Mind The Elephant

The Final Chapter

2009-10-01T08:30:00.011+01:00

Countries Visited: 28
Distance Travelled: 36650km
Litres of fuel bought: 5136
Punctures repaired: 9
Food poisonings: Lots!

With an afternoon to kill we headed out to Cape St. Lucia for lunch, tarmac turned to gravel, and gravel to dirt track as we re-entered Africa. Waving children and smiling faces. We eventually reached the coast and went for a walk along the windswept beach. Deserted, apart from three children walking towards us carrying something. They obviously didn't own any bags, so they were carrying a hard hat and a big rubber tube full of mussels they'd collected. We bought a hard hat of mussels for that evening, realising afterwards that we probably could have donated them a plastic bag or two.

Dawn and David at Overwin Lodge had been raving about Hluhluwe National Park, so we took a slight detour north again staying at Isinkwe Backpackers, the most overpriced place we'd stayed for a while. Nothing particularly wrong with it, just it was nothing special at a ridiculous price. There was one nice touch however, they put out a plate of bananas for the bush babies as the sun sets. The bush babies were all sitting in the tree ready and waiting for their breakfast snack.

We slowly crawled through Hluhluwe the following day, a beautifully hilly park with a fair amount of wildlife around. We managed to tick off three of the big five but failed on the cats yet again. A little disappointed we headed further down the coast that evening towards Durban.

We turned inland the following day towards Nottingham Road, we'd been told about the 'Midlands Meander' by a guy we'd bumped into in Richards Bay. A winding dirt road through the foothills of the Drakensberg. A very picturesque road with golden light created by all the dry grass. We arrived at Sani Pass Backpackers late in the day and settled down for a cool evening.

With the backpackers looking exceptionally well organised and the weather being beautiful we went for another meander the next day, a self guided walk for four hours or so from the lodge. A really lovely walk up a mountain and down a river. There were various pools for swimming on route, but as these are currently being filled with snow melt we decided to give that a miss.

Another good nights sleep and then it was time to give Stanley's new springs their first proper test by driving up the infamous Sani Pass. This is South Africa's highest pass heading up into Lesotho, with the Lesotho border post at 2865 metres. We passed a couple we'd met where we were staying trying to drive up in their hired Toyota Yaris, they were stuck and trying to reverse back down. The sign at the bottom saying that only 4wd vehicles would be allowed past the South African border post, approximately half way up, should have been an indication it wasn't a very good road. The road was rough and rocky as we crawled on up, and surprisingly busy as there and many agencies that do "Sani Pass Tours", where they throw a load of people into a Land Rover and take them to Lesotho for lunch.

A beautiful road with amazing views, slow with some frightening hairpin bends but nothing too challenging. As we climbed the temperature dropped and the wind got up, eventually reaching the top in a howling gale with patches of snow dotted around. We did the immigration thing, very painless as they're so used to visitors. The road improved but we kept climbing up the Kotisephola Pass to a very snow covered 3240m. By now the freezing gale was really taking its toll on Hannah and I, we decided we'd had enough of Lesotho and it was time to go back to South Africa. We headed back to the Lesotho border post and the 'highest pub in Africa' for a spot of lunch before starting the descent. On seeing Hannah was still wearing flip flops when exiting Lesotho the official looked at me and declared "You've got to buy this girl some shoes!".

The descent wasn't as tricky as we'd though it might be, and we were back at the bottom in under an hour. The gale was still blowing, but now it was a warm gale, probably our warmest evening yet. Apparently called the 'berg wind', it happens when a cold front is moving up from the cape. This was the first night of the trip we'd had to actually strap the tent down as the swirling wind was lifting it. We crawled into the tent that night, the cold front passed us, the wind dropped and we woke up with a sheet of ice over the tent for the first time since Europe, it was a tad nippy!

Time to get out of the mountains we decided and hit the road towards Port St Johns. We'd been told there was a hippy vibe there, vibe was the wrong word, it was overrun! One campsite we entered we had a 'forensic pathology unit' vehicle follow us in, we didn't stay there! With run down accommodation and too much tie dye for our liking, we headed back out of town to a place we'd seen on the outskirts. A really nice location on the river, reasonably priced and it had its own Helipad and airstrip, a little overkill maybe?

Further down the wild coast the next day we reached Cintsa. Beautiful rugged and windswept coastline again, a well run backpackers and super powerful hot showers, this was the place we should rest for a day! Lazing around for me, and early morning runs for Hannah we killed some time before headed on.

We had to go to Port Elizabeth to pop into another 4x4 Megaworld for a 'safety check' on the springs we'd had fitted to validate the warranty. We camped just outside in an amazingly remote campsite given its proximity to the city. Cruising on south with a night just outside Plettenberg we turned inland through George towards Oudtshoorn.

Oudtshoorn is an interesting place, the world's ostrich capital apparently, the place is surrounded by ostrich farms. We popped into Jemima's for lunch; I decided it's be rude not to order the "ostrich burger". It wasn't really a burger at all, rather fillet strips, but spectacularly good! The following day we invested in some ostrich steaks and an ostrich egg, yes, a whole egg. We were given a recipe sheet, the smallest meal was said to serve 12! We then drove along the famous route 62, the main wine region in South Africa.

We stopped for the night at Warmwaterberg, you don't need to be an expert in Afrikaans to realise that there might be a hot spring in the area. We stayed at the hot springs for what would be our last nights camping, we also realised we had rather a lot of fresh food to eat and we were unlikely to be cooking for ourselves again for a while. So after a dip in the hot springs we started on a mammoth cooking and eating session, with an interval to have a roman bath. These were huge private baths that were over a metre deep, fortunately the tap filled it at a good rate. All the water at the hot springs came from the spring itself. Everything from toilets to outdoor sprinklers was throwing out hot water. Our food that night was really good, topped off by spectacular ostrich steaks, some of the most tender meat we'd ever eaten.

The following morning the cooking marathon continued, a ostrich egg omelette was the plan, "serves 18" the recipe said. We eventually managed to break into the egg and Hannah started the ten minute job of beating it while I chopped the veg. We threw everything into our largest pan, filling it almost to the brim and slowly cooked it through. Then came the eating part, a little disappointing, quite bland, but plenty of it. We managed to polish off about half before we started feeling far too ill to eat any more.

That evening we'd arranged to stay with Jasper and Aileen who we'd met in Malawi. We headed towards Worcester, stopping at a vineyard on route to pick up a bottle. We shared a lovely evening with the family, Jasper knocking up some great food on the braii. We tried to sort a few things with the car that morning, having a chat with the owner of one place I said South Africa was a beautiful country, his shocking response was "The problem with this country is the blacks, we've got forty million of then you know, they'd rather steal than work". We decided to take our business elsewhere! We moved further south towards the cosmopolitan city that is Cape Town. My aunt, Sue, and family live in the suburbs giving us a convenient base for that part of the world.

After some battling with the GPS we eventually found their house. My Grandpa was also staying with my aunt for a while, he escaped the horror show that is the current Zimbabwe a few months before and was now living in Cape Town. This was the first time I'd seen him in many years which was fantastic. I think he was also pleased to meet Hannah for the first time. We settled in to having a room, bed and supermarket just down the road frighteningly quickly!

We were blessed with good weather so decided we should climb Table Mountain, Mike, Sue's husband drove with us to the cable car where we left our vehicle and were then driven back to Kirstenbosch Gardens to start our walk up Skeleton Gorge. A walk followed by lunch at the top and a cable car down was the plan. We eventually reached the top after a hard climb and were greeted with amazing views over the city. We then realised the memory card for the camera was in the computer, so photos weren't going to happen. We walked across the windy mountain top to the restaurant to find it closed, by now we were hungry, exhausted and a little frustrated by the lack of food. Not a problem, we'd have lunch at the bottom, unfortunately the cable car was also closed, and they'd closed everything because of high winds! Now very hungry, we had to start our descent; we had some tennis biscuits in the car to help spur us on! Eventually, five hours after we'd started walking Stanley came back into sight, we devoured the biscuits and headed back to base.

We had a few more days pottering round Cape Town doing the sights, we also spent a fair bit of time doing car stuff, getting Stanley ready for the boat home and preparing him to be sold, a sad day that'll be. Sue and Mike were heading down to their holiday house in Arabella, near Kleinmond. We went down with them as this was a good base to explore the area.

We invited Ian to join us for a few days, doing some more wandering, vineyards, breweries, saw some more whales in Hermanus and headed down to a very important waypoint, Cape Agulhas. Cape Agulhas is the most southerly point of Africa, and having got this far we decided we should do the last bit. We'd made the car all beautifully clean in Cape Town, and then proceeded to hit some unexpected dirt roads and get it all filthy again!

We'd arranged to share a shipping container with Ian, and back in Cape Town we did the final bits of sorting. Then the big day came, we were loading Stanley into a crate on the Thursday and loading ourselves into a plane on the Friday. We'd been told that although you can't carry much petrol in a shipping container diesel isn't an issue, so we filled to the brim.

We sorted out payment and then drove in convoy to customs. On arrival they spotted our tanks were full, Ian had done the same, and informed us that we couldn't carry that much diesel without registering the crate as hazardous and paying an extra $500! We were only allowed just above reserve fuel. After a bit of a debate is soon became clear that our only option was to drain the fuel. Fortunately Nick, who's arranged the shipping, agreed to buy it off us at a discounted price. I neglected to mention the auxiliary tank, so with 80 litres drained from our main tank they then got to work on Ian's vehicle.

Once everything was sorted we squeezed the vehicles into the shipping crate and watched the doors close behind them, a sad sight, this really was the end. We then headed back to Sue and Mike's with Ian for our last evening in Africa. A amazing Rojan Josh, and lots of wine and photos later we crawled into bed.

Our flight back was with Emirates via Dubai. While there is only a one hour time difference between the UK and South Africa at this time of year, Dubai is a little more out of the way. We were rudely woken up at about 1am, given breakfast and then kicked off the plane; this was now 5am Dubai time. We then had to board another plane a couple of hours later, to be given another breakfast. We both slept better on the second flight, eventually landing on time, tired, but very well fed having had four meals in 17 hours.

The seven person welcome party at Gatwick was a fantastic sight, and we all headed back to my parents for a good celebration and catch up before settling back into the real world.

That's all folks!

The beginning of the end

2009-08-08T12:00:00.000+01:00

We moved further south the following morning to Tofo, a popular beach destination near Inhambane. Tofo is famous for a few big animals that frequent the area, humpback whales migrate along this coast to their breeding grounds, and whale sharks and manta rays linger in the area all year round. That combined with an amazing beach, Mozambique's best surf spot, good fishing, diving and plenty of other activities, turns this area into a hive of activity at certain times of the year. Fortunately for us all South African school holidays had just finished so it was nice and quiet.

We were still searching for lazy sunny days on the beach but were still being unlucky with the weather, the day we arrived it just rained and rained. It's like being in the UK here, not just the weather, but that fact that everyone is talking and whinging about it. I was also planning on doing some diving so it wasn't ideal for days on a boat.

I decided to do a couple of dives anyway going in search of manta rays, my first day of diving was cancelled due to the weather, we had a stroll along the beach and round town instead. We'd timed our visit to Tofo well for the humpback whale season and we could see water blasting into the air from the beach as they surfaced to breathe. On our return that afternoon we saw a couple of whales thrusting their entire bodies out the sea and belly flopping back down in an explosion of water, an amazing sight.

Diving went ahead more or less as planned the next day, but heavy surges and the bad weather meant conditions weren't ideal and there were no mantas to be seen. Apparently there were killer whales in the area the week before, the same thing had occurred the previous year and no one saw any manta rays for about three weeks, so maybe it just wasn't to be. We did have humpbacks surface just 30m from the boat which was an impressive sight.

After a week in Tofo we decided we should probably leave, we woke up to our first glorious day and decided to wander down to the beach to watch the whales for the last time. We'd sat and watched them most days we'd been there. We ended up spending several hours watching whales and lazing on the beach. A group of humpbacks surfaced about 150m off shore and just sat there for a while, we also had dolphins playing in the surf. By now is was too late to leave so one more day in Tofo it was.

We escaped Tofos magnetic appeal making a push towards Swaziland. We spent a couple of days getting to Maputo where we spent a night just north of the city. We ventured into town the following day to be met by some amazing thunderstorms, the city's roads turned to rivers. We stopped for lunch at the famous Costa do Sol restaurant, a seafood place that does quick, relatively cheap and exceptionally good grub. After our amazing meal we headed west towards the Swaziland border, staying in the Swazi mountains that evening. We arrived late and the night watchman didn't know anything about camping, so we took a hut located with amazing views. We had no electricity but a hot outdoor shower with views for miles made up for that.

We drove to the opposite side of the country the next morning, only a couple of hours away. We had no real plans, but ended up venturing into Mlilwane Nature Reserve with amazingly tame wildlife wandering round the camp. We did some walks the following day through the mountain scenery. We then ventured from craft shop to craft shop, there are hundreds of them in Swaziland all selling hand crafted works of art, amazing to look at even if you're not buying.

With Hannah's date to be back at work fast approaching, we decided to leave Swaziland on the south side and head into South Africa towards Richards Bay. The border officials had a look at the expired insurance stickers on the windscreen and started complaining that they were no longer valid. One was for the Congo and the other for Zambia. They eventually understood this and started asking about our "road worthiness disc", basically proof of MOT. I guess a valid UK tax disc would do the job but ours expired a while ago, as did our MOT. I just said we didn't have anything like that in the UK, and they eventually accepted there was nothing we could do about it and let us across the border. The campsite we aimed for was closed, so with the sun dropping we set the next nearest accommodation on the GPS as our target, Overwin Lodge. We arrived to a very warm welcome from Dawn and David who said they didn't normally do camping but we could do so, and were given use of a bathroom in one of their beautiful chalets. They do a lot of work in the area and had a group of school kids staying doing work in the community. Official figures say the AIDS rate in the area is about 40%, but apparently private doctors say it's nearer 80%. They run an AIDS orphanage which they call the "Children's Village" trying to help out a community that is being devastated by the virus.

The reason for us going to Richards Bay was because we knew there was a 4x4 Megaworld there, we'd seen in an advert in a magazine Hannah happened to pick up they were Africa's only stockists of Old Man Emu suspension parts, the springs we wanted! We arrived on the Friday, they didn't have the springs in stock and phoned around the country eventually tracking some down for us at a different branch. As usual, this happened to be the Friday of a bank holiday weekend (I swear we have hit far more bank holidays travelling across Africa than we would've had in the UK in the same period!). They wouldn't be able to get the springs in until Tuesday. They tried to move mountains for us, phoning couriers and trying to sort it so we could get them the next day. They were unable to promise, but the couriers would try their best.

The next morning we received a phone call that I really didn't expect, it was good news and all four springs had arrived! We took our car down to the store and they put them all in for us. We left as extremely happy customers, amazed at the effort they'd gone to. We left on a slightly sour note being told to enjoy South Africa but to "watch out for the blacks" by the lady behind the till. Racism is still deeply entrenched in parts of this country it seems.

Prawns Prawns Prawns

2009-07-24T10:51:00.001+01:00

We wanted some time on the coast so headed east towards the Indian Ocean, to Ilha de Mocambique. Lack of planning again meant we didn't realise how big Mozambique was. It looks long and thin so we weren't expecting it to take us three days to drive from west to east. The roads were pretty bad too which didn't help. Unable to wild camp due to the dense rural population and elephant grass lining the roads we made a detour for the night through beautiful tea plantations to a cheap hotel in Gurue. Things were feeling pretty West African again, a dingy room and filthy bathroom with no running water. I think things had gone downhill since the author of the guide book was there. Friendly receptionist though, and with lots of sign language and laughter we managed to communicate. They appeared to no longer do the best food in town, or any food at all for that matter so we went in search of something to eat. Finding another hotel we sat down for a pleasant enough meal of fish and more potato than we'd ever eaten in our lives. The manager was trying hard to sell us the hotel saying we should have stayed there rather than the pensao we'd chosen, we could have even had a free breakfast! We asked what that would have been, "egg, chips and sausage". Interesting, we thought, and although chips for breakfast seemed like a strange choice (though not too sure why as surely they would sit very well alongside a full English??) the guy seemed friendly, so we agreed to come back the following morning.

We arrived at the hotel, the manager wasn't up yet, and after some very slow service our food arrived. They were out of egg so tinned sausage and chips it was. Hannah wasn't too impressed to eventually stumble across some rat poo at the bottom of her pile of chips. Feeling slightly queasy, we did our best to complain in Portuguese, paid a discounted price and left.

Nampula was the destination for the following day. Roads were still bad and progress was slowed when we came across a collapsed bridge. A couple of steel beams had been placed across as a temporary repair, but they were slightly too far apart for our wheels. We nervously crawled across with Hannah driving and me directing with tyres partially hanging over the edge of the beams while a large crowd of locals looked on.

We arrived at a campsite marked on the GPS just outside Nampula, it didn't really look like much when we turned up, and what it did look like certainly wasn't a campsite. We asked around, and an English speaker turned up and recommended we went to the lodge next door. He said we could camp but there was no running water and the facilities were in a bit of a state. "We don't mind, as long as it's cheap." We settled on £2 to camp for the night. They were very friendly, cleaning the bathroom and even putting up lights for us, and we were pleasantly surprised to receive a big bucket of hot water for a shower the next morning.

The road changed to pretty good tarmac after Nampula and we raced along with lots of people running into the road and waving plastic bowls full of something at us. We eventually stopped to take a look, they were large bowls of freshly roasted cashews. Normally ridiculously expensive, we bought half a small washing up bowl full for £2, still warm from roasting. We realised we were in the middle of a huge cashew forest, with almost nothing but cashew trees stretching as far as the eye could see.

We reached Ilha de Mocambique earlier than expected. A historically significant place, it was the old Portuguese capital, strangely located on a small island 3.5km off the coast of the mainland. The Dutch East India Shipping Company had tried to take over the island several times but failed to take the fort. If they had succeeded it's said they would never have established their base further south that was to become Cape Town giving birth to South Africa. This would have led to a dramatically different Africa to the one we see today.

The island itself is beautiful, surrounded by clear tropical waters and sandy beaches with lots of fishing activity. The northern half is mostly crumbling old Portuguese buildings with people living in and amongst the ruins. We spent the following day wandering round the very photogenic island and sampling its restaurants. Mozambique is famous for its sea food, especially the huge tiger prawns they drag in from these waters, something we'd been looking forward to for some time. The food was certainly good.

We drove south the following day having to go via Nampula again and picking up more cashews on route. We stopped at Shoprite to pick up supplies. With shopping done we set off, just as we pulled out the parking space an arm reached through the slightly open rear window and grabbed my swimming shorts out of the roof net. A very valuable item of clothing now we're on the Indian Ocean! Leaving Hannah with the car in the middle of the road I leapt out the door and set off in bare foot pursuit of the thief. I had seen him disappear down a side street, and was pleased when I turned the corner to see he'd already stopped running. He was standing there with a big grin on his face, clearly very pleased with himself. He no longer had my shorts, they'd been palmed off immediately. I charged towards the kid in his early teens, he turned and saw me coming starting running again, but a little too late. I reached to grab his shirt stumbling on some soft sand and he slipped out of my grip again accelerating away.

We darted through the back streets of Nampula for a few minutes, by now his youth and stamina were winning out over my lack of fitness. We came out onto the main road, there were other people around so I started shouting to draw attention hoping someone else might help. A few people turned and looked but no one was making any effort to stop the kid. I wondered if everyone was siding with the home team. About to give up two guys on opposite sides of the pavement tuned and started running at the kid. Realising the game was up he stopped. He was handed over to me, and with arms behind his back I marched him down the road towards where we were parked.

By now the sight of a white guy sprinting through Nampula after a local kid had drawn a lot of attention. The street was lined with staring eyes, and I was slowly picking up people who were walking with me and chatting away in Portuguese. Although I can now count to ten my conversational skills are still lacking. I was wondering if this was seen as acceptable when a man in his early 30's eventually piped up in English, "beat him, just beat him, we're tired of these kinds of people". I wasn't planning on going as far as beating him but was pleased the kid was clearly very embarrassed by the whole situation. We got back to the car and with the kid held against a wall there was some conversation with his friends and my shorts soon reappeared. I released him and we drove off leaving him to the huge crowd of gathered people, stopping a short while later to nurse my blistered seeping feet.

Central Mozambique doesn't really having anything of interest to the traveller except a lot of villages and a long road to get from north to south. We chugged along dodging potholes as best as we could pulling into Alto Molocue to track down somewhere to stay. Having a look round what the guide book said was the best place to stay we were pretty horrified, so we went to take a look at the worst. A marked improvement with friendly staff and cheap so we took a room. We were then shown there was secure parking. Deciding we'd much rather camp in the car park we tried to work out how to diplomatically explain we'd rather sleep in our tent than their room.

After a very comfy night in the tent we continued south, deciding to spend a day at Zalala Beach to break the drive. We were slightly surprised when it started to rain on route. We'd been promised beautiful weather in Mozambique at this time of year, being the dry season and all that. The "champagne climate" a South African woman had told us. We had been slightly surprised when a retired British couple we'd met in Malawi had told us they'd had rain the whole way up through Mozambique. Zalala beach was cold, wet and very windy, so rather than spending a day there we decided to plod on to try and escape the weather.

No such luck, we surged southwards with more rain the following day. We had however received some good news from the British couple in Malawi. We thought we'd have one more African ferry to contend with, but we'd been reassured that the new bridge over the Zambezi was due to open the week before we'd have to cross. We approached the beautiful piece of engineering stretching over the wide waters to see a sign saying it was still closed. We joined the queue of cars waiting for the ferry in the pouring rain.

We pushed on past Caia to some accommodation marked on the GPS. We drove through the grounds past exquisite looking chalets to a beautifully situated restaurant, there was no one around. We shouted, no response, so just sat down and waited. After half an hour or so a lady turned up. Despite not having seen a soul since we arrived, they were apparently full and there was no camping allowed. With no known accommodation south for a few hundred kilometres we headed back to Caia.

The Zambezi is a dividing line in Mozambique, separating the populated, undeveloped north from the less populated southern half of the country. Symbolically, the warning signs at level crossings in the north pictured steam trains and in the south, electric (not sure what that says about the UK's use of steam train signs!). We pushed on south all day, rudely interrupted by a policeman who legitimately stopped us for speeding. Some pleading and joking for ten minutes or so and we were let off. We reached Inhassoro at sunset, the most northerly area of coastal towns with tourist facilities that stretch for hundreds of kilometres all the way to the South African border.

The cold wind and rain were still clinging on, and there isn't much to do in this part of the world that isn't outdoors. We spent a day sorting, and a day praying for the wind to stop. A man walked past our campsite one afternoon with a box full of fresh crayfish, so we bought a couple and threw them on the fire that night for a delicious meal. Our days lazing around on the beach weren't going to happen so we pushed on again, this time to Vilanculos.

We went to speak to Sailaway, a company that arranges boat trips to the Bazaruto Archipelago. They had a weather forecast to hand, they next two days were going to be good weather before it all closed in again. We booked a boat trip round the islands for a couple of days.

The following morning we had beautiful weather as promised. We set off with three Belgians, Julie, Rose and Jerome, and our three man crew including a chef, guide and captain. The fire was lit on the boat to make tea, a fire in a wooden box on a wooden boat. At least there's plenty of water round to put it out if need be we were told before we left! Day one was out to Benguarua Island for a walk. Our guide lead the "half hour" walk. Regularly asking directions, and regularly feeling lost we eventually reached the big dune that was our target. After absorbing the spectacular views we headed back in search of our boat. We got back exhausted, hungry and very dehydrated four hours after we'd left. We rapidly demolished the meal of fresh crab prepared for us by Alfredo as we headed back towards the mainland. Camping on the islands is illegal and there is no budget accommodation, all the lodges cost many hundreds of dollars per night so the mainland is the only option.

After a pleasant evening chatting around the fire eating good food and a bad nights sleep, both Hannah and I can only sleep well in our tent these days, we set a course for Two Mile Reef. The plan for the day was snorkelling followed by some chill out time on Bazaruto Island. Alfredo knocked up some amazing omelettes and fruit salad for breakfast on route. We leapt into the freezing water (ok, that's an exaggeration, apparently it's about 22 Celsius at the moment) and did not very much snorkelling at all before we decided it was far too cold. We climbed another dune for the amazing holiday brochure views over the archipelago before returning to the boat for Alfredo's final masterpiece, squid stew. We raised the sails and sped south back to Vilanculos.

And finally...

Thundering Smoke

2009-07-12T15:08:00.000+01:00

We spent a few more days relaxing in Kasane, although the wildlife made it difficult at times. After the monkeys spent four hours at our camping pitch one day I decided to invest some time in making a catapult. It works really well, we don't need to use it, all we have to do it show it to them and they make sure they're out of sight. Catapults are generally the weapon of choice against monkey raids and they are well recognised. Even so, we've still managed to lose coffee, matches, bread and porridge to them. More annoyingly we lost a brand new 500g pack of butter to a warthog when it raided our breakfast table! The birds have also been braving up, learning that they can land on and eat bread while it's toasting on the fire - clever! It is amazing to watch the monkeys at work though (on other peoples pitches), they are so intelligent - opening drawers and bags, we even had one on the roof of our car trying to unscrew a jerry can!

During our time in Kasane we bumped into Ian, the guy we'd been in touch with since we'd left, and met in Ghana. He had shipped from Ghana to Durban, but our paths had crossed again, in Choppies supermarket of all places. He happened to be staying at the same campsite so we had a good catch up about the trials and traumas of overland travel.

We headed off to a local forest reserve one morning with the hope of spotting lion, inviting Ian along too. A fairly uneventful day, we saw a few animals but no lion. We'd had a slightly squeaky belt that I'd been putting off sorting out. On the way back the air conditioning stopped working. A jesty comment about how it was probably the air conditioning belt that was squeaking and we carried on. A few minutes later Ian spotted the dash board light up like a Christmas tree, and the engine temperature gauge started rocketing upwards. I hit the brakes and pulled off the road, cutting the engine just as it hit the red. A brief inspection confirmed what we'd suspected, the air conditioning belt had broken, unfortunately it had taken both alternator belts with it which also drive the water pump and fan. Fortunately we had spares of all three belts, so out came the car manual and we started fiddling trying to work out how to fit them. After half an hour of battling away a car pulled over to help. Conveniently it was two mechanics from Chobe Motors who happened to be passing. "The fan belt has broken, but it's ok, we've got spares" Ian told them. "Well why don't you put them in then?" came the ever so helpful response. Ah! So that's what we're supposed to do with spares then is it?? They took over and twenty minutes later all the belts were in and the engine was running again.

Friday arrived and we took Stanley into Chobe Motors for them to get to work on our suspension. After they'd changed one spring the car was looking very low at the front. Quick inspection and it was obvious there was not nearly enough lift in the new springs, the rubber stopper touching the axle. After some discussion and disagreement they insisted that if they put the other new spring in the other side it'd be ok, so I left them to it. Sure enough, it didn't help. We now effectively had no front suspension. They tried to persuade us to take the new springs, but as the old broken spring was more effective than the new ones we refused. They made a few calls and discovered they'd got the wrong parts, but they could have the right part the following Friday they said. Not wanting to spend another week in Kasane we looked for other options, I eventually persuaded them to weld the old spring. It would be weak, but it wouldn't do any harm. We had the old springs back in and all was looking good again. The problem now was they refused to refund the new springs, they could only exchange them for the right part. After much discussion we were left with a few options. Wait in Kasane, or come back to Kasane in a weeks time to get what may or may not be the right part, plus we'd have to pay for all the shipping costs, or leave and take the new springs with us to sell at a later date on eBay. So, we're now carrying two useless suspension springs round Africa with us, which isn't ideal when we're tight on space anyway.

We set off the following day for Zambia, only thirty minutes or so down the road to the ferry. Borders further north were a hassle with everyone demanding money, Zambia was similar, just this time the demands were official. Several different taxes, visas, insurance, ferry ticket, after all of which we were feeling very poor. We arrived at Livingstone that afternoon and ended up at "The Waterfront", a nice enough camp site if a little crowded.

We did the thing that has to be done the next day, Victoria Falls. The far nicer, and more appropriate local name is Mosi Oa Tunya, meaning "Smoke that Thunders". We could hear the roar of the falls from our tent in the night 4km away. At 1.7km wide, 108m high and with a flow rate that peaks in the wet season at over twelve million litres of water a second they are phenomenal. That's the equivalent of throwing about 4000 Land Cruisers over the edge every second!

We entered the park and were pointed down the most "exciting" path, so we thought we'd give it a go. The path ran along the top of the canyon opposite the falls. The people coming in the other direction were drenched, it looked like this was going to be a wet experience! Fortunately we'd remembered our waterproofs, and it wasn't long before we started to feel the spray from the falls. We walked from view point to view point, as the light spray turned into a torrential downpour at times, and a torrential uppour at others as the spray raced up the wall of the canyon. The waterproofs proved to be fundamentally useless - not much can stop bucket loads of water! It did also mean that we never saw the bottom of the falls. The spray is so dense at this time of year it's rarely possible. The falls themselves were an incredible sight - the sunlight penetrating the spray created spectacular single and double rainbows. They open the falls at night on a full moon so people can come and view the lunar rainbows that are created.

Back in the car park we spotted a very familiar looking car. Virtually identical to ours in everything but colour - a UK registered 80s series Japanese import Land Cruiser prepared by Footloose 4x4. There was a note on our windscreen saying "We're Footloose too, where are you?". We found Mark and Cain later, they'd shipped to South Africa and had been driving round for the last eight months loving every minute of it.

A decision was made to splash out a little the next day and treat ourselves. Victoria Falls is on the Zambezi separating Zimbabwe and Zambia with the falls best viewed from the Zimbabwe side. Being British we'd get stung for the highest visa charge if we entered Zimbabwe, $55 each, so we decided to spend a little extra and pay for a microlight flight from Zambia. That way we get to view the falls in their entirety without having to pay for a visa. The flight was amazing, only fifteen minutes, but we made two passes across the falls at an altitude of 500m, returning to the airstrip spotting elephants, hippos, giraffe and impala on the way. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to carry a camera, and $20 to pay for the photos they took was too much, so memories are all we have, but they are amazing memories.

Lake Kariba was the next destination with some fishing planned. A few hours from Livingstone we arrived at a deserted campsite, beautifully located on the edge of the lake, unfortunately with a cold gale blowing. The night watchman eventually turned up and we set up camp for the evening. The following morning it was still cold, windy and choppy out on the water so we decided to give the fishing a miss and head off.

The next plan was South Luangwa national park. We'd never realised quite how large Zambia was, and it wasn't until we left that we noticed it'd take us three days to get there. We had a stop just outside Lusaka so we could do some shopping the following morning. We needed to replace the spare fan belts that had been used. Hannah has also been on a mission to find some new shorts ever since I left the only pair she brought on a washing line in Gabon. Unfortunately with it being the Southern African winter they only have the winter stock in. Despite the daytime temperature being in the high 20s in some places, there are no shorts available.

After a night at Bridge Camp, we took the scenic route to the park, turning off the main road at Petauke. The road certainly wasn't great, but we'd driven far worse. About 60km down the track we started getting loud clunks from the suspension, a now familiar problem. Once again we had a broken stabiliser bar. More critical than the previous stabiliser bar breakage that we'd had on the trip - without this one the entire rear axle was shifting from side to side creating horrible noises. It was, however, not a new problem. This part had also broken before and had been welded by Footloose before we left the UK.

We strapped it up as best as we could and made the decision to battle on for the remaining 110km. The journey was very slow, not helped by detours round destroyed bridges and swamps. We eventually arrived at Wildlife Camp shortly after sunset. We pitched up at a spot on the riverbank with great views across the water into the park, falling asleep that night to the familiar sound of grunting hippos.

We decided we should have a sort out day, tracking down a welder in Mafuwe and doing some shopping. Later that day we walked from the campsite towards reception to arrange some activities, but only made it half way as there was an elephant chewing on a tree next to the footpath. We decided to try again later.

There was no lie in the following morning as I had to be up and out by 6:30am for a walking safari, Hannah had decided to give this one a miss! Zambia, and South Luangwa specifically, is renowned as one of the best and safest places in Africa for walking Safaris. All guides have to pass exams to qualify, and all walks are lead by a guide and an armed scout. The idea being the armed scout always leads the group to deal with any "confrontation". Should a situation arise the guide can tell the clients what to do while the scout keeps his target firmly set on the animal in question to deal with it should the situation get out of hand. David, our scout and an ex hunter, showed us the hefty bullets he was putting in the gun, good for buffalo, elephants and hippo apparently. I asked if he'd ever fired a shot on a walking safari, a reassuring no was the answer.

Andrew, the very informative and knowledgeable guide impressed me immediately, although the long stories he told to get every point across got a little tiresome after a while. And wasting an hour while seven of us debated the theory of evolution on the walk wasn't exactly what we'd paid for. Overall it was an educational experience, it's just a shame there wasn't more walking and less talking. We saw a heard of Buffalo and that was about it!

That evening we had a "night drive". This was a drive starting at 4pm and ending at 8pm, so there were a couple of hours either side of sunset. Hannah came along for this one, and Sly was the guide this time who was a lot quicker in getting points across than Andrew was. We saw all the usual suspects, and were treated to a very sleepy looking male lion lying in the grass at the side of the road. After sunset a spotlight came out and we started hunting for nocturnal creatures, leopard being the word on everyone’s lips. We saw less than we'd hoped, just a Genet, Hyena, mongoose and bush baby.

We'd decided by now we'd had enough of animals so it was time to move on to Malawi, famous for its lake. We had a night at a backpackers in Lilongwe and were amazed to hear so many British accents, it hadn't been like this since Dover! Malawi is well and truly on the British backpacker’s circuit. We left the next day heading for Senga Bay. A little like Kariba, cold and windy so we set off the following morning for Cape Maclear. We stopped in at a fish farm on route, they export fish from the lake all over the world for aquariums. There are around 500 species of fish in the lake, most of these are cichlids, and 99% of these are found no where else on earth. That was all learnt from a guide book as the guide at the fish farm was probably the least informative person I've ever met. He never spoke unless questioned and most questions received a monosyllabic answer.

We arrived at Fat Monkeys and Hannah noticed the car was looking a little odd from the back. Our number plate had gone missing, the mounting snapped off! We trawled back along the bumpy 20km or so of road to Fat Monkeys but no luck in finding it. We're wondering if a kid may have tried hanging off the back of the car on the way through the village, as they often do, and broken it off. Fortunately we had a spare (thanks Andrew) which we stuck to the rear windscreen.

Cape Maclear was more successful than Senga Bay. A sheltered setting with light winds and calm water. We thought ourselves very lucky to grab a camping spot right on the beach front, a lovely location. We soon realised why it was empty, having to say "no thank you" every couple of minutes to the beach vendors walking past was quite tedious. They were trying to sell everything from fish and fruit to drugs and boat trips.

We did a boat trip the following day (not bought through a beach vendor) out to an island for a spot of snorkelling. Beautiful fish, although certainly not as spectacular as a good coral reef. We then had some fresh fish, cooked over a fire on the island, delicious. Fish eagle feeding was the next event, we set off in the boat, the boatman throwing out fish and whistling to the well fed fish eagles trying to persuade them to eat even more for the tourists. One eventually obliged and swooped down snatching a fish out the water.

Time for another change of scenery, we went further south down to Mulanji, Malawi's, and one of Southern Africa's highest mountains. Beautiful scenery and tea plantations on route eventually arriving to the obligatory hassle from "guides". Fortunately Mulanji is well set up with an office that all guides should be arranged through. They cycle all the official guides insuring everyone gets work. A man came rushing up on a motorbike demanding we went to the office rather than talked to the loitering guides. We assumed he was an official, although all became clear when we arranged our guide and he walked through the door to be introduced as Edmonton, the next guide on the list.

We'd unknowingly timed our visit to Mulanji well, the porters race was the talk of the town, due to start at 7:30 the following morning. Originally set up in 1996 and as the name would suggest, it was a race for the mountain porters. It's grown into a fairly large event, sponsored by NBS Bank with anyone welcome to take part. There were approximately 300 runners and about £300 for first prize, a lot of money in this part of the world. It's a gruelling event, a 25km(ish) race to the top, at 3001m, and back down again. The start is at just over 800m so it's a 2200m steep climb over uneven rocky terrain. For tourists this is normally a 10 hour walk over two days.

We were camping just up the road from the start and were woken up at about 5:45am by music blasting out of the speakers. Edmonton turned up at 7am and we wandered down. We missed the start of the race, either Edmonton was ill informed or they'd set off early. We went for a walk to a waterfall for a couple of hours, on the way back we spotted something red on the path in the distance, it was one of the runners on his way back down already. We quick marched down the very steep slope to the finish line with several more runners passing us on route. Edmonton excitedly insisted that we must take a photo of "number one", so we went to track down Mike, judging by his kit he was no novice athlete. He'd beaten Francis someone or other (I'm not good with these athletes names) who Edmonton was saying is a Malawian international. He'd completed the route in a record time of 2 hours 5 minutes.

The most amazing thing about the race was the average runner, there were a few people running in standard running attire, but most weren't, they were just running in their clothes, for many the only ones they'd own. Obviously running shoes are way out of reach for most people, over a months earnings for an average pair, so most runners were in bare feet over very difficult terrain. There were medical staff on hand at the finishing line dousing feet in antiseptic. Many women were running in long skirts, not good for allowing leg movement! Around about the 3 hour mark there were big cheers as a kid, who can't have been more than about 12 years old came over the finishing line. An impressive time on the flat for someone of that age, surely an athlete of the future if his knees survive! Big cheers again around the 3:45 mark when the first white person finished, there were five or so white runners, all severely outclassed by the locals.

The next day we decided to add another country to the list and crossed the border into Mozambique. We had to get visas on the border, the only English speaking border official piped up saying it'd be $100 for two visas. I thought the visa was around the $30 mark so was a little surprised. We paid up and I asked for a receipt for the visa payments, he'd have to go and talk to his boss and we should come back later. We sorted the car paperwork and returned for our receipt and passports but they'd run out of receipts and wouldn't be able to give us one. By now we were very suspicious and made it perfectly clear that we would not be leaving until we had a receipt. Off the border official went to talk to his boss again, returning fifteen minutes later, they'd found the receipt book and had two receipts for $25 per visa. He then went on to explain how these were receipts for half the money, and the visas themselves were the receipts for the other half. Not being born yesterday we didn't accept this and started to argue our case. With my Portuguese being non-existent and the border officials English failing him he turned to a waiting Mozambique citizen who spoke English to help reassure us, which he obligingly did at first. I then explained the whole situation to him, saying that if we'd paid $100, we'd expect a receipt for $100. There was then what sounded like a bit of a debate between him and the border officials in Portuguese, at the end of which, a very embarrassed looking border official picked up the $100 we'd given him, counted out $50 and sheepishly handed it back to us. We thanked the guy that had helped us and hit the road.

It's a wild old world

2009-06-27T10:28:00.002+01:00

This rain had turned things a little upside down, instead of the warm days and cold nights we'd been expecting we were getting cold days and warm(er) nights - much better for sleeping in the tent though!

We set off south the next day, following the Okavango river to enter Botswana. An amazingly efficient border post, we were in and out in fifteen minutes, definitely a record for this trip. There was only one room on each side that dealt with all the formalities. Maybe they should suggest this amazing system to some of the countries further north? The Angola - Namibia border was the first time we'd seen computers at a border post since Morocco, they did have a couple of old typewriters at the Gabon exit post however.

So, Botswana. A more African Africa than Namibia was. There was actually a bit of a North South divide in Namibia. There is a fence with control posts to get through separating the huge cattle ranches in the south with the subsistence farms in the north to prevent the spread of disease. Once we'd got north of this fence in Namibia we lost a lot of the western world. Back to mud and timber huts with thatched roofs, people herding livestock down the sides of the road and a bit more of an African feel to the country. This carried on into Botswana, I've never seen so much livestock on a road as the one heading south from the border.

First stop, Tsodilo hills. These are an ancient sacred site with rock paintings, and pretty much the only four hills in Botswana, about 350m high. It must be one of the worlds flattest countries. 85% of the country is dominated by the flat expanse of the Kalahari Desert. It took us thirty minutes or so to travel along the 40km track from the main road. We found Alistair and Bosse sitting at the end of it eating their lunch, the guys we'd met in the Polo in Namibia. They'd got this far in 1.5 hours, but had decided they could not make the last 3km to the hills and would have to turn round again.

We went for a walk that afternoon with James, our guide, to visit the paintings and learn about the hills. The San people believed these hills were the point of creation so they were of great importance. Paintings dated from about 3000 years ago and were mainly of wildlife, most amusingly I thought, there was one painting of a penguin. People must have travelled up from Southern Namibia where penguins exist.

We crossed paths with the Botswanan military on our walk, being the only hills in Botswana it's where they come to do their training. Usually the African military are to be avoided, but all these guys seemed very friendly, one of them stopping to take a photo of us.

The next plan was to visit the Okavango Delta. Most rivers disappear into a lake, the sea, or another river. The Okavango is a river with a difference, flowing into the Kalahari Desert and disappearing into the sand and the air. In the process it creates the worlds largest inland delta bringing water and nutrients to millions of people and animals in this arid country.

We decided to take what looked to be the most interesting route down through the delta - down the east side cutting through the Moremi reserve. This involved heading north again back towards the Namibian border to get the ferry across the river. While waiting for the ferry I asked a couple of people how much it cost receiving blank looks. We drove onto the ferry anyway, and I asked the guy behind us, a local guy, how much it cost. "It's free, a service for the people". The thought of an African government actually trying to provide a free service for its population hadn't even crossed my mind! Onto the road the other side, we headed down to Seronga, to Mbiroba camp to arrange a boat trip into the delta the following day.

We set off with Tom, our "poler" (the person who powers the boat using a pole). He'd been doing this for eleven years and was an impeccable guide, naming plants, animals and even birds from their calls. The boats used are called Mokoros, basically a flat bottomed canoe. We were sitting very low to the water, gliding along silently through the reeds of the delta. Very peaceful. The thought that the area was crawling with hippos, crocodiles and elephants kept us on the lookout.

We arrived at an island where we would do a walk, I assumed this would just be a little potter round a small island. "Now this is where your game walk begins" Tom said. I saw the immediate horror on Hannah's face in realising what we were about to do, walking and animals do not mix well in her books! He then went on with a safety briefing, kind of like the ones you get in an aeroplane but without the fancy arm waving - what to do it charged by a buffalo (lie down), how to avoid getting charged by elephants (make sure you're down wind of them) and other dangers. We set off, within a few metres we stopped to analyse two piles of dung. One was elephant, the other hippo, the two most dangerous animals on the planet. The difference being that hippos only eat grass where as elephants dung contains sticks and twigs. We carried on with the walk, spotting baboons, warthog and impala, but none of the African classics. A couple of hours later back at the boat, and Hannah amazed that we had survived we set off again to find a spot for lunch and then slid back home through the reeds.

We carried on along our road following day, with the road steadily deteriorating. We eventually came to water flowing across the road and three huge pools stretching 100 metres or so. After a quick examination, we successfully drove through these pools, only to reach the next village where we were informed by one of the locals that the road beyond was impassable. Due to the exceptional rains earlier in the year there was an abnormal amount of water in the delta at the moment. We turned round heading back towards the ferry to find a huge queue of cars - it seemed that the ferry had broken down. Now we couldn't get off either end of the road! Never having much luck with ferries on this continent we sat and waited, watching an otter, then wondering why the locals seemed determined to hit it with rocks. Fortunately it escaped safely. After a couple of hours we got across the river, bush camping that night before heading on to Maun the following day.

This proved to be a much more successful route south, although the discovery at one of the many veterinary control points that we were trying to carry sausages around the country without a permit led to a spontaneous picnic, whipping out the stove and cooking up sausage butties, much to the amusement of passing drivers.

Maun is a funny little town, it just seems to be crawling with overland vehicles restocking for their next mission. We went to a campsite recommended in the Lonely Planet as a quiet campsite, I think the book was a little out of date as it was now the place where all the young and trendies of Maun hang out for the weekend. They were enjoying the unusual amount of water in the delta, waterskiing, fishing and just pottering around on boats, as well as attempting to drink the campsite bar dry.

We did the thing to be done in Maun the following morning, refueling and refooding. We decided against the track up to Kasane as it went through a couple of marsh areas, and with the abnormal water levels didn't want to risk having to turn round again. We decided to head on towards the Makgadikgadi pans instead. We reached Gweta, the area all looked quite flooded, it appeared they'd had a lot of rain recently. We started heading south on gravel, that turned to sand, that turned to mud. With the road getting worse and the sun setting we decided to pull off the track and camp for the night. Testing the ground it was dryish sand so we drove off, as soon as we were off the track the car went through the sand and into the hidden mud below grinding to a halt. We tried brute force to get out but that didn't work so we started the now familiar process of digging, jacking and sand ladders. We also noticed the rear left tyre rapidly deflating, not ideal. Everything in place and the sun now set we tried getting out again, moving the car a couple of metres back towards the track but stopping just short of firm ground. We decided to just put up the tent and sort it in the morning. Jacking up the rear right wheel to stick a sand ladder underneath to prevent it sinking more in the night and level the car for sleeping, we heard the dreaded tssssssss - the jack had torn the tyre valve, so now both rear tyres were flat - time to ignore it for now, and eat and sleep instead!

The following morning we reassessed the situation, the car wasn't too badly stuck. A little more digging and jacking to be done. We managed to get some air into both the rear tyres to prevent them from being damaged further and reversed out. We fixed the puncture and headed back towards Gweta giving up on the pans idea - if this area was anything to go by they'd be flooded anyway. We left the fixing of the valve to the professionals in Gweta, removing the tyre from the rim was something I'd only do if I absolutely had to, far too much work!

We'd later find out this was the first time it had rained in Botswana in June for 88 years. Maybe we should offer our services to other drought stricken parts of the world?

Leaving the tyre repair shop in Gweta, we headed towards Nata. Barely 15 minutes had gone by before once again we heard a now familiar sound, tssssss thud thud thud - yet another puncture! This was our first self-repaired puncture from Ghana that we didn't trust 100% that had failed, so we switched tyres again and got on our way.

Wildlife in Botswana has been amazing, in most of Africa it's mainly in the parks, but in Botswana we'd seen all sorts just at the side of the road including giraffe and elephants. Driving north towards Kasane we were lucky enough to spot two lions in the road. As we approached they walked off, although we could still see them just a few metres from us, watching us watching them. When we moved the car to try to get a better look at them they'd move to try to get a better look at us. After five minutes or so of staring at each other they decided we were no longer interesting and disappeared off into the forest.

We stopped at Pandamatenga that night. The following morning I happened to notice that Stanley's front right suspension spring had snapped. Fortunately the break was near the top and the way it had collapsed and lodged itself it place meant we'd lost a few centimetres of clearance but other than that it was working fine. Seeing as it was only an hour to Kasane we decided to carry on and see what they said when we got there.

We arrived at Kasane and went straight to Chobe Motors. They got on the case of trying to track down new springs for us, eventually telling us to return the following day for a quote. The next day, after another hour or so waiting they eventually managed to get hold of parts and prices from South Africa. We'd have to wait till the following Friday before they'd receive them for fitting, eight days away. Glad the car was still in a useable state we started to make ourselves at home in Kasane. Fortunately there are a few things to do in the area. It's the main entrance to the Chobe National Park for a start.

We'd spent our first couple of nights camping in Kubu Lodge. On our second morning while clearing up the tent, a bit of a clatter indicated the arrival of campsite raiders. A vervet monkey was sitting with the remnants of our loaf of bread in its hands, and another with a banana skin it had stolen from the dashboard. The games now began. I was trying to clear away breakfast to keep the monkeys at bay. As soon as I'd chase a monkey from the table another would sneak round behind me and be hanging from the tailgate with its hand in the kitchen or climbing in the door of the car. Amusing for the first 10 seconds or so!

After a day of chores we opted for a change of scenery and went to stay in Chobe Safari Lodge, a stunning hotel and not a bad campsite either right on the river. Our pitch was on the edge of the park, the park fence was only a couple of metres from the car! The warnings in the hotel about elephants wandering the premises at night suggested the fence wasn't very effective. The site was not too surprisingly overrun with animals, warthogs wandering between the tents, more vervet monkeys, monitor lizards, and amusingly we had a troop of fifty or so banded mongooses (collective noun for mongooses anyone?) charging down the path next to us. That combined with the warnings about elephants, hippos and crocodiles roaming around makes it feel like quite a wild campsite!

The next morning we went into Chobe National Park, it's a huge park that runs along the banks of the Chobe River. Chobe is known for its massive herds of elephants, apparently the highest concentration in the world, and they were certainly in evidence. Hundreds and hundreds of them along the waterfront. It's a beautiful park, all very natural and unspoilt. All the roads are still just dirt tracks, and other than that it's fairly untouched by human hands. There was a wide variety of life, mainly impala, with other classics such as giraffe, zebra and fish eagles. We also had a few unexpected, such as several species of mongoose, a honey badger and lots of hippos out of the water during the day.

We were camping in the park that night, as the sun was setting we started heading to the site. Lots of life in the road and we soon reached our first serious road block, a huge bull elephant just standing in the road. We stopped the engine about thirty metres from the elephant and waited. He started walking towards us. It's said that with elephant you will always get a warning that they're getting upset before they do anything serious, such as ear flapping, trumpeting or a mock charge, so we figured we'd just wait and see what happened. Appearing totally relaxed, just eating and throwing dust over himself, stopping occasionally to have a look at us he kept approaching, and approaching. He eventually walked past us almost touching the side of the car. All we could see were his hips through the window. After a couple more four legged road blocks we eventually reached our camp. A beautiful site, right on the river and exceptionally basic, just a toilet block. However, Hannah believed it was lacking something fundamental for the middle of a national park - a fence. We arrived at our site with the vervet monkeys waiting for us and a couple of elephants a little further down the bank. As we set up camp we could hear shouts of "Oi, get out" as a troop of baboons made its way from pitch to pitch stealing what they could. Fortunately (for us) the occupants of the site next to us had their tent up and weren't back yet, so this kept the baboons busy trying to work out how to get into the tent (I did occasionally do the right thing and chase them off). We tucked into some delicious fillet steak, £4.10 per kilo, we love beef prices in Botswana! We slept that night with a good racket outside from all the animals wandering around, having no clue what was making most of the noises we heard.

The next morning was very quiet in the park, we decided all the animals must have had a heavy Saturday night as there was hardly anything around. We left the park on the western side of the riverfront section and tried to track down somewhere to camp but there were no camp sites in the area so we headed back to Kasane on the transit road to relax while waiting for car parts.

Those of you who have been following us closely may have noticed that we're slightly off course, there is a reason for this. Due to the weakness of the pound we decided we'd have to cut the trip short and are therefore skipping out Kenya and Tanzania. The new route plan is to cut across from Namibia, through Botswana, Zambia and Malawi to Mozambique, then head south through Swaziland, South Africa and Lesotho to eventually ship from a port in South Africa.

Don't forget to drive on the left

2009-06-09T12:00:00.004+01:00

We rushed for the Angolan border hoping to get as far as possible on our first day. We'd gathered as much information as we could about the Angolan roads on our way down through Africa. We'd planned our route to include as much tarmac as possible, by crossing at Luvo, head for Luanda via M'Penza-Congo and then carry on south down the coast before heading inland again at Benguela, down to Lubango then following the main road to the Santa Clara border.

We crossed the border, a little slow but no real problems eventually breaking free at 3pm. Relieved it was dry, it was a relatively smooth dirt track. We'd been warned it was like soap when wet. There were, however, storm clouds brewing in the distance. This was due to be our last evening in the wet season, and after about 45 minutes of driving it decided to see us out in style with a huge storm flooding the road. The surface became slippery as promised and we were sliding all over the place. We eventually reached M'Penza-Congo. The sun was setting so we thought we'd try to find a place to stay. The only hotel in town was full, so we left the town eventually finding a quarry just outside to bush camp. A quarry doesn't sound like the nicest place to sleep, but you're advised not to venture off the roads in Angola as there is still a high risk of landmines from the recent civil war. Quarries therefore provide one of the few options for bush camping, being well cleared.

The following morning, setting off at 6am, the wet season decided to throw its last punch with drizzle and fog, not ideal, but the road started off as a beautiful smooth dirt road winding through the hills of Northern Angola. Probably really lovely scenery but we couldn't see anything. As we raced towards the coast the fog lifted and the road deteriorated. Anyone who's driven on the wide variety of roads across Africa will know that the best ones are the beautiful tarmac, well maintained dirt roads aren't too far behind. A bad dirt road is a bit of a pain, throwing you and the car around, but bad tarmac in just brutal. Sharp edges and aggressive deep potholes violently jolting the car slowing everyone down to a crawl (not that there was anyone else). Most of Angola's roads were tarmacked before the civil war, but haven't been maintained for 30 years or so. Patches where the tarmac was totally destroyed weren't too bad, but other bits were terrible. The terrible tarmac changed to a pretty terrible sand road along the coast as we started heading south. By now vegetation was drying out, grass was turning yellow and the sky was turning the beautiful deep blue that the lack of moisture in the air allows. We were back in the dry season!

Shortly before Luanda the road turned back to tarmac, smooth and new, winding its way down the coast with stunning scenery, palm trees and blue seas racing past as we headed south. It was 4pm, we decided to try and shoot round the city to get to the southern side ready for an early start the next morning. The road we wanted to take round the city seemed to no longer exist, we turned back to try a second option. Tarmac quickly turned to sandy diversions round roadworks, and progress was slow, especially with heavy lorries crawling along. There were roadworks all round Luanda - they're hosting the African Cup of Nations next year, so there's frantic infrastructure improvement taking place (although I'm not sure how anyone is actually going to manage to get an Angolan visa to watch it). After several hours of battling we were on our road south out of the city. A policeman suddenly ran in front of the car blowing his whistle telling me to stop. Seeing as our Portuguese is really quite limited, all we could understand was that we had to pay a fine of US$50, with no idea why. "Nao compreendo" (I don't understand) repeated over and over again for 10 minutes or so seemed to do the job, and he eventually gave up and returned my driving licence. It was now dark, and with no sign of anywhere to set up camp. The first hotel we tried was full. The second might have a room soon for US$200. Slightly beyond our budget, so we tried the old overlander trick of asking if we could sleep in their car park in return for eating in their restaurant. After a bit of a discussion they agreed, so we put on our finest clothes, which really are pretty disgusting and sat down in their lovely beach front restaurant for a meal.

That night in the car was unbearably hot. Struggling to sleep we decided to set off at 4am, stopping after a while for porridge and tea at the side of the road. The road was good, again with fantastic scenery down the coast and beautiful Angolan villages. We realised we could possibly make it to Windhoek for the 23rd to meet Hannah's brother, so we pushed on all day. The good road carried on most of the way, eventually running out, turning into diversions winding through the forest round all the road building works that were going on. We searched for somewhere to camp, eventually pulling off up a forest track shortly before sunset. We were treated to amazing stars and our first cold night for several months (with the exception of Mount Cameroon).

We got up before dawn to make a push for the border, and were unexpectedly treated to some more good road. Disappointingly, it then turned into some of the worst road we'd had in Angola with badly potholed tarmac and dirt track with huge craters several metres wide. Shortly before the border we filled up everything we could with diesel at 25p/l, the cheapest we'd have on the trip.

After 34 hours of driving, with 2000km covered in 3.5 days we reached the Namibian border at about 3:30pm. We were helped out by a young man sorting out all the formalities on the Angolan side. I went to hand him US$5 for his assistance, quite generous I though for half an hour of work. He rejected it, saying "Just US$100 will do, that's all", I had to double check I'd heard correctly, yes, one hundred United States dollars was what he thought his help was worth. "How stupid do you think I am?" I believe was my response. "Ok, only $50 is ok". I got in the car to drive off and he suddenly decided the $5 was ok after all, having rejected the first offer he got nothing. It was nice being able to argue in English though!

The border itself was trouble free, and we were suddenly in a world where we could speak English and drive on the left (though changing sides of the road does make for a slightly confusing land border...!). We set off to find a camp site, yes, a dedicated camp site, our first since Morocco! This campsite even had some bog standard tourists in it, the first we'd seen for several months since Ghana. Pulling out woolly hats and ski jackets we braced ourselves for a Namibian winter evening, it was cold!

After our recent early starts we were up early the next morning - although as it turned out, somewhat earlier than we'd realised. We'd put our watches forward an hour on entering Namibia, blissfully unaware that the country has daylight saving time. We were quite happy in our world an hour away from everyone else's for a day or two until we realised - although it did explain the strange looks from the security guard when we got up at 4:30am - we thought it was early at 5:30am! Got a nice sunrise photo though.

Onwards to Windhoek, tarmac all the way and not a pothole in sight. We saw roadworks a couple of times where repairs were being made to the slightest imperfection in the road surface. The roads weren't designed to keep the driver awake however, with only a couple of corners every hour or so. We arrived at Thomas and Corinne's hotel to be met by an amazingly unfriendly woman, telling us that they were out around town. We headed off to Chameleon Backpackers. It was the most classy backpackers I've ever seen, the room we took was stunning and immaculate, staff exceptionally helpful and all reasonably priced as far as Windhoek goes (although still the most expensive place we've stayed since leaving Europe).

We returned to see if the others were back at the hotel, but it was just the exceptionally unfriendly woman still. We weren't allowed through the gate so decided to sit outside and wait. She advised us after a while that the area was very dangerous with serious crime problems and we shouldn't wait there. We knew the others would be back in 10 minutes or so and asked if we could wait inside for that time. "No, no visitors", ok so where should we wait. "I don't know, but not here, it's not safe". There were no bars or cafes around we could pop into so we decided to brave the street for another 10 minutes. The others eventually turned up, and after some pleading by them we were allowed through the gate for a few minutes while they sorted their stuff. We received warnings from several people about crime in Windhoek after we arrived, I'd imagined it to be a quiet and safe city, so this was really quite unnerving. We headed off to Joe's Beer House that night for a safari on a plate, a meal of of kudu, ostrich, crocodile, oryx, springbok and zebra. We were back in a land of good meat!

We'd been referring to Namibia as the promised land for quite a while by now, since leaving Ghana really. There would be good food, tourist facilities, hot running water, good supermarkets, we'd be back in the dry season, speaking English, good roads, driving on the left and fresh baguettes and croissants growing on trees (we can dream can't we?). Whenever someone was complaining about anything there would be a voice that would say "Namibia", as if everything would be perfect there. So far, apart from the bread trees it was pretty much holding true. We set off south fairly early the next morning after a trip round Shoprite, the big South African supermarket chain (Hannah and I really enjoyed it!). A camp site near the Taushab river in the Naukluft mountains was the destination. After a little while we took a right turn onto Namibian gravel, a new experience for Thomas and Corinne and it wasn't long before they were cursing the guide book for saying everything was perfectly doable in a two wheel drive vehicle and hiring a Toyota Yaris. It may be doable, but at half the speed and twice the discomfort. The lack of high clearance and travel on the suspension made for a slow journey.

We arrived at the campsite reception with its pool, bar and shop to be told that our pitch was 8.5km down the road, so off we went to find it. Clearly signed, well laid out and in the middle of nowhere with just 4 large pitches, all of them well separated by a bit of woodland to give some privacy. All that was polished off with clean, well maintained toilets and showers with hot running water. This was like no campsite we'd ever stayed at before, kind of like bush camping in luxury.

A couple of days walking was the plan, starting with the Olive trail. Lovely walk up through the mountains, descending along a dry river bed, a few tricky bits including hanging onto chains to traverse a near vertical wall - not sure what UK health and safety would have to say about that!

On to Sesriem the next day, climbing Elim Dune in the evening for sunset, a spectacular walk with stereotypical Namibian scenery all around including springboks bouncing in the distance. That night we had our first close encounters with Jackals wandering the campsite looking for food.

According to the Lonely Planet everyone wants to see Sossusvlei at sunrise, so we decided we probably should too. It was about an hours drive from the campsite so a 4:30am alarm was the order of the day going through the gates at 5:30am to join all the other cars to get there. The partly cloudy skies gave us a spectacular sunrise, but obscuring the sun after that meant we didn't get the flaming red dunes that we were supposed to, this combined with the unfortunate fact that we went to the wrong place meant we didn't get the experience we were meant to. Honestly, how often are there cloudy days in Sossusvlei in the dry season?!

Swakopmund was the next port of call. We had a very surreal drive on route into Walvis Bay. The sun was setting straight ahead, the thick blowing sand and the silhouetted cranes in the distance created a very eerie world. We did our chores in Swakopmund, including getting the hole in our exhaust sorted - they didn't have the right part, but nothing a grinder and a bit of welding wouldn't fix. A few other bits and bobs combined with some delicious sea food and we were on our way again.

We took the scenic route to Etosha via the Skeleton Coast national park. An exceptionally long days driving through a spectacularly barren landscape, visiting a few shipwrecks on route and Hannah and I managed to squeeze in another puncture. We barely saw another person all day, struggling even to find anyone to let us into the National Park at the gate. As the sun was setting the booked accommodation was no longer an option so we found a camp site, but the Yaris couldn't make the access road, despite what all the locals in the campsite were telling us. We all piled into Stanley leaving the Yaris at the side of the road.

We spent the next few days at the Etosha National Park. Our first Southern African park, and what a change from the ones down the west coast; not only was there actually wildlife, but also sufficient organisation to enable us to see it! As soon as we were through the gate there were zebra, springbok and giraffe at the sides of the road. The first evening we spent over three hours by the floodlit waterhole at the camp, there were twelve rhino at one stage, both black and white, elephants, giraffe, hyena, they were all making a show. On our final day in the park we went searching for a lion, sitting by a waterhole we'd heard they were known to visit. After an hour or so we were a little surprised to see a different big cat, a leopard creeping through the grass. Known for being incredibly shy, mainly nocturnal and rarely seen this was quite a surprise! Sadly, we still had to retire at the end of the day without our lion.

We left Etosha and went our separate ways leaving the other two to head south back to Windhoek for their flight, and to discover what pain Europcar would inflict on them for the state of the Yaris, while we went North East towards the Caprivi Strip. We spent the next few days moving very slowly, just driving an hour or so each day after our frantic whistle-stop tour of Namibia. We spent a day relaxing at Treesleeper community camp, named after the native people from the area. They're known for going hunting, then after making a kill they'd climb a tree with the kill and wait there to avoid the attentions of other predators, such a lion that might be interested. We paid to go on a "Bushwalk" to learn about the old hunter-gatherer lifestyle they used to lead, learning fascinating facts about hunting, medicine and making fire. This lifestyle has now been pretty much outlawed in the name of conservation.

We eventually reached the Okavango river, this whole area had been subject to serious flooding earlier in the year and was still recovering, our first campsite showing us how high the water had been. Went met Alistair and Bosse here, a couple of guys who'd rented a VW Polo in South Africa and were doing a small African tour in it. A little slow on some roads apparently but it was holding out ok.

Our next Okavango campsite, Samvura Camp, was a curious affair, we arrived to be greeted by three barking dogs and an exceptionally friendly lady. "Do you want to see a cape clawless otter?" she asked. Is it by the river? Stuffed? I thought. She wandered down to the house, "Come on Otty, come here". An otter wandered out of the house and came to say hello, a beautiful animal. Its mother had been caught in a snare and it was the only survivor from three pups. Attempts not to humanise it had failed, it was still effectively wild however. She said it would disappear into the river for up to six days at a time, but would always return eventually. Amusingly it would mark its territory by going to the toilet at the various entrances to the house. We were chatting at the bar when a large male goat trotted through and stood between Hannah and me. "Here's trouble", said the owner. He was going to be staff Christmas dinner five years earlier but they decided he was too small to kill. She gave us a stick to whack him with if he got annoying, he had a habit of butting people. We wandered down to have a look at the river, followed by dogs and a goat. "This is the worst campsite ever!" said Hannah, her dislike for animals overriding everything else that existed. We retreated to our camping spot, unfortunately joined by a horse for a while who decided to raid our table for food, but that was the last of our animals for the evening. A lovely peaceful campsite, lots of character and plenty of domesticated wildlife for those that like animals. We were a little surprised to have a bit of thunder and a few spots of rain that night, this was the dry season!

We carried on along the river heading for Ngepi camp, raved about in the guide book as the best backpackers in Namibia and the owner of the previous camp saying it was very nice we had high expectations. We arrived, there was no one else there, the staff were not particularly friendly and it was expensive. Still, we were here now. We went to look at our camping pitch, small, and we weren't allowed to drive on the pitch, so with a roof tent that would mean we had to camp on the road. We decided it wasn't for us and went to a place marked on the GPS instead, just a few kilometres down the river, Mahangu Lodge. Surprisingly it was packed, the first busy accommodation we'd stayed at in Africa! We were shown around - again the whole site had been underwater for two months in the floods, only drying out again in March. Amazingly it was all back up and running more or less normally, German run of course! We finally managed to spots our first hippos, the animal that had been eluding us the whole way through Africa. As the evening wore on various pods of hippos grunted away as they drifted past the camp. Again, we were surprised when a storm hit that evening, amazing sounds created from the thunder rolling across the plains. Even more amazing when it struck just metres from our tent!

Still stuck in the Congo (Waiting for a visa)

2009-05-23T21:59:00.003+01:00

I was so busy writing about mud in the last entry I forgot to say anything about the country! Not at all as expected, when people think of either of the Congos they normally think of war, corruption, poor infrastructure and chaos. After crossing the border we passed though some small villages receiving the most frantic waving yet, I thought some of the kids were going to fall apart they were waving so violently. As soon as the shouts started people poured out of their houses to take a look and wave as we drove through. Most amusingly we entered one village to be spotted by a child who started screaming "Touriste, touriste" (French African accent required). The customs post was really beautiful, in the middle of nowhere and everything built from natural materials, not a sheet of corrugated iron in site. Officials were friendly and chatty.

Brazzaville has been most unexpected, apart from the manic driving, it's a calm, peaceful city. Probably my favourite capital so far in Africa. Hippocampe was well placed and we walked everywhere, people were friendly and helpful, and we had no problems with officials at all.

We had a few more days at Hippocampe sorting things out, we got the car fixed and greased and had a few other chores. We had been regretting our decision not to get the Angolan transit visa in Abuja for a while. Our hopes had been raised slightly by Roy and Michelle who said it was now easy to get it in Brazzaville, we heard otherwise at Hippocampe.

For those who don't know, the Angolan government likes making it really hard to get into the country. The only places to reliably get a visa in Africa north of Angola are Abuja in Nigeria and Matadi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Even then, unless you wait three weeks for a tourist visa you only get 5 days to travel 2000km on bad roads, very few people manage. We still had Matadi to go through before reaching Angola, unfortunately the DRC immigration at the Kinshasa ferry terminal don't let tourists into the country without proof of onward travel, for example, an Angolan visa. We bypassed the visa in Abuja hearing that the problems on the DRC border were over, but apparently not. So, we now couldn't get into the DRC without an Angolan visa, and couldn't get an Angolan visa without getting into the DRC. We thought we'd try our luck at the embassy in Brazzaville. We dressed in our finest clothes (such as they are) and managed to get through the door which is apparently a feat in itself. They asked for a letter explaining what we wanted and why, various photocopies and three passport photos each. We provided all this that afternoon, sat in the reception for an hour or so, with Florian who'd volunteerd his portuguese skills, only to be told they'd call us to let us know if we could apply for the visa. we weren't holding out much hope so switched to plan B. We would create a fake shipping receipt, saying we would ship the car and ourselves from Matadi around Angola, directly to Namibia, therefore no visa required. After a bit of work and internet plagiarism we had a beautiful shipping receipt. Peter, another overlander, who had just thrown his worldly possessions in the back of a pickup after finishing a contract in Algeria and started driving south happened to have a printer with him which was handy, so we worked together to produce something that looked vaguely official so we could try and cross the border with Florian and Sarah the next day.

The Brazzaville - Kinshasa ferry is infamous for its chaos. We arrived at the port and everything was incredibly disorganised, it seemed to take us forever to find and finish the formalities required to leave the country. Eventually the ferry docked at Brazzaville, hundreds of disabled people started rushing through the gates, some being grabbed by the police and dragged back, others being hit with sticks. I believe that disabled people travel for free on the ferry, so they are used for all the imports/exports between the two countries. I have no idea why there needs to be complete chaos when they disembark however.

We sent my mum a text saying we were trying to cross and asked her to get in contact with the British Embassy in Kinshasa to brief them and see if they could help if there were any problems. They said to just give them a call, so it was nice to know we had a backup plan. We'd tried the consulate in Brazzaville, they said they wouldn't be able to help until Monday, today was Wednesday - I hope no one ever requires urgent help from them.

Eventually it was our turn to get on the ferry, Hannah was evicted from the vehicle and for some unknown reason had to walk onto the boat. The ferry was still being unloaded from the trip over, at the same time as being loaded for the coming journey. How does this work?! I think the English are inherently bad at the African 'queuing' system. The guy guiding me onto the ferry was getting angry that I wasn't just driving through crowds of people, I was just a little concerned about killing someone. Slowly but surely we crawled through the chaos and onto the ferry. Once on things were much calmer, safely locked in the car. The ferry set off and we were on our way.

The journey across the mighty Congo river itself was fairly painless, then everyone started pushing towards the front as we neared Kinshasa. Surprisingly, Kinshasa seemed much more organised with people slowly disembarking while being whipped by a policeman. Hannah and Sarah were once again evicted from the cars (but escaped a whipping), then passports and carnets were requested and promptly disappeared in different directions. Flo and I were left on the boat with the cars wondering where our passports, carnets and girlfriends were, all three fairly important components of the trip. We were eventually led off the ferry and into parking spaces. I got out the car and Hannah walked over "I've already been asked about Angola". The visa was the first thing they looked for when we arrived. Florian and Sarah had their visas so they were ok.

Florian and Sarah started the very slow immigration process with a grumpy looking man in a mustard shirt, in the meantime someone walked into the office asking if anyone had jump leads as the chief's car wouldn't start. Willing to try anything to get into the country I volunteered myself, jump leads and car (though possibly not the best plan given that Stanley himself had had to be jump started that morning). Hannah started our immigration proceedings without me, I returned to the office to find the shipping receipt being scrutinised by the chief. They clearly found this mysterious boat they'd never heard of slightly confusing. We explained how it would all work, we'd avoid Angola and didn't need a visa for Namibia, they eventually seemed to accept it. Hannah was slowly winning round Colonel Mustard and he was now smiling. He then disappeared with passports and our shipping receipt, the phone number on the receipt was wrong so they couldn't check it, although I suddenly realised they could phone Matadi port to check if the boat existed. I started to get concerned they might be doing just that. The door opened, two policemen were standing there with serious faces, then smiles broke "Bonjour", they were looking for the chief and left. It felt like this was taking forever. Eventually Colonel Mustard returned, handed passports to Florian and the shipping receipt to Hannah, "C'est bon". I breathed a sigh of relief, we were in!

Next step was the now famous disinfectant scam. All foreign vehicles entering Kinshasa port have to be "disinfected" at the cost of $60 per vehicle. This is all incredibly well done, and clearly set up by someone quite high up. They all have nice uniforms, even an office in the port, books of regulations and price lists. Frank, who we'd adopted / had adopted us to help us through the border was an absolute legend. He'd been helping us every step of the way and sprung straight to our defence. Still, there was a big steel gate between us and the outside world and we were going nowhere until an agreement was reached. We decided to try the British Embassy, Frank sorted us a phone and I called them, the phone was answered in a perfect British accent, "I'm sorry, there is nobody available to take your call right now....", that wasn't going to work. After lots of arguing we eventually agreed on $40 per vehicle as we really just wanted to get out of there. Just as they started spraying the vehicles they asked if anyone was asthmatic. I had asthma as a kid and saw an opportunity here, they conceded they couldn't spray our vehicle. Fantastic I thought, that saves some money. No, we still had to pay apparently, but it was alright they said, they'd give us a receipt as if that was the most important thing. What I hadn't realised was that Flo had already gone off to hand over the money. We just had to accept that the money had gone to the big black hole of African corruption as we really wanted to get out of there. We'd already spent 8 hours crossing the border (with just 40 minutes of it actually crossing the river) and just wanted to settle down somewhere for the evening.

The following day we left Flo and Sarah in Kinshasa and headed towards Matadi, hoping to get our visa application in that day as it was a Thursday, and the weekend was fast approaching. We arrived at the Angolan consulate in Matadi shortly after 3pm, the Chief had left at 3pm so we couldn't put our application in. We asked if it was possible to get it the same day on the Friday. It was possible, but it's not the secretary's decision so he couldn't promise anything. We were told to turn up at 9am the next day with various photocopies and a letter requesting the visa. The weather closed in overnight and we returned in the pouring rain at 9am as requested, the guard said the secretary wouldn't be in till 11am. We sat in the car for a couple of hours playing rummy, returning to speak to the secretary shortly after 11, he was now there. It was still possible that we could get the visa today, but the ambassador hadn't come to work because it was raining, she doesn't like getting her clothes wet! A few hours later with the rain still falling we were told we couldn't get the visa and would have to return on Monday. This was annoying for two reasons, firstly we'd have to spend the weekend in Matadi, and secondly we would now miss the arrival of Hannah's brother in Windhoek - the deadline we've been working towards for the last month.

We were staying at a convent in Matadi, camping in the courtyard. All very pleasant, except on the Friday morning we were evicted at 6:30am as the kids were turning up for school. We returned that evening requesting to stay another three nights due to visa issues, they told us of some people who stayed for two weeks. On the Saturday morning we weren't evicted, although despite being a Saturday the kids still turned up for school. I guess they'd been told about us and the fact we were English as they kept walking past saying "Hello". They then got a little more brave and a few of them started saying "What is your name?", and "How are you?". I think this was the limit of their English however, and after half an hour of being asked the same questions over and over by the same kids it got a little tiresome!

Monday eventually arrived with a blazing sun, we got to the embassy at 8:45am, the secretary was in, but no sign of the chief yet, 10am, 11am, eventually at 11:45am "madame" turned up. In the mean time we'd made friends with the gardener who used to work on a British ship, and therefore spoke pretty good English. He kindly offered to get us some pawpaws. Eventually at 12:30 we were called into the office, got asked the usual visa application questions, and then the names of parents, all our brothers, sisters aunts and uncles - what do they do with this info?! We were then told we wouldn't be able to get the visa today and would have to return at 11am tomorrow.

We returned to the convent asking to stay another night, a little annoyed to say the least! Cheered up slightly when the gardener, Alfonse, from the Angolan embassy turned up with all the pawpaws we'd forgotten to get off him earlier, all seven of them! We had some to be eaten as you or I would normally eat a pawpaw, and some "green pawpaws", which we were told to use in the same way we would a potato. We'd had storm clouds brewing to the east every night in Matadi, we'd been clipped a couple of times, but the clouds tonight were looking a little more threatening. Alfonse said it was going to be the last rain of the year and rushed off as we listened to it slowly approaching over the roofs of Matadi. Yet another truly spectacular storm flooding the entire courtyard at the convent, and as we left the sunroof open it flooded Stanley too! That night we made a curry with fried green pawpaw, it was really quite tasty.

Tuesday came, we got to the embassy at 9am hoping they might be willing to give us our visas, no, we had to sit and wait. Madam was clearly up a little early, she dragged herself in for 10:30am. Eventually at 11:45 we were called into the office and our passports were returned with visas. We were cheered up slightly on seeing we actually had 6 day visas starting today, so with half a day lost we'd still have 5.5 days to rush through Angola rather than the 4.5 we'd been expecting. I do wonder why we had to wait 5 days for a sticker to be stuck in a passport and a couple of dates to be written on it.

We rushed out the embassy, into the car and set a course for Luvo, where we'd cross to Angola. Apparently the road is much better than the one from Matadi. May the great race across Angola begin.

Um Bongo, Um Bongo, we're stuck in the Congo

2009-05-10T22:01:00.005+01:00

We arrived in Franceville, spent a day sorting ourselves out, washing clothes and preparing for the trip into the Congo. We'd been dreading the roads over the border as the wet season was drawing to a close, assuming they'd be terrible mud. Roy and Michelle, who we'd met in Nkambe has said there was nothing to worry about, they were sand and quite a fun drive, so we were a little more optimistic. Our guide book described the area as a cool, dry plateau, this sounded really quite pleasant.

The plan was to spend a night in Leconi, then zoom over the border, hoping to get as far as Oyo, then the following day set a course for Brazzaville. Everything went exactly as planned, as far as Leconi anyway. We had an incredibly uncomfortable bed that night, so both lay awake listening to the torrential rain hammering down on the roof all night long. Relieved it was sand and not mud we set off with the sun breaking through the cloud. Wet sand is better than dry sand as it's firmer, so we thought all the rain might even be a good thing. Tarmac quickly turned to sand as we left Leconi, eventually reaching the Gabon border about an hour later the sand turned into beautiful new tarmac, with a T-junction showing a sign to Leconi, 26km away down the new road. Kicking ourselves for taking the old road we went through the border post back onto the sand and into The Congo.

The going was slow but steady, some deep ruts and puddles but Stanley was taking it all in his stride, for a while at least until we went to drive through one puddle and the front left wheel dropped into a huge hole, we were then going nowhere. Out came the high lift jack and sand ladders, but before we'd got too involved we heard the distant rumble of a diesel engine. A Gabonese truck turned up, we threw them a tow rope and they dragged us back out of the puddle. With 45 minutes lost and the road being slow we were starting to doubt our chances of getting to Oyo.

We reached the Congo immigration post, a classically slow African border post where three different people have to all spend a long time writing down exactly the same information. We asked how many hours to get to Oyo, they looked at the car and said four or five, so still doable we thought. Once everything was done one of the policemen asked us for a lift to the next village, 45km away, where we'd have to go through customs. We cleared half the back seat, and the policeman, another woman and child all piled in. The road started to get worse, churned up wet sand with deep ruts created by the big trucks that mainly use this route. The sand had also become finer and more mud like causing further problems. Struggling for clearance it was only a matter of time before the car was stuck on its belly. So, stationary with all four wheels spinning off the ground out came the recovery gear again. We eventually got the car out of the ruts and on the ridge while being pestered by some amazingly annoying flies, another 45 minutes wasted Oyo was looking very unlikely.

We reached the village, dropped off our passengers and did the customs thing. Our first request for money since Togo, and only our second since Senegal. After a brief discussion Joel seemed happy to take our email address instead. He then went to search the car, but seemed to forget about that too when I reminded him I had to write down our email. We set off again, Joel said we wouldn't reach Oyo today as the road was "Disastrous". We were immediately stumped by a bridge that had been washed away, one lorry that had tried to go over the submerged remnants of the broken bridge and destroyed his wheel, another had tried to go through the stream to the side and got stuck. The second lorry was in the process off being rammed by a large digger to try and get it moving. On seeing us they immediately decided that we were the answer to all their problems and should tow the truck out. Not too surprisingly, Stanley was unable to tow a huge truck our of a river while driving up a steep sandy hill. My suggestion that they fix the bridge, get the digger over it and get that to tow the truck out was shrugged off, so we wandered off to have some lunch and the digger went off to get more help.

After lunch I decided I'd go and explain to everyone loitering around how to fix the bridge so we could get moving at least, even if everyone else was still broken or stuck. They agreed to help if I paid them, the planks were far too large for me to move on my own so I had a brief argument with them about how I'd tried to help them without asking for anything, but they weren't willing to help me in the same way. We eventually agreed on a packet of cigarettes, we'd bought cigarettes to help us with sticky situations and had just used one pack to buy some fish in Mali so far. Everyone sprung into action, and within five minutes the bridge was in a useable state - we were on our way again, joking about what the next problem would be.

A few minutes down the road we found the next problem, the digger that had gone to get help was sitting stationary in the middle of the road, "Un autre probleme?", I shouted to the guy standing on the digger. "Oui, la transmission". I looked down to see the drive shaft hanging out the bottom of the vehicle into the mud, he was going nowhere soon, there was a mechanic on the way apparently. To one side of him the mud looked far too deep and waterlogged for us to get through, the other side was a tight squeeze, although also waterlogged there was a dry bank we could use for traction. We went for it, a fine balance between slipping off the dry bank into the mud, and going too far up the bank and the car rolling. We had it perfect until a few metres before the end when we slipped off the bank and rapidly ground to a halt for the third time that day. There were trees around this time, so out came the winch. None of the trees were particularly large however and after uprooting the two largest we decided that wasn't going to work. Another truck then turned up, but the road was now totally blocked so there was no way he could get through in front of us to tow us out. Back to jacking, digging and sand ladders, we now had an army of Congolese drivers working on getting Stanley out. Then we heard a distant singing and chanting coming down the road, it was a group of mechanics to fix the digger. There was a good atmosphere while everyone worked together to sort out the stranded vehicles listening to the distant rumbles from another storm. After well over an hour of jacking, digging, rocking and sand ladders Stanley started inching forwards, slowly escaping the suction from the mud, eventually breaking free and back onto a dry patch. We exchanged email addresses and I threw them all a packet of cigarettes to cheers of approval. On our way again, with the sun setting and just 80km covered in 9 hours we certainly weren't going to reach Oyo so we pulled off the road for the night instead.

We lay in the tent listening to another night of rain, getting up and moving at 5:45am the following morning expecting the worst we returned to the road. The rain was still pouring down and the whole road was now a swamp, it truly was disastrous. We battled on through, rapidly gaining mud driving experience we soon learnt how important it was to keep momentum - we were moving ok. We reached the bottom of a valley and were faced with a 25m long puddle, waste deep gloopy mud in places, there was no way we could get through. We tried looking for paths off the road but the trees were too thick, so back to the puddle. After careful analysis we decided that the ruts were too deep and we'd ground our belly, they were also more silty and would provide less traction. There was one ridge that was much firmer and only about knee deep that I reckoned we could drive along, a deeply sceptical Hannah reluctantly agreed to help mark out the position of the ridge with sticks so we could try and use it. With everything in place a large truck appeared the other side of the puddle, they wanted to charge through first to show us it was ok, probably destroying the ridge that was our only hope of making it, then we could go. It was also useful having them the opposite side of the puddle to tow us if we got stuck. Eventually they agreed to wait for our delicate approach before they charged it. Slowly but surely, we crawled across the puddle balancing on the underwater ridges, making it across without a problem. The truck driver then looked at me, smiled and slammed his food down on the accelerator and they charged on through as fast as they could. Passengers clinging for dear life to the back and sides.

We chugged along taking two hours to travel 8km to the next village where we stopped to ask the police the way. After another immigration session we set off again with news the road from now on was better. It was better in places, and worse in others, but still generally terrible. We fought on through deep mud and water for most of the day, only getting stuck once. We eventually reached a village about 30km from Oyo at about 4:30pm where we saw a flat, grey surface with white lines down the middle. Thinking it was a mirage at first we went a bit closer, it really was smooth new tarmac. We set off to find a hotel with a shower in Oyo. Yes, the hotel owner assured us, the shower does work. Unfortunately he neglected to tell us that there was no running water, but hey, it was a nice idea. A bucket did the job.

The two days of difficult driving did however serve a purpose. Not only did they massively improve our mud driving skills, the road also provided a scenic point for us to stop and enjoy an Um Bongo (while being eaten alive by sand flies), and as everyone growing up in the UK in the 80's will know, that's what they drink in the Congo. (For anyone not in this age bracket, see www.umbongo.com for the TV advert from back in the day). We brought 5 cartons, but with a 40% fatality rate on the bad roads only 3 made it to the Congo.

The tarmac continued to Brazzaville, where we joined the hoards of overlanders at Hippocampe. Stanley was in desperate need of a wash. The lack of two front fenders meant that he was barely recognisable, and we attracted even more stares from the locals than we normally do. We found a lavage where we joined the queue of beautifully clean and shiny Congolese cars waiting to be washed, and enjoyed the look on the washer's face when he saw our car. Stanley has never had quite such a thorough wash, and two hours later we fitted in perfectly with the locals (almost) in our shiny car.

Next was the problems with the car, we noticed a clunking on the way back from the car wash. Back to swinging violently on the car to track down the cause. A bush on one of the shocks had totally disintegrated, fortunately we had a spare. We got that fixed and started looking into the horrible noise the brakes had been making since we left the mud. Brake pads had almost completely disappeared, so with the help of Florian, another overlander at Hippocampe we set about changing them. Three wheels fixed, I got to the last one and one of the pads had been completely destroyed by the mud, the result was the brake disc had been destroyed. So with more parts tracking and work hopefully we'll have that fixed soon and be on our way!

Into the Southern Hemisphere

2009-05-03T19:12:00.002+01:00

After a couple of days dodging taxis in Yaounde, we had Gabon visas and set off towards the border. The taxis in Yaounde were terrible, dented, yellow, un-roadworthy scraps of metal zooming all over the place as if they owned the city, we were glad to escape. Out of the cities however it's been delightful, once we'd cleared the terrible roads near the Nigerian border we unexpectedly had beautiful smooth tarmac pretty much the whole way, snaking through the hills and forests of Cameroon with almost no other cars on the road. Such a pleasant change after Nigeria! As we knew was likely to be the case, we were stopped regularly by the police to tell us that right-hand drive vehicles are illegal in Cameroon. Fortunately we had our argument prepared and on telling them that it's fine for tourist vehicles in transit, most of them seemed happy enough. No idea whether this is actually true or not but it seemed to work!

Cameroon has been the first country in Africa where we have seen clear evidence of huge commercial farms. Mile after mile bananas, rubber, pineapple and palm nuts. Fields of tea stretching over the hills round the ring road and at the base of Mt Cameroon. I was very excited to have my Tole tea in Limbe in the morning, then drive past the Tole plantation later that day! The shops even stock packaged Cameroonian products such as tea and coffee. Most packaged products in shops usually come from Asia or Europe, even things they should be able to easily produce locally are shipped in from Indonesia or China.

The wet season peaks in May in Cameroon and April in Gabon, so we joked we'd be due to hit the worst of it on our journey across the border, and we did. The first time we'd had to drive through torrential rain, to arrive at a flooded hotel in Ebolowa, we had no electricity or running water due to the storm (We should have gone somewhere else on hindsight). Another hassle free border, customs was very quick the Cameroon side as the officials were playing a game and the guy dealing with us had to get back to it.

Across the border we headed for Oyem where we planned to stay the night. Accommodation is notoriously expensive in Gabon so looking for a cheap option we pulled into the Catholic Church. Approached by Victor, the local bishop, we asked if we could camp, "No problem", was the response so that was us sorted. We got out our table and chairs and he asked if we'd mind if his family joined us, so we all sat down and had a chat about the trip. Victor asked if I liked beer, and promptly sent a boy off to buy one, I figured I should probably pay so when the boy returned I gave him some money, and he went off again and came back with another two large beers. After a couple of glasses Victor started insisting that Hannah and I went to meet his mother, so we were marched across town to meet his mother and visit his fathers grave. On the way back he said we should go into a bar for some more beer as his father was there, we decided that we probably shouldn't be plying the local bishop with any more beer at this point and persuaded him to return to the church. Much to Hannah's dismay he told us that his dogs would guard us all night so we'd be very safe (Hannah dislikes dogs), and very obediently, they did, sleeping next to the car all night.

Setting off the next day, with the Equator just a few hours away the countdown to the southern hemisphere started, stopping for the obligatory photos at the sign. We carried on south, and it seems Gabon only makes good roads in the northern hemisphere, as it rapidly deteriorated then turning to dirt road again for the long drive to Franceville.

Gabon is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and relatively stable being run by President Bongo for the last 40 years, a great name, and an "exceptional man" if the posters at the border are to be believed. It is very rural, a similar size to the UK, and has a population of just 1.4 million. Once we started heading east towards Franceville the country just seemed deserted, few signs of life other than the road.

Bongo, being persuaded that ecotourism was the future turned 10% of Gabon into National Park overnight in 2002, in a country where no parks existed before. This has been the first country we've seen any sign of mammalian wildlife outside of parks since Mali - the Muslim north has an advantage as Muslims don't eat bush meat. Since then we've seen an amazing variety of dead wildlife for sale at the side of the road, from rats and snails to deer and monkeys. It's been good to see living monkeys and antelope again in Gabon. We had a night of unofficial camping in the Lope National Park in a quarry where we watched a troop of monkeys dance through the trees as we sat down for our evening tea.

If I could buy Stanley a beer

2009-04-28T16:31:00.001+01:00

Countries Visited: 16
Distance Travelled: 16582km
Litres of fuel bought: 2408
Punctures repaired: 5
Food poisonings: 7

We eventually escaped Abuja, leaving Julian and Peter to enjoy their fourth week at the Sheraton. We had one night in Katsina Ala in Nigeria before making a run for the Cameroon border the following day. The going was good until Takum where we turned off towards Bissaula. The road changed to a dirt track with deep ruts and puddles, it had taken us six hours to reach Bissaula when we'd estimated three. Berwyn and co. the group that had taken this route a couple of weeks before us were still the talk of the town. "We had some of your people come through recently, do you know them?" was one of the first questions we were asked by immigration. We were told we should have had our Carnet stamped out in Takum, but there was no way we were going to do a eight hour round trip for that, the police told us it wouldn't be a problem. We left Nigeria with a warning the road was in a "terrible state". We knew that one section of the road had taken Berwyn five attempts, so with a much heavier, although more powerful vehicle we were concerned. We'd now been stamped out of Nigeria, so there was no turning back.

The reports held true, the road was terrible. Some incredibly steep climbs and descents, river crossings, badly rutted roads with serious rain damage, dangerous cambers, loose rocks, puddles and a bit of mud to polish it off. Everything a 4x4 enthusiast would dream of, but we just wanted to get to Cameroon! Stanley behaved impeccably, this unstoppable machine doing what seemed impossible, even climbing the "big hill" we'd been warned about on the first attempt, a ridiculously steep climb over loose and uneven rocks for about 1km. We breathed a sigh of relief at the top wanting to give Stanley a hug and buy him a beer. Still, no rest for us, we were aiming for Nkambe. This wasn't to be however, after nine hours of driving that day we ended up bush camping for the first time since Northern Ghana before we'd even reached Cameroon immigration.

We officially entered Cameroon the following day at Ako where we were stamped in before heading on to Nkambe, the road improved but still very hilly. We had a phenomenal climb on a dirt track, from 400m to 1600m in the space of about 12km. We had to stop twice to let Stanley cool down as he was overheating! We were jumped on by Roy and Michelle as we arrived at customs in Nkambe, a Brazilian couple who had been on the road for over two years on a world tour. They were considering crossing to Nigeria and wanted information about the route.

We carried on along the Ring Road - a circular route through the spectacular mountain scenery of north western Cameroon - to Kumbo. The road had vastly improved, so Stanley decided now would be a good time for the stabiliser bar to break again. We limped along to our destination where we stayed in a hotel with a difference, no fan or air conditioning, we even had hot water for the first time since Northern Senegal! We were now at almost 1800m and although the sun was still blisteringly hot during the day the air temperature was relatively cool. We wore jumpers that night, not because we had to, just because we could!

The following morning, after some asking around, we tracked down Victor and his welding shop. His team sprung into action putting Stanley back together, with a brief interlude while there was a power cut. Not impressed with the previous job and the fact there was only one strengthening bracket they added another. Victor guaranteed that his workmanship will last until the car returns to Europe. I can't see myself going back to Kumbo to get it fixed if it does break again. Still, I've got his email address so I'll let him know either way.

We pushed on towards Mount Cameroon with a stop in Bafang, we then decided to delay another day in Limbe for more food poisoning recovery. Three days of driving for nine hours per day had taken its toll. Despite the fact we were right next to Mt Cameroon we couldn't see it, it was totally shrouded in cloud. We ate in "The Fish Market" that night, a spot on the beach where the days catch is grilled over a fire and served up on a plate. A lovely meal sitting at a table on the beach. The electricity failed so we were eating by the strobe lighting of a storm over the mountain. The wet season has been gaining momentum, with spectacular storms most evenings since our first rains in Hohoe. Then came the tell tale strong gust, a 180 degree switch in wind direction and everyone sprung into action. I've never seen anything so efficient in Africa as our plates were grabbed and we were taken to a table with a roof. Table clothes were cleared as everyone was frantically battening down the hatches. A couple of minutes later the rains hit like a sledge hammer. We were joined at our table by a guitarist, the lightning illuminated Hannah's grinning face as we were then treated to the very surreal experience of eating seafood in the dark in the middle of a huge storm while being serenaded to the sounds of Bob Marley and The Eagles. We had a brief five seconds of electricity before there was a flash from the power cables over the street and sparks rained down onto the road knocking out the towns power once again.

Mt Cameroon is an active volcano, the most recent eruption in 2001. It shoots straight out the sea to 4095m in height, probably quite impressive if you could ever see the top. It does unfortunately also have the reputation of being the second wettest place on the planet, receiving over 10m of rain a year at the peak, even more rain than Manchester! Buea is a small town sitting about 1000m up Mt Cameroon and the starting point for most climbs. It's handy being at altitude for two reasons, firstly, the climb to the summit is shorter, and secondly, most of the hot sweaty walking through the rainforest circling the base is eliminated. We arranged a guide in Buea with two porters, feeling slightly guilty having other people carry all our stuff but we're not very fit at the moment! Especially as we had to take three days supply of water, 18 litres. The aim was to get up and down in two days, but we allowed the extra day in case we were struggling. Amadou, our guide said we wouldn't have to start too early, he'd be back at 7am the next day to give us time to eat our breakfast. I think they're early risers around here, we had the school opposite singing hymns at 6:30 the previous morning.

As promised, Amadou arrived with Joseph and Thomas, our porters, at 7am, unfortunately our alarm hadn't gone off, so we eventually left at 8:30. Really good walking weather for this part of the world, overcast with light rain. We reckon you can judge how hard a walk will be in Africa by the guides footwear, if he's wearing flip flops, it'll be hard, if he's wearing trainers, it'll be really hard. Our guide was wearing walking boots, we were worried. The only saving grace was he was carrying three days supplies and we were carrying a bottle of water and camera between us. We set off and the pace was ok, the porters shot on ahead carrying all their stuff and ours. We were quite lucky as the day remained overcast with high cloud, the rain cleared giving us amazing views from the mountain. The guide was saying it's the best views he's ever had from the mountain, and considering he'd been doing this for 30 years that's quite a statement! He and porters were all taking photos with their phones so it was clearly unusual. The walk started with a gradual ascent and seemed to get steeper and steeper. Scrambling up a very steep slope of volcanic rock and tufts of grass we eventually reached "Hut 2" at 2860m after just over six hours. This was where we'd be spending the night before making a charge for the summit the following day. We spent the night in the rat infested hut, it wasn't particularly pleasant hearing rats scurrying past your head in the dark. We also lost a packet of biscuits and a loaf of bread to them before we found hooks on the ceiling to hang our bags from.

The higher sections of the mountain look a little like scenery from the Lake District or Scotland, this was even more true when we woke up the next morning, it was wet, windy and cold, it could have easily been an English summer day. Craig and Lou had given us some Kendal Mint Cake before we left which we'd decided to eat on route to the top, so this all felt very fitting. Unfortunately it wasn't to be, the summit had inconveniently placed itself 1235m higher than my knees were willing to go. They'd been sore the previous day on the way up and were still painful in the morning, we decided the final ascent would be a bad idea and started heading down instead, enjoying the mint cake of course. When my knees are bad I find walking down stairs difficult, so a 1860m descent wasn't ideal! Still, we hobbled along slowly eventually making it back to the bottom in time for lunch. Amadou, spent most of the two days ranting about politics, moaning about the corrupt Cameroon government. We were told many times what cruel rulers the Germans were, how French systems breed corruption, which is why most of French Africa is such a mess, and how good the area was under the British but they left too early and should come back to help sort it out. He seemed very proud of the British post box in Buea.

The following day we headed for Yaounde to sort out more visas. We'd been told we could stay in a Benadictine Monestary on Mt Febe for free, so that's where we are now with great views over the city. Unsurprisingly, we've timed yet another visa application with a public holiday forcing us to pay the express fees for the Gabon visa.

Minding the Nigerian Drivers

2009-04-16T12:49:00.009+01:00

We were staying in Hohoe before going to Wli Falls the following day. I woke up at about 4:30am, discovering that the fan had stopped as there was no electricity. There did, however, appear to be a flickering light bulb through the window, although closer investigation revealed that there was no light bulb, just a distant thunderstorm, so ferocious that the sky was almost constantly lit by lightning. We stood by the window watching the approaching storm, the winds picking up to what must have been gale force. We could see a column descending to the ground silhouetted by the lightning. "I think that's a tornado..." The interest in the storm rapidly turned to concern, as we looked around the room for the most solid piece of furniture for shelter, "ok, get under the bed". Quick check back at the window - the tornado had disconnected from the cloud and was now swaying, "Ah...our tornado is a tree!". We then heard the roar of the approaching rains, turning to a deafening drumming on the corrugated iron roofs of the town. The storm eventually passed, we were so far from the centre that we couldn't hear the thunder, even so, the effects of the storm were spectacular. Disappointed, although slightly relieved we didn't receive the full brunt. With the monsoon rains imminent, this will be the first storm of many.

A trip to Wli falls the following day, the weather wet and grey after the nights storm, but pleasantly cool and a good day for a walk. We arrived at the falls and picked up Evans, our guide, heading for the upper falls and completing the four hour trip in two with Evans and his high speed flip flops racing up the mountain. A spectacular waterfall and an interesting walk with many varieties of plants shown on route. We then went to the lower falls and bumped into Patrick and Paula, a German couple we'd first met at Green Turtle. Paula is currently working in Accra as part of her degree, Patrick is dreaming up an overland trip of his own. We agreed to travel together to Mt Afadjato the following day, Ghana's highest peak.

We set off the following morning to the mountain, preparing for our third day of intensive walking. A European mountain walk would normally involve gradually winding up the mountain to the top. In this part of the world, if you want to go to the top of a mountain, then you take the most direct route. An hour or so later after struggling up a 45 degree slope we got to the top and were disappointed on two counts. Firstly, we were swamped by flies, which we've heard called sweat bees, and have a habit of flying into ears, eyes and nose which can get really quite annoying! Secondly, we could see much higher mountains in Togo, just a few hundred metres away, so the panoramic views over the range weren't complete. We then wandered down to a waterfall at the bottom, more beautiful falls, although with more annoying flies! We returned to Wli for another night where Patrick and Paula treated us to dinner which was lovely (thanks you two!).

A few more things to note about Ghana; in several countries we've had toll roads - £20 tolls in France, 20p tolls in several African countries. Ghana also has tolls, but they're 4p! Maybe I'll suggest this price for the M6 Toll! Secondly, Ghana is the first country where people have been able to pronounce my name, and the name Hannah is no longer a cause of hilarity. I also need to mention fufu, a Ghanaian dish that is very difficult to avoid. Fufu is made from cassava and is like a super-glutinous version of mashed potato that is served with a sauce - usually either goat or fish - and eaten with the hands. It wouldn't be top of our dream cuisine list, but it's certainly an experience! Last, but not least, we've had no real hassles from children in Ghana, only one or two requests for money or presents in three weeks. Compared to the hundreds of requests we'd receive some days in previous countries this was really quite pleasant!

On to Togo, back to ex-French countries with decent bread and not-so-decent cadeau requests. We'd decided to shoot through as we want to hit a notoriously bad road on the Cameroon border before the rains are in full force. A lovely scenic drive through the mountains followed by an argument with a border official about our Visa Touristique Entente. He didn't want us to use the visa as we'd left the block of countries covered by the visa by travelling through Ghana. After much explaining that we had a separate visa for Burkina Faso, and the entry into Togo was our first use of the visa, he eventually gave up/understood and let us through. A night in a pleasant hotel in the mountains followed by a race for the border the following morning. The road wasn't bad, although very uneven. 20km or so from the border we started getting noises from the rear of the vehicle over potholes, which we managed to track down to a broken stabiliser bar on the rear axle. We carried on slowly, spotting a garage with a welder lying across the forecourt just before the border. £3, 7 men and 20 minutes later we were back up and running.

Crossing the border was slow but relatively hassle free. The Togolese policeman doing the car documents was training a junior member. Once all the work was complete he called me over and sent his trainee away. He then asked me for 2000 CFA, a request which rapidly disappeared as he realised that his trainee was on his way back. I suppose it's promising that at least they don't train their juniors in corruption!

Once in Benin (the land of magic - Voodoo is the main religion here), we headed for the coast again, to Grand Popo. One morning while we were doing our washing, Romeo and Edgar turned up. After the compulsory part where they watch us in silence they spotted some real ground coffee on the table that we'd bought in Togo and asked to taste it. So we gave them a few grounds to taste, they promptly announced they'd be back at 4pm to drink some. They turned up again at about 1pm. We weren't ready for coffee at this stage, we had yet to eat lunch, but they couldn't hang around as they had to get back to the office. This wasn't a problem, we could just give them some coffee grounds and they could make it at home they said. So after giving them a lecture on how it was ok to share the coffee, but we weren't going to just give them some they agreed to turn up again at 4pm as originally agreed. We shared a mug of real coffee (made with our makeshift coffee filter of a bottle cut in half and a jiffy cloth) and had a good chat. Romeo really wanted to improve his English so we gave him a book to help him on his way. We also promised to put a picture of them on the website, so here it is!

Next stop, Ouidah, one of the main slave market towns in west Africa and the last place in Africa many slaves would have ever seen. We had a tour down the 'The Slave Route', the sandy 3.5km track to the beach that the slaves took on their way to the waiting boats. Various monuments to see on route and a relatively interesting tour. The usual argument about payment at the end of the tour though - despite having agreed a price beforehand - a genuine misunderstanding I think, but even so there was no way we were going to pay his price!

Off we went to Cotonou to sort out some admin stuff. We decided it was so busy and manic that we just had an ice cream and left again heading towards Ganvie, a stilted village on a lake north of the capital. We decided to spend the night on the edge on the lake and have a tour early the following morning to avoid the hottest part of the day. A really nice village in a lovely location, although the turds and litter in the water didn't add much to it! The word for white people has changed again - we're now called 'Yovo'. The children would just chant this as we went though the village - "Yovo, yovo yovo", occasionally "Yovo, cadeau, yovo, cadeau", which rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

We had a couple of days in Abomey before heading off towards Ketou and the Nigerian border. We wanted to pick up some nice baguettes for lunch before crossing back into ex English territory and the terrible bread that goes with it. To our horror, the loaves changed before the border so we were stuck with horrible bread. The border crossing was totally hassle free apart from the mission to find immigration on the other side of the village. Once we'd entered we then had to go back into Benin to change money, eventually we were on our way to Ibadan.

It wasn't long before we had our first experience of the famous Nigerian roadblocks. Men with boards full of nails ready to kick out into the road if we don't stop - it works! Many of them weren't even in uniform so we had no idea if they were police or just random people. Still all very hassle free, Hannah got asked "Do you want to marry a Nigerian policeman?" at one and a job offer "marketing for the Nigerian Immigration Service" at another. I wasn't nearly as popular! We occasionally got asked "So what do you have for us?", but just saying "Nothing" did the trick.

The quiet roads soon turned into Nigerian chaos as we entered our first big town of Abeokeuta, a heaving mass of people and pollution, litter everywhere. Some people lining the street battling to sell something, fighting for survival, others just sitting on the pavement looking like they'd given up on trying. We crawled through manic traffic glad we hadn't gone anywhere near Lagos, a city with a population twice that of London wouldn't be fun!

We stayed in a random hotel on the outskirts of Ibadan, rudely awoken at 5:30am by the first call to prayer we'd heard in ages. Then rudely awoken again at 6:25 by a knock on the door, we were being offered a bucket of water. Our hotel had no running water or electricity, not because the mechanisms were not in place, but because the infrastructure in Nigeria is so bad that it rarely ever works. Still, 6:25 is a little early.

I've heard several people say that Nigerians are the worst drivers in the world, people who have travelled across India, Asia and South America, so we weren't expecting much. Setting off the next day we had our first real experiences of Nigerian driving. Driving down the busy dual carriageway to get out of the Ibadan area there were cars everywhere, driving down the outsides of the road, along the central reservation and even the wrong way down the dual carriageway trying to make ground. If you stopped touching the bumper of the car in front then someone would dive into the gap. This was all fairly amusing at low speeds through the town, but became terrifying at 100kph on the open road. Personally I would say that Nigerians are exceptionally skilful drivers, but practicing overtaking manoeuvres where you are inches from certain death on a public road just isn't very sensible as it does sometimes go wrong. The many mangled twisted wrecks on the side of the road testified to this. We must have seen hundreds of lorries, buses, cars and tankers wrapped round trees or upside down in ditches, somehow this still didn't serve as a warning to other road users. Road rules just don't exist, it's every man for himself. We'd try to leave a safe gap between us and the car in front, but there was no point as someone would just overtake us and dive into it. Overtaking, undertaking, running other cars off the road, anything goes out here. Our guidebook warns that driving without hooting your horn is considered dangerous and discourteous. We got stuck in a traffic jam on a road with one lane in each direction, yet we had four lanes of queuing traffic going in our direction, on the road, off the road and on the wrong side of the road. Assuming the same thing happened the other side, this lead to fairly rapid gridlock. So we crawled along for two hours, generally off the road, until we escaped the other side. Things become even more dangerous on potholed roads as cars slalom down both sides trying to take the smoothest path. We looked on in horror when we turned a corner, a petrol tanker had just swerved for a pothole and lost control, careering off the road in a cloud of dust and tilting dangerously as the driver fought to get it stable. Fortunately he managed to get back onto the tarmac and carry on - just another day in the life of a Nigerian driver!

A couple of days later, taking a day longer than expected due to another bout of food poisoning, we arrived at Abuja, entering the city was like entering another world. Abuja is the new Nigerian capital, created in the 1970s it was meant to be the model Nigerian city. We left the chaos entering the wide expressways into the city itself, light traffic, street lights and traffic lights (not that there's any electricity to power them). Moto taxis have been banned so there aren't bikes weaving dangerously all over the place. It was all very strange, un-African and to be honest, lifeless. No hustle and bustle, very few people about. After driving in circles for a little while we eventually spotted our target, one of Abuja's top hotels, The Sheraton. We hadn't just won the lottery however, we'd heard we can camp for free in the car park. We were sent round the very back of the hotel (and told "your type go round there") to set up camp next to the rubbish tip, and we're not allowed to use any of the hotels facilities except the shower and toilets by the pool. But hey, it's free accommodation, there are street food joints just down the road where we can get a meal for £1-2 each, which beats paying £10 for a sandwich in the hotel.

We're in Abuja for a visa stop, we've bumped into Julian and Peter here, both cycling Africa and waiting on the infamous Angolan tourist visa. They've been round the back of the Sheraton for three weeks now. Julian is heading for South Africa, then is going to head across to South America. Peter is going all the way down the west and up the east coast of Africa back to Poland. Being connoisseurs of the Abuja tourist scene they've proved very useful. They've also proved useful with contact details for a couple of other overlanders that have been through in the last few weeks giving us information on the roads ahead. We now know we have two choices into Cameroon, either a very bad road, or a very bad road - so we'll go for the second option, a route across the border onto Cameroon's 'Ring Road'. The couple that went through before us have cleared fallen trees and confirmed the route is possible. When they asked the chief of a village if many Europeans came that way he said 'Yes, we had two cyclists come through five years ago'.

Cocoa and Mango (but no Bovril!)

2009-03-28T14:36:00.000Z

We've been living the lazy life recently. Five days at Green Turtle Lodge doing pretty much nothing other than eating, sleeping and having dips in the sea to keep cool. Hannah did brave a couple of morning runs, now we're on the coast the temperature is in the low 30's and much more bearable. We had a stroll to the village at the end of the beach one morning, a really lovely walk until we got nearer the village. Rural Ghanaians don't view beaches in quite the same way we do, they put them to a more traditional use - a public toilet. This made the area of the beach nearer the village a bit of a minefield and a pretty smelly one at that. A percentage of the profit from Green Turtle goes into a village fund and turtle conservation in the area. The lodge also employs people from the village keeping relations very good.

Eventually crowbarring ourselves away from Green Turtle we headed for Kakum National Park, one of the few areas of natural forest left in Ghana. There is a canopy walkway there which we thought would be interesting, although it would involve me facing up to my fear of heights! We spent the night in the national park and got up at 5am to do a forest walk, apparently the best time to do it. The walk was pleasant enough, although we got the impression that our guide, Fred, was more used to doing school trips. The canopy walkway was more impressive, particularly in the early morning light with the mist over the trees.

Next stop, Accra, mainly to track down the Nigerian Embassy to sort out our visas. We wandered into one of the western style supermarkets that exist in this part of the world, full of ludicrously priced imported goods. Very excited to see the Bovril we've been craving since our jar from home ran out in Senegal; slightly less excited to realise that the price was over £10 per jar. Decided our cravings weren't quite that extreme. (At least we weren't after Nescafe Gold Blend which was going for £25 a jar - bearing in mind too that Ghana is a coffee-growing country!) Also managed to track down a smoothie bar - asking for directions to the smooTHie bar didn't seem to work, it's smooTie apparently!

We picked up the Nigerian visas, all surprisingly hassle free. Then on to the hills on the outskirts of Accra, to Aburi, a town where the locals go at weekends and holidays to escape the heat. Pulling up outside the botanical gardens, a guy wandered over to the car and pointing at the ground said "Your diesel tank, come and have a look". Sure enough, diesel was pouring out of the bottom of the car - annoying enough anyway, but doubly annoying having just refuelled! I rapidly crawled under the car to try and stem the flow, and eventually managed to track the problem down to pump that transfers fuel from the auxiliary tank to the main tank. After about 20 minutes of battling and some Ghanaian guy saying "God will provide" over and over again we eventually got it back together. The Ghanaian guy then asked for payment for "waiting for us". He didn't get his money and we gave up on the idea of the botanical gardens as I looked and smelt like the diesel equivalent of the swamp monster!

Resuming our mission the next day we had a stroll round the gardens. They were pleasant and diverse, a wide variety of trees and some crazy, and very agile animal that looked like a cross between a squirrel and a chipmunk. Lots of birds and butterflies including a stunning sunbird.

Another interesting stop off was a cocoa farm. Cocoa was imported to Ghana from Fernando Po in 1876 by Tetteh Quarshie. This was the farm he set up, first bearing fruit in 1879 with two of the original plants are still standing today. Ghana first exported cocoa in 1891, Within 20 years it had become the worlds biggest exporter. Today it still stands in second place. Hannah and I both really enjoyed the brief tour, unlike a field in the UK, a cocoa farm has a variety of plants all having a purpose. There was plantain, yams, chillies, vines and avocado all grown together for maximum efficiency and productivity. We picked a ripe pod and opened it up, taking a beans and sucking on the white flesh round them. Surprisingly, it tasted really sweet, a bit like mango. We were then shown how the beans were fermented and dried and given the finished product to taste, the very familiar taste of cocoa, although not as bitter as we'd expected. We then purchased some Ghanaian chocolate at the end - they should stick to growing rather than manufacturing.

The fruit in Ghana has been amazing (except the oranges, they should leave those to Morocco). We have however been having a few issues. A couple of weeks ago Hannah decided she wanted tomatoes, so seeing a road side stall selling them she went to get some. Unfortunately she got more than she bargained for, and ended up with a whole carrier bag full (made even more unfortunate by the fact that I don't even like tomatoes!) The women selling fruit generally don't speak much English, and it seems less hassle to just take what you're given for the sake of a few pence rather than trying to explain you don't want to buy in bulk. I had the same problem with mangoes, we now have 16 to get though. Good value for a pound, but they're all quite ripe and need eating very soon!

The following morning we decided to drive up to "Mountain Paradise Lodge" near Biakpa, attracted by the promise of good food and home roasted local coffee for breakfast. The lodge was in a stunning location overlooking Mount Gemi. An Anglo-Ghanaian couple turned up and showed us the joy of sucking on cashew fruit, yes, there is a fruit as well as a nut. The nut hangs off the bottom of the fruit, it unfortunately can't be eaten without being dried and roasted. The fruit had a strange, sweet flavour, but despite being very juicy it makes your mouth feel extremely dry.

The next morning after our coffee (they should stick to growing rather than manufacturing) we set off for a walk laid out by the lodge through the neighbouring forest. It was a very 'fruitful' walk, lots of avocados, mangoes, cashews, bananas and cocoa, although the real stars of the show were the insects. Countless species all over the place, the most stunning were the butterflies, unfortunately never staying still for long enough to have a good look. The most shocking were the ants, we got out first close up view of one of Africa's most venomous snakes, a green mamba (or maybe a boomslang, we're not experts), it had been killed and was slowing be dissected by an army of red ants. The walk was incredibly steep in places, there had been ropes put in place to help us up and down. It certainly wasn't a gentle stroll and our walking boots had their first proper outing in a while. On our return to the lodge we were approached by a man named 'Believer', he showed me a beautiful bamboo necklace he'd made, I had a look and gave it back to him. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I said I did, but I didn't want to buy it. "I'm not selling it, I'm giving it to you". I felt slightly embarrassed having rejected it initially, but having been approached by several hundred people trying to sell us necklaces over the last few months, the last thing I expected was a gift! So I'm now the proud owner of a bamboo necklace.

Being a world cup qualifying weekend we decided to try and squeeze in some football. With England playing on the Saturday and 'The Black Stars', the Ghanaian team playing on the Sunday we figured we should try to squeeze in both games. The watching of the England game didn't go as we'd hoped. We found a bar but it turned out Togo were playing Cameroon at the same time. As we were virtually on the Togo border, and these borders were drawn up with no correlation to African tribes, there are a lot of tribal links between eastern Ghana and Togo. This was almost their home team, to the extent that the Togo medical staff were all Ghanaian. So we settled down to watch that, a lot of smiles at the end with Togo going against the odds and winning 1-0.

Back to the beach

2009-03-16T10:58:00.000Z

Strangely enough, visa collection went as expected! We then set off to get our Ghana visas. While trying to track down the embassy, we were turning left across a stream of traffic (they drive on the right here) when a couple of girls on a moped decided it would be a sensible idea to overtake us. I jammed on the brakes but it was slightly too late and they clipped the front corner of the car, losing control of the bike and skidding along the road. We were relieved to see both of them get up straight away and hobble over to the side of the road. Fortunately no serious injuries, just a few scrapes and grazes. We whipped out the first aid kit and got to work cleaning them up and dressing their wounds with a huge crowd looking over us - everybody loves "white man's medicine" over here.

One of the key pieces of advice for driving in Africa is that as a foreigner, any road accident you're involved in is your fault, no matter what the situation. As these things can quite easily get out of hand, we decided to play it safe, and offer a bit of cash to get the bike fixed and be on our way. Unfortunately neither of the girls owned the bike, so they wanted to wait for the owner to turn up to discuss what happens next. A guy who spoke a little English got talking to me when he saw me getting out some money to give them, suggesting I gave them half the amount, and offering to argue our case and do all the talking for us for a couple of pounds. Considering the potential sensitivity of the situation and language problems I decided this was a good idea. It was an hour or so before the owner turned up, and our man got to work. 5 minutes later it was all sorted as previously agreed. He then jumped in the car with us to direct us to the embassy which saved us any more stress!

We collected our Ghanaian visas the next morning and headed for the border. We took the road to Leo rather than Po based on Foreign Office advice, and all went smoothly entering Ghana in the early afternoon. Unfortunately Tumu wasn't quite as large as expected. We were in desperate need of fuel as we had been trying not to fill up until we reached Ghana. Diesel is half the price here, about 46p/l instead of the 91p/l we were paying in Burkina. Unfortunately we had no money to buy fuel, and no one wanted to change money for us. We eventually managed to track down a man who was willing to give us an exceptionally bad exchange rate, but we didn't have much choice so had to accept.

Ghana has been quite a dramatic change. With other countries there have been a few changes as we've crossed the border, but with Ghana, virtually everything has changed. Most obviously and noticeably for us, we can now speak English and generally be understood. Although not always, and the problems we still have with communication do make us feel slightly better about struggling so much with French! Secondly, Christianity has struck with a vengeance. Although Burkina Faso was 50% Christian, it wasn't that obvious, but the second we crossed the border the world started to revolve around God. Most amusingly, Ghanaians like to prefix their business name with a religious slogan. We've seen the likes of 'God is in Control Chop Bar', 'If God say Yes Insecticide and Chemical shop' and non religious ones such as 'No Food for Lazy Man Cafe'. The local dialects had subtle changes previously, but this is the first time the word for white man has changed from 'Toubab' to 'Obruni', and it's shouted at us by adults as well as children. The people also look different, wider faces. And despite the women doing most of the carrying in pervious countries they always looked delicately built, where as in Ghana a lot of the women seem quite butch, that combined with the fashion for shaved heads over here I'd say a little scary too! The other major change has been the weather, we've left the 40 degree heat of the semi desert and headed into the proper tropics. The oppressive heat replaced by oppressive humidity. The savannah giving way to our first glimpses of rainforest, although true rainforest is now fairly sparse in Ghana due to logging activity, there were some fairly spectacular sections through the hills near Kumasi. Roads are now lined with divine mangoes, bananas and pineapples; there is now a real abundance of fruit everywhere which our bodies are thanking us for.

The religion thing carries on over to cars, with various psalm numbers plastered on lorries, and phrases like 'Trust in God'. Unfortunately I think a few too many of the drivers have put a little too much trust in God and not enough in their driving skills. The combination of poor drivers, heavier traffic than we've had previously and good roads that enable high speeds has created a lethal cocktail. This is the first country we've hit that seems to have the 'biggest vehicle has right of way' rule on rural roads. Lorries and buses have no qualms about overtaking into oncoming traffic forcing other cars off the road. Bus drivers, carrying large numbers of passengers you would think might have some concern for others and their passengers, but while we'll slow down at the 50kph signs through towns and villages, they'll just swerve round us and career on through at 100+kph. In the last few days we must have seen the results of 15 or more serious accidents, several involving buses. We're just relieved we have our own transport and therefore the ability to drive defensively, rather than put our lives in the hands of someone with no common sense or driving skills. I do wonder why people feel the need to drive so fast on a continent where they're never in a hurry to do anything else.

We decided to head for the coast, so have been following the road south. There were waterfalls on route, and us being us, we decided it'd be rude to not stop by and have a look. The waterfalls weren't quite as expected. Some of the local lads had decided to take down a generator, computer and sound system, so the music was blaring and there was a party in full swing, with kids of all ages prancing and dancing around under the falls. I suppose it was a Saturday, and it's a nicer spot than any of my hang outs as a kid! On top of that we'd also timed the trip to coincide with a school visit, so that swelled the numbers even more.

We wandered down to the falls, had a paddle and took the obligatory photos. Hannah got talking to a kid called Martin, probably in his mid teens. He kept asking for our address and to have his photo taken with us. 'I just want a white friend, I've never had one before' was a line that made us smile. There was a school photographer down by the falls and we went to have our photo taken with Martin, which was fine. Then every other boy in the school decided they wanted their photo with us, so they queued up, and one by one we got through most of the school. The poor photographer had a film camera too, so he's just going to have to get about 30 photos of Hannah and me developed.

We headed off to find a camping spot for the night, a few miles down the road there was a pop, followed by the sound of a rapidly deflating tyre. We stopped the car, and the tyre was completely flat in a matter of seconds. Upon inspection there was a huge hole punched right through the tread. We got to work changing the tyre to the rumbles of an approaching tropical storm. We managed to get the tyre changed and on our way before the rains hit, but we were now running very short of time to find a camping spot, and in the thick forest is was no easy task getting off the road. We eventually gave up and headed for a hotel and a night in a real bed.

The following day we continued south, (in our beautifully clean car, which had mysteriously been washed for us overnight) aiming to hit the coast that afternoon. We stopped at some stalls to get some bread for breakfast. Upon the announcement that we just wanted bread and not fruit the fruit sellers were a little distraught. One woman, Ya, I think her name was, took us to the bread shop. She declared the fact that I was her friend, immediately another fruit seller jumped to the front of the crowd and pointed at Hannah saying 'And you're my friend'. So now the white friends had been declared we could get on with what we were doing. Bread purchased, we were then physically escorted to the fruit stalls, and ordered to buy oranges and 6 pineapples. What on earth we'd do with 6 pineapples I have no idea. We eventually escaped with our lives, one pineapple and a bag of oranges.

After 8 hours of driving we reached the Atlantic and Green Turtle Lodge with plans to settle there for a couple of days. We were approached by a man who announced, “Hello Hannah, hello Will, I’m Ian” which seemed slightly strange given that we hadn’t actually introduced ourselves. After a few seconds Hannah twigged, 'As in Trombone Ian'. Ian was a guy (travelling with his trombone) that had contacted us before our departure as he was leaving at a similar time, and a similar route so we'd be assuming we'd bump into him somewhere. We had a good chat and catch up on the last few months. Exchanging stories of the humour and hassles of African overland travel.

So, I'm sitting writing this at our camping spot under a coconut palm on a beach in Ghana; there are tracks in the sand from turtles laying eggs last night and the sun is battling to break through the moisture laden skies. The equator lies just 500km to the south as the crow flies, but we have to head east for a few thousand km before we can head south again when we reach Cameroon, eventually crossing the Equator in Gabon.

Minding the Elephants

2009-03-10T18:30:00.003Z

The collection of our visas didn't go quite as planned. We turned up at the collection point just after 3pm, as we thought had been requested. I guess there was a misunderstanding as it was closed for the day. With it being a Friday it was therefore closed for the weekend, in an unfortunate twist Monday and Tuesday also happen to be bank holidays. We now had four days to kill, and our original plan was to go to Parc National du W. This is a national park that extends across 3 countries, Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. We believe there is no border control within the park itself, but decided it wasn't worth driving 500km only to be told we couldn't get in without a passport. We decided to travel to the Nazinga Game Reserve within Burkina itself instead.

We drove down to the edge of the reserve setting up camp on the outskirts to give us a full day inside the following day. We were rapidly swamped by tiny annoying flies. Two boys turned up and sprung to the rescue, lighting a fire and throwing on green foliage to create plenty of smoke. This seemed to get rid of most of them. The boys left as the sun set and we settled in for the evening. Now, our evenings in the bush usually follow a familiar pattern of Hannah hearing a noise and saying "what's that?", and the evening went as usual.

"What's that?"
"A donkey"
"What's that?"
"Some people talking"
"What's that?"
"A dog barking"
"What's that?"
"Sounds like someone felling a tree" - I thought this was slightly strange as there had been no saw or axe noise, and it was dark. Thinking it wouldn't worry Hannah I left it at that. (note from Hannah - please don't think I'm actually gullible enough to believe the felling trees line though!)

We sat there in silence as the sound of cracking branches and falling trees grew gradually closer. It was starting to sound within 100m heading straight towards us. Time to admit I was getting a little concerned too. The noise grew closer and closer, now less that 50m away.
"Ok, get in the car" - I've never seen Hannah move so fast. I grabbed the torch and shone it in the direction of the noise and shouted (Bonjour - just in case it spoke French?!). Elephants have very poor vision, especially at night and the last thing I wanted was it walking into our camp and being startled by our presence. There was silence, just the red glow of an eye reflecting the torch light through the trees about 30m away, staring at me. Ten seconds or so passed before the cracking of branches started again, this time moving away from the car. We decided to spend the rest of the evening in the tent!

We entered the park the following morning, initially wondering where all the elephants had gone. We then had our first daylight encounter with a herd crossing the road in front of us. It's moments like this that make you realise how far you've actually driven. From the sub zero temperatures of Europe to the 40 degree heat of North West Africa with elephants in the road. We sat a safe distance while they crossed, they then stopped to feed just over the other side of the road. We crawled along slowly a matter of metres from them. Them watching us, us watching them.

We carried on along the 35km stretch of road to the camp where we would be spending the night with several more encounters on route. We then arrived to a waterhole full of elephants, the adults having a drink and the teens all splashing around and playing in the water. We spent the day crawling along the roads of the park, seeing a few other species, mainly various antelope, although in this kind of heat most animals are in hiding during the day. The wildlife viewing in the woodland isn't nearly as easy as on the open savannah of southern and eastern Africa.

We returned to Ouagadougou the next day, spotting a great looking short cut on the map of the park we thought we'd take that. Several hours later, while following a boy on a bike down footpaths through the wood, squeezing between trees we decided the shortcut wasn't such a great idea. We'll learn one day. We'd picked up the boy in a village we'd stumbled across where the road just seemed to just end, he was a great help in re-finding the road.

So, back in Ouagadougou, another day of rest today before collecting visas tomorrow. There are several things to note about Ouagadougou. The number of things the locals carry on mopeds, and even bikes is incredible. We saw one man carring about 30-40 live chickens, all just tied by their legs hanging off the bike. Huge stacks of wood or hay, piles of goats strapped on. The other amazing thing is these people on bikes, and there are massive numbers of them, cycling round in the middle of the day when the temperature is 40+. Hannah and I struggle to walk from the car to the pool, let along cycle across town, yet there are probably more bikes here than Amsterdam!

Timbuktu to Ouagadougou - what a mouthful!

2009-03-06T20:29:00.009Z

We're in Ouagadougou - where?! The capital of Burkina Faso - where?! Ok, so it's probably not the best known country. Landlocked between the expanse of desert to the north and the coastal countries to the south it's often overlooked. Being resource starved and one of the poorest countries in the world it doesn't pack the punch of many of its neighbours, but we're certainly enjoying it so far. We've timed our visit well. 'Ouaga', as it's affectionately known is the capital of African cinema and the home of Africa's largest film festival taking place this week.

We had another hassle free crossing into Burkina Faso, although it still took 4 hours, partly because there was no border at the border, We had a 50km drive between towns either side. The only indication of us entering Burkina was a slight change in the colour of the road, we then had to register ourselves in the first big town on the other side.

After spending a while feeling lost and confused driving round Ouaga we decided to brave the 'OK Inn', a name we'd been laughing about earlier in the day, but we could easily find it as it was on the GPS. We drove through a slightly dodgy looking lorry park into the immaculately groomed car park of the hotel. Upon entering reception and seeing the rooms costing £50 per night we asked if we could camp. 'Oui', was the response. The car park was better than many camp sites we'd stayed in, so we were happy. We then asked how much expecting it to be pricy. 'Gratuit, free', was the response. So we're now sitting outside by the hotel pool, drinking draft beer and about to order dinner. We even have decent showers and real flushing toilets. (Only had holes in the ground for a while). Probably our best campsite yet, and all for free. Lovin' it!

The evening we arrived in Timbuktu we were introduced to a guide who had taken a Scot under his wing. He was planning to head to Dogon country, and we thought we could save money by teaming up. So we met Caspar, and rejected the guide's extortionate price deciding the three of us should go it alone. We agreed to meet him on the south bank of the ferry two days later.

We had an enjoyable day in Timbuktu. Having beaten off many so called guides, we were eventually landed with two school kids who had the day off and seemed to just want to practice their English. They insisted in guiding us for free, and I couldn't come up with a good way of getting rid of them. We spent most of the day with them, settling down for tea with some Turegs for a while, before buying them a drink at the end of the day to say thanks.

Upon arrival at the ferry there was a car stuck trying to get off - a familiar story by now. Due to the water being so low at this time of year there was a very steep slope to climb, and this fully loaded car was struggling. As we were the only other vehicle around they asked for our assistance. No problem I thought, we'll just winch him up. So out came the winch. Unfortunately his battery was flat so he couldn't assist by driving up the slope, so we were just dragging this vehicle. This proved too much for the winch which broke free from its mountings with a loud bang. We then got out the recovery straps and tried to drag it out, eventually succeeding after about an hour with a round of applause from most of the village. Back to Timbuktu for us to get the winch fixed. Three hours later and £40 poorer we returned to the ferry hoping for a free ride across for the assistance we'd provided earlier. They had different idea, as there were no other cars waiting to cross now they wanted to charge us the cost for the entire ferry, and then double as it was now after 7pm! So after some arguing we got them down to the daytime cost, but they wouldn't go any lower than that.

We spent the night on the south bank of the river with some very loud frogs, waiting for Caspar the following morning. He eventually turned up 4 hours late, African transport, by which time we'd adopted a village load of children. Although entertaining for a while, as the games of catch started to get a bit tired, and yet more children were appearing, the arguing, fighting and tears started. Hannah eventually resorted to showing them photos from home that her parents had given us. This caused much amusement and shut them up for a while.

Due to the later than expected start we camped a hundred or so kilometres from Timbuktu before heading to Dogon Country the next day. We decided to take the short cut, taking the less major, but direct route. Unfortunately one wrong turn and we were 500m up on the cliffs on a 'walking and donkey track'. Our car driving through these Dogon villages far from the tourist area caused much excitement. We had children chasing us the whole way through villages, hanging off the back of the car, lots of shouting and excitement. 8 hours later we still hadn't made it to our destination so we settled down for another night.

We set off early the following morning to find breakfast and guides. The first village we hit there was a woman cooking at the side of the road so we stopped to get some food. She had unfortunately just run out, but as ever, there just so happened to be a 'guide' in the village. Every man in Mali will claim to be a guide, but we sat down for a discussion anyway. Solomon claimed to be the man with the knowledge, but he didn't speak English, so he dragged in his friend Calib, but Calib couldn't speak Dogon so we needed both of them. While discussing the logistics it seemed all they could offer us for breakfast (apart from millet beer, which they gave us at about 8.30am) was chicken, so we agreed to that. A whole chicken eventually turned up, feathers and all. The woman of the house plucked and cooked the bird, serving it up in a big communal bowl that we all dived into with our hands, discarding the bones on the floor. Caspar was the one lucky enough to get the chicken's head. About 4 hours after we originally arrived in the village we eventually left, well fed and with guides in tow.

It became apparent on the way to our first village that the guides didn't know the area at all, when they had to ask directions several times on the way. This carried on for the next few days, with them asking directions and having to employ other guides to show us the way. Still, they were nice guys and we got on well. Did a little walking and lots of sitting around, eating traditional food (always with hands - not easy when it's spaghetti) and drink - we asked for some millet beer, which materialised about 5 hours later - a 5 litre jerry can which kept us busy for the evening. Dogon Country itself is well worth a visit (although perhaps with guides who are able to explain what things are). The Dogon are an ethnic group in this area of Mali who have been sensible enough to choose an area of stunning scenery to make their home. Lots of very attractive villages are dotted around an escarpment which overlooks a vast expanse of savannah. Added to this is the intrigue of the mysterious Tellem people, a pygmy race who apparently inhabited this area in the distant past. Their waist-height houses are built into the cliff, often half way up, which fuels the legend that they could fly.

So, now in Ouagdougou. Put in our applications for the Visa Entente yesterday (Maybe someone should tell the embassies in Bamako it does really exist), which covers several of the West African countries, so hopefully that should be ready to pick up this afternoon. We decided we liked the police in Ouagadougou, after we went to the wrong police station to extend our Burkina Visa/get the Visa Entente, they helped us out by giving us a police escort across town to the right place, allowing us through the roads closed for the Fespaco Film Festival and refusing to take a tip at the end. This all changed however, on return to our hotel, via a roundabout which we've since discovered is a regular trap for European vehicles. We were pulled over for apparently going through a red light. On hindsight, maybe we did, but the lights were of the variety used for pedestrians at home, i.e. tiny and about four feet up a post, off the road and facing in a different direction. Our main issue was that the policeman who pulled us over was on the other side of the roundabout with no view of our lights. So yet again we were defending our case to African policemen. Documents were taken and we were told to come back tomorrow to collect them and pay the fine. Funnily enough, the documents came back to us pronto when we insisted on going to court and the camera came out for us to take phographic evidence of where we were, although we were still told to return tomorrow - a face-saving strategy I feel. Both they, and we knew that we wouldn't turn up - although it did mean we had to find a new, much more convoluted route into town to avoid the roundabout!

The road to Timbuktu

2009-02-24T20:54:00.001Z

Well we made it, to the town renowned for isolation and inaccessibility, Timbuktu! (Also apparently the home of the Mr Men if I remember correctly.)

Time for a brief history lesson - In the early 19th century rumours were rife across Europe about a town of countless wealth on the southern fringes of the Sahara. Roofs tiled with gold and all that stuff. Men had dedicated their lives to finding the mysterious town of Timbuktu and the wealth contained within it. It wasn't until 1829 that Frenchman Rene Caine became the first European to find the town and return alive. What he discovered was a fading town of mud houses which he declared as a disappointment. I don't think it quite lived up to the hype. Unfortunately he was 300-400 years late for Timbuktu's hay day of trading in salt and gold.

Much has changed in the 170 years since then, Timbuktu is, however, still a town struggling for survival on the southern fringes of the Sahara. The difference now being that it's able to survive on the tourism created by the legend that it once was. There is still the occasional Tureg camel caravan coming and going, but it's not a thriving market town anymore.

We left our campement having failed to see any hippos and set a course for Bamako. We were told if we left at 9am we could easily be there by 1pm. I'm guessing the guy that told us that had never driven to Bamako, so with fading light we pulled up on the side of the road and set up camp an hour or so from the city itself. The journey started in an interesting fashion, we got to Mahina and had to cross the river using a shared bridge for trains and cars, the only problem is it's a single track bridge with no road. So with our first experience of driving along a train track we crossed the river. With only 3 trains a week there wasn't too much risk of an oncoming train, our only problem was a stuborn mule refusing to move.

We timed our Bamako visit well with overcast skies and a occasional spot of rain. This kept the temperature in the mid 20's rather than the mid 30's and made it quite comfortable. Our main aim was to sort out a 'Visa Touristique Entente', which is a shared visa for a number of west African countries and also get a visa for Ghana. Having realised the Ghana visa would take several days and we could now get it on the border, and being told the Visa Touristique Entente didn't exist, we realised the visit might not be so worth while.

We moved on to Djenne, home to the largest mud building in the world - a large mosque. A very attractive town. Supposedly, to become a mason in Djenne you have to take an 11 year apprenticeship starting at the age of 7! The visit was enjoyable and we'd timed it well with market day so we stocked up on food while we were there. The children were worse than flies, grabbing us and our clothes, demanding things and just hanging round whole time.

We left Djenne for Timbuktu yesterday, a couple of days drive, camping just after Mopti. The Savannah slowly turned back into desert, camels started to reappear, eventually arriving in the town itself this evening.

Back towards the desert

2009-02-17T15:05:00.000Z

We slowly crawled through Tambacounda's hustle and bustle in search of several things before heading to Parc Niokolo-Koba; fuel, cash, food and an internet cafe. After a bit of searching and a phenomenal number of children asking for 'cadeaux' we had eventually found all four. We ended up spending about an hour in the Total petrol station - friendly staff, and for some reason most of them spoke English which was useful. Once word had spread that we'd just taken on 200 litres of fuel there was much interest shown in the car. We eventually left fuelled, watered, washed and greased - ready for the open road again! There was one especially helpful guy that we tried to give a tip to, and he refused saying it was his job, not something that happens in this part of the world often! He'd said he liked to read, and conveniently Hannah had just finished her book, so we persuaded him to take that instead.

While tracking down food we suddenly heard an English accent saying, "That's a very interesting number plate to turn up in Tambacounda!". A fellow 'Toubab' (white man), Colvin (spelling??) chatted to us for a while, telling us how he'd been working in the area for 5 years on a mission to restore Parc Niokolo-Koba and sort out various other problems. We concluded the conversation on the fact that the park was very run down and not worth us spending the money there when we could save it for better places. It's a shame as this is billed as West Africa's best national park and we were really looking forward to it, unfortunately they forgot to maintain it.

A sudden change of plan and we were now on the road to Mali; one more night of bush camping and we'd cross early the next day. The crossing was extremely straightforward (two easy borders in a row – we could get used to this!), the biggest problem was making sure we’d been to see all the right people and got the right bits of paper stamped as everything was so spread out. We were sent from the Senegalese border to the other side of town to the police station to get our passports stamped. Similar issues on the Malian side. One half-hearted request for a pen, and that was it!

We headed on towards the reported 92km of potholed road to Kayes, so were most surprised to stumble across a Peage for a toll road. I think the guy manning the Peage was a little surprised too as we had to wake him up from his afternoon nap. A bit different to the French autoroutes! Mostly smooth road all the way, the odd section that seemed to have erupted into a craters and mounds. Quite dangerous at high speed, but I'm guessing there is no word for maintenance in the local dialects.

There has been a train line from Dakar to Bamako passing through Kayes for decades, this was seen as the transport infrastructure for the region so good roads weren't required. The new road to Bamako has only seen the light of day in the last few years, road travel to Bamako until that point was considered an expedition and only suitable for 4x4 vehicles - there are however waterfalls and hippos on that route so rather than a one day drive we opted for the 3 day expedition.

First stop was just beyond Medine, the guide book warned of hyena that have been reported to attack humans in this area. Anyone who knows about Hannah's dislike of harmless animals will realise that something like this didn't go down too well. We were safely locked away in the tent just after 7pm, the second the sun went down.

We survived the night without getting eaten and set off on what was certainly an expedition, heading off the 'main' road to the waterfalls, Chutes de Gouina. Over an hour of the toughest driving we've done yet, but well worth it. These are Mali's biggest waterfalls and we had them all to ourselves. We set up camp overlooking the falls and spent the afternoon washing clothes in the river and fishing without success. Fortunately as the sun was sinking over the horizon a fisherman appeared out of nowhere and offered to sell us some fish. We had no change, so with payment of green tea and cigarettes (bought for exactly this purpose!) we had ourselves some food.

Leaving the falls this morning we couldn't find the continuation of the road to rejoin our main route, so we had to backtrack. Unfortunately our 'wardrobe' (i.e. the shelves constructed behind our back seats) didn't agree with one of today’s potholes decided to break loose of its fittings, so that's tomorrow mornings job. We arrived at Bafoulabe having had to pay for the ferry twice due to some confusion and the fact that it operates in a triangle. The other problem with ferries in this part of the world is they know we're not going to spend a day driving back to take a different route, so they're not cheap!

We caused much confusion at the campement by turning up, they seemed quite annoyed to actually have guests, meaning that they might have to do some work. It seemed the trickiest request was asking to see the room. It must have been about 40 minutes before someone was able to show us a room with no light, it had a fan but no electricity and an out of order bathroom. As we have more facilities in our tent we opted for that instead. Unfortunately by the time everything was sorted out the sun had set and we'd missed out hippo viewing window.

Floating along the river

2009-02-13T11:48:00.000Z

It's Friday 13th, and we're sitting somewhere in the bush in eastern Senegal having left The Gambia today. We had a good few days relaxing in Tendaba camp. Went to the national park on the first day. Tried driving around for a bit, but all the road tracks were so badly maintained it was impossible. We eventually recruited Omar in the afternoon, we saw a bit with him. We had however timed it badly and after a short walk we were both well roasted and had to retreat back to the shade. So after meeting Omar's family and a glass of Gambian tea we went back to the camp.

The following day we went for an early morning boat trip, saw some beautiful birds including malachite kingfishers, ospreys, various eagles and plenty more. The original plan was to leave that afternoon, but thoughts of the horrendous road back out changed our mind and we put it off until the following morning.

We set off bright and early to make it to Georgetown (aka Janjangbureh) and beyond. We had heard from Farafenni the road on the North side was much better than the so called road on the south so we opted for the ferry north, as it had been so hassle-free on our journey in. There was a bit of a queue, but it wasn't too long so we decided to wait. It was a baking hot day again, so thought that a nice cold bottle of water from the fridge (yes, we have the luxury of a fridge in the boot!) would go down a treat. Unfortunately the boot had other ideas. Dust from the previous road had caused the release mechanism to seize up on the rear wheel carrier, meaning we couldn't get into the boot. Not only did this prevent us from getting to the fridge, but it also prevented us from getting to the tools to fix the problem! The best bet was to find a mechanic once we'd crossed the river. Just as we were nearing the front of the queue a lorry, loaded with groundnuts, decided that half on, half off the ferry, it was going no further. Crowds gathered, and lots of head scratching followed, including a lot of official (and unofficial) looking people instructing drivers to move their cars in seemingly random places. The incoming tide didn't help matters, and the lorry was soon also sitting in water. After about 3 hours, a German eventually started shouting at people and things started happening. A huge industrial vehicle finally turned up and dragged the lorry back off the ferry.

Once across the river we found a mechanic who had our boot working again in about 15 minutes so we were off. The road was divine! One of the best since Europe. Smooth tarmac, almost no traffic. Just the occasional herd of cows or goats was the only inconvenience. With the sun setting we still hadn't made it to Georgetown, so we pulled off the road and camped.

We had one night in Georgetown, a very friendly place where everyone wanted to talk to us. Half of whom wanted us to buy them a football or sponsor their football team. Had a very relaxing afternoon fishing in the River Gambia from the bank of Solwin camp where we were staying. The manager and friends seemed very interested in getting involved. We went to the rice field behind the camp to dig for worms. Fished together and caught a few catfish and a sardine. We were also fed the most amazing meal that night by the camp. If you're in the area then pay it a visit. It does look like it's only half built. But such friendly staff and amazing food it's worth popping by.

So that brings us back to Senegal, we left Georgetown this morning and had a very smooth trip over the border. We were through in less than 30 minutes without a single request for money! Been a scorching afternoon with the thermometer reading 39 celcius in the shade. A couple of warthogs have just wandered by as we're sitting here in a very peaceful spot just off the road before heading for Tambacounda tomorrow.

Happy Gambia

2009-02-09T11:44:00.000Z

We had a little more coast time in Senegal, and our first dip in what felt like real warm water! We then set course for The Gambia, having heard so many bad things about Gambian borders and police we headed for Farafeni rather than Banjul. Being off the beaten track we figured it'd be less hassle. The usual illegitimate requests for money at the manic Senegalese border. The first place we've had people actually trying to open our car doors to sell us stuff. We then prepared ourselves for a showdown with the Gambians!

Surprisingly, it was totally problem free, the only issue caused by a misunderstanding. No requests for money, no one hassling us or trying to sell anything. We then popped into the market to try to pick up some more sturdy flip flops for Hannah. Again, totally hassle free, not being dragged into shops, people giving realistic prices - were we dreaming??

Next was the ferry, and our first dreaded police stop. Still no problems, he just directed us to where we needed to buy our ferry ticket. The Gambia continued like this, nice people, police who only wanted to ask us how we were and give us directions, and no problems at all! Very pleasantly surprised. The only thing that let the country down was the road, it was absolutely terrible. Considering this was the main and only road through the country we didn't have any options other than to crawl along apologising to the car. The entire surface was cratered with potholes, barely a flat section in sight.

We eventually got to Tendaba Camp, both us and the car breathing a sigh on relief. We enjoyed a couple of beers overlooking the river, watching the sun go down and partaking in a buffet put on by the camp which included 'bush pig' on the menu (aka warthog). And very tasty it was too! A lovely evening.

Birds and salt pans

2009-02-05T11:27:00.000Z

We headed back north again to Park National de Djoudj, a large and spectacular park. Got a guide, who wasn't much use. We did get invited back to his house afterwards though for a bit of food and tea. Was fascinating seeing his mud brick house, only about twice the size of our 2 man tent for a family of 5. No running water or electricity (yet they all seem to have mobile phones - no idea where they charge them!), and the only furniture was a mattress and prayer mat. So, back to the park - We spent the next day without a guide, saw huge flocks of birds. One we couldn't identify that we christened 'Bouncy Birds', as these flocks numbering thousands of individuals seemed to bounce over the terrain. Also took a pirogue (boat) trip. Vast numbers of pelicans all round us, stunning. We also got to see our first dangerous predators, a crocodile and python. Plenty of warthogs around, they were always entertaining to watch.

Headed south again just beyond Dakar ending up in a fishing village called Nianing. We had several attempts at getting assistance finding a camp site, one guy took us to a half built hotel and said we could stay in the grounds for £30! We ended up at Le Girafon (14.34827,-16.93065), not camping, had a little hut instead. Really nice staff and had a fantastic meal, best of the trip so far! Well worth a visit if you're in the area.

Went out for breakfast one morning and asked a guy on the beach if he knew of somewhere. He had a friend with a restaurant (No surprise there!). So we ended up outside someone’s house, there was only one small table so we sat round with the locals. They were very proud of their Cafe Toubab and were quite excited for us to try it. Basically a white coffee with Nescafe and powdered milk - we were very polite. They were also very determined to braid Hannah's hair, said I'd be very proud of my Senegalese wife. Hannah managed to somehow escape with her hair still intact.

We drove further down the coast to some salt pans. In the dry season the locals don't use the roads, they drive over the pans instead as they're far smoother getting an annual resurfacing when the rains fall. We followed suit heading off across the pans. They are really beautiful - a harsh looking landscape with the occasional lagoon or raised section speckled with baobabs and palms. We decided to try to find a nice spot near the coast to camp so followed a little used track eventually hitting a lagoon. For those who don't know, salt pans are a bit like ice, there's a nice hard sun baked surface, under which is a thick sticky mud. Unfortunately the track we were following had clearly been driven by a car weighing less than 3.5 tonnes. We went through the surface and the car rapidly ground to a halt - we were going nowhere with the rear wheel up to the axel in mud. We have had zero experience in vehicle recovery, watched a few videos though! After half an hour or so in the baking afternoon heat we'd used the high lift jack and sand ladders to get ourselves back on the hard surface. Had a peaceful afternoon failing to catch any fish and drinking beer at the edge of the lagoon.

Persistent Policemen

2009-01-31T12:47:00.000Z

We set off early to give ourselves time to get across the Senegal border and to Zebrabar before sunset not realising two things, firstly, how far Diama (the border) was, and secondly, how bad the road would be to get there. On the plus side, the road was through a national park so there was lots to look at, and because it was so bad it was a very quiet border.

No real issues getting to the border other than a policeman taking a shine to our camping chairs and demanding one - fortunately he took a firm 'no' for an answer. We like our chairs! We also had a guy from the national park requesting 20 Euros in park fees. I noticed the sign behind him saying the price was 1000 Ouguiya (just over 3 Euros each), so he didn't persist either.

The police at the border were a different matter altogether. Constant requests for 10 Euros from every policeman we spoke to. Requests for receipts and even names met with a firm "no, we're the police, everyone else has paid". Eventually, threats to phone the embassy to verify the additional charges, and when that wasn't working, getting out the satellite phone seemed to work and we were waved through.

So, Senegal at last, and on to Zebrabar for a few days relaxation. A few more hassle free police stops, one guy just wanted to chat, and we were through St. Louis. Just leaving town we were pulled over. The policeman told us we had to pay a fine as we didn't indicate when he pulled us over. This rapidly changed into a fine for driving too fast as he realised the indicator was still flashing. Much arguing followed -
"How fast were we going?"
"Too fast"
"But what speed?"
"Excessive speed"
"What's excessive speed"
"Too fast"
And on and on and on the conversation went. Anyway, driving license and insurance documents were soon confiscated. He eventually backed down and returned documents when we demanded to go to the police station in town rather than deal with the "infraction" in his little office. I really don't think "Too fast" would have stood up in court anyway.

So after that moderately traumatic day we felt we deserved a few days relaxation. (relaxation for Hannah, checking over the whole car for me).

Nomadic Encounters

2009-01-28T12:44:00.000Z

We headed off down to Dakhla the next morning for one last Tagine before a planned push for the Mauritania border the next day. Another windy night gone by and we set off, the plan was to get close to the border, camp there and the cross over in the morning. While stopped to take the compulsory photo of us by the Tropic of Cancer sign Chris, a Swedish travel writer who was on his own and wanted someone to travel with to help protect from corrupt officials. We decided to travel in convoy with Chris and cross the border that afternoon. We had managed to get tangled up with the Budapest - Bamanko rally, and the border was quite busy. It took us over 4 hours to get across by which time the sun was setting so we headed for Nouadhibou to find somewhere for the night. No wild camping in this part of the world due to land mines! No real problems at the border, plenty of 'Cadeaux' requests but polite refusals seemed to work fine.

We headed on to Nouakchott with Chris passing through some of the most beautifully barren desert we've seen yet. Plenty of camels thrown in to complete the picture. Several police checks and cadeaux requests later we got into Nouakchott but struggled to find a good value place to stay due to the rally, we were really starting to look forward to losing them. They would be heading east from here to Bamanko where as we were going south to Senegal.

We spent a couple of night in Nouakchott, we had a Mali visa to sort out and had a look round the town and the fish market. A friendly city, and judging by the amount of building going on, rapidly expanding. Plenty of livestock in the streets and at least 95% of the vehicles must have been damaged from collisions. We survived 4 taxi journeys with only one knock, thought we were doing pretty well.

We set off again for the Senegal border. We were starting to miss beer and Hannah was looking forward to not having to fully cover up every day, the weather is really starting to get warm now. We took a side road and found a beautiful beach then headed back inland a little for the night. Found a lovely spot in the middle of nowhere, no sign of human habitation anywhere. Just as we were settling down to make tea a voice broke the silence. "Bonjour", Hannah and I, both a little surprised to see another person said hello, and rapidly got invited back to his place which was near by. So with a very bad choice of flip flops as footwear we set off on a 1km trek with spikes impaling Hannah's foot through her flip flops several times. We struggles with the language barrier as usual, Brahim was a nomad who collected resin from trees to sell in the local village. He lived with his friend so the 4 of us settled down to traditional nomads evening. The tea was lovely, the drink made from fermented milk, sugar and water was better than expected, I was concerned I wouldn't be able to swallow it! We then all settled down to a risotto type dish of rice with onion and dried beef. All served on one plate and eaten with hands, was very careful to use right hand only!

He was trying to persuade us to say the night originally, then saying we should stay for a week, but seeing as the language barrier made things quite difficult we decided we should head back to our tent. The sun had set so we were escorted back to our tent with our flip flop prints used for tracking. We offered them some English tea but they politely refused, they seemed to find the fact we put milk in tea mildly amusing. So M&S humbugs and eclairs it was (thanks Edward). They seemed to go down well.

Into the desert

2009-01-23T20:06:00.001Z

We ended up braving the tent as we had to open it anyway to get the sleeping bags out. It was a fairly comfortable night in the end. Unfortunately due to the relentless rain all night long our campsite had turned into a wet, slippery clay pit. Got filthy trying to clear up and put the tent away.

We headed for the coast, ending up in a camp site in Sidi Wassay so we could use and abuse their facilities to wash clothes and ourselves. Spent two days there, met the first other English people we'd seen in Morocco, and had our first real T-Shirt weather of the trip. That lasted one morning until a gale started to blow. We had a relaxing couple of days lazing around, picked and cooked mussels and checked over the car.

On leaving Sidi Wassay we went into the fantastically named Tiznit to refuel ourselves and the car then carried on South having another night of wild camping just south of Sidi Ifni. Got a cracking fire going and settled in for the evening. We then headed on to Fort Bou Jerif. Our first bit of driving that actually required a 4x4. Had a couple of tricky patches but we got through it in the end. Just before we got to Fort Bou Jerif we came across a mass wild camp, stunning location with a crumbling French fort on one side and a picturesque desert river on the other. We went down to Fort Bou Jerif proper and decided we'd rather pay nothing for a better location and went back to join everyone else. That night we managed to bring rain to the Sahara and woke up to a wet and windy morning.

We packed up and headed back in the direction of the coast road taking a slightly different route. The coast road we'd left to go to Fort Bou Jerif had been beautiful tarmac, unfortunately the road we rejoined was most definitely not. It took us about 4.5 hours of tough driving to cover the 50km to Plage Blanche, with the road washed away in places and just disappearing for no obvious reason in others. Upon arrival we found a car park full of motorhomes which cheered us up as we knew there must be a good road back out! The beach was stunning, but the prospect of a night in the tent in a howling gale was not. So after a walk on the beach we headed back inland eventually opting for a hotel in Guelmim, the self declared gateway to the Sahara. Found a busy evening market, so restocked and treated ourselves to a nice meal.

The following morning we wandered off to find a coffee and some bread and got talking to a Mauritanian man, he introduced us to his friend who owned a shop in Camden. He bought European cars, drove them to Mali to sell them on, bought jewellery and flew back to stock his shop. We drank some mint tea with them, chatted and absorbed advice from this seasoned traveller. Upon asking what vehicle we had, when we said a Land Cruiser the response was 'Ahh, a camel' - a reliable desert vehicle. Stanley was starting to feel a little more at home here, there were armies of Land Cruisers all over the place ready for trans Saharan travel.

The next couple of days were mainly long drives, we found some stunning coastal dunes to camp in on our first night just north of Tarfaya. We also managed to run into our first bit of trouble with the Police. We were pulled over to join a French and Spanish vehicle at the side of the road and were told we'd have to pay a 400dh (£33) fine for not stopping at a stop sign. To be fair, they were right... but A. Do you really need a stop sign when you can clearly see down the road you're turning on to? B. Who's stupid idea was it to put a stop sign in the middle of a roundabout in the first place? Still, they had my driving license and we didn't fancy going to court to argue the case, so we just paid up and with the production of an official receipt we were on our way.

We headed into country No.2, Western Sahara, although Morocco seems to think it's actually Morocco now. No border control to worry about, and with people becoming much more scarce the police checkpoints became far more frequent. We're still not sure why we were stopped twice and asked all the same questions within the space of 100m. There seems to be one or more checkpoint at every town in Western Sahara, with a few more in the middle of nowhere thrown in for good measure.

We parked up somewhere in the middle of nowhere today for lunch. Decided it was a nice enough place so upon the decision to stay on for the night we went for a stroll in the direction of the coast. Eventually reaching a deserted beach with an old shipwreck beached on it. Fantastic place! We lazed around and collected firewood to take back to the car. As we were leaving the beach we were fast approached by a Moroccan man. Neither his, nor our French was particularly good, but he kept saying 'post' and pointing. It appeared he wanted us to follow him, so we did, to a little building set back slightly from the beach. Eventually with a very slow conversation using his and our broken French it turned out he'd been posted there by the military. The 'post' was his military post, to keep watch on the coast for people landing in Western Sahara and using it and Morocco as a route into Europe. Apparently there is a military post every 5km down the coast. We're guessing he's not usually very busy as he showed us his impressive collection of flint arrow heads, fossils, and even ancient jewellery he'd found lying round the surrounding area. After the ritual mint tea we headed off to find the car again before sunset.

Mountains and Mud

2009-01-15T22:16:00.000Z

After Chefchaouen we decided to head for the coast, somewhere near Rabat was the plan. Upon arrival we struggled to find any campsites. The only one we knew of for sure was closed down, we were directed to another that was closed eventually stumbling across a patch of overgrown grass round the back of a police station that the guy wanted 100 dirham (£9) for. There was no hot water, showers or toilets to speak of, and his main selling point was the good security next to the police station. So rather than be ripped off we slept in the car in a car park overlooking the sea, a much better option!

We then moved on to Ouzoud the following day to visit the famous waterfalls, we arrived quite late and settled in for the evening with Hannah eating (or trying to at least) the biggest plate of couscous I've ever seen! I had a more moderately sized tagine. The next day we went for a walk to the falls after spending a while trying to shake off guides figuring we didn't need one for a well trodden foot path, we then got lost in a olive forest. It was a lovely place to be lost though. We turned back and took the 'easy route' without a guide instead. We couldn't go too far wrong with that. Stunning waterfalls, and a few more barbary apes (same as the ones in Gibraltar) to complete the African image. Hannah has now decided she doesn't like monkeys after one pulled Michelle's hair in Gibraltar and was a little terrified of them coming too close.

The next plan of action was to head to Essaouria, but having had a long discussion with a Morrocan where we were camping we decided to head to Agadir instead. He was telling us about the amazing and constant winds that blow up the coast. Makes the place a windsurfing Mecca, but we decided probably camping hell in the middle of winter.

We are most of the way to Agadir, unfortunately leaving later than expected, and the journey taking longer than expected we've driven off the road round behind some trees for our first night of wild camping. We have however decided to sleep in the car as we're at 1100m, it's a little windy, very cold and raining! Stunning scenery however.

Into Africa

2009-01-11T22:06:00.000Z

I realised our first evening camping in positive temperatures hasn't gone as planned when the locks on the roof box were frozen the following morning and there were shards of ice falling off the tent. We got up nice and early to soldier on to Granada for another evenings camping, not realised that the city itself is at 800m altitude, so the camping rapidly turned into a night in a hotel. The brake lights on the car decided to play up again, so after several hours of fiddling I'd managed to isolate the problem and disconnect the faulty wire so it could be looked at when we had a little more time. We were better off driving with 3 brake lights than none.

Due to the delay we didn't arrive in Granada until the sun was setting. We carried on with our Spanish ritual of driving round cities realising we can't park anywhere. We then headed to the outskirts of town to find a hotel with available parking. A pleasant evening in Granada, if a little cold, followed by a shockingly bad meal.

Up again early the next morning to race down to Gibraltar for yet another attempt to beat the cold. Had a picnic in the Costa Del Sol just outside of Marbella. Not the nicest part of the world, lots of English cars too. We eventually arrived in Gibraltar in luke warm sunshine and were treated like royalty by JP and Michelle for the next few days. Got a fantastic tour of 'The Rock', loved the views and the apes. We also had great food to fuel us up before the push into Africa. It was quite surreal being able to see Africa over the water. We think of it as being so far away from the UK, yet there it was, the towering Rif mountains on the horizon just a 35 minute ferry ride away. Break light fixed, the car fuelled, watered and checked over we were ready for the push into Morocco.

We got up bright and early the following day to jump on the ferry to Ceuta, a Spanish territory on the North coast of Africa. We left the sun of Southern Europe to arrive in overcast skies and the first rain of our trip. Not the Africa we were expecting. It's amazing how much more lush and green the North Coast of Africa is compared to Southern Spain considering they're just a matter of miles apart. Upon getting off the ferry we followed signs to Morocco reaching the border a few minutes later. No problems at the border, just looked in the boot and didn't want to dig any deeper.

Having been running from the cold for several weeks, we decided to prolong the suffering by heading for Chefchaouen in the mountains. A beautiful little town, very picturesque. We tucked into our first tagine and mint tea, slightly frustrated that Spanish seemed to be the spoken language rather than French - and our Spanish leaves more than a little to be desired!