independent travel, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, North America, Panama, Photography, Travel Blog, Wildlife
That Was 2022
When we retired at the end of 2019, full of wide eyed enthusiasm about seeing the world and feeling like the entire world was our oyster, we had a vision of what a year would look like. This was of course before we had any inkling that something very nasty was about to escape from China and have something of an impact on those plans. Resourceful as we were in ‘20 and ‘21 (we travelled as much as we could and more than most), 2022 has probably been the first year which really did match the dreams we had at the start. As a year which started in Costa Rica…
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Beautiful Places #5: Zanzibar
Without doubt Zanzibar is one of those evocative place names full of romance, the very mention of which creates images of an exotic island, paradise beaches and the dreamy blue of the Indian Ocean. The reality doesn’t disappoint: Zanzibar is indeed an idyllic destination. We split our time on the island between the capital Stone Town and Nungwi on the north coast, and the two places proved to be very different experiences. Stone Town, aka Zanzibar Town, is a bustling town in an unmistakably colonial style with grand old buildings and ornate gardens standing shoulder to shoulder with cramped townships. If you want anything in Stone Town, from excursions to…
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Travel Stories #2: Into The Unknown
Sitting on the rocks at the top of the waterfall just at the point where the river drops over the top to cascade to the plateau way below, hundreds of square miles of flood plains and sugar plantations stretching out to the horizon, seemed like as good time as any to ask. After all, Hamadi had made it very clear that we could add anything to our itinerary. “Hamadi, we’d like to see an ordinary African town, if possible”. “Really?” He was surprised. “To see what?” “Just to see a different way of life, to learn culture”. “OK, Johnson will take you. He knows his town well”. As if on…
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Travel Stories #1: Bush Routes
“Are you Phil?”. He’d appeared from nowhere in the darkness but his friendly smile was a big relief at such a late hour. The airport at Dar-Es-Salaam is not your standard terminal, with half of the seating area positioned outside of the building and surrounded by concrete, plastic and glass, only a handful of features recognisable as a Terminal. It was somewhere around 2am, we’d disembarked our flight from Istanbul and all other passengers had scattered quickly. Within minutes it was just the two of us milling around the concrete areas, shrouded in deep darkness, the night as silent as the airport itself. I looked at Michaela, the worry in…
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Photographic Memories #6
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories….. Photo #6: Seaweed Farming On rare occasions you look at a photograph you’ve just taken and immediately know it’s special. This photograph is one such, capturing the unique pale blue of the Indian Ocean and the vastness of the tidal reach, as well as the hard and lonely days of the workers. This is Paje on the east coast of Zanzibar, where seaweed cultivation is one…
