The travels of Tim and Megan

Africa Safari: Botswana

2012-01-30T01:15:00.000-08:00

Day 38: Chobe National Park, Botswana

After an early night (8pm!) and a massive sleep, we were raring to go at 6am on Monday. Today we were leaving Zimbabwe and heading west into Botswana. We packed up our things and said goodbye to our old crew (Mwangi, Mwai and Nick) who were heading back up to Kenya with another truck. We also bid farewell to a number of our tour group, some of whom were homeward bound, while others were taking a different truck south to Johannesburg. We, of course, were heading to Cape Town on a shiny new orange truck.

We had breakfast with our new crew and met some new tour group members, who seemed like good fun. We left Victoria Falls at about 9am and we drove west for around an hour to the Botswana border, where we were treated to a speedy border crossing.

Botswana is a flat, desert covered, landlocked country in southern Africa, with a population of around 2 million. Unlike its neighbours it was never formally colonised, although it was once a British protectorate before achieving independence in 1966. We had been intrigued by Botswana for a while as it is a proper success story - rising from poverty at the time of independence to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world (its GDP leapt from US$70 t0 US$14,000, largely due to diamond mining). Impressively, Botswana has managed to remain relatively stable and democratic post-independence and we were looking forward to seeing it after witnessing so much poverty throughout other parts of Africa.

Things started well, with a successful supermarket visit for supplies at the town of Kasane, just across the border. People there looked a lot wealthier than in other parts of Africa and the shops were really good - a welcome change from some poorly-stocked shops in Malawi and Zimbabwe.

After a short drive, we arrived at our camp and got ourselves set up. We had lunch and a talk from our new tour leader, Darlington. He seemed really nice and a bit of a hard case. He, like Mwangi, was an Arsenal fan. Smart man. After lunch we chilled out in the bar next to the swimming pool. Most of us had chosen to do an optional overnight camp in Chobe National Park. We couldn't resist the opportunity to sleep out in the wild with the animals! Chobe, in northern Botswana, has one of the largest concentrations of game in Africa and it is particularly known for its concentration of elephants (numbering over 50,000)!

Later in the afternoon, we got into our special 4x4 game viewing vehicle and set off for a two-hour game drive through Chobe. It wasn't long before we were at Chobe River and watching elephants play and wash in the water - happy times. We also saw plenty of giraffes, sables, impala, mongooses, crocodiles, hippos, monkeys and loads of baboons, before stopping riverside to watch another gorgeous African sunset.

We got to our camping spot, which had been set up for us earlier. The camp was in the middle of Chobe National Park and had no fences or security against the animals. The camp looked beautiful, with chairs, tables, lanterns and tents, which contained mattresses and pillows. Luxury! We went through a few ground rules since we were camping wild - no visiting the toilet on your own after dark, no leaving fruit in your tent (as elephants will smell it and tear the tent down to get at it) and no leaving your tent if you hear animals outside.

Then it was time for a few drinks around the camp fire and a meal that none of us had to cook or clean up afterwards, bonus! The food was fantastic - soup, beef stroganoff, pumpkin, potatoes, green salad and fruit with custard. However, eating was a challenge with hundreds of giant flying beetles, moths, flies, mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies dive-bombing our heads and trying to share in our food.

Several of the group were also unnerved by the large, white spiders that scuttled across the ground at high speed and seemed inclined to follow us wherever we moved. Our guide nicknamed the spiders the "Kalahari Ferraris" due to their speed. He was pretty relaxed about these spiders, as apparently they are not deadly (although if they bite you it will really hurt!). We weren't so fond of them and we were getting monstered by insects, so after dinner we retired to bed fairly early. Plus those mattresses and pillows looked mighty comfy. We got a great sleep, only interrupted by some odd grunting in the night...

Day 39: Chobe National Park

On Tuesday we woke at 5.45am and had an amazing breakfast at the campsite - porridge followed be French toast, bacon and baked beans. Delicious! Our guide informed us that the strange grunting noise we had heard in the night was a leopard, who had wandered right through the middle of our campsite and past our tents. Leopards make a grunting noise as a way to mark their territory and scare off any other leopards or hyenas etc who might be lurking in the region.

We left the camp at 7am and started a morning game drive through Chobe. It was a slow start, as there were not many animals about. However, before long we came across a big pride of lions, gathered by the edge of the river. They were looking hungrily at a dead buffalo lying in the river, just far enough into the water to make it out of reach for the lions. Out of reach due to the crocodiles circling the buffalo, almost willing the lions in to the water so they could pounce!

Once the lions realised they would not be eating this morning, they walked away from the river towards the bush. They passed our 4x4 vehicle literally 2-3 metres away from us. Those of us sitting on the left side of the vehicle felt very vulnerable, as there were no doors, windows or sides to the jeep - we were completely exposed and had nowhere to go if one of the lions pounced. They actually looked right at us as they passed - it was quite scary. But it was also brilliant to see lions so close!

During the rest of the morning we saw a variety of bird life, squirrels, impala, some kudu (a large type of antelope), elephants, giraffes, zebras, sable, buffaloes, baboons, hippos and a massive monitor lizard (this thing was well over a metre long)! When we stopped for a short toilet break, we saw some cheeky monkeys scuttling around on the ground. Tim accidentally dropped a piece of biscuit on the ground and one of the monkeys snaffled it and ate it up. It was pretty cute. The lions were definitely the highlight of the morning.

We left Chobe and returned to our proper camp near Kasane at 11am. We had showers and chilled out there for a while. After lunch we left the camp and headed back into Kasane for some more supplies. We then had an afternoon outing in the form of a boat cruise on the beautiful Chobe River. The cruise was spectacular. The scenery was amazing and we saw lots of wild animals up close.

There were loads of hippos in the river, some massive crocs chilling on the river bank, elephants grazing on the huge island in the middle of the river and some baboons scrapping around for some food. But the real highlight was an amazing fish eagle, perched in a tree, clutching a fish in one of its claws (photo below). Tim got to skipper the boat for a short while, which was pretty cool - again, photo below.

It was another "booze cruise" and some of the tour group dominated. Mike (aka Little Anzac) demolished most of a bottle of brandy in a touch over two hours and he stumbled off the boat at the end of the trip. One of his jandals (aka thongs over the ditch and flip-flops in the motherland) fell off and he was struggling big time to get his foot back into it. Tim asked him if he was OK and he slurred "I lost my shoe" and then laughed hysterically. Always good value, Little Anzac. Back at camp we had a good solid dinner and then went to bed nice and early. We were knackered after a big couple of days!

Day 40: Travel to Maun

On Wednesday we left camp at 6.40am. We had a long day of driving from Kasane (in the north-east tip of Botswana) south-west down to Maun in central Botswana. The landscape was very dry and barren - lots of red soil and prickly looking trees and not much else. We passed by a national park at one point and saw some zebras and a few antelopes but nothing too exciting.

We arrived in Maun around 3pm and we had some time to do a bit of shopping and internet before heading to our camp. There was no hassle from the locals in Botswana - it was very noticeable that people living there were much better off than those in Zimbabwe and some other countries, where there was severe poverty. It made it much easier for us to get around town.

Our camp was pretty nice - it had a small swimming pool and a decent bar, which was covered in NZ flags and All Blacks posters! We pitched our tents and had a couple of drinks in the bar before dinner. Our new chef, Freddie, made us spag bol for dinner and it was amazing.

There was a wicked thunder storm in the evening - the thunder and lightning rolled on for over an hour before any rain actually fell. Luckily we had gone to bed by the time the rain came - because it absolutely chucked it down. There were a few leaks in the tent. The noises were unreal - there was a real electric-sounding crackle from the lightning and an insanely loud boom from the thunder, like a bomb going off. We had never heard a storm like that before. It was scary.

Day 41: Maun

Thursday signalled the beginning of a three-day optional activity in the Okavango Delta. The Okavango Delta (or Okavango Swamp), is the world's largest inland delta. It is formed where the Okavango River empties onto a swamp in an endorheic basin in the Kalahari Desert, where most of the water is lost to evaporation rather than draining out to sea. Needless to say, the water attracts an abundance of wildlife!

The optional excursion involved a canoe ride and lots of bush walking. Megan and Tim decided not to do this activity, as it sounded a little dull to us and we were also looking forward to a couple of days to chill out on our own. While we got on famously with most of our tour group, there were one or two of the newbies that we picked up in Zimbabwe who were already rubbing us up the wrong way! Some time out was ideal! We were not missing out on much anyway, as we had booked in for a flight over the Okavango Delta in a Cessna on Saturday afternoon.

But Thursday and Friday were all about relaxing! After the others headed off on their Okavango Delta trip, we showered, had breakfast and did a bit of washing, before retiring to the pool area, where we lazed in the sun, had a couple of swims and chilled out in the bar. The camping ground was super quiet - there was only a few other people roaming around all day. It was really quiet. Just what we wanted.

Darlington cooked us an amazing dinner (Freddie, our chef, had gone with the rest of the team to cook for them in the Delta). We had battered chicken drumsticks, which Darlington called "DFC" - Darlington Fried Chicken. Very funny. Then we had pasta and sauce with spicy sausages. Delicious. While we were chatting to Darlington after dinner a couple of huge bulls walked through the middle of the camp. Very odd.

Day 42: Maun

Tim woke in the middle of the night thinking there was someone lurking outside our tent, but it was just a cow. We felt refreshed when we woke on Friday morning. We had a solid breakfast of scrambled eggs and bread and then caught a lift into town with another tour company's truck. We had a look around the shops and spent a fair chunk of time catching up with the outside world over the power of the internet. We even managed to fax our voting papers for the general election back to New Zealand.

We caught a taxi back to the camp and had pasta salad and tuna for lunch. We did some more washing and hung out by the pool in the afternoon. Another bonus of staying at the camp was that the truck bound for Johannesburg rolled back into camp, with many of our former tour mates on board! Even though we'd only spent a few days apart, it was great to have a reunion. They had just returned from their trip to the Delta and were not overly enthused about it - apparently it was insanely hot and there was not much to do there.

We had a few drinks with the old team and then dinner in the camp restaurant - roast chicken, scalloped potatoes and coleslaw. After dinner there were more drinks and shenanigans with the old crew. It was a late night by African standards!

Day 43: Maun and Okavango Delta

Saturday started slowly - we were pretty tired. After breakfast we spent a productive morning doing our hand washing and repacking our things. Then it was time to welcome our fellow travellers back from the Delta (feedback was generally positive but it was not a trip highlight) and get ready for our Cessna flight over the Okavango Delta. Those of us who had chosen to do the flight drove to the Maun Airport after lunch.

Our plane was a seven-seat Cessna, it felt small on the airstrip and even more so once we were airborne! It was a windy day and we got blown sideways during take-off! The Delta from the air was mesmerising. We were amazed at the contrast in scenery in the Delta - the landscape seemed to change so fast. There were huge patches of water, grassy areas, palm trees and patches of dry land, as well as little streams that ran across the countryside like veins.

We were captivated by the stunning views and we even spotted some game - hippos, elephants, giraffes, zebras and antelopes. The flight lasted over an hour and we covered a big area. It was a really wicked experience.

We got back to camp late in the afternoon in time to see a wart hog ripping through our rubbish bags! We then caught up with some English football in the bar before enjoying pasta, bacon and veges for dinner and settling in for our last night in Maun. Megs saw a little brown owl in the tree next to our tent, which was very cute! We hit the hay at 9.45pm - late! Tomorrow we were leaving Botswana and entering Namibia.

Elephants
in Chobe

Elegant

Baboon
grooming

Our Chobe
camp

Hungry
lions

Woah
that's
close

Praying
wart hog

Freaky
tree in
Chobe

Buff! With
birds in its
nostrils

Megs in
Chobe

Monkey
eating
biscuit

Chobe
River

The skipper
of the boat

Huge
croc

Fish
eagle -
with fish
in claw

Bar and
pool at
camp in
Maun

Our
little
Cessna

Maun
from the
air

Oka-
vango
Delta

Very
excite

Delta

And
again

Africa Safari: Zimbabwe - Part 2

2012-01-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

Day 37: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

On Sunday, we woke at 6.30am, not feeling great after a lousy night's sleep. At 7.30am, Neena joined the two of us on a visit to the Victoria Falls waterfall. It was a decent walk down to the waterfall and it was already hot, although there were not many annoying street vendors hassling us and, by going early, we avoided the crowds at the Falls.

Victoria Falls is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Locally known as "the smoke that thunders", the waterfall is situated on the Zambezi River between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Falls are 1.7km wide and 108m high at the centre. The average flow of water over the Falls is 1,088 cubic metres per second. That is a lot of water.

We arrived at the Falls around 8am and had a slow, leisurely stroll from one end of the Falls right to the other end. The beginning of the walking track had a large statue of David Livingstone. Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary and explorer, is believed to have been the first European recorded to view the Victoria Falls. Livingstone gave the Falls the name "Victoria Falls" in honour of his Queen.

The waterfall was so incredibly beautiful. There was a fine mist in the air (like that spray that keeps the fruit cool in the produce section of the supermarket), which kept us cool. On the side of the walkway opposite the Falls, there was a beautiful garden, thick with exotic looking trees and plants and some bright red flowers that looked a little like pohutakawa flowers.

It was not the high water time of the year, so the Falls were not as full as they can be, but they were absolutely spectacular. The noise of the Falls was quite breath-taking. It really does "thunder". We spent around two hours there. After we got to the end of the path, we walked all the way back along the path the the start, taking loads of photos as we went. There were much bigger crowds coming through by the time we finished.

We had a drink at the outdoor cafe by the entrance to the Falls and checked out the gift shop before wandering back to our camp. We were harassed by street vendors on the way back - they kept asking for Tim's shoes and T-shirts. We had lunch at the camping ground restaurant, which was comically called "In Da Belly", and the food was great. It was a lazy afternoon chilling out by the pool, swimming in the pool, and lying in the sun.

Later in the day, we had showers, packed up all of our things, and sheltered from a thunderstorm that rolled in around 5.30pm. There was really heavy rain for quite a while - thankfully we had got the rain sheet on the tent in time and we had put our packs back in the truck. Crafty! We had dinner with Troy and Sara and then had an early night - tomorrow we would enter Botswana with a new crew!

Entrance
to Victoria
Falls

Statue of
David Livingstone

The
Falls

Pretty
flowers
at the
Falls

Neena and
Megs at
the Falls

Tim on
a big log!

Megs
and the
giant
log

Zimbabwe
flag

Our
camping
ground
pool

Africa Safari: Zimbabwe - Part 1

2012-01-23T00:56:00.000-08:00

Day 35: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

We woke up still feeling a little drunk from the night before. It was a bit of a struggle packing up our gear, although eggs on toast for breakfast greatly improved things. We left the camp at Livingstone just after 8am and we had our shortest drive of the whole tour - just 20 minutes to the border crossing into Zimbabwe.

The crossing itself took a long time - over an hour - and it was scorching hot despite being early in the morning. Once we were across the border into Zimbabwe, we were almost immediately in Victoria Falls town, where we would spend the next three days.

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and north and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three official languages: English, Shona and Ndebele. Zimbabwe began as the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, created from land held by the British South Africa Company. Zimbabwe's independence from Britain was internationally recognised in 1980. The population of Zimbabwe is around 13 million and the capital and largest city is Harare.

Victoria Falls is a town of about 20,000 people on the southern bank of the Zambezi River at the western end of the Victoria Falls themselves. Aside from being home to one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, the town is far enough away from the big centres of Harare and Bulawayo that it has escaped much of the political and economic unrest that has plagued Zimbabwe since the 1990s, ensuring that tourism has remained steady in the region.

On arrival in town, we stopped in at an adventure company and heard about all the activities on offer. Victoria Falls is a kind of adrenalin capital, similar to Queenstown in New Zealand, but with wild animals thrown in.

We chose to steer clear of the bungy jumping (a 111-metre high fall from a bridge over the Zambezi) and other adrenalin activities. This proved to be wise, given that an Aussie tourist miraculously survived when her bungy rope snapped as she was falling at the very same bungy site, just weeks after we were there. She fell 30 metres into the crocodile-infested Zambezi River, passed out on impact, woke a few seconds later, struggling to keep afloat as her legs were still tied together and only avoided drowning in the rapids when the rope got caught in rocks and she managed to haul herself out of the water. Scary stuff.

We signed up for the "Walk with Lions" and we seriously considered doing a helicopter ride over the Victoria Falls waterfall, but in the end decided against that. We also opted not to do the elephant ride, as we had done that in Thailand in 2004.

After choosing our activities, we checked into the camping ground and pitched our tents. We thought it was pretty cool when the clock ticked over to 11.11am on 11/11/11. It was insanely hot - easily over 40 degrees and so dry. Apparently there was a heat wave in southern Africa while we were there, meaning there were unusually high temperatures for the time of year. We sought refuge in Pizza Inn (a good restaurant just down the road from our camping ground). It actually combined a bakery, a pizza place, a fried chicken place and an ice cream parlour all in the same shop. Brilliant. We had delicious pizza for lunch and enjoyed the air conditioning!

There were loads of young guys in the streets who pestered us to buy things off them every time we walked down the street. Most of them were selling old Zimbabwe currency (which is no longer legal tender) for novelty value. The hyper-inflation in the country in 2008-09 meant that bank notes up to 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars were printed. These are now sold as souvenirs - we bought a 20 billion dollar note for about US$2. Quite a good deal, we thought!

While we felt sorry for them, the street vendors were also really annoying - they were so persistent. When they realised we did not want to buy anything from them, they would ask if we wanted to swap shoes with them or they would ask us to give them T-shirts or other clothing. It was sad, as they were very poor.

The camp was quite cool - it had a big swimming pool and a nice bar area. Our time in Zimbabwe was more or less free time - so we could choose which optional activities we wanted to do and the rest of time was spent chilling out. We hung out at the camp for a while and Tim cut his hair with Andrew's clippers. Then later in the afternoon we walked back across the border into Zambia to the bungy jumping bridge to watch Mike, Sara and Susan do their bungy jumps, bridge swings and flying fox slide things. It was scarily high looking from the bridge down to the river below. But the guys didn't seem to be too nervous and they all had a blast. There was a sign in the middle of the bridge that marked the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and, as you can see from the photo below, Tim got a rare photo of himself spread across two countries...

It was so hot in the afternoon and there was very little shade anywhere near the bungy jump bridge. We were all very dehydrated and Megs almost fainted from the heat. Not good. Back at camp, we sat by the pool for a while and took in loads of water. In the evening, we had a big dinner with our whole tour group at a restaurant at Kingdom Hotel. It was a buffet dinner, with an emphasis on meat (oh Africa we love you). We had delicious soup, all sorts of amazing meat (including game such as ox tail, crocodile and wildebeest), veges and salads. Fantastic.

Day 36: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Sadly we did not have a great sleep - the camping ground was right next to a nightclub, which played really bad music very loudly until about 2am... It was also stupidly hot, so we couldn't have slept anyway. We woke early but lazed in the tent until 7.30am. Saturday signalled the last breakfast with our old crew. We were getting a new crew and some new tour members for the last leg of our marathon tour. Mwai cooked us fried eggs and baked beans on toast for our last breakfast. Brilliant. After brekkie, we charged some of our electronics and put a load of washing in to be cleaned. Then we set off for our lion walk at 10am.

We got picked up in mini vans from the camping ground and we drove about 15-20 minutes out of town to the Lion Encounter enclosure. Lion Encounter operates the African Lion Rehabilitation and Release into the Wild Programme on behalf of, and supported by, "ALERT", the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust. Given the rapid decline in free-ranging lion populations (80-90% in the last 50 years) and the reduction of much of their natural habitat throughout Africa, ALERT supports assisted lion reintroduction programmes.

The Programme run by Lion Encounter is a four stage long-term project. Cubs born in captivity are removed from their mothers and raised by humans in what is as close to their natural environment as possible. Once they are old enough, they are released into a "controlled environment" where there is limited competition for food and then eventually they are released into the wild.

When we arrived, we were given a safety briefing and an explanation of the project and what they hope to achieve through it. Lion Encounter had five cubs at the time we visited and the costs of feeding them, let alone maintaining their habitat etc, was huge. The tourist visits to walk with the lions was a means of raising awareness of the rapid decline in lion population and of raising money to fund the project.

We were each given a stick that we had to hold at all times in case the lions got too playful with us, and we were given some instructions on where we could and could not stand and where we could pat the lions etc. It was all very exciting. Then we walked through the dry, arid bush for a few minutes until we came to the spot where two cubs were sleeping on the ground. They were huge! We had expected small cubs, around the size of a labrador, but these "cubs" were massive.

They were brother and sister and were both 17 months old. Apparently they both weighed around 90kg. Fully grown males weigh about 260kg, while fully grown females will weigh over 150kg. Cubs are born with light-coloured spots, which gradually fade and are gone by the time they reach two years of age.

Initially we took turns patting the lions while they slept. They loved having the bellies rubbed. They were just like domestic cats - purring as we patted them. Their fur was surprisingly soft and we were blown away by how big their paws were. Even their back paws, which are smaller than their front paws, were bigger than Tim's hands (which are like buckets). After we had all patted the lion bellies and got some photos with them, the Lion Encounter guy whistled and the cubs jumped to attention and followed him off into the bush for a walk. We then took turns walking alongside the lions for 20 minutes or so.

Despite the way lions lazily amble along, our cubs moved at a quick pace. We had to stay behind their hind legs at all times. If you move in front of a lion, their hunting instinct will kick in and they will chase you! At this age, they would only want to "play" with us if they chased us, but unfortunately they play with their teeth and their paws and they are incredibly powerful animals. Their enclosure (or area) is not actually enclosed at all, meaning that other wild animals can come in whenever they please, which could pose a risk for the cubs. At night the cubs sleep in an enclosed hut sort of thing, to keep them safe from hyenas, leopards and other lions.

Despite not having a pride to teach them to hunt, their natural instincts were clearly there, as they had worked together to kill a baboon a few weeks earlier. The guides were really impressed with them for showing such good hunting skills at a young age. While we were walking with them, one of the cubs spotted a guinea fowl off in the distance and she tensed up and then took off towards it, almost bowling the guide out of the way as she went. After that excitement, the cubs stopped at a pond for a drink and then they found a big tree to sit under and rest in the shade. Lions are notoriously lazy animals in the heat of the day!

Our encounter with the lions was absolutely amazing - probably the highlight of the whole African tour and one of the most spectacular experiences of our lives. Everyone was buzzing for the rest of the day. We had drinks and snacks back at the Lion Encounter office, while we watched the DVD of our experience. It was a really good DVD and we just had to buy it as a record of our lion encounter. The walk with lions was an expensive activity, but everyone agreed it was absolutely worth every cent and, even if only a portion of that money goes towards lion conservation, then it is a fantastic cause!

Back at camp, we grabbed a quick lunch at the Pizza Inn bakery and then we had a cruisy afternoon. Tim did some emails and blogging in a great internet cafe (with air conditioning) and Megan went for a massage. Later in the afternoon, we hung out by the pool with some of the others and had a few drinks.

We had a cheap and easy dinner and then chatted to the others for a while. We went to bed around 11.30pm, but we were again disturbed by the nightclub next to the camp and by a few members of our tour whose loud drunken shenanigans kept most of us up until 3am. Thankfully a huge thunderstorm with super impressive lightning rolled in around 3am, which sent the drunkards to bed. Luckily, it actually didn't rain for that long, so our tents remained dry.

View from
bungy
bridge -
Zambezi
River

Tim in two
countries at
once! Border
between Zambia
and Zimbabwe

Megs and Tim
on bungy
bridge

Our lion
cubs
sleeping

Rubbing
lions'
bellies

Such soft
fur!

Megs
with two
lions!

Huge
paws!

Walking
with our
lions!

Amazing

Still walking
with lions

Megan
and lion

Thirsty
work

Raaar!

A bit
tired

Posing
with
lions

And
again

Beautiful
lion

Warthogs
in the
street in
Vic Falls

Africa Safari: Zambia

2012-01-20T20:40:00.000-08:00

Day 32: Travel to Chipata, Zambia

We crossed the border from Malawi into Zambia in mid-afternoon and we headed for Chipata. The Zambian countryside seemed to be very green and fertile, with plenty of pretty hills. We stopped in Chipata to get diesel for the truck (we were running low as there had not been any diesel in Malawi).

We also tried to exchange money, but as the banks had closed, we had to try our luck with a group of dodgy men hanging out in the car park. They offered us really bad exchange rates and Mwangi told us not to change any money with them, as they were trying to rip us off. The guys got really aggressive and threatened Mwangi. They claimed that they would beat the crap out of him when he passed through Chipata on his next trip. Mwangi just lit a cigarette and told them if they want to beat him up they should do it now. I think they were a little reluctant with Troy, Mike, Andrew, Terry and Tim standing next to Mwangi, and Mwai (a Kenyan brick shit house) lurking nearby...

We carried on to Mama Rula's camping ground, just out of Chipata and we had a good night there. We had a couple of beers in the bar. It was a much cooler night, so we slept like babies.

Day 33: Travel to Lusaka

Our time in Zambia was very brief and uneventful - it was more of a route to Zimbabwe rather than a destination in itself. So Wednesday was another big driving day, as we headed west across Zambia towards the capital city of Lusaka.

Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo to the north, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west.

Originally inhabited by Khosian peoples, the region which comprises modern Zambia was colonised during the Bantu expansion of the 13th century. After visits by European explorers in the 18th century, Zambia became the British colony of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the 19th century. On 24 October 1964, the country declared independence from the United Kingdom.

The population of Zambia is around 13 million people, about 2 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Lusaka. The official language is English. Zambia shares with Zimbabwe one of the seven natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls, which is situated on the Zambezi River between the two countries.

We woke at 4.15am and departed the campsite at 5.50am. It was much hotter than the previous day, so it was unpleasant conditions in the truck - not great for a huge day of driving. Things got worse at around 10am, when we stopped on the side of the road to buy some charcoal from some locals. While we were stopped, Mwai and Nick noticed a problem with the truck - something to do with the brakes apparently.

Anyway, we all had to get off the truck while the crew sorted out the problem. Thankfully Nick is a trained mechanic, so he knew what he was doing. Initially it was not too bad, as we chatted to the group of people who were selling the charcoal - they lived in some small round huts just back from the road. But after two hours sitting outside in the searing heat, we were over it!

After the problem had been fixed, we drove on a short distance and then stopped again for lunch. There was no shade in the area we stopped in, so our lunch break was uncomfortably hot too. It was difficult to eat much - we lost our appetite with the heat.

We drove on in the afternoon - the scenery was pretty. It was quite hilly and green and we passed lots of villages full of round huts with thatched roofs, so there was plenty to look at. Zambia makes a lot of its money from mining copper and from farming.

Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Lusaka and stopped at a huge shopping centre. We could not change our Malawi currency at the bureau de change, so we swapped it with Mwangi instead. We bought some drinks and snacks at the supermarket, which was amazing (just like a supermarket in New Zealand or the UK), although it was a little pricey for Africa.

It looked like there were plenty of wealthy people in Lusaka (relatively speaking). We passed a lot of fancy looking buildings as we drove through the capital - car yards, gyms, etc. It all looked very western and modern. We also passed a lot of chicken farms on the outskirts of Lusaka and a giant chicken statue in the centre of a roundabout - so we assume that the area produces a lot of chicken...

We got to the camping ground after dark, pitched our tent, got showered and then had a delicious dinner of sausages and potatoes. The food we had on the tour really was fantastic throughout.

Day 34: Travel to Livingstone

We woke to find some zebras hanging out next to the volleyball court in the middle of the camping ground! We departed the camp at 7am and we drove for six hours solid with just a few quick toilet breaks. The scenery was again very pretty.

We arrived at Livingstone just after 1pm. We were treated to an exceptionally close view of a herd of elephants as we entered the camping ground. The camp was surrounded by a huge fence with gates and the elephants were grazing just outside the gates. We stopped and took some photos from the truck. One of the elephants was only a couple of metres from the truck - it was seriously huge. Being so close was actually quite scary!

The camping ground was amazing - it had a great bar overlooking the Zambezi River and a swimming pool. We had lunch and then set up our tents. It was a scorching hot day. We then headed down to the bar area and waited for our sunset boat cruise. The cruise on the Zambezi was really the only activity we did during our short visit to Zambia. But what an activity!

The Zambezi River is 3,540km in length. It has its source in Zambia and flows through Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, Zambia again, Zimbabwe and into Mozambique, where it empties into the Indian Ocean. It is the fourth-largest river in Africa. The Zambezi's most spectacular feature is the beautiful Victoria Falls.

Just before boarding the boat, we saw an elephant swimming from one side of the river to the other - a distance of around 200 metres! Who knew elephants could swim?! We paid a set fee for the sunset cruise and it included unlimited alcohol! The cruise was stunning. We saw plenty of hippos in the river and Tim managed to snap a great photo of a hippo yawning (see below). We also saw another elephant swimming across the river and a huge croc sunning himself on the bank of the river.

We saw a beautiful sunset on the river and obviously had a few drinks. It was really fun. After the boat cruise we returned to the camping ground and discovered that there was a big outdoor bar area where lots of people were hanging out. So we headed there and had a few more drinks and laughs before bedtime.

Zambian
locals selling
charcoal

Broken
down
truck...

Zambezi
River

Zambian
huts

Zambian
village

Megs by
the Zambezi

Camping
ground bar
and pool at
Living-
stone

Sunset
boat
cruise

On the
boat

Beautiful
Zambezi

Hippo
yawn

Megs and
Neena

Zambezi
wildlife

Sunset

Another
boat...

Sunset
again

Pretty

Neena
on the
boat

Africa Safari: Malawi

2012-01-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

Day 27: Travel to Chitimba Beach, Malawi

Thursday was another big driving day. We were up at 4.30am and departed the Old Farmhouse camping ground at Iringa at 6am. Unfortunately Tim got an injury doing his "dogs bodies" duties. The "dogs bodies" team was tasked with loading and unloading the truck every day - plenty of heavy lifting and other such jobs. As we were loading all of the luggage on to the truck, Andrew accidentally jammed Tim's thumb in the luggage-hold doors of the truck. It pretty much split the side of Tim's thumb open - there was much blood.

It was a long and boring day on the truck - lots of time for reading, listening to ipods, chatting to the others and sleeping! It was a seven-hour drive to the border. We stopped a couple of times, once for an ATM and to buy some snacks and water, and then later for lunch just before we crossed the border. At lunch, we met one of Mwangi's mates, "Freddy the Money Changer" - who, unsurprisingly, changed our Tanzanian shillings for Malawi kuchas. He gave us a really good rate, despite us not really having anywhere else to exchange it.

Our border crossing took over an hour and a half - a painful process in the intense heat of the middle of the day. Once into Malawi, it was another two and a half hours to our camp at Chitimba Beach on Lake Malawi.

Malawi is a landlocked country in south-east Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the north-east, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Malawi is over 118,000 sq km, with an estimated population of nearly 14 million. Its capital is Lilongwe, the largest city is Blantyre and the second largest city is Mzuzu. The country is nicknamed, "The Warm Heart of Africa".

Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa and the eighth largest in the world, is located between Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. The lake's tropical waters are reportedly the habitat of more species of fish than those of any other body of freshwater on Earth, including more than 1000 species of cichlids. Lake Malawi is between 560-580 km long, about 75 km wide at its widest point and has a maximum depth of 706 metres. The total surface area of the lake is about 29,600 sq km, which accounts for 25% of the country's total area.

We entered Malawi from the north and drove south along the western shore of the massive lake. Malawi looked a lot more green than Tanzania - because we were driving along the lake and close to water, there were plenty of trees and crops growing.

We arrived at Chitimba Beach at about 6pm and we pitched our tents at a lovely camping ground right on the lakefront. The lake had actual waves, like the sea, and it had sand rather than gravel. Malawi is very bad for mosquitoes, so we were extra vigilant with our mosquito repellent. Luckily for us, it was quite windy, which kept the temperature down a bit and kept the mosquitoes away! We had a drink in the bar, followed by dinner, and then went to bed - we were all pretty tired. Early starts and intense heat took its toll on us.

Day 28: Chitimba Beach, Lake Malawi

Friday was a very lazy day by the lake. We did not have a great sleep, as it was super hot and quite noisy, but we did get to sleep in until almost 8am. We had eggs and baked beans on toast for breakfast - brilliant. We spent the morning doing a few chores - hand washing, charging our electrical gadgets and catching up on the last few days' diary entries. We then hung out in the bar with some of the others and chilled out. It was very hot outside, so the shelter in the bar was ideal.

Lake Malawi is home to snails that act as an intermediate host for the nasty Schistosoma parasite, which causes bilharzia. On contact with humans, the parasite burrows under the skin, matures to another stage and then migrates to the lungs and liver. While there are drugs that can be taken post-exposure to kill the parasite, we were unsure of the availability of said drugs and were therefore a bit reluctant to go in the water at Lake Malawi. We did, however, go for a walk along the beach and took some photos - see below. There were lots of local men fishing and swimming in the lake.

In the afternoon, we checked out the craft shops on the street in front of our camping ground. There were lots of stalls in a row, all selling hand crafted wooden products, from small souvenirs to large coffee tables, board games, African masks and the famous Malawi chairs. We bought a Malawi magnet, an elephant ornament and a smaller lion ornament - all very good value.

The rest of the afternoon was very cruisy. Tim kicked a football around with a few of the other guys in the tour, then we went to the bar, where we learned how to play the Malawian board game "bao". After dinner we had a drink in the bar and then went to bed. There were lots of ants in our tent (and a few of the other tents). So we had to spray the little shits with fly spray and sweep them all out. Not ideal! Unfortunately, the wind of the night before had deserted us, so it was a very hot and muggy night.

Day 29: Travel to Kande Beach, Lake Malawi

We woke at 5.15am, showered, packed up, had brekkie and hit the road at 7am. We had a half-day drive south along the western shore of Lake Malawi. The first part of the drive was over a mountain range, which gave us superb views of the lake.

We stopped at Mzuzu, Malawi's third largest city, to buy some bad taste outfits for a dress-up evening (unfortunately there are photos below). We drew names out of a hat as to who we would buy an outfit for - Megs got Damian and Tim got Roselin. Megs bought a lovely white, lacy number for Damian, while Tim bought Roselin a leopard print skirt with a fluffy tail attached and a black top.

There were some great little shops in Mzuzu, some of which had names similar to those we had seen in Ghana in February. We saw one called "God Can Do" Investment. Another shop had a sign that read "We sell chicken parts and grocerys" [their spelling mistake]. After picking up our costumes, we stopped in at a supermarket to get some more supplies (including more vodka).

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in Africa and the world. Recent estimates put Malawi's GDP per capita at around $US800, which is half that of Kenya and Tanzania. Malawi are currently suffering from international trade sanctions and internal restrictions, which mean that there is a severe shortage of consumer goods available in Malawi. Fuel is in short supply and is extremely expensive, which adds to the shortage of goods. At one stage, we went into a shop where most of the shelves were completely empty and the few products that were available were very expensive.

We arrived at Kande Beach at about 1.30pm, had some lunch and got settled in. We battled the extremely slow internet at the camping ground, lazed in hammocks on the beach and hung out in the bar, watching some English football. Arsenal carried on their good form with a 3-0 win over West Bromich-Albion. Megan and Neena made a crazy concoction of sprite, mango juice and Konyagi, which they called "Witch Doctor". It had the desired effect. In fact, most of our tour group was in fine form on Saturday night.

It was another hot and sweaty night. Sara and Troy found a small scorpion in their tent as they were about to go sleep. It was crawling up Sara's leg. She flicked it off and then Troy killed it in the face with his jandal. Scary stuff.

Day 30: Kande Beach, Lake Malawi

The general theme of our time in Malawi was chilling out. There were a few optional activities, but most of us used the time to relax in the sun and have a good time. Sunday was no different, as we enjoyed another sleep-in. After breakfast, we all exchanged our costumes. Neena had drawn Tim's name out of the hat and she was rather mean. She had chosen Tim a ridiculously small girly top, a mini skirt and...the worst part of all...Manchester United sweat bands. The top and skirt Tim could handle, but the Man United sweat bands were just plain wrong. Megan's outfit was actually not too bad - a beautiful leopard print top and a short skirt.

We spent the day chilling out in the hammocks, playing a bit of pool, walking on the beach, watching some football in the bar and doing a bit of internet, which was again painfully slow. In the afternoon Troy saw a black and green striped snake slithering its way across the path that led to the bar. Best to keep shoes on around the bar area then!

Later in the afternoon, there was a big game of volleyball down on the beach. This included small amounts of skill, plenty of verbal banter and much hilarity. Back at the campsite, two pigs had been spit-roasted since breakfast (photo below). It was a very special night coming up: spit roast for dinner, a special potent punch made by Mwangi and Mwai, and our bad taste dress up party.

In the evening, we showered and got into our sexy outfits, gathered around the camp fire and got stuck into the punch. It was hilarious seeing everyone in their bad taste gears. Troy and Sara were decked out in matching leopard print outfits - with Troy's bushy beard, they looked like Tarzan and Jane. A couple of the guys had to wear long dresses, which looked quite ridiculous.

The punch did its job and after dinner we all went over to the bar, where we had to model our outfits in front of everyone. One of the old German guys, Dieter, won the best dressed competition, which was fair enough. He managed to pull off his girly outfit scarily well. There was much crazy dancing and drunkenness, including Jacintha dancing on the bar and Damian revealing a little too much.

Day 31: Travel to Senga Bay, Lake Malawi

We were pretty slow moving on Monday morning after a big night. We departed the camping ground at 8.30am and continued driving south along the western shore of Lake Malawi towards Senga Bay. There was a big thunder storm and heavy rain during the drive. Everyone was very tired and hungover, so there was lots of sleeping on the truck. We arrived at Senga Bay at about 1pm. It was much cooler and there was a bit of drizzle around.

We pitched our tents, unpacked our gear and had some lunch. We then sat under cover in the bar and watched a bit of the New York marathon on TV. Unsurprisingly, the Kenyan runners were dominating and our Kenyan crew was very happy. Later in the afternoon, a group of us played football on the beach. It was really tiring running on sand and we had all got pretty unfit from sitting on the truck for the last month. We also got some nasty grazes on our legs from diving on the coarse sand.

Megan, Neena and some of the other girls visited the craft stalls near our camping ground and bought a few wooden treasures. Jacintha and Susan bought a massive wooden giraffe that must have been over 4 feet tall. It was beautiful. Megan bought a lovely sculpture with metal African characters in the centre of a wooden frame. After a shower to get all the sand off, it was dinner time and then we hung out in the bar for a little while before heading to bed.

Day 32: Travel to Chipata, Zambia

We found it a bit hard getting going again on Tuesday. We departed the camping ground pretty early once again and we drove south / south-west across Malawi to the capital city, Lilongwe. We arrived in the capital in mid-morning and stopped at a large shopping centre to stock up on supplies. Well, we tried to.

It was like entering a Communist-era shop - the shelves were empty. More alarmingly, the entire fridge area was empty - there were no soft drinks to be found in the entire supermarket. The things that were for sale were mainly strange items that we did not need and they were over-priced. We wandered through the whole shopping centre, trying to find a Coke at several cafes and shops. None of them had any soft drinks at all. Apparently there was some ongoing dispute between the government and the soft drink distributors in Malawi, which had exacerbated the shortage.

The internet cafe was not working and many of the other shops had little to no stock, so it was looking like being a fairly unsuccessful pit-stop. However, we eventually found a fried chicken shop that had three bottles of Coke left in the fridge. It was like heaven. Tim asked if he could have one bottle of Coke and the man behind the counter said "No"! He then continued that we could only buy a Coke if we also bought some food, because they were in such short supply. This sounded fair enough to us, so we bought a large fries and a bottle of Coke. Delicious!!!

We stocked up on a few snacks and some water and then carried on our merry way, bound for the border with Zambia. As we drove through the countryside, we saw lots of locals carrying crazy things on their heads and, in one case, we saw a guy pushing a bike along the road with a stack of sticks about three metres high tied to the back of it (photos below). We also saw some more amusing shop names as we passed through little villages. Below is a list of some of our favourite shop names from our time in Malawi.

Let God be God Shop
Blessings Investments
God Will Provide Tuck Shop
Mr Nice Trading
Drinkers Nest (a pub)
No-one But You Tavern and Bar
Last Hope Auto Shop
Confidence Grocery

Camp at
Chitimba
Beach

Bar at
Chitimba
Beach

Bear at
Lake
Malawi

Buying
bad
taste
outfits

Mzuzu,
Malawi

Camp at
Kande
Beach

Chilling
out at
Kande
Beach

Pigs on
a spit

Kande
Beach,
Lake
Malawi

Dog in the
shade...

Tim on
Kande
Beach

Volleyball
on the
beach

Sara and Troy -
jungle theme

No
comment

Damo and
Deb

Massive load
on a push
bike!

Malawian
woman
carrying
load of
sticks

Africa Safari: Tanzania - Part 2

2012-01-10T21:00:00.001-08:00

Day 21: Dar Es Salaam to Stone Town, Zanzibar

Unsurprisingly, it was another early start on Friday, although we did have four days in paradise to look forward to. After packing up all of our stuff, we headed down the road to catch the short ferry across to the city side of Dar Es Salaam. We then a got a bus a short distance to the main ferry terminal, where we caught the ferry to Zanzibar. It was a very nice boat and the ride was smooth and enjoyable.

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, which consists of several small islands and two main islands, Unguja and Pemba, about 25-30km off the coast of mainland Africa in the Indian Ocean. Unguja is the main island and is often referred to as Zanzibar. Arab and Portuguese traders visited the region in early times, and it was controlled by Omanis in the 18th and 19th centuries. Britain established a protectorate (1890) that became an independent sultanate in December 1963, and then a republic after an uprising in January 1964. In April 1964, Zanzibar joined Tanganyika (the mainland part) to form a new republic that was subsequently renamed Tanzania, in October 1964. The capital of Zanzibar, located on the island of Unguja, is Zanzibar City, and its historic centre, known as Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.

Our ferry arrived at Stone Town at about 11.45am, but we then had to wait around at Immigration for over an hour, while our passports were stamped - unsure why, when we had not changed countries! It was super hot and humid in Zanzibar and we were grateful for any breeze coming in off the sea. We went straight to our hostel in the centre of Stone Town to check in and drop off our bags - we had very basic rooms, but ours at least had its own toilet and shower. Bonus!

We had lunch at a vegetarian place with a few people from our tour. We had delicious samosas, spring rolls and a vege curry. After lunch, we strolled about Stone Town, checking out the shops and trying to avoid the constant harassment of the street vendors, without much luck! Stone Town was a noisy, colourful and vibrant place, a little dirty in parts and a few of the locals looked a little sinister, but it was fun nonetheless.

The local bottle store had some amazingly cheap booze, so we stocked up for the coming days with a bottle of vodka and a bottle of kahlua (for black russians) and we also bought a bottle of Konyagi - a Kenyan / Tanzanian favourite, that we had been introduced to by Mwangi during our Serengeti excursion. We could never tell if it was vodka or gin - perhaps a hybrid - and the label on the bottle just called it "alcohol"... But it was delicious! And insanely cheap.

We did a bit of souvenir shopping and then headed back to the hostel to meet up with some of the group for drinks. A crowd of us sat in Troy and Sara's room and got stuck into our Konyagi - very funny times. At 7pm, we met the rest of the group in the lobby and we all headed to Stone Town's Night Fish Market. There was an incredible selection of fresh seafood - African king fish, barracuda, mussels, prawns and more. We also tried the special Zanzibar beef pizza and chips, which was also brilliant. It was a really fun experience wandering around the bustling, noisy night market and the food was superb.

Day 22: Zanzibar

We started the day with no showers, as there was no running water - nice. The phrase "TIA" (this is Africa) was starting to be used more and more often to explain away things like that! However, breakfast at the hostel was pretty good and then we caught a mini-van up the west coast of the island to a little place called Kendwa, very close to the northern tip of the island. If Stone Town was noisy, colourful, vibrant and a little dirty, Kendwa was the exact opposite - peaceful, beautiful, clean. It was paradise!

We had the next three nights at a beach resort called Kendwa Rocks. The accommodation was nice enough and the facilities were excellent - a much needed laundry service, bars and a restaurant on the beach, fast internet, etc. We lay on the beach for a few hours, enjoying the hot sunny day. Eventually we brought our vodka and kahlua down and with the help of some ice cold cokes from the beach bar, we made some delicious black russians. Later in the afternoon, we went to next bar along the beach and watched Chelsea v Arsenal - a game we were not likely to win. It was a cracking match and Arsenal scored two late goals to win it 5-3, courtesy of a Robin van Persie hat-trick. The small crowd of Arsenal fans watching the game in the bar went mental over the last two goals - those African boys sure enjoy their football!

After the football, we had a swim in the sea (the water was so warm, not to mention clean and clear). We also made our very own "sunset booze cruise" by drawing the outline of a boat in the sand and then sitting inside the "boat" and drinking while the sun set. The heat and the black russians made us do it. It was a lovely evening and we saw a sensational sunset. In the evening, a group of us had dinner at a little restaurant along the road from our resort. It was decent food, although it took a long time. The power went out while we were waiting, so we're not sure how they managed to cook it...

After dinner, most of our group went down to the bar for the Halloween beach party. There were hundreds of people there and it was actually pretty fun. Quite a few people were dressed up in Halloween costumes and there were some (pretty average) Michael Jackson impersonators who performed Thriller and a few other MJ songs - one was on roller skates, which none of us could make much sense of. We were all pretty hammered by the end of the night, but quiet little Roselin took the cake, she was in fine form! We did not mean to stay for that long, but eventually got to bed at about 3am.

Day 23: Zanzibar

As you probably guessed, it was a slow start to the day on Sunday. We made it to breakfast just before it ended at 10am - as it turned out we wish that we had just missed it. We got a slice of pineapple, two bread rolls and a fried egg that wasn't cooked so it was all runny and looked a bit like a sneeze. Then we lazed on the beach and chatted to the others.

At about 2pm, we went up to the road to grab some lunch. We had to wait for 45,000 years to be served and then we had to compete with 45,000 flies to see who could eat it the fastest - the flies or us. Our Irish vet, Andrew, was convinced that there must be a dead animal close by, or there would never be that many flies. A comforting thought as we tried to eat our lunch in a hungover state.

Later in the afternoon we organised a proper sunset booze cruise (on an actual boat) - it was $US20 per person and included either 8 beers or 4 ciders each. In reality we got about 3-4 beers each - ripped off again! But it was otherwise a brilliant boat cruise with a beautiful sunset and we all had a lot of fun! At the end of the ride, we got to jump off the top of the boat into the sea - from probably about 3-4 metres height. We had several jumps each and it was awesome - aside from the mouthful of salt water.

We had a lovely dinner with Kirsty and Andrew at the resort restaurant on the beach, which was a lot of fun. We were pretty shattered after dinner, so we went to bed around 10pm. A few people in our group had had upset stomachs over the last couple of days - not unexpected in Africa. Although it reinforced what an amazing job our chef Mwai had done, as nobody had got sick at all from his cooking over the past three to four weeks and now within two days, loads of people were getting sick.

Day 24: Zanzibar

Monday was another perfect day in paradise. We had a sleep-in and then sat on the beach for a while. Then we went for a long walk along the beach heading north towards a town called Nungwi, right at the northern tip of the island. It was uncomfortably hot and muggy. We were sweating so much that the sunscreen we had smeared on ourselves was dripping off our arms amongst the sweat. Ewww.

We saw lots of crabs scampering over the sand and rocks on the beach and we also lots of tacky stuff for sale at stalls dotted along the beach, but aside from that it was a lovely walk and the beach was just beautiful. Back at our resort, we sought some shade in the resort restaurant, where we had a decent lunch. In the afternoon, Megs did some snorkeling and she found Nemo! There were hundreds of colourful little tropical fish in the water! Tim lazed in the shade, like a lazy lion.

In the evening, we met up with the rest of the gang, most of whom had been on a full-day snorkeling trip across at another smaller island. We had a few drinks on the beach and watched another beautiful sunset and got some pretty cool photos. We saw an amazing "shooting star" (satellite) that zoomed across the sky for ages before eventually burning out. It was so vivid and clear in the sky - it looked like a comet. The stars in Africa are so incredible - having lived in London for so long, where you rarely see any stars at all, it was such a treat to see the sky absolutely packed full of bright stars every night.

The gang split up for dinner. We, along with four others, went to a great place along the beach and the food was superb. We had calamari for starters and pizza for mains. Since it was Halloween, Jeanelle told us a spooky story about her neighbour from her childhood - a very strange and scary old woman. After dinner we sat on the beach and had a drink before calling it a night. We were pretty tired - all that lazing about on the beach takes its toll on you eventually!

Day 25: Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam

Unsurprisingly, we woke to another glorious day in paradise on 1 November. We had an omelet for breakfast, departed the resort at 10am, and drove around 1 hour south to Stone Town. We stopped at a cafe in Stone Town for lunch, where we had beef on pilau rice, and then we caught the ferry back to mainland Africa. The ferry ride was a bit bumpy but otherwise fine.

It was a scorching hot afternoon and we were dripping sweat by the time we got off the ferry in Dar Es Salaam. To make things worse, we had to walk for twenty minutes in the intense heat, carrying our heavy packs, to get from the main ferry terminal to the small ferry to take us back to camp. We were pouring sweat by the time we got back to camp. We downed a couple of ice cold cokes in the camping ground bar, pitched our tents and got our gear all sorted.

It was our chef, Mwai's birthday, so Megs and Tim bought him, Mwangi and our driver Nick, a round of beers. Mwai had had four days without us, so he pulled out a gem of a dinner for our return - juicy beef steak, potatoes, beans and carrots. We also had a slice of Mwai's birthday cake for dessert. We went to bed around 9.30pm, as we would have a very early start tomorrow! It was another disgustingly hot and sweaty night in the tent in Dar Es Salaam.

Day 26: Dar Es Salaam to Iringa

Day 26 was a huge driving day. We woke at 3.30am, showered, packed up our gear and tents, had brekkie and hit the road at 5.15am. Aside from having a lot of distance to cover, we wanted to get a speedy ferry crossing to the city side of Dar Es Salaam and avoid the morning traffic.

We drove south-west across Tanzania to a place called Iringa. We arrived at 5.45pm, making it a 12-hour journey and a rather unexciting day. It was, again, very hot and uncomfortable on the truck. The scenery was varied - there were patches of dry, dusty dirt, then there were patches full of plantations and odd-looking trees. We also passed over a mountain range, which gave us some good views. The highlight was passing through a 50km stretch of Mikumi National Park, where we saw some forest elephants and some giraffes.

We stayed the night at a campsite called the "Old Farmhouse", close to Iringa. It was described in our itinerary as "rustic and charming". This meant there was no electricity. But it was charming. It was surrounded by bush. The bathrooms were actually pretty nice (just no hot water). The bar was a small round hut with candles for light and tiny stools to sit on. It was another fairly early night for all!

Dar Es
Salaam

Kirsty and
Megs on
the ferry

Night
fish
market

Megs after
watching
Arsenal's
5-3 win

Beautiful
Zanzibar

Our
resort

Kendwa
Beach

Stunning

Tim and
Megs on
sunset
cruise

Beautiful
sunset

Megs on
the beach

And Tim

Megs at
Nungwi
street
market

View from
our beach

Sunset in
paradise

Ahhhh...

Dar Es
Salaam
campsite

Campsite
bar

Africa Safari: Tanzania - Part 1

2012-01-08T01:00:00.000-08:00

Day 16: Nairobi to Arusha, Tanzania

Sunday 23 October 2011 was a very exciting day - it was the day we entered another new country (Tanzania), it was the day we picked up some new tour members, it was Rugby World Cup final day, but most importantly of all, it was Megan and Tim's first wedding anniversary! We woke at 6.15am, our bellies still full from all you can eat meat at Carnivore the night before. We showered, packed up our things and tried to eat some breakfast in the camp restaurant. If only we had not been so full - it was a superb breakfast of toast, bacon, eggs, sausage and baked beans. Sadly we did not do it justice.

We left the camping ground and drove across Nairobi to the Boulevard Hotel, where we picked up 16 new tour members, bringing the total number of our tour to 30 - a full truck! It was a tight squeeze and the 14 of us who had already been together for three weeks were not too happy about it. But such is life. We visited a Nairobi shopping centre to stock up on supplies and get rid of our remaining Kenyan shillings, then we departed Nairobi and headed south towards Tanzania. Our tour leader, Mwangi, was sad to be leaving his home country, the "best country in the world" as he often referred to it.

The Rugby World Cup final kicked off at 11am local time - we were stuck in a truck, bumping along the road towards Tanzania, so we could not watch the game, but we (and the other few Kiwis on the truck) followed every nail-biting second of the match on our blackberries/mobile phones, etc. New Zealand started well and scored an early try, but missed a few kicks at goal, so could not establish a decent lead. In the second half, a Stephen Donald penalty extended the lead to 8-0, but France came roaring back (as they always do) and scored a try to close the gap to 8-7. France were all over us in the second half and it looked like a late dropped goal or penalty would break our hearts again, but somehow we held on and eeked out the narrowest of wins. It was a huge relief for us, rather than jubilation. We were gracious winners on the truck, but we did take every opportunity over the coming weeks to remind the Aussies on the tour that we are now the holders of both the rugby and rugby league world cups...

The rugby helped to distract us for a couple of hours on what was a big driving day. We stopped for lunch just before the border and then after crossing into Tanzania (country number 54 for Tim and 58 for Megan) we carried on down to a town called Arusha, where we would camp for the night. It was amazing how different the landscape was in Tanzania, compared with Kenya and Uganda - there was no greenery at all - just dry, dusty dirt everywhere. We got a decent view of Mt Kilimanjaro on the way - pretty rare, as the top of it is almost always covered in cloud. It was stunning.

We arrived at the camp in Arusha at around 5pm. We set up our tents and had a few beers in the bar, as we got to know some of the new members of the tour. The day kept getting better for us, as Arsenal beat Stoke 3-1, but even more enjoyable than that, Manchester United got thrashed 6-1 in their own backyard by Manchester City. Ahhhh.

The new people were mainly very nice, although there were a couple of "interesting" characters thrown in. At our meeting in the evening, there were a few stupid questions from the newbies...when Mwangi was telling us about an optional activity of swimming with dolphins in Zanzibar, a guy asked if the dolphins would be in cages! Another guy queried whether the ferry to Zanzibar would be a return trip...now let's think for a minute...as opposed to a one-way ferry to Zanzibar, where we will all stay until we die???

Sadly the bar had no champagne for us to celebrate our wedding anniversary, but we had a couple of drinks anyway and it was a fun night to cap off a brilliant day.

Day 17: Arusha

We were allowed a little sleep-in on Monday, except that two old German dudes who had joined our tour were up at 5.30am yapping away to each other outside our tents. Seriously! Still, we should be grateful that that was our only encounter with the Germans that morning. One poor girl opened her tent up to the view of an old German man completely starkers in the tent opposite hers...not a pleasant view to start the day! This sparked many jokes about seeing snakes in the camping ground etc etc. Much hilarity.

We had breakfast at 7.30am and packed up our tents in readiness for the three-day Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti excursion. At 8.45am, we went into Arusha town to get some supplies and mainly to get some Tanzanian currency. We needed to withdraw 1.2 million Tanzanian shillings - not as much as it sounds, but still a fair whack of cash really, and this caused us plenty of problems at the banks. Back at camp, we had showers and lunch and got all sorted for the crater trip. At about 3pm, we were picked up by smaller 4x4 jeeps (8 people per vehicle) and we drove west for about three hours from Arusha to a place called Karatu, not far from the crater's edge. It was a very hot and sweaty drive and we would not have access to showers for the next two days!

We arrived at our camp in Karatu at about 6pm and, after pitching our tents, we had a drink in the beautiful bar (next to the beautiful swimming pool). Dinner was pretty average - we did not have our regular chef, Mwai, for the three-day optional crater trip, and the difference in quality was obvious. We pretty much crashed straight after dinner. We were in our tent by 8.35pm and asleep before 9.30pm - but we had a 4.30am wake-up call coming!

Day 18: Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti

We got up super early and left the camp at 5.45am. We drove for 20-30 minutes to the entrance of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where we got clearance before driving up the hill to the crater rim. We stopped at a lookout spot at the crater rim and had some photos looking down to the magnificent crater below. The view was spectacular.

The Ngorongoro Crater is a large volcanic caldera, measuring about 25km x 17km with steep hills on all sides. The crater is 610m deep. The crater acts as a natural enclosure for a wide variety of wildlife in a relatively small area. A population of 25,000 large animals lives in the crater, including the rare black rhinoceros, the hippopotamus (not very common in this part of Tanzania, as it is so usually so dry), wildebeest, zebra, eland and both Grant's and Thomson's gazelles. The crater has the densest known population of lions and, on the crater rim, are leopards, elephants and buffalo.

It did not take us long to spot some of the wildlife. About one minute down the road from the lookout, where we had our photo stop, a large male lion ran across the road in front of our jeep, snarling at us as he ran off into the bushes on the side of the road. Eek! Just along the road was a decent sized herd of buffaloes, munching on some grass. We drove over the rim and down hill into the crater itself and it was packed with animals. Almost immediately, we saw two male and two female lions - they thought about having a crack at some wart hogs who were roaming about nearby...but they decided against it. Lions are very lazy!

We saw ostriches, hyenas, flamingos, elephants, hippos, lots of different birds, a cheetah, wart hogs, a few giraffes and a very distant rhino (apparently) - and all before lunch time! It was a magical place. It was very different terrain from the Masai Mara game park - here there was dry yellow grass and dirt, very flat plains and few trees - not a lot of cover for animals to hide in or to sneak up on prey. Everything is out in the open.

We had lunch in the crater and a few of our group got attacked by hawks and monkeys! They appeared to be working together, the hawks swooping down from the sky trying to grab food from our hands and the monkeys pouncing on anything that fell as we ducked for cover.

After lunch, we drove out of the crater and continued west / north-west towards the Serengeti National Park. The Serengeti National Park is a large nature reserve in north-west Tanzania. It is actually a continuation of the Masai Mara National Park, but on the Tanzanian side of the border. It is most famous for its annual migration of more than 1.5 million wildebeest and 250,000 zebra, who migrate to the Masai Mara in search of water and grass when the Serengeti gets too dry. It is widely regarded as the best wildlife reserve in Africa due to its density of predators and prey. The park covers 14,763 sq km of grassland plains and savanna.

Amazingly, as we entered the Serengeti National Park, the landscape became even more arid, dry, dusty and flat. We saw several dust storms, that whipped up out of nothing, forming a huge twister that swirled around for a minute or so and then died away - photo below. We spent a few hours on a game drive through the Serengeti and we saw ostriches, the usual grazers (zebra, wildebeest, gazelles and the like) and a few very hot and lazy looking lions, resting in the long yellow grass. But the undoubted highlight of the day, and one of the overall highlights of the whole tour was seeing a beautiful leopard resting on a log out in the open.

It was getting close to the end of the day and there were thick black stormy clouds rolling in. We were just about to head to our camp, when we saw a few jeeps parked up alongside a log. We joined them and soon heard rumours of a leopard hiding behind the log. We waited patiently, but started to think that we would not see the leopard, if it was even there at all! But just when we were contemplating leaving, the magnificent big cat strolled out from behind the log, leaped up on top of it and sat enjoying the last few moments of sunshine of the day.

Everyone in the jeep started snapping away on their cameras like crazy. It is so rare to see a leopard at all, but to see one so close and to get such an unobstructed view as this was quite magical. It must have sat there for more than 10 minutes, almost posing for our photos! And it got even better, as a small dark coloured cub jumped up and ran along the log to join its mother! When mother and cub eventually disappeared again, we too made tracks for our camp, as it was starting to rain.

We were camping at a very basic campsite in the middle of the Serengeti. There were no fences around the camp, so we were warned to be very careful moving about the camp at night - any wild animals could find their in! We had to pitch our tents on wet ground, dinner was really bad and the camp was pretty crap, but none of that could dampen our spirits - everyone was buzzing from the amazing leopard sighting!

After dinner, we were sitting around the camp fire, and we had heard that a hyena had been spotted lurking on the edge of the campsite. Mike, our South African friend, announced that there was no way in the world that a hyena would come into the camping ground when there were lots of people around. Five seconds later, a large hyena ran through the middle of the campsite, just metres from where we were all sitting, as if to say to Mike, "na na na na na". It was very funny.

Day 19: Serengeti

Wednesday started with a very poor breakfast. We had to fight just to get hold of some toast, and even then there was no butter and no clean knives left. Not cool. Eventually, we got some omelets, which made us happier. We had a morning game drive in the Serengeti, although it started out a little disappointing. We didn't see many animals at all - we had possibly left the camp too late in the morning and missed the early activity. We saw a few lions dozing amongst some bushes, and some ugly storks drinking in a pond, but then not much at all for an hour or so.

Things did get better though. We returned to the log and saw our leopard again and this time she had not one, but two little cubs with her! Leopards are rather territorial and especially since this leopard had two young cubs, she would probably hang around that same area for a number of weeks. We sat and watched the leopard for a while, as she licked her cubs clean and then kept a close eye on them as they ran along the log playing with each other. They were very cute.

Later we saw a large pride of 11 or 12 lions - three of the females were stalking a big herd of wildebeest, while the rest of the pride watched on eagerly and kept well covered in the long grass. The three lionesses very slowly closed in towards the wildebeest and we all got rather excited about the possibility of witnessing a lion kill! But they couldn't quite get within striking distance before the wildebeest ran off. It was a shame, but it was still fascinating to watch the strategy and precision with which the lions stalked their prey.

We returned to our Serengeti camp at about 11am and packed everything up. We had a good lunch of pasta, rice and potatoes (carbo loading!) before the massive drive back through the Serengeti, past the Ngorongoro Crater and on to Arusha. We arrived back at out Arusha camp at about 5pm and it was pretty full. We were all very dirty and dusty, so there was a queue for the showers, but we all got through eventually. As a special treat for all concerned, Tim shaved a handlebars moustache - lovely.

Day 20: Arusha to Dar Es Salaam

As was becoming fairly common, today was a massive driving day. We were up at 4.30am and left the camp in Arusha at 5.45am. Things took longer in the mornings with 30 people on the truck - breakfast, packed lunches, dishes, loading the truck all took more time. We smashed our tour record with today's effort - 14 hours to get to the new campsite in Dar Es Salaam!

We had a couple of quick stops, including a drinks break at a place that had loads of oranges for sale. Mwangi bought us a big bag of oranges and a bag of tangerines to share on the truck. We drove past plenty of sisal plantations, which are common in Tanzania. They are fields full of plants that look like massive pineapples. They use the plants to make rope.

We actually arrived in Tanzania's capital city, Dar Es Salaam, at about 4pm, but very heavy traffic slowed our progress and then we had to wait for more than two hours to board a ferry for a five minute ride across the river. The wait was made worse as we were parked up outside the fish market for most of it, and the fish did not smell pleasant. Not cool.

Dar Es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania and has a population of around 3 million people. It is situated on the eastern coastline, on the Indian Ocean, and it is a very hot and humid place.

We made it to our camp at about 8.00pm and pitched our tents in the dark. Our task was made harder, as the two old German guys had taken our tent, so we had to go looking for it and get it back off them. Seriously! After a late dinner, we crashed. It was an intensely hot and humid night. We were sweating profusely all night - disgusting. But tomorrow we would be going to Zanzibar!

Camp in
Arusha -
so dry!

On crater
rim

Ngoro-
ngoro
crater

Lion on
the prowl

Eyeing
up wart
hogs

So close
to our jeeps

Hyena

Ostrich

Stripey
donkey

Dust
storm

Leopard!

So majestic

Stormy
sky over
Serengeti

Leopard
again

Ugly
stork

Serengeti

Leopard
with cub

Elephant

Serengeti

Lioness
stalking
wildebeest

Serengeti
campsite

Neena, Megs
and Tim in
the jeep

Sisal
plantation

Africa Safari: Kenya - Part 2

2011-12-27T12:47:00.001-08:00

Day 12: Travel to Lake Nakuru, Kenya

It was another early start on Wednesday, as we departed Jinja and returned to Kenya. We were up at 4.40am and left the camping ground at 6am. We crossed the border from Uganda into Kenya in the morning and continued driving east towards Lake Nakuru.

We stopped for lunch at around 1pm at a shopping centre in a decent sized town (at about 2000m altitude), apparently home to many of Kenya's famous long distance runners! The supermarket at the shopping centre was pretty good - we found a fridge magnet there and also stocked up on water and snacks.

We drove for another three hours after lunch. We had some music playing in the truck, which made the trip more enjoyable. We passed a few villages that looked relatively prosperous - the people were well dressed, there were children in proper school uniforms and there were lots of market stalls selling fresh fruit and veges. We could not get over how green parts of Kenya are - such lush and fertile farmland, pretty hills and mountains - almost New Zealand-like. Most of Uganda and parts of Kenya (at high altitude) get a lot of rain, which is great for the farmland but bad for our leaky tents!

We arrived at our camp site at Lake Nakuru at around 6pm, set up our soggy tents and had a few drinks in the bar. Tim played a bit of table tennis with Andrew, which turned out to be a surprisingly skillful game. Dinner was delicious again - and we ate it sitting around an open camp fire.

Day 13: Lake Nakuru game drive

We had the luxury of a "sleep-in" today...until 6.10am. We also had a cooked breakfast and hot showers, so it was a great start to the day. We left the camp site at 7.45am and made the short drive to Nakuru town. It was a public holiday in Kenya, so not much was open. We had a leisurely walk through town and checked out a few shops. Tim found a barber and got his hair cut - quite an experience! We got mobbed by street vendors when we tried to get back on the truck, so we bought some postcards, a Kenyan head scarf and some cold drinks off them.

We then drove into the Lake Nakuru National Park. Lake Nakuru is one of the Rift Valley soda lakes, which lies about 100km north-west of Nairobi. The lake's abundance of algae attracts vast quantities of flamingos - apparently more than one million flamingos inhabit the National Park! The park is also famous for its pelicans and other birds, as well as black and white rhino.

There were literally hundreds of birds huddled on the edge of the lake, although not so many flamingos for some reason. We're not sure where you hide a million flamingos, but we only saw a couple of dozen of them all day! We did, however, see hundreds of pelicans, storks and many other birds! We saw plenty of gazelles and impala, zebras, waterbucks, giraffes (these were Rothschild's giraffes, which are a different subspecies from the Masai giraffes), buffaloes and...wait for it...rhinos!!!

At first we saw a few rhinos off in the distance, which didn't make for great photos. Then later in the afternoon we got a magnificent view of a rhino close up on the side of the road. All of the rhinos we saw were of the white rhino subspecies, which can be distinguished from the much rarer black rhino by its square upper lip and a hump on the back of its neck. The white rhino is not actually white at all - it is grey. As you can see from the photo below, they are massive animals, measuring 3.5 - 4.5 metres in length, weighing up to 4 tonnes and usually sporting a huge horn on their noses. The rhino sighting completed our Big Five game viewing, which was very exciting!

We left the game park and drove for 1.5 hours south-east to Lake Naivasha, arriving at our camping ground just after dark and in drizzly rain. We had a nice dinner of beef stew and pasta and then had a couple of quiets in the bar.

Day 14: Lake Naivasha

Friday was a lazy day at the campsite at Lake Naivasha. There were some optional activities available, which some of our group did - a bike ride around the lake to see some birds or a short hike to see some birds. We opted to stay at the camp, so we had a sleep in and a late breakfast at 8am - delicious french toast and banana.

It was a scorching hot morning, so we dried out the tent and did some washing. It was very peaceful around the camp, aside from an aggressive turkey, who spent the morning chasing a female turkey around the lawn and hissing and gobbling at us. Quite amusing. We watched the third/fourth playoff of the Rugby World Cup, on the TV in the bar. We wanted Wales to win, but they played badly and Australia won a disappointing game 21-18.

After lunch, there was a spot of rain, but it cleared up quickly. We had a couple of drinks in the bar, played some pool, and tried to have a game of back yard cricket - but the resident campsite dogs were very sharp in the field, grabbing the ball at every opportunity and not relinquishing it without a fight. We really enjoyed hanging out with our group - we were very lucky to have such a quality group.

Dinner was steak, potatoes and salad. Our tour leader, Mwangi, tried to get us to go a "nightclub" next to the camping ground, but it wasn't getting started until after 11pm (way past our African bedtime), so we bailed and went to bed. A few of the guys went along and said it was lame - hardly anyone else there.

Day 15: Nairobi

On Saturday morning, we had a short drive from Lake Naivasha to Nairobi. We left at 7.45am and arrived in the capital at 9.30am. We dropped off three of our group who were leaving the tour at that stage - it was a bit sad to see them go, but on the up side, Tim inherited a head torch from Max, who no longer needed it. We then drove to our campsite and dropped off our gear before heading to an elephant orphanage.

The elephant orphanage was amazing. They look after baby elephants who are literally orphaned, or who get lost and cannot find their family, or who get trapped, fall down holes, etc. Then they raise them at the orphanage until they are old enough to be released back into the wild. We had a talk from the staff of the orphanage, explaining what the elephants eat and drink, the activities they do at the orphanage and stories of where some of the elephants had come from.

We then watched the elephants roll around in the mud, kick a soccer ball around and drink milk from large plastic bottles. Interestingly, they feed the elephants human baby formula imported from the UK, as they obviously do not have access to elephant milk and they cannot use cow or goat milk etc, as the elephants are badly allergic to it and it will kill them. The orphanage also houses a black rhino, which is almost completely blind, meaning it could not survive in the wild. It was nice to see a black rhino for the first time (black rhinos are extremely rare) but we felt very sorry for it.

Next stop was a giraffe centre, where we had the opportunity to feed some of the giraffes. The giraffe centre backs on to the Nairobi Nature Park, where animals can roam relatively freely in a large enclosed park. When the giraffes want to, they can wander over to the giraffe centre to be fed or just hang out with some humans!

We went up on to a raised platform and fed some animal pellets to two of the giraffes, a very young one and a 16 year old giraffe called Laura, who proved to be a hit with one of our tour group, Sara. While the rest of us fed Laura pellets from our hands (giraffe tongues are very rough and scratchy), Sara stuck a pellet in between her teeth and Laura ate it from there, effectively giving Sara a big kiss and covering her face with giraffe slobber - photo below. It was very cool to see giraffes so close up - they really are the most elegant of all the animals.

After a brief visit to a large shopping centre, we headed back to camp and chilled out at the bar for a couple of hours. In the evening, a group of us went to a restaurant called "Carnivore" - needless to say, it was a meat restaurant! It was an amazing place - all you can eat meat for a set price, and it was all types of meat. We had beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, crocodile, ostrich, different types of sausages and even ox testicles! We ate so much we could barely move. Tim had stomach cramps all night - but it was worth it.

At such a brilliant place as Carnivore, you need a strategy. Tim and Dean had it all sorted. You don't go near the soup, bread, potato or veges. These are all tricks - just fillers. Once you steer clear of those, you can focus on the meat. Also, you need to pace yourself - there's no hurry at Carnivore. So there you go, when you go to Carnivore, you have a few tips from the experts.

Tim at the
barber

Lake
Nakuru -
birds

Our
truck

Pelicans
and
flamingos

Flamingos

Us at Lake
Nakuru

White
rhinos

Elegance

Awesome
white
rhino

Lake
Nakuru
camp

Elephant
orphanage

Elephant
baby
drinking

Neens and
Megs

Elephant
soccer

Black
rhino

Laura -
elegant

A giraffe
kiss for
Sara

Megs
feeding
giraffe

Carni-
vore

Lake
Nakuru

Africa Safari: Rwanda

2011-12-24T00:58:00.001-08:00

Day 8: Rwanda

After an exhausting day visiting gorillas, we had another big day ahead with an optional day trip to Rwanda, which most of our tour group (16 of us) decided to do. We were up at 5am, had breakfast, made a packed lunch and then set off in two minvans. It took about an hour to get to the border, but then it was a frustrating process to actually enter Rwanda. The whole border crossing consumed over two hours of our day - partly because of inefficient border control staff and partly because the minivan operators did not have adequate insurance on their vans and were not allowed to cross the border until they paid bribes to the appropriate people. It did not help that people were queue jumping in front of us at every opportunity and that many of them stunk of the worst body odour imaginable.

Rwanda is a country in central Africa with a population of approximately 11.5 million people. The country is very small and is one of the most densely populated in Africa. Rwanda is located just below the equator and is bordered by Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, Burundi to the south and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. Rwanda is at high altitude with a geography dominated by mountains in the west, savanna in the east and lakes throughout the country - it is beautiful. Rwanda gained its independence from Belgium in 1962. The official languages are English, French and Kinyarwanda. The capital and largest city is Kigali, which has a population of about 1 million people.

Once we eventually made it across the border, we drove for another two hours to the capital city of Kigali. The countryside was very green and hilly and there were plenty of people working in the tea fields. It all looked very gren and lush. Kigali itself was a pretty city: fairly clean even though busy. There was a big flood across one of the main streets, not sure what caused it, but we just drove through the water like everyone else. Nobody seemed too concerned! Our first stop in Kigali was at the Museum of Genocide.

Rwandans form three groups - the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Hutu are the largest group, making up over 80% of Rwandans. The division between the Hutu and the next largest group, the Tutsi is based more on social class than ethnicity. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was the culmination of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi, who had controlled power for centuries, and the majority Hutu peoples, who had come to power in the rebellion of 1959–62 and overthrown the Belgian-sponsored Tutsi monarchy.

In the space of just three months in 1994, over 1 million (mainly Tutsi) people were systematically beaten, tortured, raped and murdered by the Hutu, while the UN (and the rest of the world) stood back and watched. Men, women and children were beaten and hacked to death with clubs and machetes. Many more Rwandans died in the refugee crisis that follwed the end of the genocide, as there was insufficient humanitarian aid for the huge numbers of refugees, leaving many to die of hunger and disease.

The Museum of Genocide was well presented and we learned a lot about the Rwandan genocide and how it had come about. There were some very disturbing photos and stories of the horrific events that had unfolded in the beautiful city around us. The museum also had information on other genocides from around the world, including the Bosnian massacre of the 1990s, which we had learned about when we visited Sarajevo. Outside the museum there were some memorial gardens dedicated to the victims of the genocide and next to the gardens were rows of mass graves, which contain thousands of bodies. They are covered with huge slabs of concrete.

After our museum visit, we drove about an hour east of Kigali to the Nyarubuye Catholic Church, the site of a massacre in which 10,000 civilians were murdered in the space of a couple of days. Thousands of Tutsi has fled to the church for refuge, but its defences were breached by Hutu attackers and the sheltering Tutsi were killed with grenades and guns. Horrifically, many of the women were brutally raped and tortured before dying and some of the babies and children were grabbed by their legs and smashed against the brick walls, which still bear their blood.

Along with bloodstains on the walls, there are bullet holes and grenades explosion marks all over the church, making for a highly disturbing atmosphere. The clothing from the victims has been kept and is heapped all over the floor and the seats in church to show the magnitude of the assault and as a memorial to the victims. It was extremely difficult hearing about what had happened in the church and seeing the remnants of mass murder all around us. There are mass graves beneath and behind the church. In the basement beneath the church, there is a memorial to the victims, which shows cracked and broken skulls and bones of some of the victims - rows and rows of skulls and bones. It was all very upsetting, but we appreciated the opportunity to learn about an episode of history that we previously did not know much about.

Our final stop on our whirlwind tour of Rwanda was back in Kigali, at the luxurious Sabena Hotel des Mille Collines. It was there that a Rwandan man, Paul Rusesabagina, used his influence and connection as manager of the hotel to save 1,268 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during the genocide. He has since been internationally honoured for his bravery and courage. In 2004 a film called "Hotel Rwanda" was released, which was based on Rusesabagina's efforts.

We had a look around the hotel, which was very nice, and took a few photos before hopping back in the van and heading out of Kigali. It was a fairly long drive back through Rwanda, across the border and then through Uganda back to our camp at Lake Bunyonyi. We were all shattered after not only a big day but such an emotional day learning about the shocking events which took place so recently in our lifetime.

If anyone is interested in learning more about how the genocide came to pass while the world stood by and watched, Megan recommends Romeo Dallaire's "Shake Hands with the Devil: the failure of humanity in Rwanda", detailing account of his time as Force Commander of the UN's peacekeeping mission in Rwanda between 1993 - 1994.

Flood on
Kigali
street

Kigali

Museum
of Genocide

Memorial
garden

Mass
graves

Kigali
again

Nyarubuye
Church

Doors of church
blown open by
grenades

Hotel
Rwanda

Africa Safari: Uganda

2011-12-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

Day 5: Travel to Kampala, Uganda

On Wednesday morning, we packed up the tents etc, had breakfast (while a couple of dogs mated across the other side of the campsite, continuing the animal mating theme of the previous few days) and departed the camp at about 6.45am. We continued driving west / north-west across Kenya towards Uganda, and crossed the equator shortly after leaving Kisumu. At about 10am we crossed the border into Uganda and a couple of hours later we stopped in Jinja for lunch.

Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa and is known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also shared by Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda gained independence from Britain in 1962, its population is around 34 million, the official languages are English and Swahili, and the capital city is Kampala, which is home to 1.7 million people.

Jinja is situated in south-eastern Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria and near to the source of the River Nile! Jinja is the largest town in Uganda (it is the second biggest commercial centre in the country behind Kampala, which is Uganda's only city!). We would be staying in Jinja on our way back through Uganda but for now we just had lunch at the campsite (including delicious raspberry fanta) and kept on driving.

Uganda is also at high altitude and it gets a lot of rain, so the countryside was very lush and green. We passed a lot of tea and coffee plantations as we drove through the country. Tea and coffee are amongst the biggest export goods produced in Uganda. We arrived in Kampala at about 4pm. The traffic was horrendous in the city and it took us a long time to drive to a shopping centre for supplies and then on to our camping ground. As we were driving we saw the aftermath of an accident. It looked like a man had been hit by a car and was lying on the road in a huge pool of blood. He was clearly dead.

The camping ground was fairly average and it was very full. We pitched our tents and got our gear sorted and then had a delicious dinner of chicken, veges and rice. We had a few drinks and then went to bed. It rained heavily in the night and our tent leaked. Not impressed.

Day 6: Travel to Lake Bunyonyi

All of our things were wet in the morning thanks to the leaking tent. The camp was also very muddy in the morning, so it was very messy all round. We left the camp at 6am to avoid busy traffic in Kampala. It was another big driving day, as we continued across Uganda to Lake Bunyoni in the south-west of the country, where we would be based for the next four nights.

We stopped in the town close to the camping ground and got some more supplies for the days ahead. Sadly, it was raining when we arrived at the camping ground and the grass where we were supposed to pitch our tents looked very wet. Megan and I (and most of the others in our tour party) opted to upgrade to cabins. As it turned out, we ended up sharing an actual house with Dean and Jeanelle, an Aussie couple on the tour. The house was amazing - it had two bedrooms (fully equipped with beds), a kitchen, a large lounge and a bathroom (with a shower that had hot water!).

We did some washing, dried out some of our wet clothes, charged our electronics and bonded with our new flatmates and then headed to the bar for a few drinks before dinner. It was Neena's birthday, and we had arranged with our chef Mwai to get a birthday cake for her - it was really fun and hopefully she had an awesome birthday in Uganda!

Day 7: Gorilla trekking

Lake Bunyonyi is situated almost 2,000m above sea level, so the nights were very cold, even in the house! Friday, Day 7 of our tour, was a very special day. It was the day we were going gorilla trekking - one of the big highlights of the whole tour. We woke at 4.30am, had breakfast and made a packed lunch at 5am and left the camp in minivans at 5.30am. We drove for nearly two and a half hours over very hilly, winding and generally crappy roads until we reached the Wildlife Authority hut, which was the starting point for our trek. The minvan driver was funny - he played a mixture of Eminem songs and some Whitney Houston power ballads - nice.

When we arrived at the hut, our gorilla guide gave us a talk about the gorillas and their environment, etc. Mountain gorillas are extremely rare - as of 2010 the estimated total number worldwide was 790. They are found only in four national parks in central Africa, two of which are situated in south-west Uganda, one in Rwanda and one in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We were in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, which is close to the border with DR Congo. The gorillas are constantly on the move and often roam across the border into other national parks in DR Congo or Rwanda, which could have been costly in terms of more visa fees if we had had to follow them across the border. But thankfully, our gorillas were in Uganda that day.

A dedicated team of gorilla trackers/guides has been working in this area for years, learning about the gorillas' habits and movements and getting them used to human interaction. Less than half of the gorilla families in Bwindi have been "trained" for human contact, so these are the only families that are visited by tourists. The "training" sounds intense. The guides visit a new gorilla family every day for months and months until the gorillas are used to having humans around, which then makes it safe for tourists to visit them. Apparently the guides know when the gorillas are ready for tourists when they stop charging the guides!

The Wildlife Authority takes the protection and conservation of the gorillas extremely seriously. As gorillas share much of our DNA, anyone with the slightest cold or transferable illness is not allowed to go trekking. There is also a strict limit to the amont of people visiting the gorillas - there is a maximum of eight tourists per group and only one group will visit a particular gorilla family each day. On top of that, so that the gorillas do not get too used to the presence of humans, the maximum time a group can spend with a gorilla family is one hour. As the gorillas are constantly on the move, there is no guarantee you will even see them at all - so the US$500 gorilla permit fee per person and the potential for an eight-hour trek is a bit of a gamble! It should be noted that the gorilla permit fee is used exclusively for the conservation of the gorillas.

After learning more about the gorillas and getting a safety briefing, we set off with our gorilla guides, hiking through the dense rainforest of Bwindi. The name Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is appropriate - the trek was very tough. The terrain was very hilly and there was thick bush often full of thorns that we had to navigate through. We had to wear gloves to protect our hands as well as long pants and long sleeves to protect against the thorns and insect bites, so we ended up getting very hot and sweaty, which was quite uncomfortable. On top of that, the recent rain had meant that the track was very slippery and parts of the forest were very muddy and boggy - we often sunk ankle deep into a pool of mud! Then there were a lot of strange insects around, including processions of red ants, that we had to avoid stepping on, or they would crawl up our legs and bite! We even tucked our pants into our socks to keep them at bay! The forest was incredibly wild and harsh.

We trekked for about two hours to get to the gorillas and when we found them, they were hanging out on a very steep bank, which made following them through the bush and trying to take photos of them rather difficult. Our gorilla family had 23 members, which included four silverbacks (adult males), a few blackbacks (younger males), some females and a few babies. At first the gorillas were well hidden in the thick bush, but eventually we saw quite a few of them out in the open, so we took some good photos - we got scarily close to a few of them! Some of them moved past us, just a few metres away at times. The gorillas made some interesting grunting noises, but they seemed to be very relaxed and comfortable about us being there.

They are huge animals and incredibly powerful. The silverbacks can weigh up to 200kg and their strength and power is amazing. The gorillas did smell quite bad and they had a lot of flies hanging around them. We also had to take care to avoid stepping on a massive gorilla shit at one point. That would have been particularly messy and would have made for an uncomfortable ride back to camp in the minivan.

It was an incredible experience to see these animals in their natural environment and to be so close to them. We were all buzzing after the seeing the gorillas - a real highlight of the trip and something we will all remember forever. Fingers crossed that the numbers of gorillas can bounce back, as it would be a sad day if these beautiful and fascinating creatures were to become extinct.

Once our hour with the gorillas was up, we had a two hour trek back to the hut, during which we stopped and ate our lunch and also got soaked by a torrential downpour. The rain was actually quite nice, as it cooled us down. By the time we got back to the minivan, we stunk of sweat, were soaked, covered in mud and pretty knackered. We then had another two hour drive back to camp to round off a massive day. Needless to say, there was much washing and showering back at camp - we were really thankful that we had upgraded!

Everyone was shattered after dinner - we had one drink and then went to bed early. A few of the tour group, including Neena, were feeling unwell - a combination of early starts, cold temperatures at night, getting soaked in the rain and a massive few days had taken its toll. We all slept like babies.

Day 8: Rwanda

See separate blog entry for Rwanda after this entry.

Day 9: Lake Bunyonyi

After gorilla trekking on Friday and a day trip to Rwanda on Saturday, we were ready for a cruisy day on Sunday and that's exactly what we got. We slept in until 7.45am (huge sleep in) before having breakfast and then getting settled in the bar. It was a very exciting day - Rugby World Cup semi-final day. All Blacks v Australia. There was huge excitement in the camp, as we had three Kiwis and around 10 Aussies in our tour. We were nervous, as we had obviously cocked it up several times before (usually at the semi-final stage, and twice to Australia at the semi-final stage).

We got to watch the game live on TV in the bar and it was an exciting match. New Zealand played well and deserved to win. We were very excited and relieved to win. We tried not to give the Aussies too much crap, as we were outnumbered and we still had a final to go...against the other team renowned for wrecking our World Cups. We had quite a few beers and it got a little messy as the afternoon wore on. After the rugby we were treated to watching our other favourite team, the Arsenal, win 2-1 against Sunderland, to continue their revival after a horror start to the season.

We also did some more washing and packed up our things, ready to move on again tomorrow. It was nice having a relaxing day after a few full on days. Sadly, the camping ground tried to rip us off when we went to pay our bar tab - a trick they tried with several of our tour group. They had added a lot of drinks to our tab, claiming that Tim had drunk about 25 (500ml) beers on Sunday alone. Whilst it had been a rather drunken day, this was ridiculous. We refused to pay for all of them and eventually settled on what was probably a few more than what we had actually drunk, but well short of what they originally claimed. Not cool.

Day 10: Travel to Jinja

Monday was another huge travel day. We woke at 4.45am and departed the camping ground just before 6am. It was a massive drive from west to east across Uganda, to Jinja. We stopped for lunch at a little village that sits on the equator. We got the obligatory photos by the monument marking the equator and we even found a Uganda magnet for the magnet collection at one of the souvenir shops. After lunch, we carried on in the truck.

We stopped in Kampala briefly to get some more Ugandan shillings and some supplies at a supermarket. We then carried on to Jinja, arriving at 5.45pm. Our tent was still wet from the last time we had used it (five days earlier) and it smelled a bit. Not cool. We made sure we put the rain cover on, as the sky looked a little ominous. Dinner was chilli con carne - delicious. We then had a couple of raspberry fantas in the bar. Raspberry fanta really is the best thing in the world. Sadly, Jinja was the only place we ever found it.

It was a fairly early night, but before bedtime, Australian prankster Max rounded up Dean, Troy and Tim and they snuck out of the bar to move Mike's tent further up the hill and behind a big tree. Mike was the sole South African in our tour party and he copped a lot of good-natured flak from the Aussies and Kiwis, but he took it well and gave a fair bit back too! About an hour later, when Mike was ready for bed, he wandered around and around the camping ground looking for his tent, getting gradually more and more annoyed. He claimed that it was not funny, but the rest of us found it hilarious.

Day 11: Jinja

It rained heavily in the night and our tent leaked a bit, despite the rain cover. Thankfully it was fine by the morning. Today was a day of optional activities - some of our tour opted to go white water rafting in the River Nile, while others did some painting at a school as part of a community project. Megan and Tim and a couple of others decided to chill out at the camping ground instead.

We got up just before 8am and were treated to fried eggs and spaghetti on toast for breakfast. After showering we headed to the bar, where there was free WIFI. We sent a few emails, saved our photos to our memory stick and sorted out a few admin jobs. The bar at the camping ground was really nice and it looked out to the River Nile. It was a scorching hot day - we took advantage of the washing service at the camping ground, which was quite cheap, and got all of our clothes clean.

There was a big thunder storm in the afternoon, so we sheltered in the bar while it poured with rain. There was much raspberry fanta consumed. Dinner was fish, potatoes and mixed veges. It rained again in the evening - at that stage we were looking forward to leaving Uganda and getting back to some dry weather! Despite the leaky tent, we had a pretty good sleep. It was another early start coming up and then back into Kenya!

Shops on
the side of
the road

Mountains
around
Lake
Bunyonyi

Trekking in
Bwindi
Impenetrable
National park

Bwindi
Forest

Gorillas

Lake
Bunyonyi

Uganda's
country-
side

A cute
little
Ugandan
girl

Crossing
the
equator

Roadside
shacks

Locals
doing
their
thing

Shops in
Kampala

River
Nile,
Jinja

Camping
ground
bar,
Jinja

Our tents
in Jinja

Africa Safari: Kenya - Part 1

2011-12-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

Kenya

On 5 October 2011, we farewelled London for the last time (well, not the last time, but you know) and began the final leg of nearly five years of OE adventures. We got a flight from Heathrow at some crazy hour and flew to Nairobi, Kenya (via Brussels and Bujumbura in Burundi) to begin a two month safari through 10 countries in the east and south of Africa.

We arrived at Nairobi airport around 11pm local time. We were greeted by an On the Go Tours rep and taken to our hotel for the night, the Comfort Inn. It did not take long to spot our first wildlife in Africa - a jackal ran across the road in front of us as we drove through Nairobi. Needless to say we crashed as soon as we had checked in to the hotel.

Bolt-on Day 1: Nairobi to Masai Mara

We were booked on a 57 day tour through Africa, but we had also signed up for a free "bolt-on" which gave us three additional days in Kenya's Masai Mara game park. The Masai Mara is a large game reserve in south-west Kenya, which is essentially the northern continuation of the Serengeti National Park, across the border in Tanzania. It is named after the local Masai people. We woke at 7am and met Neena for breakfast in the hotel lobby. We then met the rest of the tour group and our tour leader, Anthony. Our tour party had 21 people - mainly Aussies plus a few Kiwis, Americans and English.

Kenya is a country in east Africa that lies on the equator. With the Indian Ocean to its south-east, it is bordered by Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, South Sudan to the north-west, Ethiopia to the north and Somalia to the north-east. Kenya has a population of nearly 41 million, representing 42 different peoples and cultures. Kenya gained its independence from Britain in 1963. Its official languages are Swahili and English. Its capital city is Nairobi, which has a population of around 3 million.

Day 1 of the bolt-on was a big driving day. After the welcome meeting, we boarded the massive truck and made our way through the streets of Kenya's capital. We stopped at a big shopping mall for some supplies and then set off for the Masai Mara. We stopped for lunch and a couple of breaks along the way and eventually arrived at our camping ground in the Masai Mara at about 7pm. Being so close to the equator in central Africa, the sun rises around 6am and sets around 6pm all year round, so it gets dark very early, and it's very, very dark.

The camping ground was pretty good - we stayed in massive two-person tents, big enough for Tim to stand up in, which were covered by little huts. They were fully equipped with beds, so it was relative luxury! We had three crew members travelling with us the whole time - a tour leader, a truck driver and a chef. Dinner was solid - tomato soup and bread to start and then spaghetti bolognese and chopped veges. We had a few beers after dinner by an open camp fire and got to know some of the tour party, and then went to bed. We could hear hyenas cackling around the camping ground all night. Pretty exciting.

Bolt-on Day 2: Masai Mara game drive

We would get very used to early starts during the Africa tour. We woke at 5.45am and had breakfast at 6.10am. We boarded the truck and left the camping ground at 6.45am. It was not long before we passed through the gates of the actual game park and had our first proper look at Africa's wild animals! Just through the gates we passed by the lions' buffet section - all you can eat impala, gazelles, zebras and wildebeest! Delicious. Not much further and we passed a few giraffes, quietly grazing away - it should be noted that giraffes are the the most elegant of all the animals. It was so exciting. We had been looking forward to a game drive for months and we could not believe how many animals we had seen so soon - they were literally everywhere, hundreds of them.

Next up we saw the first of the "Big Five". The term "Big Five" was originally used by white hunters to refer to the five most difficult or dangerous African animals to hunt on foot, those animals being the lion, elephant, leopard, buffalo and rhinoceros. These days the Big Five are still highly sought after by tourists, but not so much for hunting as viewing! Our first was the buffalo - very common in the Masai Mara. In fact by the time we left Kenya, buffalo had become so commonplace that they hardly warranted a mention. But the first few times we saw them were very cool. Buffaloes are massive and can be very aggressive. Lions rarely tackle a buffalo unless they are super hungry and there are four or five lions on to one buffalo, as it is a risky business.

We did not have to wait long to spot our second of the Big Five - the lion! There was a large pride of around 10 lions, consisting of three fully grown females, a few younger ones and some small cubs. No sign of an adult male though! They were lying on the road and when our truck and a few other trucks came along to get a better view of them, they lazily got up and ambled away into the bushes. Lions are exceptionally lazy animals. They usually sleep all day in a shady spot and hunt at night.

We carried on driving through our small patch of the massive Masai Mara game park and we soon saw a herd of elephants - our third of the Big Five. The adults were very protective of the babies and, given that a fully grown male stands at more than 4 metres tall and weighs a touch over 6 tonnes, we wisely kept our distance. Next up we saw two cheetahs lying in the shade under a tree. Cheetahs are now very endangered and are getting difficult to see in game parks across Africa, so we were very fortunate to see two cheetahs up so close. We parked the truck right next to the tree and watched them for 15 minutes or so. We would have loved to see them running or making a kill, but we were lucky to see them at all. Rounding off a solid morning's game drive, we also saw ostriches, mongooses, some vultures and various other sorts of antelopes.

After lunch, we drove along the the banks of the Mara River, where we got a great view of some massive crocodiles sunning themselves on the edge of the water and several huge hippos bobbing in the river like barrels. Apparently, if you are lucky enough, you can sometimes see wildebeest and zebras crossing the river during the Great Migration and some unfortunate ones get snapped up by the waiting crocs. No such luck for us. As we were driving back through the game park, we saw a few trucks gathered around a stream, so we headed over to see what the attraction was. The attraction was, quite unbelievably, our fourth of the Big Five (all in one day), a leopard.

Leopards are also very rare and they are extremely difficult to see, as they are very shy animals and they tend to sleep or hide during the day and hunt and roam around at night. Our leopard was sitting across the other side of a small stream, in full view, almost posing for photos! Anthony told us we were very lucky, as he only sees a leopard maybe once a month, if that, and it is hardly ever such a good view. Later in the afternoon, we saw lots more giraffes (very elegant), zebras and elephants and also a few wart hogs and some baboons. We couldn't quite manage the elusive rhino to top off the Big Five in one day and we also did not see a male lion, but all in all, it was an amazing day of game viewing.

Back at camp, we had a cold shower before dinner, which was chicken soup followed by beef stew on rice. Once again, we sat around the camp fire after dinner and then headed off to bed early. Because it got dark at around 6pm and we were getting up so early, we generally went to bed at about 9pm, sometimes earlier. It was also very cold at night - we were at nearly 2,000m altitude in Kenya, so the days were pretty hot but the nights were freezing.

Bolt-on Day 3 / Tour Day 1: Masai village tour

It was another very early start on Saturday - up at 5.50am and it was very cold out of the sleeping bag! We had breakfast at 6.10am and the truck left the camping ground at 6.45am, bound for a cultural visit at the Masai village just along the road. The Masai people are a group of semi-nomdaic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania. The Masai village that we visited was home to around 50 Masai people. The village was set up as a collection of mud huts surrounding a large open space in the centre, like a town square. Then there was a fence right around the perimeter of the village, to keep wild animals out!

The villagers owned a large herd of cows and goats, which they use for milk and occasionally for meat, but they mainly eat fruit and vegetables that they grow themselves - they are very self-sufficient. They keep the cows and goats inside a pen during the night, to keep them safe and then they let them outside the village gates to graze during the day. They also have several dogs, who bark at night when hyenas, lions or other wild animals are lurking near the village, to alert the villagers to the danger. It is a big loss for them if they lose goats or cows to wild animals.

We were treated to a traditional dance by some of the young males of the village - an important part of their dance to jump very high straight up in the air - the higher you jump, the more manly you are! Some of the women sang us a song, the men started a fire using two sticks and we also got to see inside the mud huts, where the villagers live. They were very small and cramped living conditions, but everything is pretty basic really. Tim bought a necklace (supposedly decorated with a cheetah's tooth - we knew it was not a cheetah's tooth, but probably shin bone from a cow that they ate) but we resisted the temptation to buy any more nik-naks. There would be plenty of opportunities for that.

At the end of the village tour, a few of us walked back to our camp, while most of the tour party carried on in the truck all the way back to Nairobi. The three day bolt-on was made up of people doing all sorts of different tours, most of whom were not continuing on with us on the 57 day safari. Back at the camping ground, there was a large family of baboons running amok. Thankfully they seemed quite scared of us, although one managed to grab a packet of chips from somewhere and he looked very chuffed with himself as he ran off into the bushes with it. The rest of the day was very cruisy - we had a little nap, then ate a delicious lunch at the camp's restaurant and then sat in the sun in the afternoon. There was more interesting wildlife to keep us on our toes - huge bumble bees about the size of a field mouse that would buzz about our heads and sound like a light aircraft as they passed; and some little vervet monkeys, stealing scraps out of the rubbish bins.

Later in the day, Mike, Terry and Tim wandered into the little township to check out the pub scene. The pub we went into was absolutely rammed full and everybody stopped and looked at us as we entered. We were the only white people there and even though we thought we may never leave alive, we sat down and ordered a beer. It was very warm beer and we drank it quickly and left. We safely made it back to the camping ground before dark - crucial - and we had dinner and drinks around the camp fire again. As there was hardly anyone staying in the camping ground, we got hot showers and then retired to our comfy tents, where we listened to cackling hyenas as we fell asleep.

Day 2: Masai Mara game drive

The benefit of staying in the Masai Mara rather than returning to Nairobi was that we could have another full day's game drive in the Masai Mara. This time was even better, as the six of us who stayed behind went out in a 4x4 jeep rather than the big truck, so we could get a lot closer to the animals and move around more quickly. It also meant that we had open top and sides so we got a much better view. Our driver/tour guide for the day was a local Masai guy named "Lefty". He was an experienced rhino tracker and, given that we had seen four of the Big Five aside from the elusive rhino, we asked him to find us a rhino.

We started the morning by getting crazily close to a pride of lions - like about two metres away from them!!! They looked pretty sleepy, just lying on the grass and they were not too bothered at all that our jeep had just about run over their tails to get nice and close. Later in the day we saw another small pride sleeping and then a male and a female hiding in the bushes - the male looked like he might pounce at us (but he didn't).

But perhaps the best lion action of the day was an adult male that had a stare-off with a buffalo (he wanted to eat the baby buffalo that the adult buffalo was protecting). The lion thought better of it and backed off and then walked literally right past our jeep (so close he nearly jumped in - photo below), so we got a magnificent view of him. He had a lot of scars on his face, like he had been in a lot of battles over the years.

We saw the same two cheetahs (again resting under a tree), lots of elephants, lots of wart hogs, a hyena (they are very ugly animals), some meerkats and all of the usual antelope suspects, zebras, wildebeest, etc. There was a rumour that a leopard was hiding in some bushes, so we sat patiently waiting for him to appear, but no luck. There was a freshly killed antelope lying at the base of a tree near the suspected leopard hiding place, so chances are the leopard killed it and had not got around to hawling it up the tree for safe-keeping yet.

In the afternoon, we tried really hard to find a rhino - Lefty took us to the most likely spots, scouting around the thick bush where rhinos like to hide, visiting spots where he had seen them just days earlier, but alas, it was a rhino-free zone! There were fewer animals around in the afternoon, as it was scorching hot, so they were most likely seeking some shade or sleeping. The early morning and evening are the best times for game viewing.

In the evening, we were joined by our new tour group, who had arrived from Nairobi. There were 17 in total in the tour party - still mainly Aussies, a few Kiwis, a couple of Britons and a lonely South African. Our new crew was excellent. Our tour leader, Mwangi, was really funny and well organised. He had already made up a roster for chores, so that everyone did their bit. We also had an excellent cook, Mwai, and driver, Nick. Dinner was solid and we had a couple of drinks while we got to know the newbies, before we crashed and had a great night's sleep.

Day 3: Masai Mara game drive (again)

Monday was more of the same - 6.30am breakfast and we entered the game park at 7.00am sharp. While this was our third full day of game viewing, you can never get sick of it. No two days are ever the same. Even if you see the same animals, they are always doing something different...particularly the lions!!! It was another hot, sunny morning and we were greeted by lots of giraffes - which (as you will recall) are the most elegant of all the animals. A short distance further we stumbled upon four lions sitting proudly around the demolished carcass of a wildebeest. One of the cubs was getting into it, blood all around its face, while the other watched on (photo below). Lurking just out of reach of the lions was a hungry jackal and several vultures, waiting for scraps.

Later in the morning we saw two lions mating. It was a fascinating experience. Apparently a male and one of the females will leave the pride for a few days and go off on on their own to mate. They will do the deed roughly once every 15-30 minutes for a few days, with each effort lasting only a few seconds. It looked rather aggressive - snarling and swiping at each other.

We had lunch on the bank of the Mara River and we got to go for a little walk along the bank, where we got great views of some hippos (including a baby hippo, closely guarded by its mother) and some pretty nasty looking crocs. Once again, we did not see much in the afternoon, as the intense heat kept the animals away!

We got back to the camp at about 4.30pm so we had plenty of time to pack up our things, have showers and get sorted to leave the following day. Some of the Masai guys who worked at the camp had challeneged Tim to a Masai club throwing contest. They claimed that they could throw their wooden mallet-type weapon over 100m, which we told them was impossible - you can't even throw a cricket ball that far. Tim accepted the duel and did fairly well, given he had never seen a Masai club before, let alone thrown one. Tim threw about 60m and the Masai guys threw about 70-75m. It was pretty fun. After dinner, we crashed in bed and had an awesome night's sleep!

Day 4: Travel to Kisumu

Tuesday was a big travel day - something we would get very used to! We left the campsite at 7am and drove pretty much all day. We stopped for "morning tea" in a town called Narok, where we had delicious vege samosas to keep us going. It was a hot day and the road was really bumpy, so it was not super comfortable.

We stopped for lunch later and drew a crowd of locals, who watched on eagerly. We gave them the leftovers and they were pretty chuffed with that! We arrived in Kisumu at around 4pm and stopped in at a shopping mall so we could get some cash out at the ATM and stock up on bottled water and snacks. Kisumu is a port city in west Kenya, situated on the shores of the massive Lake Victoria. Kisumu is Kenya's third largest city with a population of around 400,000.

The camping ground in Kisumu was OK - it had free WIFI, a decent bar and power points so we could charge batteries etc, but the bathrooms were pretty grotty and there were some particularly dangerous pets. The camp was literally on the banks of Lake Victoria, and there were hippos grazing on the lawns of the camping ground!

The interesting thing about hippos is that while they look rather ridiculous and harmless, they are actually responsible for more human deaths every year than any other African wild animal. They are herbivores but they are fiercely territorial and generally angry with the world. If you ever get too close to a young hippo or if you ever get between a hippo and the water, chances are you will be cut in half in the mouth of a hippo! We were warned about not going near the hippos, which made everyone a little nervous when night fell and it was pitch black but we could hear them grunting on the lawns close to our tents!

While it was just a travel day, we still saw a lot of interesting and exciting things. We loved passing through the small villages, where the locals (especially the children) would run towards the truck waving and smiling. We also saw donkeys having sex in a field, which was rather amusing for all. Tomorrow we would be crossing the border into Uganda!

Megs by
the truck

Masai Mara

game park

Thomson's

gazelle...
looking

nervous

Buffaloes

Lions

Stripey

donkeys

On a hill

in the Mara

Giraffes - the

most elegant of
all the animals

A baby

Croc and

hippos

Leopard

Wildebeest

Masai men

jumping

Masai women

singing

Up close

with lions

Vulture

Ostriches

Two young

cheetahs

Ready for

action

Elephant

and baby

Male lion -

so close we
could have

touched him

Wildebeest

for breakfast

Delicious

Hippo with

baby

elephants

Masai Mara

camping

ground

Italy

2011-10-03T00:39:00.000-07:00

Wednesday: Travel to Italy

As was the case with Slovenia, we had been to Italy before and we had seen all the major sites and attractions. So we planned to have a relaxing, quiet time in Italy and visit some of the smaller towns and see a bit of countryside this time around. After the train, bus, train combo to Bologna, we caught yet another train the short distance to the town of Modena. The original plan had been to spend a day or two in Bologna, but there was some major event or conference on there and we could not get accommodation at all. So we opted to stay in nearby Modena, which gave us the option of seeing Bologna during the day. As it turned out, with our delay in leaving Slovenia, we did not bother with Bologna at all.

We arrived in Modena in the evening on Wednesday, checked into our accommodation and set off to explore the town centre. We were starving and really just wanted to sit down and have dinner, even though it was quite early. We walked around and around town for ages without any luck - there were plenty of cafes, some of which served slices of pizza, but we just could not find any restaurants that were open. We eventually found one and they told us that they would not be opening until 7pm, another 30 minutes away. So we waited until 7pm, very hungry, and eventually got dinner. Who knew it was so hard to find food in Italy! Dinner was very good, however. We had bread, red wine, spaghetti bolognese for Megan and some other pasta dish for Tim, rounded off with a shared tiramisu for dessert. Very nice.

Thursday: Lucca

We caught a train to Lucca on Thursday morning. This actually involved catching three separate trains - from Modena back to Bologna, then a train to Lucca, with a connection in Prato. We only just made it to the connecting train in Prato, which was lucky, otherwise the journey would have taken even longer. We arrived in Lucca at 1.30pm and there were no taxis anywhere, so we walked into the centre of town. Actually we wandered aimlessly for a while, hoping to find a taxi. Eventually we found one and it took us to the hostel. It was a hot day and we were sick of trains and travel. We had lunch at a cafe and then explored the pretty town centre of Lucca.

Lucca is a small city in the Tuscany region in central Italy. It was founded by Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180BC. It is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls. We spent the afternoon wandering the pretty (and busy) streets inside the city walls of Lucca. We found the town to be much prettier and more lively than Modena. There were plenty of busy squares, one of which had dozens of market stalls (selling crap) in the centre, and a large church and bell tower on one side. Another of the main squares was completely surrounded by buildings, which curved around to form an oval-shaped courtyard or square in the centre. It was really cool.

We checked out some shops and the obligatory church or three, had some gelato, and then ended up having a drink at a cafe in the oval-shaped square. We then negotiated the maze of streets once more and found a good place for dinner, where we had bread and oil, lasagne/pasta and Italian wine. Good solid dinner. Then we had a long walk back to the hostel and crashed in the rather uncomfortable beds.

Friday: Siena

We had booked train tickets to Siena for Friday morning, so we got up and checked out of the hostel and headed down to the train station. It was another three-leg journey, with changes in Pisa and Empoli before we finally arrived in Siena. We had heard that Siena was a beautiful place and we really wanted to go there more than anywhere else. It did not disappoint, we loved it. So we ended up staying there for five days, which had the added bonus of not packing up and catching trains again for a while!

Siena is a city in Tuscany, with a population of around 55,000 people (plus a billion tourists)! The historic centre of Siena has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city is famous for its art, museums, cuisine, medieval cityscape and the Palio, which is a horse race held in the main square twice yearly.

After dropping our luggage off in the Piccolo Palio Hotel, we headed out to find a laundromat, so we could do some much needed washing. We found a really good one on the other side of the Piazza del Campo (main square), so we put the washing on and then had lunch at the trattoria next door while we waited. After lunch, with clean clothes again, we walked around the beautiful town centre of Siena, did some blogging at an internet cafe and enjoyed the hot, sunny weather.

In the evening, we had dinner at a place called Zest Wine Bar and Cafe. Megan had read about it and it had been highly recommended. It was fantastic. We had the usual - bread and olive oil and delicious red wine, followed by lasagne (Tim) and beef salad (Megan) and insanely good chocolate cake and custard tart for dessert. We gave it an A+.

Just along the street from the restaurant there was a massive gathering of locals celebrating some special occasion. They all wore a scarf (or carried a flag) with a crest depicting a goose. We later discovered that Siena was historically divided into 17 different neighbourhoods or districts, known as the 17 contrade of Siena. The contrade were set up in the Middle Ages as a form of military defence of Siena. As time has gone on, the contrade have lost their military and administrative functions and have instead become areas of localised patriotism and the contrade race against each other in the twice annual Palio horse race. They each have a crest, usually depicting an animal.

Apparently six of the contrade have gradually died out, but the remaining 11 are still going strong. You can see their flags flying proudly in their different areas of Siena. The goose contrade was obviously celebrating some sort of special goose occasion. It was pretty cool.

Saturday: Siena

We had a fairly lazy day on Saturday. After a big sleep in, we had croissants and fruit from a bakery near the hotel and then we walked along the main street and into the Piazza del Campo, the main public square in Siena. It is a huge shell-shaped space that slopes downwards towards the majestic Palazzo Pubblico (town hall), complete with a very tall bell tower, called the Torre del Mangia. The outskirts of the piazza are lined with cafes, bars and souvenir shops. We carried on wandering the streets of Siena, discovering new pockets of the town as we went.

Megan had booked us in to a wine and food tasting course from 1.30pm to 3pm in the afternoon. It was really good, although it was full of American "gap year" students, so there were a lot of painful and just plain stupid questions/conversations. We tasted bread and olive oil, various hams and salami (including wild boar salami), various cheeses (including cheese made from sheep milk) and a selection of cakes and biscuits. The wine was brilliant. We tasted a sparkling wine, a white wine, two reds and a dessert wine, all from the Tuscany region. They were all really good, but we particularly liked one of the reds. It was really interesting learning about the region and the particular types of foods and wines that go well together.

After the tasting course, we grabbed some supplies from the supermarket and checked out a bit more the town centre to round out the afternoon. We had dinner at a restaurant just off the Piazza del Campo, but it was pretty ordinary.

Sunday: Siena

Sunday was another very lazy day, as it should be. Certain parts of Europe (such as France and Italy) just don't really do anything on Sundays. You can hardly find any shops open at all - even the supermarkets are closed. Luckily we had prepared well and picked up some food the day before. So after a lengthy sleep-in, we had a picnic brunch in a little park not far from our hotel. We had juice, bread with meats and cheeses and some chocolate croissants (which we got from the only bakery in Italy that was open on Sunday)!

We went up to the impressive Siena Cathedral - built between 1215 and 1263 - and got some photos of that and other sights around town. We didn't go inside the cathedral, as that involved queuing for a ticket, and we were just too lazy for that sort of carry on. The rest of the day involved very little - a walk through town, a nana nap back at the hotel, a bit of internet (we followed Vettel's dominant performance at the Singapore Grand Prix - love it). We got a very cheap and easy dinner of some takeaway pizza slices and coke. Solid.

Monday: San Gimignano

On Monday morning, we got going early and bought bus tickets to the little hilltop town of San Gimignano. We had some time to kill before the bus left, so we went to the pinnacle of Italian efficiency, the post office. We needed some stamps for postcards - very simple you would think. They have a helpful ticket system, where you push the button and get a numbered ticket and then wait until your ticket is called. We waited for a few minutes and our number got called and we went up to the window, where the woman said, rather rudely, "No stamps here. Go to the other end." Of course, only some of the post office tellers are able to issue stamps!

So we had to push a different button and get a different coloured ticket and wait at the other end of the long row of tellers. We waited and waited. After about 20 minutes, our number finally got called and after some more fluffing about, the woman informed us that it would cost 2 euros per postcard, so 6 euros in total. That's almost three times the cost of stamps in the UK, which is hardly the bargain basement store of international stamps. So we flagged the stamp idea and left.

The bus ride to San Gimignano took about 1 hour and 20 minutes and the scenery was quite nice in parts. It was another very hot day, approaching 30 degrees when we arrived in San Gimignano at about 11.30am. San Gimignano is a small walled medieval hill town, which was founded in the 3rd century BC. It is a beautiful place - there were still a lot of tourists, but it was not as busy as Siena. It did not take long for us to walk right through the town, stopping in lovely little shops and admiring the pretty squares, fountains and a church as we went. All around the outskirts of the walled town, there were magnificent views of Tuscan countryside - rolling green hills, vineyards and other tiny villages dotted about on the hills.

We had a glass of wine outside a bar, sitting in the sunshine, which was almost too hot! We then grabbed some pizza for lunch and popped into a wine/chocolate shop, where we bought some wine and chocolate - bet you didn't see that one coming! At about 2.30pm, we caught the bus back to Siena. Megs was lucky enough to make a friend - a strange old American man who asked a lot of stupid questions. Tim pretended to be deaf to avoid having to join in the fun. Usually the weirdos pick Tim, so it made for a nice change!

We got back to Siena just before 4pm and we walked to a nice patch of grass just in front of little neighbourhood church, where we had a bottle of wine in the evening sun. Megs continued her fine day of attracting weirdos, as an old woman from the area came and sat right next to her, started cuddling her and jibbered away to us in Italian for about 15 minutes. Quite special. That aside, it was a lovely warm evening and it was so peaceful at that spot. We had dinner at a place near our hotel, which was, again, only average. Probably 6/10, but not what we had hoped for.

Tuesday: Siena

We got sorted and checked out of the Piccolo Palio Hotel and had a delicious breakfast in the Piazza del Campo, sourced from a new bakery we had discovered. Several tour groups came and went as we sat in the square with our breakfast. Most were American and very loud. We were moving on to Assisi later in the day, so it was another very lazy, relaxed day. We visited the internet cafe and managed to get quite a few admin jobs done - booking flights and hotels, emails, a bit of blog.

Later in the morning, we walked back to the Piazza del Campo and had an extremely expensive soft drink at a cafe looking onto the square. Prime real estate! We had awesome pizza for lunch from a great little takeaway pizzeria we had found a few days earlier. In the afternoon, we stumbled upon Santa Domenica Basilica and had a look inside. It was very large and empty (hardly any seats!) but there were some beautiful paintings and sculptures around the edges and some very modern stained glass windows, which were worth a look. We rounded out our time in Siena with some gelato and then we made our way to the bus station, where we caught an extremely new and modern bus to Assisi. We left Siena at 5.15pm and we arrived in Assisi just after 7.00pm. Not bad.

We were quite tired by the time we checked into our hotel, so we grabbed dinner at the restaurant underneath the hotel and we were not disappointed. It was the best food we had had for a while and quite reasonably priced too. We were also impressed with our hotel room - it had an excellent bathroom, which made a nice change!

Wednesday: Assisi

We felt we had earned a massive sleep-in, so that's precisely what we had on Wednesday morning. The window shutters are very effective at keeping sunlight out, so it is actually quite easy to sleep late in Italy!

Assisi is a town in the Umbria region (south-east of Tuscany). It was the birthplace of St Francis (of Assisi), who founded the Franciscan religious order in the town in 1208, and of St Clare, the founder of the Poor Sisters. The 19th century Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows was also born in Assisi. The town is long and narrow and sits on a hilltop. We were staying at one end of the hill (at the top), so we walked down through the town towards the bottom end to visit the major attraction, the Basilica di San Francesco. We stopped along the way for breakfast in the Piazza del Comune (main square) and admired the Santa Maria sopra Minerva, originally a beautiful Roman temple dating from the 1st century BC, but now a working Catholic church.

We loved Assisi - it was exactly what we thought an Italian town should be like. It was not too big or too small and not too crowded or too empty - just perfect. It has narrow and winding cobbled streets, with the odd moped zipping through, beautiful old stone buildings (some of which are on a lean) with wooden window shutters, and all sorts of interesting shops and eateries.

We made our way down to the Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi's most famous landmark. The Basilica is the resting place of St Francis of Assisi and hosts a multitude of artistic treasures, including some remarkable frescoes detailing the life of St Francis. As regular followers of the blog may know, we have seen a great many churches in our travels and we have maintained that after St Peter's and Westminster Abbey, nothing will ever compete. Well, the Basilica came quite close. We loved that it actually contains two churches, an upper church on top of the lower church, as well as the peaceful tomb of St Francis beneath the lower church. Megan particularly enjoyed the frescoes, including the most well known, which is St Francis "preaching to the birds". They looked a bit like pigeons, so we imagine he was telling them to get lost and let him have his sandwich in peace.

Afterwards we wandered around admiring the views of Umbria from the magnificent courtyard outside the Upper Church, got some pizza for lunch and checked out a few smaller churches and art workshops, of which there are plenty in Assisi. We really liked the Duomo di San Rufino, where visitors can see the original baptismal font where St Francis and St Claire were baptised (making it more than 800 years old), some exposed Roman foundations and some quite breathtaking sculptures and paintings.

Feeling spiritually satisfied, we followed up the Duomo with some red wine on our hotel terrace, before wandering back to the main square where we were entertained by an all female Christian youth choir, led by -wouldn't you know it- a dodgy looking man with an accordion. We managed to capture a couple of photos and even a bit of video footage on the blackberry - you just can't beat that sort of entertainment!

In the evening we did a wine tasting at a nice wine bar. We tried several different wines from the region. We particularly enjoyed one of the reds, which happened to be a hit with Vladimir Putin and George Clooney. We were lured into buying an additional glass of that one after the tasting had finished (deliciously expensive). We then wound up back at the same restaurant as the night before, which again was excellent. A combination of the red wine and the churches inspired Tim to get a vision of the Last Supper from a row of wine bottles on a shelf. They were arranged with six bottles on either side (apostles, of course) of a stereo speaker (Jesus...spreading the word) you see. Brilliant.

Thursday: Assisi and Rome

We started Thursday with another sunny breakfast in the main square, before beginning the simple task of getting some cash out. However, Italy decided to mess with us. Three ATMs later, we were alarmed by the message "the machine has captured your card, please contact your bank". Disaster! Luckily, the machine promptly spat the card back out again, so perhaps it was a mistake in translation. We spent the few hours before our train to Rome exploring, soaking up some sunshine and getting some lunch. We then rode the public bus down to the train station, which was full of a couple of dozen noisy and excited Italian teenagers. Lucky us.

The train ride to Rome was direct and fairly painless. We arrived in Rome at 4.30pm. Our hostel was conveniently positioned one street back from the main train station in Rome, so it was a great spot to explore the city from. We got settled in and then planned a route to get to Trastevere, where we'd had some excellent meals in the past. Unfortunately, it really was a day for Italy to dump on us. The metro was clearly broken, as the platform was jam-packed and there were no trains in sight - we gave up and spent an hour or so having a drink nearby, waiting for it to fix itself. We then got to the platform again to find it still broken. Almost two hours and four euros down, we resigned ourselves to eating within walking distance of our hostel. Amazingly, we walked for an hour before finding anything that looked halfway decent in our price range, and even then it was distinctly average. Not cool Rome! We were determined to hit up Trastevere the next day.

Friday: Rome

After a brilliant sleep, we got up and checked out of the hostel. Thankfully the metro was working, so we were able to catch a ride across to the western side of Rome, by the Vatican City. As we emerged from the metro station and walked towards St Peter's, we were pretty much mobbed by people trying to sell us tickets, give us information or get us through some secret passage to avoid the massive queues to the Vatican Museums and St Peter's Basilica. They just couldn't understand that we were not interested in seeing the Sistine Chapel. Been there, done that, loved it, but no need to re-do it this time around.

We walked into the massive square in front of St Peter's (the Piazza San Pietro) and stood and admired the massive and beautiful basilica - one of our favourite sights in the world. The queue to get into the basilica was at least 150 metres long. Insane.

After a couple of photos, we crossed the border back into Italy (te he he) and carried on walking along the river towards the district of Trastevere. Trastevere is packed with brilliant restaurants, cafes and bars, amongst lovely little squares and it is relatively tourist free. We arrived around midday and found a nice looking place, where we sat down and did not move for almost three hours. We had a perfect long Italian lunch, sitting outside in the sun.

We had all of our favourites - bread and olive oil, beautiful red wine, ham and cheese, green salad, spaghetti carbonara and cakes for dessert. We rolled out of the restaurant and headed east, across the river, past the Roman Forum and to the metro station. After picking up our luggage, we caught the train out to the Rome Fiumicino airport. We got there really early (as we had allowed for transport meltdowns, which did not materialise), so we had a long wait at the airport. We had some drinks and dinner and got rid of our last euros. We were excited to be heading back to London to catch up with some folks and we were excited to be leaving the pushy and loud Italians!

That signalled the end of our six week tour through eastern and central Europe. We had an absolute ball. After a short break break in London, we would be flying to Kenya to begin a two-month safari tour of Africa. These are very exciting times.

Country tally:
Megan - 54
Tim - 50
Bear - 50

Pretty
church
in Lucca

Lucca

Oval
square
in Lucca

Megan in
Piazza del
Campo

Piazza del
Campo

Siena

Duomo,
Siena

Square in
San
Gimignano

Boom -
Italy

Palazzo
Pubblico

Siena

Santa Maria

sopra Minerva

Umbria

Tim in

Assisi

Basilica

di San

Francesco

Frescoes

inside

basilica

Assisi

Piazza del

Commune,

Assisi

Duomo di

San Rufino

Another

church

Christian

choir -

accordion

man

Wine

tasting,

Assisi

St Peter's

Basilica,

Il Vaticano

Ljubljana, Slovenia

2011-10-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday

Our flight from Moscow arrived in Ljubljana at around 5.45pm and, while it was much warmer than it had been in Russia, it was actually raining on and off. Not what we had hoped for. We had been to Ljubljana before, at Christmas time in 2008, and we decided to spend a couple of days there to re-visit the place where we got engaged. It also seemed like a great chance to have a couple of quiet, lazy days after some full-on travelling.

We caught a taxi in to the city, to Marta Studio Apartments (B&B), where we were staying. The room was excellent, much better than we had expected. The friendly man who owned the place, showed us to our room and gave us a city map and some information, before explaining that he would not be in tomorrow, but if we had any more questions, his "woman chief" (aka wife) would be happy to help. We were exhausted, but we wandered (in the rain) down the road towards the town centre and we had an excellent dinner at a nice little restaurant, before calling it a night.

Monday

We had an awesome sleep in on Monday morning. When we eventually woke, it was raining pretty heavily. We picked up some breakfast and groceries at the supermarket just along the road from the B&B and then walked into the town centre. It was still raining quite heavily, so we sheltered in Cafe Romeo and had a cup of tea, while we waited for the rain to clear. It didn't clear much, so after that we headed for an internet cafe, where we spent a couple of hours catching up on world events.

We also took the opportunity to purchase some train tickets to Italy for Wednesday. By mid-afternoon, it had actually stopped raining and the sky started to clear. So we went for a big walk through the town centre, past many of our old haunts from our last trip to Ljubljana. It was nice to see that very little had changed and it was just as we remembered it.

We had a drink at a bar by the river and then had dinner at a restaurant called Sokol, which is where we had dinner the night after we got engaged. That, too, was just as we had remembered it and dinner was great. The service was brilliant, a nice change from Russia. A smile goes a long way! We walked back to the B&B after dinner and had another massive sleep.

Tuesday

Thankfully, Tuesday was a beautiful day. We had originally planned to travel to Italy on the Tuesday night, but we were only able to get train tickets on Wednesday morning. Our B&B had no room for us to stay the additional night, so we had to check out and find a new place to stay for Tuesday night. This proved a lot harder than expected. A very helpful girl in the tourist information office managed to find us a great room in the end, but it seemed that the entire town was booked out - no idea why, being so late in the summer and a Tuesday night. Very odd.

We dropped our packs off at the new place, the Pod Lipo pension apartments. The place was brilliant - the manager was extremely friendly and helpful, the room was spacious and clean (with its own bathroom), fridge, TV and it even had a PC with free internet in the room. Awesome.

We walked to Tivoli Park and re-visited the spot where we had got engaged in 2008. It was a lot warmer this time round but, again, the spot looked exactly the same. We took a few photos and since there was loads of graffiti and carvings on the old wooden picnic table, we naughtily scratched out own graffiti into the table with our initials and the date of the engagement! Such vandals!

Back in the town centre, we wandered around enjoying the hot sunny weather, snapping some photos of beautiful Ljubljana. We had some gelato on the famous Triple Bridge and watched the people pass by. We noticed that there was a new bridge across the river that had not been there in 2008 and it had followed the lead of various other bridges we had seen throughout Europe (Budapest, St Petersburg, Vilnius and others), in that it had hundreds of padlocks attached to its railings. The idea is that couples attach their padlock to the bridge railings and then throw the keys into the river, to symbolise their unbroken love, or something equally cheesy.

Anyway, we bought a shiny purple padlock from a nearby shop, scratched our initials into it, Megan locked it to the bridge and Tim threw the keys into the river. Now our little padlock sits happily alongside many other padlocks on the bridge in Ljubljana! Awsome.

Later in the afternoon, we had a couple of drinks outside a bar by the river and then moved on to a wine bar, called Vinoteka Movia, the place where we had celebrated our engagement with some champagne on our last visit. This time we had a bottle of red wine and a meat and cheese platter, which was delicious. We rounded out the day with dinner at the Pod Lipo restaurant (just beneath our new accommodation). The food was good, servings big and service excellent.

Wednesday

We got up pretty early, checked out and headed to the train station to catch the 9.15am train to Italy. Actually, it was a train from Ljubljana to Villach (in Austria), followed by a bus from Villach to Venice, and then another train from Venice to Bologna. Big day of travel, but still better than work. It was a lovely, relaxing couple of days in Ljubljana - just what we needed after some full on travel - and it was nice being able to re-visit some of our favourite spots from our 2008 trip.

Franciscan
Church and
Triple
Bridge

Pretty
Old Town

Ljubljana
Castle on
hilltop

Engage-
ment
spot

Serbian
Orthodox
church

Tim in
Tivoli
Park

Bear at

Triple

Bridge

St Nicholas

Cathedral

Famous

dragon on

Dragon

Bridge

Padlock

on the

bridge

Franciscan

church in

main square

Triple

Bridge

Drink

by the

river

St Nicholas

Cathedral

Pretty

Old Town

Ditto

Moscow, Russia

2011-09-27T02:00:00.001-07:00

Friday

After piling off the overnight sleeper train in Moscow, we all caught a bus to our hotel, Hotel Vega, which was once again, awesome. On the Go kicked a goal that time! We were not able to check in to our rooms yet, as it was still something like 6am, but we were able to relax in the hotel lobby and enjoy a brilliant buffet breakfast, complete with all the deliciousness you could hope for and cheesy 1980s music!

At about 9am, without showers or a change of clothes, we set off on our Moscow walking tour! At least everyone was in the same boat. We caught the metro from the hotel to the city centre. Some of the metro stations in Moscow are incredibly ornate. Stalin ordered artists and architects to design a structure in the metro system that embodied radiance and brilliance. With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grandiose chandeliers, this underground communist paradise reminded metro riders that Stalin and his party had delivered something substantial to the people in return for their sacrifices.

Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia. It is situated on the Moskva River and was founded before 1147, much earlier that St Petersburg. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia. It is also home to the Kremlin, an ancient fortress that is today the residence of the Russian President and of the executive branch of the Government of Russia. The Kremlin is also one of several UNESCO World Heritage sites in Moscow.

Moscow is the most populous city on the continent of Europe, and the seventh largest in the world. Its official population is 11.5 million but, as is the case with St Petersburg, the actual figure may be much higher. Based on figures from Forbes 2011, Moscow had 79 billionaires, displacing New York as the city with the greatest number of billionaires. Woah!

We emerged from the metro near the city's famous Red Square. Vladimir pointed a number of famous buildings and statues before we entered Red Square. The square separates the Kremlin from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. As major streets of Moscow radiate from here in all directions, Red Square is considered the central square of Moscow. The name "Red Square" derives neither from the colour of the bricks around it nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word "krasnaya" can mean either "red" or "beautiful". This word, with the meaning "beautiful", was originally applied to St Basil's Cathedral and was subsequently transferred to the square itself.

We wandered through Red Square, surrounded by enormous and beautiful buildings and structures on all sides. Along one of the sides is the massive fortification wall of the Kremlin, with Lenin's Mausoleum and the graves of famous Russians in front of the wall. Running along the other side of the square is the equally massive former GUM department store building, now a multi-level luxury shopping mall, full of designer clothing, jewellery and other things we could not afford. At the far end of the square is the magnificent St Basil's Cathedral, of similar design to the Church on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. And at the end that we entered the square from, sits the State Historical Museum and the Kazan Cathedral, separated by the Resurrection Gate.

Lenin's Mausoleum is a dark, imposing Communist-style block building which houses the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's body has been on public display here since 1924, the year that Lenin died. The mausoleum is not open every day and it was not open on Friday, so we could not visit it. However, a few of us decided we would come back early on Saturday morning to see Lenin.

St Basil's Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox church, which was constructed on Red Square between 1555 and 1561. Built on the order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, it marks the geometric centre of the city. The original building contained eight "side-churches" arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession. A tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint, Saint Basil. A victim of State atheism, the church was stolen from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's anti-religion campaigns and it has operated as part of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularised in 1929.

We then left Red Square and wandered along the Kremlin fortification wall, past the eternal flame, commemorating Russia's dead from WWII, which had some very serious looking soldiers guarding it. We then went back to GUM for lunch at an awesome old school Communist style cafe called Canteen 57 in the GUM. Tim had chicken breast, pork fillet, boiled potatoes, chocolate cake and a coke (not very Communist), but it was delicious, not too badly priced for the heart of Moscow and the atmosphere was cool. Despite our Kremlin tour commencing at 2.30pm, Vladimir got us out of the warm, cosy and interesting GUM department store building at 1.30pm and we walked the short distance to the Kremlin wall, where we waited for 55 minutes in freezing cold wind until it was time for our tour to start. Not impressed.

Vladimir left us for the tour of the Kremlin and we got a local guide, who was apparently well schooled in the ways of the Kremlin. Sadly she was a tiny woman with a tiny voice, made worse by the bad cough she was suffering, so unless you were standing right next to her or were exceptionally good at lip reading, you could not understand a word of what was being said. We will be the first to admit that after an overnight sleep train, no showers, no change of clothes, a walking tour of Moscow and standing in the cold for an hour, none of us were in a great frame of mind for a Kremlin tour, but we were still disappointed by the content and lack of quality of the tour itself.

The Kremlin is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, which includes four palaces, four cathedrals and the enclosing Kremlin Wall and Kremlin towers. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of Russia. We only really visited the Cathedral Square and some of the cathedrals of the Kremlin, so that was disappointing to start with. Some of the palaces are open to the public and you can also visit the Armoury, including the "Diamond Fund", the home of weapons and exquisite treasures of Russia; a little like the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London but on steroids. So it was a shame that our tour did not include visits to these places. The cathedrals were quite cool, but we spent a very long time inside one of them and the whole group was bored to death by that stage. On the up side, we saw the massive Tsar Cannon, weighing in at 39 tonnes (this was mostly symbolic and was never actually fired) and the Tsar Bell, the largest bell in the world. We managed to sufficiently cuddle up to our guide to learn that the Tsar Bell weighs in at nearly 202 tonnes and is over 6 metres high, although it cracked during casting and like the canon, was never actually used.

After the Kremlin tour, we caught the metro back to our hotel and had much needed showers and a rest. Some of the group had signed up for an optional "Moscow by Night" bus tour, which checked out some of Moscow's sights by night and involved a vodka shot at each stop. Thankfully we passed on that, as they didn't get home until after 1am. We had a few quiet drinks, dinner not far from the hotel and crashed pretty early. Massive day in Moscow!

Saturday

We woke early on Saturday and met James and one of the Aussie girls from our tour, Jess, in the hotel breakfast room. We were the keen (or stupid) few who wanted to queue in the rain for over an hour to see a guy who has been dead for nearly 80 years and is immersed in wax every now and then to stop him rotting. Still, we were in far better shape than James, who had been up until 1am drinking vodka. After breakfast, we caught the metro to Red Square and, shivered for an hour until Lenin's Mausoleum opened at 10am. We were amongst the first few in the huge line, so it was worth getting up early.

We were filed through the spooky mausoleum in silence, watched by armed soldiers the whole way. Lenin's body in enclosed in a glass case underground, so you walk down quite a few stairs before you enter the room where his body lies and then you basically walk a lap around the glass case, and you must not stop moving or speak or do anything other than walk in silence really, for fear of being shot. Lenin's body looked very small and quite possibly has no legs any more. But otherwise, was well preserved and looked much like a Madame Tussaud's figure. Must be all those wax baths. On the whole, it was an interesting experience and worth the effort.

Outside the mausoleum, there is a row of graves of famous Russians, including the famous cosmonaut and first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, and former Premier of the Soviet Union and all-round nice guy, Joseph Stalin. After we left Red Square, we caught the metro to where we had planned to meet Vladimir and the rest of the tour group for a "metro tour" to see some of the especially elegant and opulent metro stations. We waited and waited and sent many texts to Vladimir. As it turned out, he told us to meet him at the wrong metro station, so we waited there for about 20 minutes for nothing and then we ended up doing our own metro tour, as we knew which stations were worth checking out. Some of the metro stations are insane. They have beautiful chandeliers, mosaic pictures on the walls and ceilings, paintings, sculptures. it really is amazing.

We eventually joined up with the rest of the group for the Soviet Bunker tour, another optional add-on. That was brilliant. The Stalinist-era Soviet Bunker (that was still top secret until very recently) is cleverly hidden beneath an ordinary apartment building, on a busy street in the heart of Moscow. We descended 18 floors (65 metres) below ground level to the impressive 75,000-square-foot facility, which was constructed covertly in the 1950s to protect the select few against a possible US nuclear attack. Known as the Tagansky Underground Command Center, the site was in operation throughout the 1970s, with a staff of 2,500, of whom 500 could be on duty at any one time. In the event of a nuclear war, it would have been sealed, with enough stored food for three months and systems to purify the air. In the 1990s with the Cold War thawing and the death of communism, this bunker came off the top secret list and is now open to the public for tours!

The tour was really well done. We watched a 30-minute film on the nuclear weapons created during the 1950s and 1960s (scary stuff) and then wandered through the intricate tunnel system of the bunker. We even got to pose with AK-47s and Soviet army helmets and uniforms - very nice. At the end of the tour, we were led into a modern-looking cafe/restaurant/bar kind of thing, still 65 metres beneath the ground, where we were treated to a Communist-style lunch of buckwheat slop, dry bread and tea. It was pretty fun, although not that tasty. Apparently people hire out that venue for wedding receptions and other parties - hope they have different caterers!
Later in the afternoon, we walked with James and Margot to the Fallen Monument Park, which is full of over-sized former Communist statues of Lenin, Stalin and co as well as general "worker bee" type monuments to famers etc. The Stalin statue has been attacked and defaced (see photo below) - nobody likes that guy. Right next to the Fallen Monument Park is Gorky Park, a large amusement park. We had a walk through there, which was really nice. The sun had come out and it was actually quite hot for a couple of hours. There was a band playing some sort of music and there were pretty gardens and fountains in the park.

Then it was back to the hotel, where we grabbed an early dinner of Subway, before we headed out to the Moscow Circus! This was another optional add-on to our tour. When we arrived at the circus, we saw a tiger cub, which was posing for photos with anyone who wanted to pay the fee. Tim couldn't resist - photo below - and has decided he would like his own tiger cub. They had all sorts of animals posing for photos and we also got one with both of us and a baby chimpanzee - not on our camera unfortunately, so we only have a hard copy photo. But it is very cute. They also had a near-fully grown tiger, a leopard and an orangutan! From what we could tell, the animals all looked in good shape and well cared for.

The circus itself was brilliant. There were actually not many animals in the performance, aside from synchronised performing sausage dogs and a dancing horse. But there some incredibly talented acrobats, ballet dancers and tight-rope walkers (see photo below of the guy walking on an uphill-sloping tight-rope, with a woman standing on his head)! There were also the usual suspects such as magicians, clowns and the like. It was a good night out and excellent value.

Back at the hotel, we had a few drinks with James and Margot. OK, we had a lot of drinks. We had to finish off a couple of bottles of vodka, as we did not want to travel with them in our luggage. Once that was demolished, James and Tim headed down to the shop to get some more, but James got side-tracked and bought a giant white teddy bear holding a red love heart, with a message written on it in Cyrillic lettering. It was their anniversary, you see. Very romantic gift! Things got even more hilarious as James and Tim were walking back to the hotel, as they discovered that the bear talked. It says several different things, all in Russian of course and it also occasionally plays a little jingle. Much hilarity was had.

Sunday

Sunday was our last day on the tour and there was nothing organised. But we dragged ourselves out of bed, feeling like we had consumed a lot of vodka the night before, attempted breakfast, and then caught the metro into the city with James and Margot. The white teddy bear did not accompany us. We checked out another couple of the luxurious metro stations, wandered through Red Square and bought some quality Russian souvenirs. We acquired a Soviet decorated hip flask, some wooden Russian dolls and the obligatory fridge magnet, while James got himself an old school brown leather air force cap, complete with chin strap and the hammer and sickle logo on the front. That will be his new drinking hat. Love it.

Around midday, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then caught our airport transfer out to the airport. We were absolutely shattered - tired, hungover, cold, getting sick, generally broken down little soldiers. We were very much looking forward to a few very lazy slow days in Slovenia. In saying that, Russia was brilliant, we loved every minute of it. It also happened to be Tim's 50th country. Boom.

Megs in
Red Square

Kazan
Cathedral

State
Historical
Museum

Lenin's
Mauso-
leum

Kremlin
Tower

St Basil's
Cathedral

Ditto

Megs in
GUM
shopping
mall

Tsar
Cannon,
Kremlin

Kremlin
Cathedral

Tsar Bell,
Kremlin

Kremlin
wall

Tim with
AK-47
in Soviet
bunker

Defaced
Stalin
statue

Gorky
Park

Tim and
tiger cub

Tight-rope
action at
the circus

Lenin
statue
in a metro
station

Metro
station

St Petersburg, Russia

2011-09-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Tuesday

We woke stupidly early and caught a taxi to the Riga airport for our 6.40am flight to St Petersburg. The flight left on time and only took about one hour. We were greeted at the airport in St Petersburg by our "On the Go Tours" transfer rep, who drove us to the hotel in the city. The drive took over an hour due to the crazy traffic. Apparently there is always a lot of traffic in St Petersburg and Moscow regardless of the time of day - constant traffic jams!

We had booked the 6-day "Vodka Shot" tour of Russia with On the Go Tours, as we had used them for our Egypt tour a couple of years ago and that was amazing. The "6-day" part was a touch misleading, as Day 1 (Tuesday) consisted of a welcome meeting at 8pm and Day 6 (Sunday) was "breakfast and get out". So it was essentially a 4 day tour, which meant we were on our own for the first day.

We arrived at the Andersen Hotel a bit after 10am Russian time. We grabbed breakfast not far from the hotel at an old favourite of St Petersburg, the Stolle pie restaurant. We had chicken pie and apple juice and it was delicious. After checking into our hotel room, which was really nice, we set off to explore St Petersburg!

St Petersburg is a city of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. In 1914, the city was renamed Petrograd, in an attempt to sound "less German" and in 1924, it was renamed again to Leningrad, before being changed back to St Petersburg in 1991.

St Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703. From 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918, St Petersburg was the capital of Russia. In 1918, the central government moved to Moscow. St Petersburg is Russia's second largest city, with 4.8 million inhabitants officially, although the actual figure is much higher, due to many "unregistered" residents.

It was a chilly and grey morning. We walked to the metro station and caught the metro two stops to the main street of St Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt. We ambled around the centre city, loving the feeling of being in a completely foreign place, surely one of the most mysterious and foreign countries in the world. The street signs, menus and information notices were all written in Cyrillic lettering and very few people spoke any English at all.

Our first main stop was the famous Church on Spilled Blood. We were going to be visiting the inside of the church as part of the tour on Thursday, so we just admired the exterior for now. The Church on Spilled Blood, a Russian Orthodox church, was built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. They have actually kept the handful of cobble stones that were stained with his blood (when he was attacked and killed by a group of revolutionaries who threw a bomb at his carriage during a parade) and these are now covered by a shrine inside the church.

The church was built between 1883 and 1907 and was officially called "The Resurrection of Christ" Church. The Church on Spilled Blood is only a nick-name. The church was closed for services in the 1930s when the Bolsheviks went on an offensive against religion and destroyed churches all over the country. Apparently it was at one time used to store cabbages and other vegetables! After 30 years of restoration, it was re-opened in all its former glory in 1997. It is such a beautiful building. We took loads of photos and the sky even cleared a little while we did so!

We visited a great book shop in the old Singer building just along from the church, where we bought a St Petersburg photo book and some postcards, then we grabbed some lunch in a cafe a couple of blocks further along Nevsky Prospekt. It rained pretty heavily while we were in the cafe, so we ended up having a long lunch.

Once the rain had cleared we carried on walking down the main street and eventually we stumbled upon the massive Palace Square. Palace Square is considered to be the city's main square. On the northern side of the square sits the colossal yet picturesque Winter Palace, while on the southern side is the yellow and white building of the former Imperial Army General Staff, which curves around to enclose the southern half of the square, and which includes the Triumphal Arch. In the centre of the square is the Alexander Column, a monument to the Russian military victory over Napoleon's France. Named after Alexander I, who ruled Russia between 1801 and 1825 (during the Napoleonic Wars), the column stands nearly 50 metres high and is topped with a statue of an angel holding a cross.

The Winter Palace was built between 1754 and 1762 for Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died before the palace was completed, so only Catherine the Great and her successors were able to enjoy the sumptuous interiors of the palace. From the 1760s onwards the Winter Palace was the main residence of the Russian Tsars.

Today the Winter Palace, together with four more buildings arranged side by side along the river embankment, houses the extensive collections of the State Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage Museum is the largest art gallery in Russia and is among the largest and most respected art museums in the world. The museum was founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased a collection of 255 paintings from Berlin. Today, the Hermitage boasts over 2.7 million exhibits and displays a diverse range of art and artifacts from all over the world and from throughout history. The Hermitage’s collections include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, a unique collection of Rembrandts and Rubens, many French Impressionist works by Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet and Pissarro, numerous canvasses by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin and several sculptures by Rodin. Apparently, if you were to spend a minute looking at each exhibit on display in the Hermitage, you would need 11 years to see them all.

We got some photos in Palace Square and then went as far as the Neva River, just past the Winter Palace, before heading west to St Isaac's Cathedral. The cathedral was built between 1818 and 1858 by a French-born architect. It was intended to be the main church of the Russian Empire. The dome of the cathedral dominates the skyline of St Petersburg and its gilded cupola can be seen glistening from all over the city. Apparently there is over 100kg of gold leaf covering the dome and the dome itself is the fourth largest cathedral dome in the world.

We lined up and bought our tickets to see the inside of the church, which was decorated in the most elaborate way possible. Pretty much every square centimetre of the walls, ceilings and columns inside the church is decorated, mainly with huge pictures or "icons" of saints and the like, mostly created using mosaics. The church now serves as a museum and services are only held on special occasions. It was amazing and well worth the visit.

Our legs were pretty tired after such a big day of walking, so we we headed back to the metro and on to the hotel. We picked up a couple of Russian beers and some wine and snacks from the supermarket near our hotel and we had a couple of drinks in our hotel room before heading down to the On the Go Tours Welcome Meeting at 8pm.

Our tour leader, Vladimir, was really nice, although a little all over the place, which made parts of the meeting quite confusing. We were disappointed to see that On the Go Tours had changed the itinerary from that which is on their website and in their glossy brochure. They had squeezed what had previously been two days' activities in Moscow all into one day, leaving an entire day of "free time", which really means that you just pay a whole lot more money to do another optional add-on unless you want to hang out in Russia on your own. Pretty sneaky, On the Go!!!

After the meeting, we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was only OK and it was definitely over-priced. We had had an early start and a big day, so we were pretty tired. We had an excellent sleep.

Wednesday

We woke fairly early on Wednesday. Breakfast in the hotel restaurant was quite good - juice, bread or croissants, fruit, yogurt, noodles, sausages, etc. After breakfast, we paid Vladimir for the entrance fees and the optional extras we had decided to do and then the group boarded the bus for the sight-seeing tour of St Petersburg. The bus was small and pokey and quite old. Vladimir used a microphone that had seen better days and created a weird echo throughout the bus when he spoke. Our tour group was really good. There were 18 of us in total, including quite a few Kiwis and Aussies.

The tour was brilliant. We stopped at the Church on Spilled Blood and St Isaac's Cathedral, which we had seen the previous day, but we learned about a lot of other buildings as we drove around the city. There are literally hundreds of massive and extravagant palaces in St Petersburg, some of them not even famous, but they are all very beautiful. We also stopped along the bank of the Neva River, where we got a great view across the water to St Isaac's Cathedral and some of the amazing palaces. Vladimir told us that the water levels in the river were very high and close to flooding, which happens almost every year around this time due to temperature changes and tidal flows in the Gulf of Finland.

It was an overcast and cool day and when the wind picked up later in the morning, it was bitterly cold. Our next major stop was the Peter and Paul Fortress. When Peter the Great founded St Petersburg in 1703, he decided to build a fortress to protect the area from a possible attack by the Swedish navy. The fortress was built on a small island in the Neva River. The Swedes were defeated before the fortress was even completed and for that reason, from 1721 onwards, the fortress housed part of the city's garrison and a high security jail.

In the middle of the fortress stands the impressive Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial place of all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Alexander III. The Cathedral was the first church in the city to be built of stone (between 1712-33). We visited the Peter and Paul Cathedral and saw all of the tombs. The church was amazing - they must have had so much money to build all of these amazing churches and palaces everywhere!

As it turned out, lunch was at the Stolle pie restaurant (it really is famous in St Petersburg). Sadly they had run out of chicken pie, so Tim had to settle for a large fish pie. Not cool. Megan had a small salmon pie and a small apple pie for dessert. In the afternoon, we visited the Hermitage State Museum, in the Winter Palace and adjoining buildings. We spent three hours touring the amazing Hermitage, with Vladimir pointing out the many highlights as we went. He really knew his stuff in the Hermitage! We entered through the palatial staircase and, as we wandered through the massive museum, we saw paintings by French, Italian, Dutch and Spanish artists (all the big hitters) as well as an awesome sculpture by Michelangelo and countless former treasures of the Russian Tsars, not to mention the Egyptian hall, where there was a 10,000 year old mummy, partially uncovered. It was an amazing tour. You really could spend days in there, there is just so much to see.

On the Go had refused to fork out for a bus back to the hotel after the day's activities concluded, so we all caught the metro back to the hotel. Sadly, one of the older members of our tour group had his wallet pick-pocketed on the metro. Thanks On the Go, nice work. We made our journey home via a supermarket to acquire some more beers and snacks, and then we had some drinks with another Kiwi couple from our tour group, James and Margot, back at the hotel. Most of the group had elected to go to a performance of Swan Lake by a Russian ballet company as an optional add-on. We had decided not to, as we had seen Swan Lake performed by a Russian ballet company in Auckland a few years ago. As it turned out, the performance was below average (the dancers were out of time, made mistakes and were just generally poor), so we didn't miss much at all. We had dinner with James and Margot at an English/Irish pub near the hotel and it was pretty solid. The food was good and reasonably priced. We had a really fun night.

Thursday

There was nothing officially planned for the tour on Thursday, but those who wanted to pay some more money could do the optional "Pukka Pass" bolt-on tour. We had signed up for this, so we found ourselves getting up quite early and feeling a little rough. Russian beers pack quite a punch! After the hotel breakfast, we hopped on the bus and drove about an hour out of the city centre to visit the Peterhof Gardens.

Peterhof is an immensely luxurious and beautifully preserved Imperial estate, founded in 1710 by Peter the Great on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. It combines several ornate palaces, a number of beautifully landscaped parks and a dazzling array of magnificent statues and fountains, hence it often being labelled "The Russian Versailles". We were not visiting any of the palaces, just the gardens, but the gardens alone were magnificent. Just after we arrived, there was a spectacular water and musical show at the main fountains. Luckily we were watching from the top, as another few tour groups down the bottom got soaked as the wind carried the water from the fountains across to where they were watching from.

The bus ride back from the Peterhof Gardens was really enjoyable too, as Vladimir very candidly spoke about the Russian government and police force, the corruption and the fear that the general public has of the police, due to their blatant corruption. He said that very few Russians support Putin and the general feeling is that Medvedev and Putin will decide between themselves who will be the next president and what the people want is largely irrelevant. We drove past the St Petersburg residence of the Russian president, which was a monstrous palace on the outskirts of the city. Given that Medvedev is the current president (or is he?) it should have been his residence, but Vladimir told us that Putin spends a lot of time there...interesting.

Back in St Petersburg, we had a traditional Russian lunch at a nice restaurant near the Church on Spilled Blood. We had a beetroot and cabbage soup to start, with bread and a shot of vodka, of course. Then we had beef stroganof for our main. It was very nice. After lunch we visited the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood. It was absolutely amazing inside, the most beautifully decorated church we have ever seen. And as Megan will tell we have seen about 3 billion churches on our travels! It shot straight to the top of our list of favourite churches ever, right up there with St Peter's in Rome.

Once again, On the Go neglected to give us a ride back to the hotel after our optional add on tour, which we had paid extra for... So, after an ice-cream at Baskin Robbins, we caught the metro back to the hotel. We met up with James and Margot and another Kiwi couple from our tour and headed to Pizza Hut for dinner. We had the all you can eat option. The Russian waitress explained to us in her best English: "I will bring you pizza. You will eat it. I will repeat until you are not hungry any more." We understood and obeyed. Russian people do not smile at all. It is a cultural thing - if you smile too much people will think you are either mad or taking the mickey out of them, so it is a very stern and serious place. However, one of the other waitresses who brought us pizza now and then, could just not stop smiling. She was easily the happiest person in Russia. Probably drugs.

After all you can eat pizza, James was not satisified, so he bought a boiled pork and horseradish filled pancake from a roadside stall (bear in mind this was before an overnight train ride!) and followed that up with a plum pie from the Stolle pie restaurant. Later in the evening we all got the bus to the train station and caught a 10.45pm sleeper train to Moscow. That was an experience. We were organised in groups of four members of our tour group in each compartment of an open sleeper cabin with two strangers at the end of each compartment. We shared with a retired couple from Canada, who were brilliant. They smashed our passion for drinking, leaving us for dead. They pulled out a half bottle of gin and demolished it within an hour, whilst entertaining us with stories of their travels and their life in Canada.

When it came time for bed, it was girls on the top bunks and boys on the bottom bunks. As Peter had pretty much passed out in the bottom bunk, Tim had to try to help Denise get up to the top bunk, which was not an easy feat in a moving train, even if you were young and sober, which Denise was neither. To add to the fun, she had recently shattered her kneecap, which made her a little like Bambi on ice at the best of times. She got halfway up and then could not go any further, so Tim was trying to push her up the rest of the way with no success. Megan and the Aussie girls on our tour from the next compartment along the carriage didn't offer any help, but just laughed instead. Thanks guys. Eventually Denise made it up to the top bunk and no doubt slept like a baby!

It was a fairly smooth ride through to Moscow, although we were on the look-out for the professional thieves that stalk the night trains stealing from good citizens of the world like ourselves. Tim was ready for them, but they never came. Wise move. We arrived in Moscow at 5.10am. Rise and shine!

Church on
Spilled
Blood

Onion
domes

So
pretty

Perfect
sense

One of
many
canals

More
crazy
signage

Megs at
St Isaac's
Cathedral

Inside
St Isaac's

Kazan
Cathedral

On banks
of the Neva
River

Peter and
Paul
Cathedral

Tim at
Winter
Palace

Inside
Hermitage
Museum

Ditto

Ditto

Church at
Peterhof
Gardens

Main
fountains
at Peterhof

Peterhof
Palace
and
fountains

Megs at
Peterhof
Gardens

Russian
Bear

Inside
Church on
Spilled
Blood

Riga, Latvia

2011-09-20T03:15:00.000-07:00

Friday

So we arrived in Riga at about 10.30pm on Friday night. We ended up catching a taxi with a taxi driver who looked like he should be on America's Most Wanted List for having chopped up people in his freezer, but to his credit, he took us to our destination without killing us and he charged us a fair price. We pretty much crashed straight away, especially since we had to climb 5 flights of stairs with heavy packs on our backs to reach KB Bed & Breakfast.

Saturday

On Saturday morning (10 September) we had a bit of a sleep in before breakfast at the B&B, which was pretty standard. Then we walked into the old town, yes, another old town. It was a lovely sunny morning but a little chilly in the wind.

Latvia is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe, the meat in the Baltic sandwich if you like, bordered by Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south, as well as by Russia to the east, Belarus to the south-east and by a patch of coast on the Baltic Sea to the west. The official language is Latvian (we don't know this one either). The population of Latvia is about 2.2 million. Riga is the largest and capital city, with just over 700,000 people, making it the largest city of the Baltic states.

With the help of a guide brochure, we showed ourselves around the old town, wandering the medieval streets, checking out the beautiful buildings and statues and visiting the main squares, which were all packed with cafes and bars with plenty of outdoor seating. There were also a lot of market stalls selling various nik-naks. Our favourite square was the Town Hall (Ratslaukums in Latvian) Square, home to the rebuilt Town Hall (obviously), the beautiful House of Blackheads and the Museum of Occupations, watched over by the central statue of St Roland (Riga's patron saint).

The House of Blackheads was originally built in 1344 and owned by a merchant guild. It was destroyed during WWII and buried by the Soviets, but rebuilt in the late 1990s. It is now home to a museum and concert hall. We decided to visit this on the Monday and instead we caught the elevator to the viewing platform at the top of the 70m-high spire of St Peter's church. The church interior was pretty plain, but the wait for the elevator ride to the top of the spire was definitely worthwhile - the views of the old town were amazing.

We grabbed some lunch and then met up with the London crew who had arrived on the midday flight from London to spend the weekend with us in Riga. Kristen, Daggy, Alex, Andrew, Kate and Jono had just started their lunch when we found them, so we joined them for a drink and then wandered the old town in the sunshine. There were plenty of buskers in the streets, including our favourite old lady in a red jersey, who was "dancing" to some delightful pre-war tune (see below). Now that is good quality busking. The was also a guy dressed up as a slice of pizza, who Andrew punched in the crust - but he didn't feel a thing. Good solid crust!

Riga is renowned for its art nouveau architecture and a few of the girls were eager to check it out. So we went on an art nouveau walk, through one of the quiet suburbs of the city. After the walk, we had a couple of drinks at a slightly strange sailor-themed bar, where our bill was presented to us in the skull of a crocodile!

As we were walking through town to find somewhere for dinner, we stumbled across an archery course, so we all had a crack at that, largely without success. We are blaming the alcohol! Then we found a great little restaurant tucked away in a square behind St Peter's church, just along from a "Musicians of Bremen" statue (random). We had a few drinks and a great dinner there, before checking out the Kiwi Bar across the square. New Zealanders with valid ID get their first drink free. Bonus. We watched the tail-end of a classic tennis match (US Open semi-final between Federer and Djokovic), which Djokovic won after Federer blew two match points.

A few more bars and a few more drinks followed before it was just Tim and Jono left, talking to some Brazilian cage fighter at 4am. Jono could easily have taken him. We told him this. He laughed.

Sunday

We were pretty slow getting going on Sunday morning. Some felt worse than others, but generally everyone felt rubbish. Andrew had brought balloons and a birthday cake all the way from London for Megan's belated birthday, to show what a kind, caring guy he really is. So breakfast consisted of chocolate cake and various other snacks that we managed to pick up on our way down to the old town.

We joined a midday walking tour, which started out badly. The guy taking the tour was very...shall we say...eccentric (read "weird") and did his best to be offensive too, but he was only the second weirdest guy in the tour group. The medal went to a Riga local who decided to join the walking tour of his home town and wave to confused strangers as we went. As it turned out, the walking tour was not of the old town at all, but rather outside the town centre, in some of the so-called "dangerous" spots of the city. The tour lasted three hours and we visited the huge market next to the bus station, which stunk of fish, a quirky little art gallery, a massive Soviet-era building nick-named "Stalin's birthday cake", a church constructed entirely of wood (this was actually pretty cool), the train station, a developed area full of eateries and modern bars, a park and a sprinkling of art nouveau. The tour guide got better as the tour progressed and it was actually pretty good in the end.

Once the tour concluded, we took 75 years to decide where we should have lunch. Eventually we settled on a place in the main square, where the waiters wore white gloves, as if they might break into a mime at any moment. It was a really hot and sunny afternoon - we soaked it up while we could, as we were off to Russia next, while the rest of the crew was heading back to dreary old London town.

A bit more walking in the sunshine, a cheeky afternoon beer and then an early dinner for the Londonites. There was a fair bit of anger floating around the dinner table, as Jono expressed his dislike for a certain red taxi that was ruining his view of an otherwise pretty square and the Gunn went off about how the Americans arrange their dates in the month before day format (as in 9/11) - those scoundrels! Poor old Captain Daggs struck out swinging with a disappointing "little girl's basket" that consisted of cheeses, pickles and similar, while Andrew hit a home run with BBQ chicken wings and a man burger. Andrew just about fell off his chair laughing. The Germans actually have a specific word which means "laughing at another's misfortune", so we all had a go at putting that into action. Much hilarity.

It was really fun to see everyone again and we had an awesome weekend. We will really miss them when we leave London for the final time. After seeing off the others, we were once again lonely in Eastern Europe. In truth, we were completely shattered. We grabbed some dinner of our own and crashed pretty early.

Monday

Monday was a much-needed admin day. We had a big sleep in and grabbed a delicious breakfast at a cafe down the road from our B&B. We then had plenty of washing to do at the laundromat, plenty of internet to do and some general planning for our tour of Russia, which started bright and early Tuesday morning! As it turned out the good weather of the previous days deserted us and was replaced with cloud and drizzle. So it was a good day for admin.

We looked for a Russia travel guide (in English) but could not find one. They had about 50 other countries' travel guides in English, but not Russia. Booooo. We wrote some postcards over lunch and then wandered into the old town to try to visit the House of Blackheads, but alas it was closed. The woman dressed in a ridiculous outfit from the Middle Ages took great delight in telling us that it was always closed on Mondays and that there was now no way we would be able to see it. Bitch.

We did, however, visit the "Three Brothers" houses on a narrow street not far from the Town Hall Square. The Three Brothers are the oldest stone buildings still standing in Riga, and an excellent example of medieval architecture. They were built from the 15th century (white brother) to the middle of the 18th century (yellow brother).

It was starting to rain a bit heavier, so we left the old town and returned to our B&B area, where we had an awesome dinner at a place called Iguana. Tim had pork fillet and fries, Megs had chicken noodle stir fry and we shared chocolate cake for dessert. We played a few pokies at a mini-casino after dinner. We broke even and headed to the hotel to pack up and get ready for Russia!

Town
Hall
Square

Old Town,
Riga

View from
St Peter's
church
spire

Symbol
of Riga -
arched
cat on
rooftop

Lady in
red - our
favourite
busker

Pizza
dude

Orthodox
Cathedral

Art
nouveau

Tim and
Megs on
cannon

Archery

Ditto

Handsome
men

Kiwi Bar
shenanigans

Stalin's
birthday
cake

Riga
clock
tower

Freedom
monument

Town
Hall
Square -
House of
Blackheads

Statue on
House of
Blackheads

St Peter's
church spire

Three
Brothers
buildings

Vilnius, Lithuania

2011-09-19T04:55:00.001-07:00

Thursday

Our overnight bus from Tallinn pulled in to Vilnius at about 6.40am. Thankfully we had booked a hostel close to the bus station, so we walked the five minutes to our hostel (hilariously called "A Hostel") and crashed straight away. We had three hours sleep and then woke at 10am, ready to explore the Lithuanian capital.

Lithuania is the largest of the three Baltic states. It shares borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad) to the southwest. It also has some coastline on the Baltic Sea to the west. Lithuania has a population of approximately 3.2 million. Vilnius is the largest and capital city, with a population of about 560,000. The official language is Lithuanian, another language that we are not so fluent in.

The old town of Vilnius is actually very pretty - we were a little surprised! The day started out cloudy and a bit cool, but it cleared before long and was a lovely day for the most part. There were a few heavy showers that lasted for only 10 minutes, but luckily we managed to avoid all of them! We walked through the Town Hall Square, the home of the city authorities in Vilnius for the past six centuries, and down Pilies Street. Pilies Street is the oldest and most flamboyant street in the old town. The street grew out of the former road from Vilnius Castle to the south to Russia and Poland. The name Pilies Street dates back to at least 1530. The street is now filled with markets, plenty of souvenir shops, churches, cafes and bars. At the end of Pilies Street we crossed the road to the Cathedral Square.

The Cathedral Square is the historical heart of Vilnius. In the centre of the huge square sits the beautiful Cathedral of St Stanislaus and St Vladislaus, the most important place of worship for the countrys Catholics and the venue for main Christian folk and national festivities. Many prominent people of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy - bishops, dukes and noblemen - are buried in the vaults of the Cathedral. The first heavy shower of the day arrived just as we entered the Cathedral, so we spent 20 minutes or so admiring the interior of the Cathedral, which was very pretty, before re-emerging to the square.

In front of the Cathedral is the Bell Tower, which is 57 metres high and was reconstructed in its current position 200 years ago. The other prominent landmark in the square is the Monument to the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (1275 - 1341). Besides being the founder of Vilnius, Gediminas was also one of the most famous rulers of Lithuania. The statue shows him in a rather odd pose with his noble steed watching on!

We had a tasty lunch in a really fun underground restaurant, decorated like a cave, on Vokieciu Street, a street with a lovely strip of garden running down the middle and quite a few cafes and restaurants down either side. After lunch we checked out Gedimino Street, which was filled with very modern and upmarket looking shops. There were loads of people around and there was a stage set up in a little square off to the side of Gedimino Street where a live band was playing. The town was hosting the European basketball championships while we were there and, as basketball is the national sport of Lithuania and their team was one of the three favourites to win the championships, there was a lot of basketball hype around the place!

We then walked past the National Museum of Lithuania (otherwise known as the New Arsenal) and we carried on up a steep hill to the Hill of Three Crosses, a monument to some Franciscan monks who are believed to have been tortured to death there by pagans. The sun was shining and the views of the city from the top of the hill were brilliant. The next hill across is home to the Upper Castle (dating from 1323) and Gediminas Tower, where we again enjoyed beautiful views of the city.

Back down the hill, we walked back up Pilies Street and stopped in at a chocolate shop / cafe, just in time to avoid another downpour. We had a piece of cake and tea / hot chocolate (which was actually just melted chocolate in a cup - delicious). Once the shower had passed, we carried on along Pilies Street, bought some postcards and souvenirs and popped in to St Nicholas Orthodox Church, where there was a service going on, which was very interesting. We then walked through the Gates of Dawn, a small place of worship in the top of an archway which was formerly one of the gates to the walled old town. The place was visited by Pope John Paul II, who prayed there, making it an even more significant place to religious people of Vilnius.

After a short rest at our hostel, we had a couple of stupidly cheap beers at an English pub and then a massive meal at a German beer house, which was fully equipped with an accordian player! Awesome.

Friday

After another sneaky sleep in, we packed up and checked out of A Hostel. We wandered into town at around 10.30am, had pancakes for breakfast at a pancake restaurant called Gusto. We were following the All Blacks opening game of the Rugby World Cup vs Tonga on the blackberry and we were delighted to discover that Israel Dagg had scored the first try, which we had put a bet on. Nice work Megan. The return of 42 pounds would have paid for 21 beers in Lithuania!

After breakfast we strolled across to the sleepy suburb of Uzupis. Uzupis is sometimes compared to Montmartre in Paris. It is the "republic of artists", with its own president and constitution (which is displayed on a wall in the area). In the central square is the large bronze angel statue, said to be the guardian of Uzupis. Another of the main symbols of Uzupis is the bronze mermaid statue, positioned on the bank of the Vilnia river, which runs through Uzupis. It was such a lovely, peaceful place for a morning stroll.

After a bit of internet action, we carried on the Museum of Occupation and Genocide. Once again, as far as such a gruesome museum can be, it was a very good and well put together museum, with plenty of information in English, but we were concerned that there was actually no mention of the Nazi persecution of Jews in Lithuania. That seemed to have been glossed over, as most of the information in the museum concentrated on the Soviet Occupation of Lithuania from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Later in the afternoon we walked to St Annes Church, a masterpiece of the late Gothic period, which has survived to the present day without changing for over 500 years! Then we grabbed a late lunch / early dinner at a brilliant restaurant called Bistro 18. If anyone is going to visit Vilnius, definitely eat there - it was superb.

Then it was time to grab our luggage from A Hostel and head to the bus station, where we spent our last Lithuanian Lits (great name for a currency - right up there with the Latvian Lats!) and caught our 6.30pm bus to Riga, Latvia. Once again, no passport checks or border control, so no stamps. Booo. We had a very comfortable journey - the buses in the Baltic states are new, modern, very spacious, comfortable and on time. We arrived in Riga four hours later at 10.30pm.

Town
Hall
Square

Megs and
Vespa

Cathedral

Vokieciu
Street

Cathedral
Square

Monument to
Gediminas

Cathedral

Lithuanian
fan?

New
Arsenal

View from
Hill of
Three
Crosses

Three
Crosses

Gediminas
Tower

Pilies
Street

Pilies
Street
again

Pretty
Old
Town

St Casimir
Church

Gates of
Dawn

Old
Town

Uzupis
angel

Uzupis
constit-
ution

St Annes
Church

Tallinn, Estonia

2011-09-12T02:20:00.000-07:00

Saturday

We were pretty glad to get off the ferry in Tallinn and leave the crazy Finns to get on with their drinking. We had a little trouble finding our hotel. We knew it was pretty much right next to the ferry terminal, but it was well hidden and we wandered around in the dark for a while before tracking it down. It was a great place to stay, though. Good location close to the Old Town and our room was really nice. We were happy to be in Estonia!

Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe. It is bordered by Latvia to the south, Russia to the east and has the Baltic Sea to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the north. The population of Estonia is just 1.35 million, making it one of the least populous members of the European Union. Tallinn is the capital and largest city, with a population of around 415,000. Tallinn is also the European Capital of Culture for 2011!

Sunday

After a bit of a sleep in, we had a fairly typical breakfast buffet at the hotel - bread, fruit and yoghurt, sausages, baked beans, juice. Excellent. We then set off to explore the old town of Tallinn. We had heard from a number of people that Tallinn was beautiful, but it was even more spectacular than we had imagined. The morning was cloudy and drizzly, but by afternoon the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

We wandered through the cobble stone streets, admiring the colourful and pretty medieval buildings and checking out some of the souvenir stores. There was plenty of amber for sale, as it is abundant in the Baltic States, as well as lots of Russian dolls, jewellery, wool and linen products and other crafts. We found the Tourist Information Centre and got some info on various tours and then we had a drink at one of the cafes in the beautiful Town Hall square (main square). The sun was shining by this stage and it was actually quite hot. We watched the waiters and waitresses rushing up to tourists in the square, trying to entice them into their cafes.

We continued to explore the old town, checking out shops, churches and the fortification towers and walls, which are still largely intact, and we made our way up to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a picturesque Russian Orthodox church opposite the Estonian parliament building, which is pink of all colours! We had awesome pizza for lunch at a nice restaurant on Viru Street in the centre of the old town and then ventured outside of the old town walls (to the new town, we suppose) to check out one of the huge department stores and use the internet.

Later in the afternoon, we walked back around the edge of the old town to our hotel via the Alkoholopood, where we picked up some exceptionally cheap beer and cider as well as some snacks, which we consumed while watching some of the Athletics World Champs in our hotel room. We can now confirm that the sport of hammer throw is a ridiculous one. We also managed to book ourselves a bus from Tallinn to Vilnius, Lithuania for just 20 euros each. Bargain!

In the evening we walked back into the old town and found a great little restaurant where we both had a delicious chicken and rice dish. After dinner we went for a walk through the old town. It was so pretty all lit up at night. It was a nice still evening, although a bit chilly after dark.

Monday

Tim got up early and trekked across the other side of the old town to do some laundry at the laundromat. The women working there spoke no English, so there was a rather hilarious mime session and much pointing by Tim and one of the women to convey that we indeed wanted all of clothes both washed and dried. With chores out of the way, we discovered a brilliant market just across the road from our hotel - the Sadama market. It sold literally everything you could imagine short of livestock.

It was a stunning day - hot, sunny, perfect blue sky. We loved Tallinn even more! We wandered into the old town, past the Fat Margaret Tower, a huge round tower that was once part of the town wall fortifications. You can see from the photo below just how big it is. It has become one of the icons of Tallinn and you can buy all sorts of souvenirs relating to the tower.

On our morning walk we stumbled across a lovely little square, beneath St Nicholas Church, that had sun loungers scattered all over it, so we lay in some sun loungers for a while, thinking about how much better that was than working. We joined a walking tour of the old town from 12-2pm. It was really well done. The tour guide was excellent and he gave us so many interesting facts and figures and he told us a few stories (both fact and myth) about Tallinn and Estonia. We visited the Estonian War of Independence Victory Column, a few of the main churches, some lookout platforms on the higher part of the old town with stunning views and the town walls and fortification towers. The walking tour was superb.

We had lunch at a fantastic Texan restaurant called Honky Tonk Canteen. It had all sorts of delicious American food (massive servings as you would expect) and was quite cheap too. After lunch, we pretty much rolled through the old town with packed stomachs, enjoying the hot weather and the beautiful surroundings. The town was over-run with Northern Ireland football supports (Northern Ireland were playing Estonia in a Euro 2012 qualifier match on the Tuesday night and a big contingent had made the journey to eastern Europe for a long (and thirsty) weekend). A large group of them hung about in an Irish pub in the main square all day Monday, singing and chanting. It kind of ruined the tranquil atmosphere of Tallinn's town centre, but was also quite amusing.

We were inspired by the Irish and decided to check out a few of Tallinn's pubs in a mini pub crawl of our own. In truth, we actually only made it to two pubs - the Drink Bar and Hell Hunt. Hell Hunt is actually the Estonian translation for Gentle Wolf, and it has an interesting logo of a large wolf carrying a naked lady on its back... It was the first Estonian pub registered after Estonia regained independence in 1991. It was nice to relax with a few beers after a lot of walking and exploring over the past few days.

We rounded out the day with an awesome dinner at a place called Porgu. Megan had salmon and Tim had a pork chop. They had ridiculously heavy chairs - like about 50kg each. There was no way of stealing those bad boys. It was a bit of a struggle to get up the steps out of the restaurant after dinner as it was. Another solid day in Estonia!

Tuesday

We had a sleep in and then breakfast in the hotel on Tuesday. It was a grey morning, with patches of drizzle. Not ideal. After breakfast we made our way to Hotel Viru for the 11.30am KGB tour. The KGB used to have the top floor of the hotel to themselves, where they had offices and spy equipment stored to allow them to keep tabs on any foreign hotel guests during the Soviet Occupation era. The tour was really well presented. It was crazy to believe that the extreme lengths the KGB went to in order to spy on pretty ordinary people, and that this occurred up until the late 1980s! Our tour guide, who cannot have been much older than us, vivdly remembers getting training in putting on a gas mask (in case of some attack) when she was at school as a 5 or 6 year old!

It had started pouring while we were in the hotel tour. It had improved slightly by the time our tour ended, so it was only drizzling, as we walked from the Hotel Viru back in to the old town. We headed for the main square, where we visited the Raeapteek pharmacy. This is the oldest continuously functioning pharmacy in the world. Records show that it was in operation as early as 1422, but it was probably earlier than that. It has been passed down through the generation of the same family for centuries. It is now part modern day pharmacy and part museum of weird and wonderful things that it used to sell back in the Middle Ages - including herbs, snake skins, toads, insects, a mummified human hand and deer penises to name but a few. Very strange place.

Just along from the pharmacy, we found a great little cafe that had an amazing assortment of cakes, so we popped in there to dodge some rain and we got a piece of cake each and a hot chocolate for Tim and a tea for Megan. Delicious! We then visited a Russian flea market down behind the railway station. It was actually quite crap and the rain was still falling, so we abandoned that fairly quickly and headed for the hotel.

We managed to get on the computer in the lobby of the hotel next to ours without any complaints from management. It appeared to be the only computer in Estonia with a functioning USB port, so we could download photos and do some blog! We also decided to use the pool and spa complex of the hotel next door. We got 90 minutes in the indoor swimming pool, spas and saunas for an excellent price. Great way to spend a wet afternoon. After some wine and snacks in our hotel room, we had dinner at our favourite Texan restarant, the Honky Tonk Canteen. Again, it was excellent. Again, we walked home very full. It was quite a nice evening. The rain and cloud had cleared away and we were hopeful of a cracking day on Wednesday.

Wednesday

Sure enough, Wednesday morning was bright and sunny, although there was a bit of breeze about. After breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we caught a public bus from central Tallinn out to a suburb called Pirita. Pirita is a lovely area on the coast, with a white sandy beach and a nice little marina with dozens of yachts and a view back to the old town of Tallinn. We walked through a small forest of pine trees and then along the beach to the marina. There was not a lot happening in Pirita, so after our walk we caught the bus back into the city - bus was full and not pleasant smelling.

Back in the old town we walked to St Olav's Church. The church was built in the 12th century and by the 15th century, the church was 159 metres tall. The motivation for such a massive steeple must have been as a maritime post, to make the trading city of Tallinn visible from far out at sea. Between 1549 and 1625, the church was the tallest building in the world. After several lightning strikes, the height was reduced and it is now around 123 metres tall. We climbed the steep steps of the tower up to the viewing platform, where got breath-taking views of Tallinn's old town and out to sea. The interior of the church itself was actually quite plain and boring - another Lutheran church!

We grabbed some lunch at Hell Hunt (solid club sandwich and salad) and in the afternoon we visited the Museum of Occupation, which depicted in graphic detail the terrifying occupations of Estonia by Nazi Germany during WWII and then by the Soviet Union, the latter lasting right up until the early '90s. The museum was brilliant - loads of information and we wished we had more time there. But, as we had an overnight bus to catch, we had to move on. We had dinner at our favourite restaurant in Tallinn - the Honky Tonk Canteen and then we grabbed our luggage from the hotel and made our way to the bus station.

Our bus left Tallinn at 10.30pm and arrived in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, at 6.40am on Thursday, passing through Latvia on the way. The bus was comfortable and we managed to get a decent enough sleep. Strangely there were no border checkpoints at all, which made for a better sleep but also meant we got no Baltic stamp action in our passports.

Town
Hall
Square

Tim and the
chimney
sweeper statue

St
Nicholas
Church

War of
Independence
Victory Column

Beautiful
Tallinn

Ditto

St Olav's
Church

Megs by
town walls

View
over
old
town

Another
pretty
church

Estonia
parliament
building

Alexander
Nevsky
Cathedral

Hell
Hunt
pub

Pub
crawl

Megs on
KGB
tour

View
from
St Olav's
tower

Megs
hugging
Fat Margaret
tower

Statue in
the park

Prison
doors in
Museum of
Occu-
pation

Tim and
a bear

Helsinki, Finland

2011-09-09T03:01:00.000-07:00

Friday

After arriving at Hotel Finn in the centre of Helsinki just before midnight on Thursday night, we had a sleep in before we got going on Friday morning. We found breakfast in a cafe on the 4th floor of a huge department store called Stockmann. The department store was amazing and breakfast was quite delicious too!

Finland is a Nordic country, bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway in the north, Russia to the east, while Estonia lies across the Gulf of Finland to the south. Finland has a population of around 5.5 million, most of whom live in the southern part of the country. It is the 8th largest country in Europe in terms of area and it is also the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Apparently Finland has over 188,000 lakes! Woah. Helsinki is the largest and capital city, with a population approaching 600,000, although around 1.1 million people live within the wider metropolitan area.

After breakfast we wandered through the pretty streets of Helsinki. We certainly noticed a temperature difference between Romania and Finland. Helsinki's position on the globe is about equivalent to the Shetland Islands, comfortably north of mainland Scotland! We had been told that Helsinki was not the most attractive place to visit, but we thought it was actually quite nice. We walked down Pohjoisesplanadi (the esplanade), which has a strip of park/gardens full of statues and fountains running down the centre. This took us down to the waterfront where we visited the market. There were some really cool things for sale at the market. Tim bought Megan some birthday ear-rings made from silver and a stone called spectrolite, which is apparently only found in Finland.

We then carried on around the waterfront and checked out the Uspenski Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral, which was beautifully decorated inside. From there, we made our way to Senate Square, the city's main square. The Senate Square presents four of Carl Ludvig Engel's architectural gems representing the political, religious, scientific and commercial powers of Helsinki. The Helsinki Cathedral is the largest of the buildings and it dominates the square. It was completed in 1852. Very impressive on the outside, but a little plain on the inside! The Palace of the Council State is on the eastern side of the square. This originally served as the seat of the Senate of Finland, but now houses the offices of the Prime Minister and cabinet. The main university building and the national library also decorate the square. In the centre of the square is an impressive statue of Alexander II. The Seanate Square now hosts all sorts of festivals and concerts and while we there, it was full of a wide range of Chevrolet cars, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet.

We found a great little cafe/chocolate shop just near the square, where we had some delicious chocolates and a cup of hot chocolate. When we came out of the cafe again, the thick grey cloud had almost completely cleared away, leaving a beautiful sunny blue sky and it was quite hot. This made for some good photo-taking conditions! Megan acquired a helium balloon from the good folks of Chevrolet, which she carried around for most of the afternoon. It was her birthday after all!

We had a late lunch at Bakers Bar and Restaurant, just across the road from our hotel before we carried on exploring the city centre. We thought about going to a traditional Finnish sauna, which are apparently really good, but this would have involved getting a tram across the city in rush hour, so we decided to just walk the streets instead. The blocks in the city centre are each named after an animal and they have little animal symbols above the street signs, which we quite enjoyed.

It was a lovely evening and we had a couple of drinks before heading out for dinner to a place called Ravintola Juuri (or something similar). It was amazing food - they do "sapas", like tapas but a Finnish equivalent. Megan sampled a few different sapas and Tim had wild boar and then we shared chocolate cake for dessert. So good.

Saturday

We slept in again, which was necessary after some rude drunk people woke us (and the rest of the hotel) up at 4am, shouting down the corridors. Not impressed. After checking out of the hotel, we had a good solid breakfast at the Helsinki World Trade Centre, and then went next door to the Ateneum Art Gallery, where there was an exhibition on the magic of Lapland. There were photos, paintings, sculptures etc, all inspired by Lapland. It was really good.

We walked across the city centre, past the main railway station, to the "rock church". The Temppeliaukio Church is a Lutheran church, which opened in 1969. It is better known as the rock church, as it made almost completely out of rock. The interior was excavated and built into rock, but is bathed in natural light entering through the glazed dome. We thought it was quite cool - definitely a bit different, which is always good when you have seen about a thousand churches. Sadly it was absolutely packed with American and Japanese tourists, piling off their tour buses. Old American women yelling across a church to each other is never ideal, but it is made worse when the content of the conversation is something along the lines of:

- June...June....June, where's Dorothy?
- What?
- Where's Dorothy?
- Oh I don't know. I haven't seen her.
- Oh, you haven't seen her? Wow. She was outside a minute ago, but now I can't find her...

And so on like that for several minutes. Outside the rock church, we grabbed a coke at Santa's Minimarket - not sure if it is actually owned and operated by the big man himself, but it was an excellent store and quite close to the North Pole, so the chances are good.

We had lunch in the cafe at the National Museum of Finland before we set about exploring the museum itself. It was quite a good museum, tracing Finland from pre-history through to modern times. There was a lot of stuff on the 16-19th centuries, when Finland was ruled by Sweden and Russia and then eventually gained independence.

We then had to dodge a brief rain shower before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags, via the Finnish parliament building and the supermarket to get some supplies. We then caught a taxi down to the ferry terminal for our 6.30pm ferry to Estonia. Surprisingly, there was no passport check or border control at all, so no stamp action for the passport. Disappointing.

The ferry (the Baltic Princess) was brilliant, but it was a very bizarre experience. About 95% of the ferry passengers seemed to be staying on the ferry overnight. It appeared that they had made the journey to Estonia as nothing more than a big Saturday night, instead of going to the pub. People got all glammed up in their cabins and then came down to the bar/restaurant area and proceeded to get absolutely hammered. There were people of all ages (right up to about 70) who were staggering all over the boat, often with a couple of drinks in their hands... When we arrived in Tallinn, us and about 20 others got off the ferry and everyone else carried on partying. Crazy Finns.

Birthday
girl

Uspenski
Cathedral

Megs in Senate
Square, with
Alexander II

Birthday
balloon

Helsinki
Cathedral

View from
waterfront

Mermaid
statue

Gardens

The
giraffe
block

Helsinki
railway
station

The rock
church

Inside the
rock church -
where is
Dorothy??

Amusing clock
in National
Museum

Finland
parliament
building

Helsinki
Cathedral