No Work in 2007 (ish)

Fresh tracks at 5500m

2008-04-28T17:01:00.021+01:00

So we finally decided we were ready for a bit of treking. But with a difference, 3 days of treking, three different activities...

So the first day we were driven to 4400m. And then we went rock climbing. I haven't been rock climbing outdoors for years, and Vicky has never been.

We were climbing on granite slabs at about 80degrees. The best part of that is that it's all about footwork, the granite slab is a...well a slab, so no cracks or big hand holds. Consequently our unfit for climbing arms didn't get too tired. The worst part is, it's all about footwork. You just have to use your rock boots to smear your way up standing on slightly rougher bits of rock rather than footholds. I frightens the life out of me. I still find rock climbing fun, but I'm unsure why, I spend the whole time shaking with fear.

PHIL AT THE 'WHY AM I HERE?' POINT.

VICKY GETTING OFF THE GROUND

SMEARING HER WAY UP.

Anyway, we both got to the top of the first climb. I got about three quaters of the way up the second. Vicky made it all the way to the top, though I'm claiming the moral victory because I had to give her a boost to get past the first move and she stood on one of the protection bolts to get past a tricky section higher up. As Vicky points out though, we're not climbers, so screw the whole purist not using the bolts to help you point of view. She got to the top and I didn't.

DOES MY BUM LOOK BIG IF I DO THIS?

VICKY AT THE TOP!

That night we slept in the climbing hut. Or at least I did, Vicky just stayed awake listening to the guides snore, talk in their sleep and one unknown person fart loudly in their sleep. The next morning we were supposed to get up for breakfast at 8 and be walking by 9. We got up at 9, had breakfast at 10 and started walking at 11,30. Perfect morning really.

So 3 hours of walking later we were at 4950m. Went to sleep, woke up at 5pm, had soup, went to sleep, woke up at 6pm had spagetti, went back to sleep, woke up at 2,30am ready to climb a mountain. Vicky on the otherhand, stayed awake, had soup, stayed awake, had spagetti, failed to sleep and spent the night listening to fresh snow falling.

We set off at about 3am in 6 inches of fresh powder snow. It made the going much slower and harder, and the weather hadn't changed, there was still zero visibility. But we put on cramons and roped up and set off onto the glacier anyway.

THE ROUTE UP, COOL EH?

By 9, 30 we'd made it to 5500m. The top was still two and a half hours away over steep, cravassed, deep snow. We had a chat and decided that although we could almost see the top, there would be no view. We decided we were far to lazy to drag ourselves any further up and would rather go down.

This was the point where carrying our snowboards uphill for six and a half hours became worthwhile. 6 inches of fresh powder all the way back down to camp, and probably the most hardcore snowboarding photo's we'll ever take. Check out the cravasse behind Vicky and the snowboard tracks rolling out over a snowbridge. Fantastic fun.

VICKY BRIEFLY SCARES US ON THE FIRST RUN BY TURNING TOWARDS THE CREVASSE.

SECOND SECTION WITH THE TOP IN THE BACKGROUND.

VICKT PASSING BY A CREVASSE.

SMOOTH POWDER RUN DOWN...

AND DOWN...

AND DOWN...

AND ON DOWN...

Sandboarding is a very messy sport!

2008-04-21T21:47:00.011+01:00

After Cuzco we set off to Huachina which is a little oasis resort in the middle of massive sand dunes. We'd booked into a nice hotel with a pool and spent a relaxing few days soaking up the sun, swimming and sandboarding.

It was the first time either of us had been amongst sand dunes and we were both struck by just how huge they were. Even after we'd been there a day, the sight of these sand mountains looming above us struck us as such an unusual view.

The day we spent sandboarding was excellent! First of all we were strapped into a sand buggy which sped up, down, across, over and around the sand dunes. After the first few seconds of the journey we all quickly got a better understanding of just how fast and bumpy the ride was going to be so we all took off our hats and reached for our seatbelts to tighten them up that little bit more!

Our driver clearly took a great delight from throwing his passengers around in the back. I suspected he was slightly crazy as he always seemed to be the only driver who attempted the really steep dunes either with or without us. It was like been on a massive roller coaster and as anyone who has ever been on a rolller coaster with me could confirm, I scream like a baby. Pretty much the whole way round but particuarly when we went over a blind summit. Even when I knew we were approaching a scary bit and I told myself I wouldn't scream I still did much to Phil's amusement and my shame!

The buggy took us to the top of a steep sand dune where we then waxed our boards and boarded our way down the hill. As we've done quite a bit of snow boarding we were curious to see how it compared. Well, it was certainly a lot messier! Sand got absolutely everywhere (particuarly as i'd only just applied sun cream) although landings were a lot softer. It was very good fun but as the board tended to dig itself into the sand we weren't really going anywhere fast and it was pretty difficult to turn. So, we sat on the board and used it as a sledge instead.

I had been given the wax at one point to look after for the group in case it needed reapplying after the first slope. On approaching the second slope and left to myself I absolutely plastered my board with wax. I then intended to board over to one of the other chaps who wanted some wax. However, the wax made me go a bit faster than planned and I flew past the rest of the group trying to slow myself down with my feet but actually only ensuring I created a massive sand cloud that blew back in my face. Looked most amusing according to Phil.

The last run was the steepest and Phil and I decided to have a race. The guides convinced us that rather than sitting on the board it was better to lie on it on your belly head first. So we gave it a go. They were right, it was a lot faster and so hysterical! Phil won the race but only because my board was going so fast I kept skidding sideways (got some nice friction burns on my arms as a result!).

The dune we went down on our bellies.

Needless to say, by the end of the day we were completely coated with sand but grinning as much as our crazy buggy driver (I screamed from the buggy ride on the way home too.....).

Macchu Pichu

2008-04-21T19:55:00.012+01:00

Eating guinea pigs wasn't the only purpose of us being in Cuzco. The city was the centre of the Inca empire in the 15th/16th century and so had lots of Inca ruins. The main one being Macchu Pichu or more dramatically known as 'The Lost City of the Sun'.

We had planned several ways of getting to Macchu Pichu but each attempt was folied by bad bellies and a need to be near the loo (the guinea pig was chuckling somewhere). After three days of delays we decided to take the easy option and join the herds of tourists on the train to Aguas Calientas which is the town next to Macchu Pichu (or mucho poopoo as we now called it).

Rather than rush up the hill to see the ruins we stayed the night in the town so that we could get up and be at MP for sunrise. Spent the day chilling and swimming in the natural hot springs which gave the town its name.

Next morning, very early, we got the bus up to the site and were rewarded with a perfectly clear sky and barely any other people. It gets notoriously packed with people up there and most of the time the site is covered in cloud so we considered ourselves to be very lucky. We had an explore around then made our way up the steep path to the summit of Waynu Picchu which is the moutain overlooking the site. Brill views.

The site is very impressive due to it's location and how well the buildings are preserved. Gives you a real feel for how the Incas worked, played and worshipped. Even Phil agreed it was more than a pile of stones. By 10 am the place was rammed which was actually quite helpful as you could stand behind tour groups and listen to their guide giving information for free. The temple was the most interesting part as it was designed to let the sunlight in at certain times of the day and year. In truth though, not much is known about the site. Some theorists believe that it was built following the Spanish invasion to hide up high and preserve the Inca ways. Others think the city had been abandoned long before then. Either way a remarkable site to explore.

cusco

2008-04-12T02:06:00.007+01:00

THE PHOTO's AND YOUR KIDS MAY NOT GET ALONG, READ FIRST.

We've made it as far as Cusco.

Far nicer town than expected; cobbled streets, nice cafe's and demonstrations in the street to entertain you.

The demonstration was somthing to do with coco leaves, couldn't work out what. But it was fun to watch the riot police get confused. They all stood at the foot of the stairs, and all the demonstrators walked up in front of them and stopped. Then lots more demonstrators walked up behind them, so they ran off and put their backs to the wall. We also saw a street carnival, but we didn't have the camera with us, so no photo's for the blog.

But the main story of Cusco revolves around eating and drinking. It was our third anniversary on the 9th, So we went out drinking. Judging by our inability to walk home, strong cocktails and altitude are a dangerous mix,

Tradition has it that on a third wedding anniversary you should give something made of leather, or crystal depending on which website you believe. But we didn't really need anything, so we went out guinea pig eating instead..

It's a local delicacy here, and I can tell you, we both agree the tail is the best bit. Actually the photo is the best bit. The worst bit is the 3 days of running to the loo that Vicky endured.

She's better now so we have tickets for Machu Pichu tomorrow.

Slow boat on Lake Titicaca

2008-04-08T22:44:00.008+01:00

Lake Titicaca is 3800m up. It´s impossible to breathe normally there. If you walk up the street you´re out of breath, and even sitting around in the hotel you occasionally end up taking a big breath to recover from all that sitting. But it is a very pretty place. For all but 2 months of the year you get blue skies and little wind. So we decided to get a nice hotel room there and chill out for a few days.

We also went to visit the Isla del Sol where the Inca´s believe(d) that the sun was born. We weren´t convinced of that, but as we both got sunburnt for the first time since kilimanjaro, perhaps the gods are real and er... mildly vengeful on those that don´t believe. Probably not though, if the inca gods are real surely they would have stopped them calling the town "booby poo poo"? (Best name we´ve seen, except for the breakfast cerial here called Fanny, which promises 100% fruity flavour)

Anyway the isla was nice, we got dropped off by the boat at one end and walked down the island to get picked up at the other. The whole day would have been fantastic, except for the boat. It achieved walking pace, sometimes.... The rest of the time is could only manage "so infuriatingly slow you want to swin home" 2 hours eachway for a trip that would take 25mins if you had a slow, underpowered, overloaded, jetski. Actually I wish they had jetski´s, that would have been much more fun.

'traditional boat', exists now only to entertain tourists.

To to sort out our miseries, we went out for dinner, nacho´s, curry and 4 beers each left us happy and drunk. Really can´t drink anymore, especially at altitude, had a hangover and everything from roughly 3.5 pints.

Still having learned our lesson, we´re off to Cusco to celebrate our wedding anniversary and do ourselves some damage.....

Mountain Biking in La Paz

2008-04-02T16:53:00.034+01:00

So, we eventually left Bariloche and worked our way up to La Paz in Bolivia. It took three days and two nights worth of travel with a stop over in Santiago, capital of Chile, (for sushi, a posh hotel and drinks) and Arica, beach resort at the border with Peru, (for a walk on the beach). A lot of miles but softies that we´ve now become we´d taken the premium option on the coaches which meant the standard of travel was similar to going first class on an aeroplane so wasn´t all that bad.

Bolivia is very different to Argentina and Chile. In Argentina it didn´t always feel like we had left Europe. Bolivia is a different world. The people nolonger look European, they are a lot darker and many wear traditional clothes. The women in particular wear brilliant outfits consisting of an ill fitting bowler hat and wide, calf length skirts padded out with multicoloured petticoats. Back to people watching territory!

La Paz (the administrative capital) was our first destination in Bolivia. It sits in the mountains at 3500m so the surrounding scenery is spectacular. We´d travelled from sea level to La Paz so we really felt the altitude on arrival.

We soon forgot this though once we´d spoken to a few tour operators and realised that La Paz is a downhill mountain biking heaven! So, we hired two good full suspension bikes and a guide and set off into the mountains surrounding La Paz.

The tour company´s driver took us and our bikes to a mountain top and all we needed to do was ride down 800m of single track downhill. We´d previously been warned that it would be a technical route. It was sooo brilliant! It took us a little while to get used to the bikes and biking on such dry, sandy terrain but once nerves had settled (mine more than Phil´s in fairness) we were loving it. It took about an hour to get down and we swooped over (not always in great style - I took five falls!) boulders, drops ( some very steep and fast), and jumps.

It was perfect terrain for me, highly challenging and a real adrenalin rush but steep sections were followed by flatish sections so I was able to catch my breath to prepare for the next section. Phil had a blast too.

US AT THE BEGINNING

THE VIEW BACK DOWN TO LA PAZ

RIDING THE TRAILS

THE HEADLESS IRON HORSEMAN

That section completed we got back in the car to head off for the next track. Unfortunately on the climb up the mountain the car got very ill and was unable to take us to our destination. So, as we were pretty high up the mountain we unloaded the bikes, left the car to free wheel back down to the nearest village and we set off discovering a new off road bike route down the side of the mountain.

The first part of that descent involved biking over very steep and technical moutain ridges with drops either side. Despite our guide giving us his full face helmet (it quickly became apparent this was necessay for me) I soon decide that section was way out of my league and pushed the bike down the tough bits. Phil loved the challenge and had great fun riding them.

Once the tricky bits were over we biked down some nice terrain to meet the car. Car still very poorly so we biked down through the villages to meet another pick up. Excitable dogs made that part highly technical!

DEATH ROAD

The next day´s biking was a 3500m descent along the infamous ´Death Road´ aptly named due to the amount of buses, trucks and occasional cyclists that have plummeted off the sides. We decided to give it the respect it deserved and take the day seriously.

THAT WOULD BE VICKY HITTING PHIL OVER THE HEAD WITH BANANA PEEL!

This route is highly popular to tourists and masses of us mountain bike it every day. It´s actually a pretty easy ride as the first 32km is on tar mac on nice wide roads and traffic no longer travels on the second 30km section which is the rougher road with sheer drops.

The first half of the route was downhill over tarmac road. You could get some speed up on this as you could see for miles down the road and consequently any oncoming traffic. Whizzing down this part was fun and the scenery was very dramatic.

EVERYONE AT THE START

PICS OF US

The second part of the ride was more fun though. The tarmac and wide roads ended to be replaced by a narrow stony track which curled its way around the mountain. The mountains are in a rainforest so the scenery was stunning. It had rained the night before so there were waterfalls all over the place including over the road in some places. Most of the time there was a sheer drop on the left side of the road and the guides always pointed out where trucks, buses or bikes had toppled over the side! Unless you did something incredibly stupid there wasn’t much risk of going over the edge. Really, it was a very fun ride swooping around corners amongst such dramatic scenery.

The day ended having a swim and lunch at a nice hotel in the rainforest – perfect.

Steep steeper then steeper still!

The next day we went out to do the singletrack route we were supposed to do before the car broke. We started at around 4000m and needed to descend about 1000m to our destination.

START OF THE DAY WITH A 6700m MOUNTAIN BEHINDIt started out pretty steep but after I learnt to use the brakes properly (!) it became easier. The second section was the rough and rocky kind of route we were used to from the UK. Feeling more confident with the terrain we had a fun hour blasting down this section. The route then opened up into smooth but very narrow single track over a not too steep gradient. This was a very dramatic section as there was a sheer drop to the side of us. I’ve never concentrated on not looking down so much in my life!

SCENERY WAS JUST TERRIBLE, BRING BACK THE MUD COVERED PINE FORRESTS OF THE UK The last section was far too steep really with tight bends. No room for the feck up fairy taking over given the drops if you got it wrong. As it kept getting steeper I got off and pushed – way

out of my league.

SPOT THE TRAIL THAT WE RODE DOWN THE FINAL RIDGE

Another excellent day of biking!

Kite Surfing

2008-03-28T20:22:00.010Z

(Welcome to Bariloche, heart of the Argentine Lake District.

Reputedly, the home of awesome mountain biking and some amazing walking among the high Andean passes.

Truthfully, home of a lot of mountain bike shops who will tell you you cant ride off road and tourist information centres that tell you not to ride on the road cos it is just too dangerous. And home of some amazing walking, and you can use the ski lift to get to the top of the first day. And the sunsets aren´t bad

So, what to do....hmmm....

Well we checked into a guesthouse, really nice place, owned by an 86 year old who told us all about all the places we could go and gave us maps, whether we wanted them or not. Sweet old lady. met a nice couple called Chad and Danna in the hostel, who recommended Kite Boarding on the lake. real possibility there...

The land lady quickly turned insane. By the third day she had told everyone off because she couldn´t find one of the 4 cups. Chad was told off for using the heater in his room. Canadian bloke was told to leave the kitchen because he was only camping and had no right to use the cups.

On the 4th day, we were told we had to leave. We said we were staying for a week as planned, she said she didn´t know that and we had to leave. After some discussion we were given a reprieve until the 6th day. Though I was severely reprimanded for fixing the toilet. She asked why I had loosened the cistern cover. I said that the toilet had been continually flushing, so I´d fixed it. She told me no I hadn´t because it was fixed before I came, and not to do it again.

On the 5th day the Canadian was told he had to wait to use the shower until everyone who wasn´t camping was finished in there first. He was also ejected from the kitchen for using a cup again.

On the 5th day, I broke a glass. It was quickly hidden in a cardboard box, in a bag, in a box, in the bin. Nobody said a word, but there were days of questions over that glass. I also slammed the bathroom door, cos it needed it to shut it properly. The old lady was quickly braying on our door asking what was going on. She also took our wet clothes (been swimming in the lake) out of a bag we left on the floor and hung them on the line. She carefully returned them all dried out that night. She returned them to Donna mind you, but you´ve got to love a tryer. And trust me, she was trying.

On the 6th day we left, crossed her garden and moven into her sons hostel. Sadly 2 days later they had no space so we had to move back for 2 days. I booked in with the old woman and this time was given a key for the front door with the words... ´We´re locking the front door now, because the Canadian boy is not right in the head!´ I took the keys and ran, hoping to avoid her for 2 days. 20mins later she tracked down Chad and yelled at him because I had lied and was only staying for one night. This was news to both Chad and me. Another 20mins and she found me, demanded that I pay for 2 mights now, ´because you are a liar, I don´t trust anybody now.´

I was so glad to leave there.

Anyway, activities in Bariloche...

First we found a place that rented a tandem mountain bike. If you can´t ride off road, you might as well have a tandem. To we spent a day touring the local lakes and concluding that the roads are not dangerous, the tourist office have clearly never visited the UK and consequently have no idea what a busy dangerous road is. Top day, idiot tourist office.

Then we tried walking. We got the ski lift to the top of the mountain, walked around for 10 minutes and then concluded that we really weren´t ready for another multi day trek. Especially if we could just get the bus to the bottom each day and ride a ski lift up to get the view. It takes all the majesty out of it.

So Kite boarding had to be the solution then...

I have a 2.5sqm drag kite at home. In a decent wind, it can take me off my feet. So they gave me a 16sqm kite. I loved it. It´s really easy to control because its so slow. Right up to the point where you lose control. It then drags you three feet out of the water and after a brief ´superman´it deposits you head first back in the water. Having supermanned a few times the instructor told me to stop letting go of the kite. This was curious to me as the kite was totally out of control and was throwing me 20 feet at a time. But the instructor resolutely advised that so long as I wasn´t going to land on land, I should just hold on and the kite would eventually settle down.

This led to what I will term the inverse enema...

Kite takes off,

Phil takes off,

20 feet of superman style travel,

head first dive into the water,

3 foot drag through the water,

Inhale roughly 3 feet of water,

resurface, cough,

kite takes off....

you get the picture I guess.

Anyway the kite does eventually settle down and you can try to get up on a board again. Kites are a genious invention. As soon as I get too frightened to mountain bike, I´m buying a kite.

Vicky was having a whale of a time with the kite. The first day there were some nerves, Second day she almost enjoyed, third day you couldn´t get her out of the water and she even got stood up briefly.

Torres Del Paine

2008-03-10T17:05:00.004Z

Torres Del Paine.

Back when we planned this trip, the Torres Del Paine area was high on our list of must do’s. It was expected to be THE hiking trip that we did. 8 days of trekking to complete the circuit .(I –Vicky- had thought that before attempting this circuit we should build up to it gradually by going on two day hikes in the Patagonian Lake District…..)

Funny how things change…

First day we headed off to see the Torres Del Paine themselves. After a bus trip and three hours of walking up the valley (into a very strong wind and rain at one point) we got to camp for the night. We bedded down early in anticipation of the 5:30 am alarm call. All set, backpacks packed, ready to get up in time to see sunrise hit the towers from the viewpoint 40 minutes walk above us.

The alarm went off. We went back to sleep. After surfacing again at about 12, we had lunch and walked up to see the towers, very impressive. We were planning on heading on up to valle silencio higher up afterwards. But as you have to pass the tent again to get there, we found ourselves having a cuppa instead. We were beginning to wonder if we a bit tired of walking everywhere.

Next day with a determined effort we made it up for sunrise. Was worth it. The Towers turned a lovely pink and orange colour whilst we tucked into our home made porridge. In the afternoon we went up in to Valle Silencio. Very pretty and hardly any other people on the trail which is unusual for this mountain range.

The day after, after not much discussion at all, we decided to shorten the trek by following the southern W route rather than the longer full circuit. Think our bodies had started to have enough trekking by then and wanted an easier time of it. We headed back down the valley and turned right instead of left and arrived 4 hours later at a refugio where we could get hot showers and sit inside to play cards.

Fitz Roy and Torres national parks have approached things very differently. In Fitz Roy there are no facilities except some long drop toilets, no Refuges, little public transport and plenty of wilderness. None of the authorities in Fitz Roy ask you to report in or leave details of where you intend to trek. Torres provide maintained camping grounds with decent sit down loo’s, refuges that would be better named hotels and enough public transport to allow you to access the southern side of the circuit in a series of day trips if you wish. In other words, trekking in Torres is very easy. This is no bad thing but it does make it a very different experience.

Then the following morning we walked in to the next (French) valley for some more amazing views and a worrying few hours when we couldn’t find the camera. Turned up where we had left it, but it took us an extra 3 hours of walking up and down a steep hill to find it.

Next day we went to the viewpoint overlooking Glacier Grey and then caught the catamaran and then the bus home.

Torres was beautiful, but we were both ready for a change from walking and it lacked something after Fitz Roy. The mountains are still wonderful, but they lost something important as they gained civilization, the sense of awe and achievement in visiting them is diminished. It’s a bit like going to Keswick in the lakes on a summer bank holiday weekend. The mountains are still amazing, but you know they’d be better in midweek when you can find a trail that doesn’t have too many people instead of tripping over people who are usually heading for a tea shop with a baby in a pushchair.

Once back in Puerto Natales (nearest town to Torres), I (Vicky) managed to catch some stomach bug and spent most of the night in the bathroom throwing up which was unfortunate given that we had a 33 hour bus ride to Puerto Montt in Chile the next day. Still, we had paid extra for some luxury seating on the coach which pretty much turned your chair into a bed and with such comfort the journey passed surprisingly fast. That was until we realized that our coach was taking us past Bariloche (Argentinian Lake District) which was our ultimate destination. We weren’t however able to get off the bus in Bariloche and had to travel a further 5 hours up the road. We then had to travel back the same 5 hour journey to return to Bariloche. Grrrr…..

9 days, 4 border controls, 5 rivers waded, one glacier crossed, one ankle sprained and one bruised knee otherwise it was lovely.

2008-03-06T20:29:00.011Z

LAGO DEL DESIERTO

At some point Vicky noticed that you could go up to a place called lago del Desierto she also said you could have a walk to the lakes in Chile. It’s supposed to be beautiful and as very few tourists go there, rather untouched. Sounded good to me, so I had a closer look at the map. It turns out you could indeed cross the border there into Chile. And with a bit of work you can walk to Chile’s national park O;Higgins. Of course to get there and back you have to walk for a few days, wade through 5 or six rivers and cross a glacier. I was hooked! Vicky on the other hand, was not sleeping on account of getting dreams about dying in a crevasse on said glacier. After three days of worry she decreed that she wasn’t going.

I was gutted.

I even went for a run up a hill for an hour… I do not run! I definitely do not run up hills!

After a further 2 days Vicky decided that watching me be miserable was worse than dying in a crevasse. So the big trip of lunacy was back on.

So we went and bought ice axes, crampons, rope, ice screws, karibiners and enough food for a 10 day trip. Oh, and we worried my parents a bit I think. Being sensible we left a message saying where we were going, and a contact of a company that would be prepared so send some people looking for us if we didn’t come back on time. It was sensible, in the end we didn’t see anyone for 7 days. So a broken leg would have been a real problem, but I guess my parents may have worried a bit. (Sorry)

Anyway, I was happy. Vicky was not, we were still packing and sorting things out at 2am. Which, is officially well past her bedtime unless she’s drunk, and she wasn’t. She was stone cold sober, tired and worried about snuffing it in a crevasse.

So day 1 and we got a transfer to Lago Del Desierto and then the police launch took us across to the northern end of the lake. They stamped our passports to let us exit Argentina and then pointed 15km further north on the map, to where the Chilean Carabineros would happily stamp our passports to enter Chile. This was something of a blow, because we were supposed to be going about 8km west that day, not 15km North. Why the hell would you put 15km between border posts? A gate and 200m seems to be more normal.

So laden with very heavy bags we set off for the Caribineros. 6 hours later we arrived. They were very helpful. They took a record of where we intended to go and when we were due back. They asked sensible questions….

Have you got a first aid kit? - Er… Gaffa tape, a big dressing, Anadin, blister patches and some insect repellant.
What will you do if you break a leg? - hop

They seemed less than impressed with these answers. They told us to take their radio frequency and try to call in occasionally to let them know we were ok. This led to …
Have you got a radio? - No

So they suggested that we call in at one or two of the estancias who do have radio’s.

It’s probably worth noting at this point that there are 3 Estancias in the area we were headed for, each of which has one small wooden hut, at least one resident (sometimes 2) and about 100 square miles of empty land. Part of our route required crossing back across the lake with the aid of a boat from one of the Estancias. We did ask the Caribineros if the estancia had a boat. ‘They said yes, no problem, you can cross every day’.

Anyway, we agreed to radio in from the Estancias. This made the border official happy and happy border officials are good for being able to continue your trip.

However, we didn’t have any Chilean pesos with which to pay the Estancias for the use of their lands, or radios. So we lied about where we were going and headed off in the other direction with no intention of radio contact.

We had to cover another 4km in order to reach a suitable campsite. So we headed off on our first trail marked in dotted lines instead of nice, regularly used paths marked in solid red. We followed what looked like a path and after about an hour it took us to an open grass area and a disused half broken wood hut. Nice place to camp, First day done, excellent day.

It snowed overnight. I failed to get out of bed until 11. So at about 12 we set off following the same path like thing, but this time it rapidly turned into something that looked nothing like a path. It did look a lot like a hillside covered in trees and deep shrubs with snow and bogs. 4 hours later we fought our way into the valley we wanted and were rewarded with some open ground and a river to wade.

FIRST VIEW OF THE VALLEY

Thankfully the river was only a foot or so deep, so out came the flip flops and across we went. We spent another 2 hours heading up the valley into strong winds and found some sheltered flat land to camp on the pass just before the valley heads down the other side.

On the third day we got down into the next valley and got the first view of the glacier.

FIRST VIEW OF GLACIER CHICO. (our route runs left to right just above the rock buttress you can see on the right of the glacier.)

It didn’t look that far away. After 4 more hours of walking it still looked just as far away as it had at the start. That had a fair amount to do with the fact that it was a long way away, but far more to do with the fact that we couldn’t find a path and so had to kick through shrubs again. But we got to a really nice field to camp in with a view back over the lake at the end of the day. There was also a stream nearby to take a bathe in and the sun was out to warm us back up afterwards. REALLY NICE CAMP

Fourth day and we set off for the glacier again. Thanks to more path absences we managed to move about 5km in around 5 hours. We were knackered, but we found a path at a river crossing at the right altitude and so figured we were only about half an hour from a campsite. So happy in the knowledge that we were nearly home for the night we headed off for camp. Vicky promptly slipped on a marshy bit of land and sprained her ankle…

There were a few very worrying minutes, but after a bit she found she could walk well enough to hobble to camp. (Along the way was another river to cross. Unable to hop across, Phil threw some big rocks into said river so that I could work my way over. The ‘Patagonian Man’ was emerging – Vicky.) The camp was terrible, infested with tiny biting flies and 20 minutes walk from the nearest water. Still, it did for the night.
WORRYING TIMES<>

So day 5 started with us heading off towards the glacier (again) this time a little worried about Vicky’s ankle. We immediately lost any trace of a path and after 3 hours of kicking our way up steep slopes through shrubbery and trees it was clear that Vicky’s ankle had been thoroughly tested and it was ok. Her ankle was weaker, but wasn’t hurting too much and she could hike no problem. One worry off the list. We had lunch on top of the mountain at viewpoint Agostini and then headed down to our next river crossing. It took me 45 minutes to find a place I was happy to cross the torrent of water that was tumbling down the hill at about 45 degrees. We were close to having to turn back and even when we did cross, it was on ropes, just in case.

IS MY WIFE AMAZING OR WHAT? (mind you I did have to say smile for the camera to get the second photo)

We got to the glacier fairly easily about 2 hours after that.

GLACIER DAY!
I was so worried that after all the hard work getting there, the wind would pick up again and it’d be too dangerous to cross. But thankfully we had a calm overcast morning and so we headed off onto the glacier. The crevasses were big but safe enough and crossable. The centre of the glacier was even easier and thankfully, getting off at the far side was ok too. We used the ice axes to make life easier and safer a few times, but it would have been enough just to have crampons. It took us 3 hours to cross.

START MIDDLE AND CLOSE TO THE END OF THE GLACIER CROSSING.

The map indicated that we just drop down the first valley on the far side of the glacier. Nope, that would be a cliff face. Try valley 2…nope cliff face…head for valley 3. Big fat gorge 50 meters deep. Ok head uphill till you get to the top of the gorge. It was about 2km and 300m higher up, but we finally got ourselves above a big waterfall to where the river wasn’t in a gorge and could be crossed.

Up until now we’d crossed rivers in perfect, warm sunshine. The wind had risen to gust 30mph and it was blowing drizzling down from the ice field. Still the river didn’t look too deep. I stripped down to boxer shorts and stepped in. Up to my knees, not too deep… Two more steps and my cahonas were getting wet. I’m 6’2” and while wading glacial rivers, I promise, my cahonas are pretty high up. There was only one good side to this I reasoned. Vickys 5’6” and was going to get soaked! It got up to her belly button and the look on her face was pure misery and very funny.

Having crossed the river we still had to get down into the valley bottom. The next gully over after the gorge turned out to be ok to get down. It was still steep enough not to want to fall and we filled our hands with splinters (in my case my arse too given that I had five points of contact on the steepest parts - Vicky) down most of the gripping the thorny plants on the way down, but it got us to the bottom.

REWARDED BY A RAINBOW AFTER CROSSING THE GORGE.

VIEW DOWN TO THE GLACIER (We're headed for the valley to the left of the glacier, the valley bottom is 500m away and 500m down.)

By this time the wind was up to 50mph at times and hard to walk against. It stopped me dead on one occasion in the valley bottom and sat Vicky down on her bum at one point. Anyway we found a spot behind a big pile of rocks that we could set up a tent. Took us 11 hours in total to get there.

(Vicky - Have to say this was the toughest day of trekking I had EVER done in my life. Crossing the glacier was psychologically scary for me but apart from landing heavily on my knee at one point whilst crossing a crevasse, it was actually no problem. However the following 8 hours involved a physical and mental battering and at several points I really thought we wouldn’t make it to the next camp. Thankfully, my ‘Patagonian Man’ was in his element and was leaping all over the mountain finding us the best route and stuffing me with food and drink to keep energy levels up. No meal will ever beat that Beef stew and the steaming mug of hot chocolate we had that tucked up in our tent that night. Will also never forget how the wind sweeping through the valley sounded that night. It was like a hurricane coming towards you that you first hear two minutes or so away. You then have to sit and wait in your tent as it gets closer and louder on approach. When it hit the tent would rock and at times I felt it lift our legs. Listening to the wind was far more exciting than sleeping. Needless to see, Phil slept like a baby through the night!)

Next morning, I was dead on my feet. The route led straight up the next hillside at about 45 degrees for 400m of ascent. The previous day I’d been the one encouraging Vicky on, that morning it was the other way around. We made good progress though and got up and over the next pass another 350m up at 1250m in about 3 hours. There were some amazing views out onto the icecap and at new glaciers in o’higgins national park. Then we headed down to the camp a few hours walk away.

GLACIERS FEW PEOPLE EVER SEE

Day 8 we set off early, both having admitted that we were a little nervous about being able to cross the river at the Estancia, we wanted to get there early. And that’s what we did, by 11am we’d made it to said estancia to find there was nobody home. This wasn’t good. If we couldn’t cross we had 5 days of backtracking to do with only 3 days of food remaining. After a bit of sweating we found his little row boat and as the lake narrowed to only 100m I rowed us and the bags across. Unfortunately, the boat belonged on the other side, so I rowed back. I debated swimming back across. 100m, easy I thought. I got to mid thigh, admitted to myself that I couldn’t feel anything below the knees and realized there was a good chance I actually couldn’t swim 100m in water that cold. So Vicky went off to the other Estancia to see if they had a boat. It was about 40 minutes away. I sat. Then I thought about what I’d say if the Estancia owner returned to discover I’d used his boat. Sorry seemed a good start and my Spanish was up to that. However explaining why I was sat there enjoying the sun in a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt was probably beyond my Spanish speaking abilities. So I borrowed his boat for a second time and went to get the trousers I’d left on the other bank when I was planning on swimming. Then I sat some more.

Vicky returned to tell me that the other Estancia owner was at home, was a cat lover, seemed very helpful, but didn’t have a boat. So now it was wait and worry time. We had a look around. Estancia is quite a grand word, what it really means is lots of land and a garden shed to live in. And you need to picture your great grandfathers garden shed here, held together with huge nails, putty applied with a knife and badly fitted chunks of tree. It wasn’t going to fall down, but ‘shelter’ is a much better description than ‘home’. God knows what it’s like in winter. I was just getting to the stage of looking for driftwood for a raft when the estancia owner returned.
PHIL ROWS THE BOAT BACK
Thus began a ten minutes conversation in Spanish with a man who doesn’t use his lips when speaking. He had a cigarette in his mouth the whole time and it didn’t ever wobble when he spoke. There are some conversations that go faster if you’re a girl. If I’d had breasts and a winning female smile, it would have been easy. I had a beard, a 7 day without a wash smell and a lot of difficulty explaining how my wife was already on the other side. In the end though he was happy and we settled on a price of 500 pesos (50p) per person to cross. I didn’t have any Chilean pesos, so I gave him the next best thing, a twenty quid note. He was a little unsure, but I’m confident that one day, he’ll be very happy.

Anyway we set off again and headed back up the pass to camp where we were on night 2. Safely on the route back.

On the last day we set off early, returned to the Caribineros and then headed back to Argentina.

VIEW OF FITX ROY AND CERRO TORRE FROM THE BORDER PASS

There was a boat on Lago Del Desierto at 7pm and driven by the need for a shower we covered 30km that day. Shower was fantastic.

'PATAGONINA MAN' LOOKING PLEASED WITH HIMSELF ON THE BOAT HOME.

US ON THE BOAT HOME.

Ice Climbing

2008-02-15T14:18:00.007Z

Our expedition company owed us a day´s activity so we chose their ice climbing on the Viedma glaciar.

We set off on to the glaciar with a rather large group of mainly "older" folk. Now, I know there are many brilliant older climbers but these people just didn´t really look like your climber types, too much make up, polished nails and pristine clothes, (unable to walk in a straight line over rough ground, Phil). So, we thought that if the climbing trip was sold to these folk then it wasn´t going to be all that exciting.

We were then delighted to find out that most of our group were also horrified to find they were in for a day of climbing when what they expected was a bit of a trek on the glaciar. So, they all went off for a walk leaving around 6 of us monkeys to have a go at ice climbing.

We started off with easy climbs (although hanging from two ice axes can never really be described as easy) and then after lunch did some steeper and more difficult climbs.

Not being so far removed from the apes Phil was able to climb to the top of both the afternoon routes although the steeper section was very tough on his arms. My delicate arms couldn´t quite take me to the top and at one point I pulled a dramatic movie scene kind of move and managed to swing round on the one axe left in the wall. I decided to come down after swinging my face into my own axe leaving my jaw line with a nice scratch and bruise (can´t really blame that one on phil unfortunately).

Anyhow, as the afternoon progressed our techniques improved and at the end Phil managed to twist himself into some technical climbing moves. (I said it´s hard to lift yourself over the overhang on your arms and then find a way to put all the weight on one axe while moving the other. The guide said there was a way and demonstrated the arm over leg technique. So I copied. He lied, it´s not easier, brute force and ignorance for me in future, forget all the technical leg over arm thing, Phil)

Trekking without a guide (at last)

2008-02-14T17:07:00.011Z

The reason we came to El chalten wasn’t for the big expedition on the ice it was for a 7 day trek we planned for ourselves, so after a rest day or two, we headed off. first to Campo Agustini (famous religious preacher and mountaineer who went just about everywhere in Patagonia and has most of Chile and Argentina named after him I think.) Which is just below Cerro Torre. Cerro Torre was thought to be un-climbable for years and then someone managed it and now every year climbers with a desire to shorten their lives attempt it. It has snow mushrooms 50 high on top and having climbed up with a mixture of ice and rock climbing, you have to dig a tunnel up into the overhanging unstable snow to get on top. We saw a slide show from someone who’d been up while we were on the ice and concluded that it was truly amazing and that he was insane.

Anyway pretty view, but the mice ate my water bottle in the night. We were right next to a river, little furry bastards were just being cruel.

Next day we headed off to the next camp below Mt Fitzroy. One the way we took a side trip up loma de las Pizeras to get a better view of the mountains. It took 4 hours to get up and back to the trail and having ditched our big bags in the middle of the woods for the climb, I was rather relieved to find my navigation skills were up to finding them again. An hour later we got to a lake and our first fresh water for the day.

Taking off our boots and standing in the lake was sheer bliss. Afterwards we headed off to camp Poincenot at the foothills of Fitzroy for the night.

We’d set our alarm for 5.30am so that we could walk up to Lago Tres where the view of the sun rising on Fitzroy was supposed to be spectacular. Unfortunately, as we’d previously decided that in order to lighten our bag we didn’t need our torches we had to do this trek in the dark. Not so bad when we were in the open but as the first half of the trek involved walking through woods and crossing streams it took a bit of stumbling and feeling our way!

Some how we managed to find the way up the very steep hill to the viewpoint. Sunrise was indeed spectacular.

After the light show was over we returned to the camp and bed where we slept for another three hours. After our power snooze we set off to the next camp wandering down the valley past glaciers and beautiful mountain views.

This was a private camp which came with a hot water shower. Bliss! It’s amazing what levels camping can reduce you to. As we had been unaware that we would encounter a hot water shower we had not carried soap or a towel (you shouldn’t use soap around the rivers as the water is drinkable without need of treatment). So we were both delighted to find a tiny slither of soap in the shower that someone had left behind. Almost felt like a proper wash, I (Vicky) just tried not to think of all the people who had used it before me and then not be disturbed by having to use a clean pair of my pants to dry off with afterwards (at least they were clean and mine!).

The weather forecast had predicted that the weather would change the next day. It did too. Clouds came over and it started to drizzle. Temperature dropped right down. We’d already planned to take that day off as a rest day so the weather helped us to cope with sitting still for the day. Was still a pleasant day, chilling at the camp, playing cards, learning a bit of Spanish and updating my diary which had been neglected since mid-November- oops.
Whilst there was still quite a lot of cloud coverage the weather had improved the next day so we set off from the camp up the very steep cliff to get a bit closer to Fitzroy.
After two hours of strenuous uphill we reached the glacier under Fitzroy. As it was a bit cloudy we unfortunately didn’t get clear views of Fitzroy but the views over the surrounding mountains, Marconi Pass and the snow fields were beautiful.

However, the glacier didn’t feel like the place we should stop our ascent. The path onwards wasn’t at all obvious. Phil was sure the place we’d been told to go to was behind the very big square rock the other side of the glacier. However, this didn’t seem quite right to me as this would involve traversing what looked like unstable snow and a crevassed glacier. We could see foot print marks on the snow and it was clear some people had walked that way but as we were in the realms of the climbers it could have been a crossing made with crampons and ropes.
The other option for an onwards journey was to continue up the side of the mountain we were on. This looked like a scramble and a scree climb. This route also made me feel a bit nervous and I admit to having a bit of a strop! I foolishly thought the scramble looked like slightly more familiar territory and suggested that was my preferred route.

The next hour of the ascent involved a scramble up the side of the cliff. Was actually very good fun and as Phil chose the route and helped direct me as to whether to climb left or right all turned out alright and we reached what I thought was our peak just fine.
On relaxing at the ‘peak’ my tension came flooding back when I realized that this wasn’t the final summit we were heading for. Nope, this was the beginning of the ridge scramble across scree to get to the pass at the other side of the mountain. Commence next strop and annoyance with self for not picking the crossing the snow option. The views were getting to be pretty amazing though and as they were just going to get better I suppressed my negative thoughts about Phil and carried on.
We scrambled across the top of the mountain and after a few stomach churning moments when my foot moved in the scree and I thought I was going to plummet down the mountain side to my doom (as my knowledge of walking on scree improved I realized there was never even the slightest possibility of this!) we got to our viewpoint.

Vicky is sitting in the midde of the black rock, as high as we can go without ropes.

Phil off long the ridge to get the photo above.

We started the day down next to the river you can see behind Phil

Views were remarkable. As we afterwards realized this point had no name on the map we decided to call it Lisa’s Mirador (viewpoint for those of you without our comprehensive knowledge of Spanish, hmm) as it was Lisa Brooke’s birthday that day.
However, still not content with the point we reached Phil carried on along the next ridge to get a view around the corner whilst I sat at our pass.

The return journey pretty much involved a big scree slide. I’d never really walked on this kind of terrain before and began very tentatively (still thought the scree wouldn’t hold and I’d plummet down the mountain) whilst Phil took big leaps into it. However, after getting out my trusty walking poles to help with keeping me off my arse my confidence grew and I also got into the swing of leaping down the slope in the scree. Great fun! Also got to slide on the snow as well.
After a very steep descent my legs were in need of a rest and we decided to take the next day off.

More chilling in the camp site the next day watching other people trying to fight against the wind and rain (we were finally getting a view of what the Patagonian weather is usually like!).

On our seventh day we set off back to El Chalten. Some of the paths no longer existed as the river had risen so high in the rain (shame we didn’t have a kayak with us, we would have been back in El Chalten within 30 mins). On reaching the road we hitched back to town and each had a nice long shower using our own soap and a nice fluffy towel!

(Just so you all know, I could happily send a year here, it´s amazing, and wild like Alaska currently planning a big hike from here into chile and back across a bit of glacier.... Phil)

Horse Riding and Biking

2008-02-14T16:57:00.002Z

Elspeth, Les, I know we planned to go to a cattle ranch and learn to ride horses in Australia on honeymoon, and I know that what you gave us for a wedding present. Well we got a bit sidetracked on honey moon. But nearly 3 years later we’ve finally managed to use you present. Thanks, it was wicked.

We arrived and a Spanish only speaking Gaucho saddled up the biggest horse in the place and then judging, rightly, that we hadn’t a clue, gave us the two smallest. So we set off, and all was going well as we headed down the road out of town. Then my (Phil’s) horse stopped. He didn’t want to go for a walk and turned around and started walking home. I pulled on the reins and kicked him in the side, I cursed him and turned him round a number of times. All I achieved was to make him turn from one side of the road to the other and eat the grass verge on either side. I was beginning to feel a little foolish when I spotted Vicky and the Gaucho riding back to help, Vicky was laughing so hard she could barely keep her seat on her very well behaved horse.

Gaucho informed me with some unintelligible Spanish, some ‘kick the horse’ sign language and a look that said ‘you’re an idiot’ that:

1 I needed to show the horse who was boss.
2 I was an idiot.

Humbling.

Anyway, after kicking the horse as hard as I could, he consented to travel the 100m to the first stream where he refused to cross. I kicked as hard as I could with my cushioned trainers and won a brief respite from the grass eating from my horse, but it wouldn’t cross the river. Outsmarted by a horse. Vicky wasn’t chuckling this time, the whole top of her head had flipped back on a big hinge and she was struggling for breath while letting out one long continuous skyward directed laugh. The Gaucho, having had enough, rode back across the river and whipped my horse until it cantered across the river and halfway across the next field. It behaved itself after that.

We rode up through rivers and grassland to a big waterfall sat around in the sun for an hour to rest and then headed back. The horses got up to their bellies in a river and Vicky’s decided to have a splash about for a while, thrashing first one front leg, then the other in the river. The Gaucho and I were loving it and laughing. Vicky, unable to tell if the horse was panicking, or having fun, and rather too sore to have a horse jump around under her was not looking happy. The Gaucho got us cantering along on the way home, which was loads of fun, though I can now tell you that one of the fastest ways to make someone stand up in the saddle and cry is to have him trap a cahona between saddle heading up and himself heading down.

Still, Lots of fun, We went mountain biking the next day. I was ok, but Vicky was walking like John Wayne afterwards.

Snow Field Expedition

2008-02-12T14:21:00.022Z

Day 1

After much preparation we were off. As this was an expedition the idea was to carry all our own stuff and be self sufficient with food, gas and everything we would need. As a result our bags weighed around 25k. After picking the bag up I was quite pleased I´d decided to leave my book, intensive face moisturiser and shampoo in El Chalten. This was the most weight I´d (Vicky) ever carried. I was curious and a little concerned to see how I would cope. However, after trekking for an hour through forest I was pleased to see the weight wasn´t going to be a problem and I didn´t regret ignoring the companies advice of getting a porter!

Us and our guides at the start (Freddy, lead guide on the right, Richard on the left)

The first day (described as the "easiest day") took us on a five hour trek through forest running alongside a grade three river. (Lots of fast alpine kayaking here if you can just drag a boat to the top, Phil) Through the trees we kept getting views of the mountains. Very dramatic views. We moved at quite a pace and I had the impression that Freddy was testing us a bit to see how fast we could move and to show us a bit of what we were in for. Ha Ha! As if that would be a test for us. We of course kept up and chattered most of the way. The only slightly tricky bit was clambering over steep rocks covered in scree. Helped to make sure we quickly learnt how to balance with our packs on!

Towards the end of that days trek we left the shelter of the trees behind and started headed up into the barren mountain landscape. To do so we needed to cross a river. We´d previously been warned that it was a pretty wide river and given the amount of sunshine there had been lately it would be high and we would have to wade through it. Richard had suggested we bring trainers to wear whilst crossing the river but the extra weight we´d have to carry didn´t seem to justify that so, as creative as ever, Phil thought up the idea of carrying our flip flops and gaffer taping them to our feet when making the crossing.

Sooo cold.....

It worked pretty well really except the river was absolutely freezing! The water reached up to my thighs and with a back pack on crossing was pretty tough going. Thankfully staying upright kept my mind off the freezing cold water and we only realised how cold we were a few minutes after leaving the river. Then it was sooo painful! For about 10 seconds we felt nothing but as our feet warmed up it felt like incredibly painful pins and needles working it´s way through our toes. Still, was pretty funny crossing the river!

How cold? Can´t tell, can´t feel my feet!

We camped that night at the foothill of the glaciar (Marconi Pass) we would have to go up the next day. We´d been warned that whether we would even set off the next day was very dependent on the weather conditions. If it was bad weather or a strong wind then we wouldn´t be able to go up the glaciar to cross the pass. So, we didn´t know at that point whether we would be spending a few days at that camp. As a result I got very into adding to the wall that previous campers had built to protect the tent from the wind. Got very paranoid about making sure there were absolutely no gaps in it. Think it looked pretty impressive (but slightly over the top) by the time I´d finished.

We dined well that evening on a nice three course meal of packet soup, ravioli and cream sauce and a block of choccy. Our guides kept telling us we would be glad of the energy the next day......

Day 2

Beginning of day 2 looking up the pass

We woke to beautiful weather. Very little wind and a clear blue sky. We were off!
It was uphill all day. To start with we were on scree but then we put on our crampons to begin the ascent up the glaciar and over the Marconi pass. Walking on ice was again so cool! There were so many different patterns and formations in the ice and unlike on the Big Ice tour there was no sweet assistant offering his hand to help you over the 10 ft drops. If there were drops we needed to jump over them bag and all and that made this part of the trek really fun.

Except for this river crossing, we took a bit of extra care cos the river dissapeared underground just around the corner.

After walking for a couple of hours on the ice we stopped for lunch at the bottom of the steep hard section. Looking up it didn´t look that bad and both of us suspected that we wouldn´t find it as hard as what the guides made out....

The biggest concern on this point was avalanches. As the weather had been so nice there were quite a lot of avalanches in the area and we had to cross in front of a bit of a black spot. The avalances are amazing (when viewed from a safe distance) visually they look impressive but the noise they make just shakes the valley. As we were sat having lunch Freddy had advised us that if part the the glacier came tumbling down, we had to get up and leg it to the far side of the glaciar leaving everything behind. With this in mind I kept my walking poles strapped to my hands as I could cope with the loss of my bag, but my knees just wouldn´t take walking downhill without my poles these days.

Lunch spot looking back down to the start of the pass

Looking up the pass at lunch time

So we began our ascent up the pass. This involved walking on snow still in the avalanche zone. It was a little tense because running from where we were sat having lunch would have been a doddle but running across a steep slope covered with snow and crevasses weren´t going to be that easy. We weaved from side to side of the galciar avoiding crevasses. It was so steep I only dared look down a couple of times! (I wanted to stop to take a photo but Richard said no, Phil).

Out of the avalance danger zone things became a bit more relaxed. We continued working our way up a steep snow covered glaciar. This was the first wet glaciar that Phil had walked on where people hadn´t been tied together on a rope but our guides knowledge of the moutain was first rate and he knew where roping up would be necessary. After an hour or so we reached the edge of the crevass and the guide said we could rest there for a while, they had estimated it would take us about 8 hours of walking - it took us 5 hours. (Much thanks to the lack of the expected 30mph headwind) As a wind started to pick up the guide decided that it would be safer to camp where we were and cover the top of the pass in the morning.

It was such a beautiful place to set up camp, the views of the surrounding mountains was breathtaking. Given the steepness of the slope we were on it was amazing that a flat place existed where we could pitch a tent but there was and this time Phil became slightly obsessed with building a wall around the tent to protect us from the wind.

Freddy showing Vicky the way with the top in sight

View from second night camp

Day 3

Woke to another beautiful sunny day with very little cloud so we packed up and continued on our way. We left pretty early to get the best of the weather and to catch the snow before it had turned slushy under the sunshie. We carried on up the pass crossing scree and a snow field. At the top of the snow field it was time to rope up. This was a good job as I´d already stepped through a bit of snow and my leg disappeared through a crevass. Apparently it had been farily obvious that it wasn´t a place I should stand, doh! (Not fairly, really really really obvious, Richard and I had a laugh at Vicky´s expense and hoped that it might have been an instructive lesson).

One Vicky didn´t miss.....

By this time we´d reached the top of our pass so we began to go downhill a bit on to the snow fields behind the Fitzroy Moutain range. Freddy was worried that this bit of hill would be covered in crevasses and had warned us before hand of what to do in case us or others fell into a crevass. To Phil´s great disapointment we didn´t fall into any crevasses.(I really wanted a photo of Vicky in a crevasse, Phil) It was stilll fairly early so the snow had´t yet melted. We got down the hill and into the snow field proper.

The snow field was one of the most beautiful things I´d seen. The weather was perfect so we could see from one side to the other in both directions. There was just masses of snow in front of us with absolutely no sign of any of other people around for miles.

We moved fast to try and get there before the snow turned to slush under the sun and we sank knee deep with each step, which would make the going very hard and worse than that, very wet. (Being the resident fat one, I was like the Canary in the mine and started breaking through the frozen crust on top of the snow about half an hour before anyone else, Phil).

We reached our camp spot and it had to be the most unique camp we have ever camped or ever will again! We were based in the middle of the snow field facing the back of Cerro Torre. Not many people could claim this view so we considered ourselves to be very lucky indeed!

Setting up camp on snow is fun. We had to first of all build a snow wall to protect us from the wind. It looked like one side of an igloo in the end!Our guide also made a bathroom for us behind the snow wall and over a crevass!

As the weather was so good we sat outside for a long time taking in the view. We also watched an amazing sun set that turned the surrounding mountains various shades of pink and orange.

Arriving at camp with the west face of Cerro Torre behind

Building half an igloo

This is actually the sunrise behind Cerro Torre, but hey the sunset was good too.

Day 4

Another beautiful day. We couldn´t believe our luck! We set off across the snow field in the sunshine. Never expected to be wearing a t-shirt on the snow.
The snow was very different today as it was covered in crevasses. Our guide skillfully weaved us around or across crevasses and ice hills. Again to Phil´s disappointment I didn´t fall down any serious crevasses. Every now and again I´d put my foot in another ´obviously´ weak cover of snow but was able to pull my leg back out.

One even I spotted

Crossing the glaciar

With just a small bit of ice travel remaining and all the snow gone from the glacier so we could see the crevasses our guide relaxed somewhat... To his folly. Freddy just said ´don´t step on the snow´ There were only small patches of snow where little snow bridges remained and we could step across the crevasses witout using them, so no worries, ´don´t step on the snow´. Then I saw Freddy and Phil had crossed a crevass in front of me using a snow bridge. I hadn´t seen them cross and when I saw it required stepping on snow it felt a bit wrong as we´d already been told not to step on the snow. However, as Freddy had stepped on it logic said it must be ok! So across the snow bridge I went. It took about a second for me to fall through said snow bridge up to my waist with the crevasse waiting below (remember we were not roped up at this point!). Luckily I only went as deep as my waist and with a look of fear in his eyes our guide was able to grab me and pull me up. Phil was meanwhile stood behind Freddy holding him as he had blisters and had taken his crampons off earlier! This unfortunately meant for Phil that he was unable to take the photo he had been so longing for. Think Freddy learnt a valuable lesson in not being complacent on the ice.....

(Now it should be said that Vicky has undergone a transformation. Once she was clumsy footed and incapable of rolling up her own thermarest. After all our travels, she´s pretty sure footed, puts up the tent herself, can work our rather complicated camping stove, make packet soup without lumps [I can´t], pack her own bag and carry her fair share of the trekking kit in it too. She´s not quite queen of the mountains, but she´s transformed. Sadly this transformation hasn´t involved the aquisition of any sense of self preservation or mountain sense. I saw the snow bridge, I worried about it a bit. The crevasse was wide, I guessed a 10m fall if the bridge broke. I´m heavier than Freddy who had already crossed. But I looked carefully, picked the strongest looking spot. Noticed that Freddy´s first footprint hadn´t really indented the surface and that the second one had sunk in. I moved quick, close to freddy´s fotsteps and made my second footfall as weightless as possible. I still sank in to my knee, but I was across and on to solid ice too fast to fall anywhere. Vicky, looked at it, figured we´d done it and walked hapily onto the weakest looking part nowhere near our footsteps. I was so frightened my voice wouldn´t say ´No!´. So pleased she stopped waist deep, couldvé been bad! Phil)

We covered a long distance on the snow and ice and eventually reached the point where we left the snow to walk on the scree. Before this point we had our first sights of the Viedma glaciar which was very beautiful. The patterns on it were incredible. On this final bit of snow Richard got his rewards for pulling a sledge behind him for two days on the snow - he was able to sledge down a long steep hill!

The remainder of the trek took us through terrain that reminded us both of trekking in Scotland. After the barreness of the mountain and the white of the snow everything looked so green and the yellow, white and red flowers were so pretty.

Our home for the night, looked like paradise after the snow.

The camp we stayed at that night was like a little bit of paradise. It was next to the galciar but surrounded by a lagoon and lots of greenery. The Company had also sent over a couple of porters replenishing our food supplies. On arrival we had a swim in the lagoon (it wasn´t that cold and it was nice to have a bit of a wash after 4 days of being minging!) dried off then had a feast of a meal (made very well by Richard) accompanied with a nice bottle of red wine. A good reward for covering the hardest part of the trek. (I went off over the moraine to find a loo spot. As I set off I thought probably better to put my boots on rather than these flip flops, sharp rocks and all that. Then I wandered off in my flipflops anyway, slipped and took all the skin off the end of my big toe. I returned to camp with a flip flop full of blood and a feeling of self loathing. So much for my mountain sense! Phil)

Day 5

We left our bit of paradise to trek uphill over the pass into the next valley. My legs were feeling a little tired today and I was glad we were now onto the "easy" days. That said it was a massive pass to cross with a gale force wind whipping up behind you so it didn´t feel that easy! At the top of the pass though we were rewarded with glorious views over the mountains and Viedma glaciar.

View from the pass. (and of me trying to brain Vicky, 5 days in a tent is enough for anyone!)

After crossing the pass we pushed our way through moutain trees to reach our nect camp. From this camp there were outstanding views over the Viedma glaciar and we sat for a while watching Condors swoop above it. Another glorious sunset too.

Condor (and ice berg)

Day 6

This day involved a very very steep 600m descent down to the place where our boat would pick us up.

The ground was loose and sandy so the going was pretty tough. At one point you needed a fixed climbing rope to descend. Very tough on the knees and by this point the idea of resting the next day was very appealing. (I was so pleased there was no skin on my big toe for the big decent down where it banged against the end of my boot with every step, I just can´t tell you how much fun it was, Phil)

Before getting on our boat we had a final round of Maté with our guides. Maté is a herbal tea drink. It´s a very sociable tradition as the drink is passed around everyone by the person making it, everyone takes their turn.

The boat then picked us up and we were given baileys on ice and argentinian chocolate to munch on as we had our final views of the glaciar. (it´s quite a cool feeling to radio a boat and have it beach in a deserted bay to pick you up.

An absolutely perfect end to the most perfect trip. Think it may well be my best experience so far!!
The gang enjoying a well earned Bailey´s on the way back

Patagonia and El Chalten

2008-02-02T17:10:00.001Z

With our fortnight up in BA we took a flight (Business Class no less!) down to El Calafate, our first destination in Patagonia. We couldn’t get a cheap flight so we went business class for 150 quid. It’s brilliant, I fit into my own seat and everything!

El Calafate is the gateway to the Argentinan side of Patagonia. It is also the jumping off point for visiting the Patagonian glaciers. These glaciers are some of the biggest in the world. (The south Patagonian icefiels is the 3rd biggest in the world after the arctic and Greenland. Presumably the Antarctic ice fields are broken up by land masses). I’d (Vicky) been very much looking forward to visiting the glaciers as I’d been so impressed with the glaciers on Kili. Also, as these glaciers are moving they spit chunks off which go crashing into the glacial lakes – apparently a very dramatic sight to witness.

El Calafate is a very nice place even though it is very touristy. It’s very like a ski resort in the Alps, lots of wooden triangular buildings and plenty of restaurants and bars. The temperature is also perfect for both of us. We had been expecting severe Patagonian weather but what we got most of the days we were there was weather which resembled those really nice summer days in England. It’s probably at its warmest in the evening and as it doesn’t get dark until midnight the nights are very pleasant indeed. It’s such a big change, Africa was equatorial so the sun was up at 6 and down again at 6. Then we went home for Christmas and someone kept turning the sun off at 4pm! We traveled up to Glasgow and they don’t turn the sun on there! Then Patagonia 4 hours of darkness a day, it’s like a whole new world.

We booked ourselves into a boat tour of the glaciers followed by a Big Ice experience the next day. The boat tour was really spectacular. On a fast moving catamaran (50mph) we sailed really close to icebergs which neither of us had ever seen before. I never realized they would be blue and it took Phil a while to convince me that the first ice berg we saw was exactly that and not just a blue boat! The icebergs came in lots of different shapes and sizes and were very surreal. We’ve put a couple of pictures on here but we actually took hundreds (some of you are in for a fascinating night on our return). The boat took us around the lake to the foot of three glaciers. It’s awe inspiring to realize that the lake bed was once carved out by giant extensions of the glacers we were looking at. The lake must be 200km long and 50km wide. More impressively, even though we’re high in the mountains and the rivers from the lake mouths run right across the continent to the east coast, the lakes are below sea level in places. The glaciers had to be kilometers thick to gouge the lakes and judging by the glacial scars on the mountains they stood 600m higher than they are now.

Vicky getting blown about on the boat

Thankfully we didn´t follow in the Titanic´s footsteps.....

Although couldn´t resist playing football with a lump of ice on deck a la Titanic style

In front of Moreno Glaciar

Pretty place we stopped for lunch

The glaciers we visited were still humongous! They towered above us with front faces 10m high in places. The noise they made when chunks split off was like thunder. Again hundreds of photies!

Us enjoying a whiskey on Moreno glaciar ice

Big ice tour

So the next day we were booked on a big ice tour, which involves trekking around the glacier in crampons for around 4 hours. 7 hours in total if you count the walk there and back. But hey, it’s light for 20 hours a day so no problem. (Phil) I’ve walked on Glaciers before in Alaska, I spent about a week on one. But it’s still amazing, the forms and shapes are beautiful, the water rushing down sink holes into the interior of the glacier thunders along and the crevasses change everyday offering great gaps, ceracs or crystal blue lakes of trapped surface water. I love crampons too. With 8 one inch spikes sinking into the ice with every foot fall, you can be incredibly sure footed. I took endless photo’s and I’m very much hoping some of the shots of sink holes and blue ice will be good enough for the wall. Vicky on the other hand, has never been on a glacier before. She didn’t just love it, she walked around all day with a big grin on her face. We walked out into the centre where you’re surrounded by a desert of ice. The day ended with a trip through an ice tunnel.

Phil can jazz dance even with crampons on

I make running on ice look easy

Ice Jazz dancing!

Big deep funky pool on the ice

Jumping over rivers in the ice (I refused to take the guides offer of assistance!!)

A river runs through it

The guide let me borrow his ice axe for a while....

In an ice cave

Phil in the entrance to cave

Coming out of the cave
Up a snow cliff
In front of a lagoon

El Chalten

The next day we headed to El Chalten which is the centre for trekking in the area.
We walked into the first tour operator and said we’d like to spend more time on the ice. They suggested 2 hours on the glacier in the ice climbing school. We pointed at the big 100km trek around the back of the mountains across the heart of the glacier. They told us how much it cost, we asked if we could go the next day. They said ‘are you serious?’ We said yes they said, ‘this is crazy!’ They pointed out how far it was, how far from rescue it all was, how much weight we’d have to carry in our backpacks, how bad the weather could get, and that the trip was normally booked from abroad by groups of experienced mountaineers who still often didn’t know what they were getting into. But our mind was made up, we felt they were just telling us the glacier had called us soft tourists with no right to go anywhere wild and so the only appropriate response would be to go and tramp the glacier back into it’s place for a week. We said we’d give them some time to organize and come back later in the day. So later that day we met the guide and after reassuring him we were serious we planned the trip, all three of us left the office with big grins. It looked like a really good trip .

Buenos Aires, Argentina

2008-02-02T16:25:00.001Z

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA!

There was a cannon, It seemed rude not to take a photo.

Evita or Vicky, who can say? Just don´t cry for me England........

Part 2 of our travels have begun the first destination being Buenos Aires in Argentina.

We booked to do a fortnight’s Spanish course at a language school and to do a home stay so that we could practice the lingo.

We got really lucky with the home stay. We stayed with a very nice lady (Betty) in her apartment close to the city centre. Betty loves art and music and is a very flamboyant, artsy character who is very kind and has loads of good tips on what to do in Buenos Aires. The location of her apartment was perfect, only 10 mins on the underground to the centre and within a couple minutes walk of a nice lively park full of people taking strolls, sunbathing, chatting or exercising. There were also loads of really nice restaurants, bars and ice cream shops nearby – perfect!

Vicky in Betty´s apartment

Our lessons were 5 mornings a week between 9am and 1pm. At the school, we both quickly concluded that it was a good job we didn’t actually ever go to school together as our approaches as students was so different we would have probably ended up sworn enemies than husband and wife. Phil was pretty much the school swot, very enthusiastic and eager for everyone to get it wrong so that he could correct their mistake (he denies this of course). I was the class clown pulling faces at Phil if he got the answer wrong. (I hate her! PB) I took great delight in the time I got the teacher to write on the board “Phil is not intelligent” (she was too nice to realize that my aim was mocking Phil rather than having a genuine interest in how negatives work). Of course, as the class clown I didn’t learn much whereas Phil did really well and is far better at Spanish than me.

At the school we also met lots of nice people who we explored Buenos Aires with. The city is fantastic. I loved it – reminded me of Paris. It’s a very lively places with lots of culture. The city is huge and like all great cities has lots of different quarters each with their own unique look and feel. There are so many restaurants, bars and cafes you’d need a year to explore properly (although we gave it a pretty good go in the fortnight we were there). You also need a lot of stamina in Buenos Aires. People would not even think of eating dinner before 9pm and usually it’s closer to 11pm. Things don’t close as long as people are eating or drinking which they do until the next morning.

It’s also the place where tango began so we went to see a show which was very good fun. The dancing was amazing but it’s the music that got me, so emotional and passionate – I loved it. We also had a tango lesson which was fun, but not the beginning of a change of career for either of us! A group of six of us from the school went. Actually we all went for a drink and then went to tango. I (Phil) ordered a beer which came in 1litre form. Thinking that the class started at 6pm I guzzled it in 15 minutes only to discover at 5:45 that the class wasn’t until 6:30. So I ordered a whiskey. I received one tumbler of whiskey. Or roughly 8 whiskeys. Tango was fun, hell I was drunk, most things are fun after a beer and 8 whiskey’s. We only really learned how to walk the basic steps and so sadly Vicky did not buy a skirt with a big split, or get her leg over my shoulder.

We make it look so effortless but this isn´t actually an easy tango move to do

How it should be done

I (Phil) Got a hair cut from the worlds fastest speaking half Italian half Argentinean barber living in Buenos Aires. He may actually be the only one, but he does talk like a machine gun loaded with Spanish “?seshamalacasaparadetagoshowestanoche” Get a word of that? Neither did I. Everything I understood came from the hairdresser at the next chair who was kind enough to repeat every word he said at a quarter of the pace. I got my first haircut with a razor blade ever (clippers are not popular with half Italian half Argentinean barbers) and learnt that he’s been here 54 years, that tango is good, that the tango show we’re going to tonight is top notch and that I can’t say the name of the place we’re going. ( I had to write it down for him in the end.) I was rather proud of my Spanish after leaving the barbers, I’d had the longest conversation so far and had actually managed to communicate and understand a few things. So I bought an ice cream to celebrate on the way home. Ordered vanilla ice cream, got raspberry sorbet. Gutted.....More work needed on the Spanish after all.

We also went to Tigre. It’s a little town in the river delta about an hour’s train ride from Buenos Aries. Cool place, there’s something inherently cool about having an address that starts with a number and a river name, because there are no roads. The whole place fills up with tourists at the weekend and there are big launches that drag them ( and us) up and down the river to see everyone’s house. Normally launches travel sedately, meandering their way along. These ones shoot along leaving 6 ft wakes behind them and regularly swamping the rowing boats that foolishly try to share the river. There are houses, hotels, camping grounds and beaches on the river edge. The locals stand in the beaches and wait for the boats to pass so they can play in the waves, it’s very like the wave pools at the swimming baths. We saw the presidents house which is encased in glass to keep the bullets and the humidity out. It’s the size of a shoebox and looks like a fairy tale house preserved forever in a glass case.

The tour guide (that’s right folks, we have sunk that low) took us to his favorite restaurant for lunch. He recommended the meat pizza (throw away the bread and replace it with meat, add toppings, tomato and cheese – meat pizza) he assured us that it was lovely and very tender. It was cow belly!!! I’ve never had cow belly before, and I’d guess you haven’t either. There’s a good reason for this, imagine pork belly, decrease the level of taste and increase the amount of fat, hey presto, cow belly. Then you cover it in cheese so you can't see the fat. It was tender, that much we concede, but then a lump of lard with cheese on top wasn’t likely to be chewy in an ambient temperature of 40 degrees was it?

Speaking of heat. It is HOT here. Vicky loves it, I hate it, I have that constant slightly damp feeling I normally associate with a fever, except without the chills. I spent 30mins in a cold bath of water last night and it made me the right temperature for about an hour. Then I woke up in a pool of sweat. There was a cool thunderstorm on Wednesday though. I sat up until 1am watching it, it was like daylight outside sometimes. One particularly bright flash woke Vicky up. Not understanding there was a thunderstorm going on, she blamed me for switching the lights on and gave me a ‘get you for that later’ look then turned over. Anyway the storm brought a cool breeze with it and I slept like a baby. It also washed all the dog crap off the pavement, I don’t know where it went, but there’s a lot less to step in now.

We also saw a Tango show in the street, visited lots of nice parks, a few markets, a modern art exhibition and went to La Boca which is a poor district historically full of immigrant sailors and with houses (tin sheds) painted with the leftover ship paints. We saw the balcony Evita sang from and then went to Recolletta which is a huge area in the middle of town filled with family toumbs. So we saw where Evita is entoumbed too. As it was a graveyard we were respectfull tourists and tried not to let anyone see us take photo's of each other pretending to be dead.

No, not us after our lesson, it´s actually tango street dancers!

This is us Tangoing in La Boca

More La Boca

All very good but we were ready for the next place after 2 weeks.

CHRISTMAS!!!!

2008-02-02T16:09:00.001Z

Almost everyone we met who was on a long trip cut it short at the end. It’s as though there’s a time bomb waiting to go off when you get into the last month. I’m sure if we’d had three more months to go, we’d have traveled around happily. But with three weeks to go the prospect of being at home was too nice and so the flights were brought forward and plans to surprise people were made.

With Heather’s help, we surprised my parents, though the best we got from my Dad was “oh, you’re early.” As though we were due in another hour or so. I don’t think I’ve ever surprised him, well that’s not true, I jumped up and knocked one of his teeth out with my head when I was about 6, and that was a surprise, but not one either of us would want to repeat. (Sorry Dad). Next day we were off to Scarborough. We waited for Vicky’s brother to get home from work hidden at the bottom of the street. We jumped out of the car once he’d pulled onto his drive, only to find he’d forgotten his keys and was driving off again (they turned out to be on his key ring, helpfully put there by Kerry to prevent him losing them.) So Vicky resorted to standing in his way in the road with her back turned to annoy him. He neither realized it was Vicky nor got annoyed, so Vicky turned around and gave him 2 fingers. Suitably reunited with Philip we went to find Harry, we’d been looking forward to seeing him and it was great to spend time with him again. We found Kerry too and went and got a fish supper. Proper british food! Tastes amazing and leaves you feeling that you really shouldn’t have had it. Gorgeous.

Next onto Manchester to surprise Mike. Mike wasn’t at home, but Matt and Ally were. Ally gave the surprise away when Mike called home (she didn’t know it was a surprise). That was just as well because Mike has become dedicated to work now that he spends his time in an office (spends all morning on the internet and then stays late to make up for it and to look keen to his boss) So he ditched the plans for a late night at work and came home. We parked our car diagonally across the drive to annoy Lisa when she got home from work. She arrived back, called Mike on his mobile and I could clearly hear the words “I don’t care where the car came from, MOVE IT” We called a halt to the joke, Mike went to move the car and Lisa brightened up when she realized it was us. She later showed us Mike’s new storage solution, it’s all welded together, and as Lisa said, “it’s amazing, I don’t know how he thought of it, I never would have thought of it, he’s so clever, it’s all welded together and not many people can do that.” We were so impressed, we got on our knees and worshiped at the feet of Mike the storage god. Lisa finally sensed our mood and hit me round the head. I think I deserved it.

During our time at home we were lucky enough to enjoy three xmas celebrations (one with Scarborough family, one with Washington family and the other with our canoe club family in Glasgow at Panda and Nick’s lovely new house) and at each one we were spoilt rotten. We enjoyed spending time with Lynne, Andrew and their children Harry and Katie (who were as gorgeous as ever). We also very much enjoyed being introduced to Oliver Hay who is sooooo cute. All our friends’ children have grown so much whilst we had been away, Paula’s boys are now confident little toddlers and Sarah’s Sophia is a very beautiful and extremely active young lady!
A fortnight wasn’t long enough unfortunately and we didn’t get to see everyone we would have liked or spent as much time as I’d have wanted with everyone so I’m already looking forward to catching up with everyone on our return, in particular Tegen, Amelia (and her sister or brother), Isabel, Gill’s little un and Mary’s babe (blimey, you lot are like rabbits!).

We had two new year celebrations each drunken madness. The first was on new year in Glasgow with most of the gang. All the missing members of the gang recieved a 3am singalong phonecall to remind them we missing them even if they didn't care because they were asleep. The second new year was in manchester, Mike and Lisa were missing for the real new year, so we bought booze, downloaded auld lang syne and 500 miles and had another new year. It was great, so we wited till 4am and called all the members of the gang that were at the first party but who had missed the second. They were gratefull we think.

Vicky's birthday and the Nile

2007-12-19T00:06:00.000Z

We headed back to the Nile river at Jinja after Rwanda. We had about a week to go until Eithiopia and Jinja has the Nile to kayak and nice restaurants and bars to while away the rest of the hours in. We got a nice hotel on the lakefront. Didn't fit in at all due to a lack of polished 4x4, but they agreed to take our money and gave us a lovely cottage all of our own. I got Vicky a scarf and a birthday cake for her birthday and we all got drunk on expensive wine. Top day and probably the best iced cake you've ever seen

We also kayaked and rafted the nile some more. Vicky Kelly and I got back in a boat and paddled the top 3km of grade 3. Beautiful stretch of rivr with some fun wave chains. I'm still impressed that Kelly made it through the rapids, she'd never been in a boat before.

And we rafted the river again, this time our guide was 'crazy alex'. He told us he had 42 kids on the river bank and preceded every rapid with words like, 'Oh my god I am so scared, if we flip, hold on, just HOLD ON, oh god oh god oh god.' And this time we just tried to flip the raft in every rapid. Got dunked a lot, and had a pineapple eating competition at lunchtime. Good fun!

We also visited an island called the Hary Lemon. It's a hotel island in the middle of the Nile river. It has a little natural jacuzzi where a stream comes past, a bar, space to pitch a tent, some swimming spots and a play wave called the Nile special. Sadly it also has ants and tetsi flies which ensure that a few days there are enough. After that you have to leave to escape the biting bugs.

We tried a bit of Yoga. Kelly claimed the scorpion position was the best, nobody was sure what it was best for, but it looks cool.

We saw a snake too. The locals who work on the island took a 12 foot pole to it and so we got a chance to identify it and take some photo's. Part of me wanted the snake to be poisonous, we'd killed it after all. The other half of me, the alf that had been swimming in the jacuzzi, didn't want it to be poisonous, cos that was a scary concept. It turned out to be a Jamesons Mamba, which is deadly in 30 to 120 minutes after a bite.

The Nile special wave was cool too, lots of fun.

KIGALI ( on a brighter note)

2007-12-19T00:01:00.000Z

We were a bit depressing in our Rwanda description, so... On a more positive note Rwanda is still a very beautiful place to be. It is so green and lush. The whole country is a series of hills and every single inch of those hills have been terraced for agriculture. This makes for very dramatic scenery.

Also, Kigali is the most cosmopolitan cities we have been in whilst travelling in africa. The roads/pavements are excellent and well lit. The city feels very calm compared to the bustle of say dar es salaam has and it's very clean. The people we met were also very friendly. The restaurants and the food and drink served were also the best we'd had in Africa (perfect cheese fondue with a nice red wine - nice!).

And it's the only country where the motorbike taxi's make you wear a helmet

RANT!!!!!

2007-12-18T23:57:00.000Z

Phil's final words on africa.....

My advice? skip this post. It's more for me than you.

They say that once you've heard the fish eagles call, Africa will always be in your heart. Well I heard it quite a few times but I always thought it was a warning before it tried to shit on me, rather than an invitation to return on another holiday. After 5 months in Africa, I'm happy to say I'm heading home (all be it, briefly). Africa has been amazing, I've loved almost every day, but I don't think I'll be back unless it's on a short kayak trip or a dive trip to Tofo. There are just too many other places I've never been to.

I'm leaving confused about the nature of Africa and its problems. I've seen aid agencies, charity schools, intelligent locals, fertile land, countries with rich resources everywhere I've been. All of the above in every town and country Why is Africa still so poor, why is education still so poor? I don't claim to even begin to understand Africa's problems, but it seems to me that everywhere the west has interfered we've either:

Been at war ourselves and brought it with us.
Created the circumstances for civil, ethnic or interAfrican war,
Imposed sanctions forcing countries into poverty (e.g. Zimbabwe)
Plundered all the natural resources available and then buggered off
Or,
Handed out aid in a manner which seems to have prevented African's doing it for themselves….

There seems to be a commonly held belief in Africa, that Africa is entitled to gifts, aid, and overpayment from westerners. For example, I read a newspaper story in Uganda that said the Government had set up a new nature reserve in Lake Victoria to celebrate CHOGM and would fund it for the first two years until a sponsor was found. Not just fund it, do it themselves, but rely on us. Obviously it's not a bad tactic cos they'll probably get a sponsor, but it doesn't really lead to an efficient governement or national park.

Worse than this though, I think many aid workers and aid agencies are doing short term good but long term harm. For example some aid workers are taking jobs from African's who should be doing it instead, and so the skill base in africa doesn't improve. I met an aid worker who spent time planting fields while the locals watched him. I met aid workers who were paying 75 pounds a week to teaching at a charity school which was too disorganized to make effective use of them. I met three aid workers who's main job was looking for land to build schools in Kampala...

Am I to believe that there are no locals who could be paid to do this? Perhaps I should believe that there aren't, after all, for the last 20 years overseas volunteers have been paying for the privilege of doing the work for them…

I'm left with a feeling that someone should tell Africa to pull it's socks up and get on with solving it's own problems. I met a church politician on the way home who's job was to try and persuade the church in africa to do intervene and do something itself rather than relying on western church help. He agreed with my view (after all his job was to enact that viewpoint), but he also drew the line, reminding me that Africa doing things for itself, or not doing things for itself doesn't absolve us from being morally obliged to help.

All the same, if I make charity donations or try otherwise to help Africa, it will either be to:

Eradicate 3rd world debt - I've not yet been disillusioned with the notion that this is one real reason why Africa can't help itself.
Or,
To help charities such as the red cross and aid des frontiers who help those who really can't help themselves.

I'm sure there are many more worthy charities who operate in the toughest places and most difficult circumstances, I just don't know them. And perhaps I owe an apology to the middle class of aid agencies, who help in in the short term in nice places where tourists visit and want to lend a hand, after all the fields were planted, I'm sure the kids in the school learnt something, and I'm sure the land for schools will be found. So I'm sure some good was done, I'm just not convinced it was for the long term.

Eithiopia: Gondar, simians, Axum, Ladibella, Addis

2007-12-18T23:35:00.000Z

Arrived in Addis late at night and managed to get a taxi to the hotel for 10 Birr which is 50p. Nice hotel with a room high up where the Mozzies can’t get you. Also Addis is 2000m up so it’s cool at night. Can’t tell you what a nice feeling getting under a quilt to keep warm is after months of being too hot in bed. Next day we flew straight to Gondar. The views from the window are impressive. It’s a dry yellow and green landscape that reminds me of western movies a little.

Gondar turned out to be really nice. It’s got a café culture and is fairly hassle free. (Though on our return there after the simian mountains, I wore shorts to go into town and we got hassled by everyone. Guess it’s a cultural thing, none of the locals wear shorts so if you do you deserve what you get.) we had lunch neat the town square and got our first taste of real eithiopian food, injera.

Vicky's happy, she's got grub.

Went to visit the castle compound (which is where the never laughed until toilet incident occurred.) It’s an impressive place, but the photo’s say it better than I do….
we were feeling silly pose-ish

Then we went to a church, again, see Photo’s
churchyard view, 's alright eh?

The bones are of a former ruler, doubt they expected to be in a glass case for the entertainment of westerners when they built the church.

Eithiopia is turning out to be a lot more modern in it’s outlook than we expected. There’s the café culture in Gondar for a start. At the castle compound thee were a group of 3 girls doing a fashion shoot, it looked a lot more like a way to entertain themselves than a photography course or anything professional, but still, it’s the sort of thing that we just wouldn’t have seen elsewhere in Africa. We met someone who said their guide had taken them to a gay bar in Gondar and again, we’ve not seen anything else like this. (Homosexuality is still VERY taboo in Africa). Then there’s the traditional dancing…

We went out to a bar that had traditional dancing. It’s great fun, they dance and sing about whatever the audience shout out and the songs seem to be more rugby song inspired topics than love ballads, Certainly, every verse seems to end with a punch line. We couldn’t understand a word, but they asked us where we were from and the next punch line ended with ‘England’. Anyway, it has a lot of similarities with strip clubs…
The girl dancer is the centre of attention.
There were no local women there.
The beer is overpriced.
You stick money on the dancer’s forehead or tuck it into her hat when she dances in front of you. (I know it’s not the same as a g-string, but the principle is the same.)
She jiggles her boobs in front of you, (dances here seem to be either the ‘Tigran shoulder shuffle’, a good impersonation of a man with a pneumatic drill, or the ‘pigeon walk’ which looks like what it sounds like.) Bra’s don’t really seem to have made it into African culture so the shoulder shuffle is quite dramatic.

In fact there were only really two major differences between the local folk dance club and a strip club.
The girl didn’t actually get naked.
and
Vicky let me go to the local folk dance club.
Boncy boob girl from Gondar Bouncy dancers from addis
So after Gondar we headed for the Simean Mountains. We got a bus at 5am. Or at least we got on a bus at 5am. It sat around, just like all the other busses, until 7am. 2 hours with 50 busses running their engines makes your eyes water and your throat hurt from the fumes. It’s amazing no one passes out. Anyway, once we were off it was ok. The roads here are hard packed gravel, but there’s so little rain to cause ruts that they’re actually quite good. The town at the foot of the Simean Mountains is called Debark which is where we checked into the Simean Mountains Lodge. The place is nice enough with helpful staff and a good restaurant, but it should have been renamed bed bug hell. We always check the bed for blood spots, but if they change the sheets, you don’t get that clue. Since we wouldn’t sleep in a bed with what looked like unwashed sheets, I don’t really know why we check… Anyway a day later we were both itching from head to foot and hoping it was bed bugs - gone once we left the hotel – rather than fleas or lice. Thankfully we didn’t get any more bites.

The next day we were off into the Simean Mountains, we got a lift to Sankaber the first village inside the park and then headed off with our Scout, our donkey driver and our Donkey. We hired a donkey to carry our bags, how cool is that.

It’s a bit like walking around in a fairy tale. We both think some of the inspiration for the Lord of the Rings could easily have come from Eithiopia. The area just outside the Simean mountains is idyllic: hay fields, circular houses, tiny villages connected by tracks and a hilly landscape that could easily have inspired the Shire. Gondar has lots of castles to inspire the white tower and is so close to ‘Gondor’ that Vicky keeps mispronouncing it. The town of Bahir Dar is just down the road from Gondor - Bahir Dar / Bara Dur? You decide.

Anyway, first stop Gitch. A tiny village on the side of the hill. There’s not much to tell really. The best of the views all come after that first day.

Next day we were off to Chenek via some of the best scenery we’ve seen out here and we saw some Ibix thanks to the sharp eyes of our scout Mskano. An Ibix Ridge top views

This is the zoomed in view down showing all the clutivation on the steep hillsides

by a waterfallcampsite -first night at GitchGitch meeting the locals.The walk to Chenek Still the walk to Chenek

Gitch had been cold at night, Chenek, despite being lower at 3500m rather than 3800 was much colder. Neither of us slept well. The next day we headed to the top of a 4300m peak called ‘Bwaheit’ Either we’re a lot fitter or we’ve kept some of our acclimatization because we hardly felt the altitude. Amazing views and we saw another Ibix, up close this time. On the way back down we met a group of Germans who had driven all the way from Gondar to within 20minutes of the mountain summit. Lazy Lazy sods. I think they missed the best views on the previous day from Gitch and there can’t be much satisfaction in walking 20 minutes to the top of the mountain and feeling knackered cos you’re not acclimatized at all.

Top of Bwaheit, so high the sky looks like space is coming to meet you

We headed back to Chenek that night and had a proper wash in a pool of the stream while the sun was still out to warm us. The water was freezing, but we both felt better for it. The day after we headed back to Sankaber. We got within about an hour of making it when we jumped on a truck to take us back to Debark, it was probably the last transport for the day and we didn’t want to take the chance and have to stay in Sankaber. We got the bus straight back to Gonder rather than staying in the bed bug lodge again.

We went out to a posh restaurant in Gondar the next day. The food was great, but weirdly they had live ducks walking around. I was just wondering how they stopped the place getting covered in duck poo, when a duck poo’d on the carpet and amswered my question.

Not Duck poo
Not duck poo DUCK POO!

There was an AIDS concert in the town square. The first act was diabolical, so we only stayed long enough to get some snaps.

They're all waiting for...

This man. Can you feel the stage presence? we couldn't so we went and looked at another old church.

Amazing tree.

Next up a flight to Axum. We stayed in a hotel called the Remhai, though their advertising posters around town spelled it variously, Remhai, Rayhai, RemHay, Rimhay and Romhay. Axum is famous for its Stelae, which are 1000 year old monolithic carved monuments. The tallest still standing is 13m high and they’re in the middle of re-erecting a 23m one that the Italians have returned – having previously stolen it at the end of the last century. The place had some underground tombs and an interesting-ish museum with lots of ancient pottery. There’s also a church compound. They claim to hold the ark of the covenant in one of them but won’t show it to anyone. Rome doesn’t seem too excited by the possibilities and neither was I. There was one interesting thing though, we figured out when the great big lie that Christ was white started... They have some Virgin Mary paintings from before and after the 6th century Byzantine period. The VM is black prior to the 6th century and then after, white (or at least more Turkish coloured than black).
They showed us a book which was 1000 years old, many of the pictures were coloured with things like egg yolk and the colour had lasted through the years. Though with them pawing their way over it every day for tourists I don’t fancy it’s chances of another 1000. They kiss the book too, which I thought was weird until I saw them kiss a dusty old carpet in the monastery… religious nuts if you ask me. They also had a museum, which was quite good fun because it had just opened and the caretaker was trying to learn the name of everything in English, so we taught him, goblet, embossed, trumpet, umberella, and spire. He put us to shame, after 2 weeks in Eithiopia, we’ve learned one work of Amharic, ‘amasaganalo’ which means ‘thanks’. Still why would we bother to learn a language where thanks has 5 syllables! What’s wrong with ‘Ta’?

They spent years carving it, when they stood it up, this happened. Ha Ha! idiots!

Then the next day we were off to Ladibella, which is 2600m up and perched on the side of a hill. It’s an Othodox Eithiopian Christian centre with lots of churches hewn straight out of the rock. It’s still a place of worship now, with hermits, nuns, priests and lots of dedicated locals. They’re sticking a false roof over some of the churches because the designer forgot to put drainage on the roof and so they get waterlogged in the wet season.
They’re very impressive though, flying in the face of all building techniques everywhere, they started with one really big rock and just dug down into it until they had a monolith and then carved that out to create an ornate church. X marks the spot Once it was all one rock. I recon when they finished, some clever local came up and showed them how to make bricks.

Us in the doorway, I think this is where the fleas hopped aboard.

The kings wife did this, who says DIY and women don't mix?

some use existing caves They were cleaning it with knives. Nutters!

Top 5's for Africa

2007-12-18T23:34:00.000Z

Top 5 things phil loved:

Kayaking the Zambezi, just too good to miss, KAVU DAY!
Diving in Tofo, Mozambique. They have so many huge fish there, whale sharks, turtles, moray eels, grouper. And one day I got water so clear it was like an aquarium.
The view of Mt Meru crater as the dawn light changed from amber to white.
Kayaking on the Nile special wave.
Having a mobile phone. There were one or two times when we would have been gutted not to be able to call. (Telling me to "take it idiot, you'll want it if you need to call home or if people need to reach you" was the best advice you ever gave me Mike, Cheers.)

Top 5 things vicky loved:

Kilimanjiro, both of us fulfilling the challenge I'd set us two years before in such style and amongst spectacular scenery still makes me feel a bit emotional. Also, against the odds it was very good fun spending half the day in the tent with Phil when it was pouring down with rain. All of it being a very special memory.
Finding ourselves surrounded by about 50 elephants ranging from babies to mature adults in the Serengeti. Elsewhere in this park if there is a hint of animal activity it is surrounded by hundreds of cars in a matter of minutes. However, we had this scene to ourselves for about half an hour.
Gorilla trekking in the beautiful Virunga volcanoes.
Rafting the Nile.

Things Phil will miss:

Traveling on the top (or back) of vehicles out in the open air. There is just no finer way to get around, you get the views, you get to meet the locals, you have to hold on… it makes me smile every time.
That moment which comes along every few weeks, when you realize someone is being genuinely, go out of their way for you, kind of nice. They're not going to ask for money and you know it'd be rude to offer, but you're in a foreign country, could use the help and it'll make them feel good too.

Things Vicky will miss:

Friendliness of people. If you walk past people they nearly always say hello. Walking down the streets of England is going to seem a very lonely place after being here.
Between 5pm and sunset when there is always a hive of activity amongst the local community. The kids come back from school, the farmers return from the fields and the villagers all get back together again. At that time of day there is such a buzz about the place.
Unpredictability of Africa. Be it the people, views, food, drink, Africa has never ceased to surprise me.
The weather. I love the sunshine!
The stunning African countryside
Journeys on public transport - great way to meet and see locals although often also quite a bumpy experience!

Things Phil won't miss:

Bed nets. They're dusty, they drape over your face, Vicky makes me tuck them in with military precision and you always get bitten anyway cos some part of you is touching them (usually my elbow). I'd call them an evil creation of Satan if it wasn't for the ……..
Mozzies… Evil creations of SATAN!!!
Hot weather. Sleeping under a duvet is a much underrated luxury.
Touts, flycatchers, kids wanting a pen, beggars, people missing the point of tipping and asking for a tip, but mostly the phrase, "hello, how are you?" said in that tone of voice I've come to associate with people who want to relieve me of my wallet (or at least part of it’s contents.)
Road dust. Tarmac is great, dirt roads leave you with the kind of dry amber airbrushed look that doesn't come off you or your clothes till the second wash.

Things Vicky won't miss:

Malaria
Mosquitoes. They can't get enough of Vicky blood it seems.
Ants. They get everywhere even into seemingly air packed boxes/jars!
Dust
People trying to con you out of money be it through scams or asking ridiculous prices.
Painfully slow internet connections.

Things Phil is looking forward to back in the UK:

Seeing family and friends is a cop out answer but, I can't wait to meet Oliver Andrew Hay. (Hey Keith, Hey Helen, congratulations! see you soon)
Different clothes, jeans in particular. I've worn Jeans at some point almost every day for about 15 years, and after 5 months without them, I remember why.
Having a kitchen. Haven't been able to cook properly for 5 months, hotel menu's never have beans on toast on them when you want it. (Also bread in Africa is sweet, it's just wrong!
Fast internet connection

Things Vicky is looking forward to back in the UK:

Maybe a cop out but can't wait to see family and friends again, in particular our nephew Harry.
The christmas atmosphere. We've hopefully missed all the crap bits and will just get the best bits
New clothes. The ones I have out here are now well battered and I'm SICK of only having the choice of two shirts to wear on an evening.
Phil's cooking.
A choice of good wines.

Gorrilla!!!!

2007-11-17T14:30:00.000Z

Special the silverback

With 14 happy concubines, I say he's entitled to his name.

You may think she's just spotted Phil giving her the eye, but she's just yawning.

Close enough for you?

MMmmmmm! Bambooooo!

This is the scene just after special left when all the group followed.

Today, we were to do one of the activities which I'd really been looking forward to - trekking the mountain gorillas. We'd chosen Rwanda to do this as trekking them against the back drop of the volcanoes was supposed to be the best way to see them. It really really was.

We again were accompanied by Kelly and Matt and whilst Kelly shared my bouncy level of excitement Matt equalled Phil's calm anticipation!

There are 350 mountain gorrillas in the Virunga volcanoes and the same number in Bwindi Imprenatable Rainforest in Uganda. 700 in total on this planet explains why they are an endangered species. There are a number of groups which have been habituated to human contact.Only 32 people can visit the gorillas a day in groups of 8 and you can only spend 1 hour with them.

We were allocated group 13. This was the second largest group with 22 members including 1 silverback, 4 mothers for him to please and lots of children.

Our group were resting in the forest and that's where we trekked to find them. They are located by trekkers who go out at the crack of dawn to let the guides know where to find them. We were told that we would keep 8 metres between us and the gorillas.Given that it's rainy reason the forest was Muddy. The kind of mud that you can sink into and you have to pull your foot out of. We walked through the muddy forest, pushing through trees and plants for about half an hour before we started to climb. The climb took us through rain forest, over a crater and gave us great views over the low lands. So, even before we got to the gorillas the trek had been ace.

Kelly and I were first in the group and had to use great self control from overtaking the guide and leaping up the hill to the gorillas. We frowned on anyone who stopped the progress of the ascent with a question!

We eventually got to the trekkers where we had to leave our bags and walk slowly to the gorillas.

Our first sighting of them was in a clearing surrounded by trees. Straight in front of us about 3 metres away the silverback was having a sleep with two babies crawling and playing around and over him. The others were nesting in the trees.

For the first 10 minutes our attention was taken by the playing babies who were rolling around, chasing each other and beating their chests in play. They sometimes looked like they would come right over to us but the guides made a kind of grunting noise to put them off and they backed off. The silverback slept on.Eventually one of the trekkers hacked away at a branch so that we could wander past and around the silver back. We were about 2 m away again and it was clear the 8 m rule would not apply!

As we walked around him he started to wake. He then showed very human qualities of waking up fairly groggy, picking his nose, having a scratch and looking a bit troubled to be awake (well this is phil's usual routine anyway).

The silver back called Special made grunting noises which the guides imitated. He didn't seem fussed about us been there and sat still for a while whilst he woke up. As Special was awake all the other gorillas started to wake up. The group turned from being peacefully asleep to moving around, playing and chatting to each other.

The silverback sat back and watched as the kids played around him, his women came and sat next to him and the others had a scratch or bit of each other. At one point one of the mothers decided she wanted her baby which was playing around Special and started calling to him whilst climbing a tree. On hearing his mum's call the baby started making baby mewing noises whilst climbing up the tree to her. Seemed like the mum had purposefully set herself up the tree for her babe to learn how to make it up there.

Suddenly Special decided he was awake and wanted a bit of brekkie so he got up and turned round to walk back into the bamboo forest. Like clicking his fingers his group started to follow him, jumping down from their nests, swinging from branches, causing mass tree destruction as they went (once they were done you could not tell that there had been a clearing there just a few moments before.)

So we returned very happy. We had been very lucky. We saw them sleeping and playing in a clearing where there was enough light to take pictures. We saw the control the silverback had over his group, we saw 19 of the 22 group, we saw all the babies including the 4 day old, we saw and heard them fighting over bamboo and having their breakfast. On top of that it didn't rain at all which was unusual.

A brilliantly Awesome experience!!!

We then started to trek after the gorillas. As we followed them we heard them fighting over bamboo (the noises were very loud and fraught), laughing and playing. They didn't follow in a nice neat order which meant that whilst we followed them some were in the bushes within a hand's reach away from us eating their bamboo or climbing trees. It was at this point that we were lucky enough to see a mum with her 4 day old baby nestling into her - extremely cute.

We trekked with them for about 30 mins and we got great views of them coming in and out of the bamboo, eating and playing. In the last 5 mins in particular Special seemed to be posing for us as his final curtain call. At the end of the hour they all turned round and disappeared into the bamboo as though they had suddenly had enough of us

Rwanda and the Genoside

2007-11-17T12:09:00.000Z

Ok, this is gonna be a bit of a sad post; there isn't much funny or light hearted about the Rwandan Genocide, (or Jenocide as they spell it at the memorial).

All the same I feel oddly compelled to write honestly and fairly comletely about what I learned. Partly because I respect the message of the memorial centre that that the lessons of the Genocide can only be learned if people know about it. And partly because I was saddened by my visit to the memorial and would like the opportunity of remembering why, long after my memory is dulled by time. So if you don't want to know, skip this post...

There won't be any photo's of nasties hiding further down, so it's safe for those of you with kids looking over your shoulder.

We had the option to go and see a second memorial where they've preserved the remains of the 50,000 killed in a building by scattering powdered lime on them, Apparently you can walk around the rooms and see the "room of kids killed with machetes" or the "room of families forced to kill their own before being murdered themselves". But after one memorial we felt we'd had enough bad images and didn't go.

So the roots of the problem go back to the Belgians who were given control of the country at the end of WWI. They set about segregating people according to tribe; Tutsi's and Hutu's. Both tribes existed but lived in harmony and more importantly, equality. The Belgians decided anyone with more than 10 cows was a Tutsi, and this applied to his decendants too. They then began to favour the Tutsi's giving them white collar jobs and opportunities which were denied to the Hutu's comprising 87% of the population.

Now the memorial blames the Belgians to some extent for the genocide due to the racial segregation they instigated. Personally I think that's a bit rough, Rwandans had independence long before the genocide and should have sorted the inequality problems out.

So independance came along and a Hutu government eventually came to power. They issued a manifesto which condemned Tutsi's, made it treason to trade with, marry or have sex with a Tutsi. All the media began propulgating a racist message. This clearly went far further than any desire to redress the wealth balance between Tutsi's and Hutu's. Many Tutsi's began to emigrate.

Although there was a small peace keeping force in the area, the UN largely ignored the situation. If the situation in the coutry was not obviously bad enough to require preventative action at diplomatic level at least, the Rwandan leader left a UN conference stating openly that he was "going home to plan an apocalypse". You'd think that was a clue wouldn't you.

Shortly after, the French completed a large arms deal with the Rwandan government. The finances for which were guaranteed by the French Governent. I suspect that if I knew more about world arms dealing, I wouldn't be surprised at this and would be ashamed of the record of most western countries. I'm told that 95% of the AK47 rifles in africa were made elsewhere. All the same the French seem to have knowingly and blatently supported a regime intent on internal civil war or worse, and they have escaped unpunished. Perhaps sending peace keepers into a country at the same time as selling arms to allow a war gets you off the hook? (More on the French peace keepers later though).

A member of the Rwandan presidential security team came forward to the UN commander. He stated that the president was losing control of the extremists and offered details of the weapons cache's and plans in return for his safekeeping. The local commander was unable to offer protection due to a dadly worded UN resolution. He promptly dissapeared and hasn't been seen since. I hope he's living somewhere warm and safe, but I doubt it. The UN resolution forbade UN troops from offering protection without specific UN council sanction. The idea being to prevent promises of asylum being made to war criminals. Sadly in this case the rule centralised power in brussels which was too slow to react.

At about this stage the UN council made an odd concluion at one of it's meetings. It condemned the increase in racially motivated violence in Rwanda and at the same meeting ordered half the peacekeeping troops home.

The Rwandan govenment planned and then launched its genocidal attack. People were already carrying identity cards stating their race and so the lists were drawn up in advance. The army and police set up road blocks and stormed houses. They killed every Tutsi they found, anyone who sympathised with them and anyone else who was in the way.

That is a reality which I find hard to comprehend, but I find the next bit beyond my comprehension; the local Hutu population joined in...

A church Reverend offered 250 of his congregation safe haven in his church, barred the doors and then ordered the bulldozers in. They all died.

2M people were killed in the end. 10% of a 22M strong population, 13% of which were tutsi. The genocide was incredibly effective.

People who once babysat a families children, came and killed the family. The children who hid and survived testified to watching it. Friends turned on friends and families upon themselves. It is still common for people to live on the same street as people who took part in the killings and perhaps killed their mother, brother or child.

One of the survivors we saw on video estimated that 5% of the population were neutral and 5% opposed actively. The other 90% were "evil". It's hard to believe till you hear from a 23 year old who saw a family friend lead a group into their house and throw her sisters in the ceptic tank to die. She would have bee 10 at the time.

Ceptic tanks were commonly used, they seem to have proved a convinient mass grave system. Some people weren't killed, just thrown in to be trampled by the people already inside. One tank was 20 bodies deep.

Some women were allowed to live. Only after they'd been raped by known HIV+ males though.

There are more examples, but I feel tired even of writing them, I felt pretty low after the visit to the memorial where I learned all this. So I'll give some examples of the good people.

A local medicine woman(79) hid people in her house and frightened the hutu's away saying they the evil spirits would haunt them if they forced into the house; it worked. A woman hid people in her house, even making taller feet for her bed so more people could hide. A man dug trenches, covered them with wood soil and then potato plants and fed a hoard of people who hid beneath them through bottomless dustbins, seemingly just taking out the rubbish. Oddly these success stories full of bravery and self sacrifice made the whole story far more emotive to me than the horror stories had alone, I think they gave it a sense of reality for me.

In the end there were so many open mass graves that they had to start shooting dogs who had aquired a taste for flesh. Most aid organisations withdrew; the red cross and aid des frontires (the french equivalent) stayed. Some of the stories we heard sounded like shell shock, one survivor told of seeing a baby breast feeding itself on it's dead mother and doing nothing, she was to stunned to register what her eyes saw and walked on. The aid agencies who stayed are full of brave brave souls.

The world at large did nothing. The commander of the UN forces stated that 5000 troops would be sufficient to quash the unrest. He was denied the remit to do so, but was given 5000 troops to evacuate aid workers and expatriates.

The Tutsi's invaded. They had been emigrating for some time to Congo and Uganda and they returned to stop the Genoside. They forced the Hutu's to flee. Some went north and west to Congo and 6000 Rwandan Hutu soldiers are still in force there. Many more fled East to Tanzania and Uganda. Here the aid agencies met them and started to provide aid. There were three flaws in the plot.

First the aid agencies didn't understand who they were recieving and there were more killings and rapes in the refugee camps.

Second the French sent troops into Rwanda to create a safe haven for the Tutsi's fleeing the Hutu's. Unfortunately they also created a corridor through which the Hutu leaders and perpetrators could flee. Many of the leaders still live in exile and have not been arrested. Given the close relationship between the French government and the Rwandan government prior to the Genocide and the arms dealing that went on, this mistake looks suspisious.

Third, the world at large and the aid agencies misunderstood what was happening in the country and labelled it civil war. It wasn't civil war, the invading Tutsi's took control of the capital Kigali and restored peace. But in the interrim the UN peace keepers did nothing and the aid agencies (with 2 exceptions) did not enter the country to help those inside.

The reaction of the wider world was incredibly slow. As one example, the US promised some armoured personnel carriers (16 I think) but they took a month to arrive.

That's about the end of the info I got from the memorial. There was another section which dealt with other genocides for comparison. The Germans and WWII was there, so was the former Yugoslavia/Bosnia/Serbia, Cambodia was there with Pol Pot and the Khmere Rouge leading the killing. Vietnam invaded Cambodia to stop the atrocities while the wider world did nothing. They then retuned Cambodia to it's people, I found something oddly pleasing to see the Vietnamese comunist regime doing good.

There was also a T shirt with
"He who forgets the lessons of history/RWANDA,
is bound to repeat them IN DARFUR"
I still know nothing about Darfur other than it is troubled, in the news alot and on that T-shirt. My next job is reading up on that.

But I felt there were a few questions unanswered. The first was how do you convince half of a country to hate the other half that much and then persuade them to kill everyone in sight in the most horrible way they can? If I thought I could answer that I'd take up a new profession, get rich and stop all the wars. So I skipped research on that one.

The second was what happened to all the protagonists who escaped and how much was the current trouble in the Congo related to that? So I did some digging in the web....

The memorial told us that those leaders who were captured were being tried in Arusha Tanzania. Something like 110 had been arrested 14 found guilts and 1 released so far. Rwanda was trying those who were accused but not "war crime leaders". It has resorted to the traditional local trials held by local chiefs augmented to include elements of modern judice prudence. The scale of the task is so great they they had little choice. As I mentioned it is still common for killers to live on the same street as survivors.

The Congo is interesting though. It has twice been invaded by Rwanda looking for rebels in the hills, trying to capture or kill them, since 1994. It survived recent democratic elections without decending into civil war, much to the surprise of the wider world. There is a force of around 6000 Hutu's in the east of the country who's stated claim is to recapture Rwanda in much the same way the Tutsi's did to end the genocide. This time presumably the aim would be to restart it. There is a General with around 5000 troops who claims to be trying to protect Tutsi's in eastern Congo from the 6000 Hutu's. This may be true and there have been some racial killings in the area, but there are 2 other possibilities. He could want power, 5000 troops is a force great enough to threaten the Congo government and he has refused to joing the Congo government even though their aims of protecting Tutsi's and eradicating the 6000 strong Hutu force are alligned. Secondly, he may well be an agent of Rwanda, he and his troops fought with the Tutsi's in 1994 to end the genoside and many of those who fight for him are Rwandan. A few respectable web pages such as the BBC hint at links between the US, UK Rwanda and his forces.
So now we have a 3 way struggle in the congo; the Congo army, the 6000 hutu's and the 5000 under the rouge general. One of the reasons they are not managing to fight and eradicate one another is that the Congo is the size of western europe and has 200k, of paved roads, just finding each other must be tricky. But there's another reason and it comes in the form of a 4th armed force, and this one is better trained and better equipend than all the other 3 put together. That's right. 6000 UN peace keepers.Their remit is to protect civilian life. So they can't attack any of the other 3 unless attacked or unless there are civilians in the line of fire. None of the other 3 wants to take them on, either for diplomatic reasons or for fear of losing. But the other 3 can't manage more than a skirmish because the UN peacekeepers will find a conveniently placed civilian and pull the two sides apart. It's a mexican standoff that has so far lasted for 13 years. The world truly is an amazing place.

By the way those of you with keen eyes will have noticed that we had 3 armed guards at the top of the mountain which borders Rwanda Congo and Uganda. They told us the buffalos there were dangerous, we didn't believe them either. We're now nowhere near the border so you can stop worrying. Until we fly into Ethiopia that is. The UN has carefuly arranged the deadline for the Ethiopians and Eritreans to agree on their border for the 30th November. Both sides are massing troops on the border "to ensure they don't invade". With a truly prophetic sense of timing, we fly into Addis abbaba on the 30th Nov..... (won't be going to the top of any mountains that border those two coutries then.)

Uganda contined

2007-11-15T06:54:00.001Z

Lake Bunyoni,

So we left Kanpala and after a long day in a bus we arrived at lake buyoni. Its 2000m up. The sign next to the lake states that it is Uganda's deepest lake at 6500ft. Unfortunately this would mean that it reached back down to sea level. I suspect that the sign writer confused altitude and depth. However the written word has lost none of its fabled power and all the locals know for certain that the lake is 2km deep, argements that the 51km maximum distance between the banks and plethera of islands in the middle make this a tad unlikely fall on deaf ears.

The first day it rained, we walked in the rain and then returned to eat pizza at the only restaurant or shop in the area. The prices are high and the service is slow, but it all arrives with a smile in the end and it's decent food.

We were going to leave the next day, but the sun came out so we took dug out canoes out into the lake. We reached a nice island after about an hour and a half where the community has set up a hotel business for the benefit of all. We had fanta and then headed off. Next stop was punishment island. It's right in the middle of the lake, is about 15m diameter and has one tree and lots of grass. Historically local women who got pregnant out of wedlock were made to swim there and then left to snuff it. Most are unlikely to have made it to the island never mind escaping again, the water is cold because of the altitude and even if they can swim they'd probably be so afraid of the 2km of water beneath them that they'd die of fright.

Anyway, Vicky refused to get off the boat for a 'photo' of her on the island, so she's still around.

Left the next day for Kisoro and mugahinga national park.

Hiking the volcanoes.

Nugahinga NP forms a conservation area along with 2 other parks, one from Rwanda and one from Congo. Together they form one of the 2 areas where mountain gorillas still survive. The journey over to Kisoro was interesting in itself - we passed through some beautiful mountainous scenery but we also drove past a refugee camp. The refugees were from the troubled Congo. It was an odd atmosphere driving through. The camp was not as big as we thought it would be but when we heard it homed 1000s of people the size of the place emphasised how miserable it would be for the people who were living there.

We also drove past some pygmies who live in this area of Uganda. They were dissapointingly normal looking save for being very dirty (our driver told us it's part of their way not to wash. He then went on to say they stink like animals!).

The Volcanoes

We did the trek with Kelly and Matt, our guide and two armed guides. The explanation for the armed guards were the buffalo. Given that we didn't see any buffaloes on route and it's not an animal known for it's quiet and cunning attacks we figured they were more there as a deterrent to the rebels from Uganda who were hiding out in the Congo. Still, so close to the Congo border their presence was reassuring!

We were very lucky with the weather when we set off. It was a nice sunny day given that it's currently rainy season here. The trek began through areas that had previously been harvested by the locals (the area was made a national park and people turfed out in 1992) before ascending into bamboo forest which was very beautiful.

The scenery and our breathing changed substantially as we climbed higher. The higher we got the more we were required to climb up ladders over the steep bits. It was beautifully clear when we reached the first peak so we got good first views over the surrounding areas of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. At over 3500 m altitude it was bloomin hard going getting to the first peak (far harder than kili!) and up close it looked a very steep hard climb to the next two peaks.

Looks weren't deceiving and it did indeed turn out to be a hard slog to the top of the third and final peak! The journey from the second to third peak was along a ridge with vertical descents either side. The route was pretty much either up or down the ladders it was so steep. Sometimes we were completely vertical climbing up the ladders. Whilst hard going this was a really cool ridge trek with dramatic. Having to climb the ladders to get there was a unique experience.

By the time we reached the third peak we were standing in Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo as the ridge formed the natural border between the three countries. It was particularly cool to be able to see into Congo which is very much a no go zone at the moment. The scenery there was classic Africa with lush forests untouched by buildings stretching for miles.

Now we are no longer on the mountain I can say it was a touch disappointing to find that the third peak wasn't actually the top of the mountain we were climbing. The summit was in Rwanda and the Congo so we couldn't go there. At the time, my weary legs weren't so sad that we couldn't go any further or higher!

On the third peak we again enjoyed clear views but after we'd eaten our lunch the clouds quickly surrounded us and it started to rain. This made walking down the wooden ladders and through what were in effect steep muddy slides quite hard work. Made a lot easier though by the fact that most of these parts were done on my butt!

Due to the wet conditions it took us the same amount of time to get down as getting up. We were all glad to be back at camp to commence more rounds of cribbage (the girls kicked the boys butts good and proper!).

The next day we chilled at the camp playing more cards and liar dice. At one point we saw all the local villagers come up to the park headquarters. There were about 30 men women and children and they were beating their sticks as they walked. They stopped outside the boss’s house and their seemed to be a bit of a commotion which resulted in the villagers suddenly turning and running away. Wasn't sure what had scared them off though. It turned out that they were coming asking for help with a bloke they had caught trying to pass off forged notes for one of their cows. The park boss told them it wasn't really the park's thing and they needed to go to the police. I had the impression that the villagers saw the park with their guns, cars and houses as a form of authority which maybe the police were not.

Next day we did another trek up one of the other three volcanoes in the area. This one's main feature was the crater swampland at the summit.We'd come to Mghaniga park looking for exercise and we certainly got it. Good treks in dramatic scenery. To quote our American friends, our time at Mghaniga was 'awesome'!

Uganda!

2007-11-05T10:33:00.000Z

We are in Uganda!

Jinja

Our first stop was in Jinja, a place on Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile. We caught an overnight bus from Arusha which passed through Kenya on the way. The sensible Bennetts had splashed out on a 'luxury' coach that marketed itself as being safe and obeying all speed limits. This it did, however one of the reasons it couldn't go too fast was because it was completely lacking in suspension, as Phil described it, like 50 tonne of metal on a pogo stick. This made us feel a bit sad given that we were going to be sat on this bus for the next 15 hours.

Turned out not to be too bad though. We were able to get a double seat each so we could lay down and actually got quite a lot of sleep which helped pass time. The bumpiness didn't improve any though and at one point whilst in a deep sleep wrapped up like a caterpillar in my sleeping bag I was unceremoniously thrown off the seat and landed with a pathetic yelp on the floor. Bent my glasses in the process. Ouch.

After 14 hours on the bus we arrived at a Backpackers in Jinje (we caught a cab that had to be rolled down the hill to the petrol station to get petrol with our fare!). Very nice chilled place it was too. We stayed there a night before heading up to Nile River Explores campsite on Bugali Falls.

The NRE campsite is in a really beautiful location high above the Nile River. Views are beautiful - the countryside in Uganda is green and lush. Very different to some of the dry landscapes we'd been in further south.

NRE is an incredibly chilled place - very easy to spend lots of time there. It turns a bit mad at night as the beer flows and music gets pumped up.

Our first night there we saw the rafting video which made us very nervous as the aim of the trip seemed to be to get the rafts to flip at the top of every big rapid and it is BIG water although reputedly 'safe' as everything washes out. We were rafting the next day.

Our raft had the perfect crew - everyone had either rafted or kayaked before so the skills teaching lasted seconds and our guide had a lot of confidence in us. We hit rapid after rapid, some grade 5 and by the last rapid had a 100% success rate for staying upright - even when our guide purposefully fully put us into a wave side ways with the hope of flipping us. For the previous two rapids, he'd been trying to flip us, we got through a hole called 'bad place' which flipped every other raft, so he turned us side on for the last big breaking wave of the day and shouted 'come on, please, please' ....we washed out upright with everyone still in the raft. People from other rafts were swimming all around us so (yet again on this trip) we felt very smug.

However, unhappy with our success, we went back hoping for failure
we carried the 10ft raftback up 200m to do the final rapid again. This time we surfed the wave for a few seconds before being sent arse over head (tit, the saying is deffo tit, PB) into the water. Brilliant fun. (no, I've spent enough time swimming white water in this life time, I swam to the bank no problems, but the hole plunged me about 5m down judging by the total lack of light and the time to get back up, not fun in my view, PB)

Phil's birthday!!

Phil spent his birthday kayaking the Nile. (PB, Had a top time, lots of rapids with no problems, some graded 3 some graded 5 al of them actually grade 4's in my view. Despite running every rapid without problems, I swam twice, both times in eddies at grade 2 level, I blame my boat and hang my head in deserved shame, PB)

In the evening we had a posh meal (rare steak which was delicious) and a big birthday cake with candles, his name in icing, the works. Then lots of beer and drink in the bar.

As it was halloween and there had been a lot of people rafting/kayaking the Nile people were up for a big night. In the process we tried locally brewed banana wine which was responsible for people (not us!) later on falling 4 metres off a balcony, walking into poles, people copping off left right and centre and some nudity in front of the large projector screen! We had a good night just people watching!

(PB, NRE bar is astounding. It's run by kayakers. They bought me a shot of something black and annissed like when I arrived, it came in a whiskey tumbler filled to the brim. Then three blokes who fished me out of the river that morning collected a funnel and two feet of inch diameter hose from behind the bar and force fed me a litre of beer in about 4 seconds. They were having difficulty playing the rafting video so a bloke got on stage, stripped off and danced around a bit. Someone shouted 'seen it before, giving yourself a semi on hasn't helped!' Didn't distrub him a bit, he just wiggled around a bit more and then ran off. In the morning there was about 200g of weed siting on the floor where someone had been too drunk to bother picking it up. The cleaners just swept it off the balcony. A man called lee threw up in the corner, but as he'd drunk a bit and its a gravel floor, it just vanished and they raked over it in the morning, you could smell it for a day and then it was gone. I drank heavily and failed to get close to the drunkeness levels of the bar in gereral. A man was locked in a room to let him sober up, he escaped through a bolted door and promtly fell 4m off the balcony of the bar. He was returned to the bar and had a drink. Ben walked into a window frame and returned to the bar with blood running down the side of his face from a cut to his temple about 5mm deep. It stopped bleeding, he started drinking. None of this was objected to by the bar owners. In Zambia I met a man called Rob who claimed to have passed out in the bar and woken up naked with one big toe tied to his testicles. He had to hop to his room to get a pen knife because the knots were too small to untie. I didn't believe him in Zambia, I now have no doubt it's true. The bar reached similar levels of depravity almost every night we were there. PB)

Day after we of course felt rough. Day after that we were both felt even worse. Eating rare steak was probably a very bad idea in retrospect!

Kampala

We left Jinja on 3rd November and headed for the capital. At the end of November the Heads of the Commonwealth including our very own Queen are coming to Uganda for a chat. So, lots of road improvements are underway to make sure Queenie has a nice smooth journey. Absolutely no way the improvements will be completed by then! Roads are just mud and it's raining. (PB, still the rumour goes the hydroelectric dam is going to be turned up to 11 in order to ensure the daily power cuts don't happen during the conference, we've booked into the hairy lemon island to paddle the nile speial play wave on the 28th and 29th Nov when the levels are MASSIVE, joy, hopefully all the eddies will be washed out, PB)

Kampala is a booming city. It has a very cosmopolitan feel to it and by far the most 'western' city we have been in so far. Whilst it no way near as attractive as Maputo it has loads of different restaurants, bars, shopping places, casinos and a multi screen cinema. So I like it loads!

We took a boda boda to the cinema. Thats a 125cc motorbike with three of us sat on it doing a cheap impression of a taxi. Wanna know if someone is good on a bike, ask them to do a u turn in 6 feet with 3 on a 125cc bike. Despite his driving abilities it still felt like a very risky game of traffic pinball and we swore to pay the extra for a car in future.

Having not eaten for 2 days following the post rare steak trotts we had a massive curry complete with popadoms, starters, nann, rice and huge main meal last night and suprisingly feel much better thanks.

The top of Africa

2007-10-23T12:41:00.000+01:00

Day 1 on the great Bennett tour to the top of Kilimanjaro and the Bennetts are pleading with the tour operator to accept their passports as a deposit for the unpaid portion of the trip.

The ATM wasn't prepared to shell out three million shillings in one go, the 2.4 million we had managed to get our hands on was about twice the sixe of a brick. I think if my wallet could speak it would have expressed how inadequate it felt to find that it had been left on the bedside table while the daypack was promoted to money holder of choice.

The nice man accepted our passports as security and we were on our way to the gate a few minutes later.

The gate was bustling with people, not like Meru at all. There must have been 60 people planning to do the same route as us. On Meru there were 4 others. Still our guide (Mark) ran around and sorted all the paperwork and then in his perfect english sent us off on the trail with the assistant guide who speaks not a word of it. The assistant guide was called 'Leavin'. I wanted to make a joke about us leavin' but I could sense that I would be wasting my comedic skills.

Mark was supposed to catch us up in 5 minutes. after an hour and a half we had a lunch break. No sign of Mark. After Lunch Leavin set the pace at 'Snail'. An hour later Leavin stopped us about 5 minutes from the camp for an rest, he was clearly desperate for Mark to arrive with the park permit and a knowledge of English before we met the Rangers at the camp. After a 10 min break we set off again at 'snail negotiating stairs' speed.

We walked to the camp first of all through lush rain forest. This ended abruptly (around 3000m) and the vegetation turned to that which is only found above 3000 metres. Strange shaped trees covered in green woolly moss. Was really quite a beautiful walk.

Got to the camp and had dinner. Very nice. It included the battered fish best described as sole of shoe in cardboard, which we'd asked them to strike from the menu after previous experience on Meru. But as it was served with enough roast potatoes for 6 people so we were happy enough. Mark arrived after dinner with no explanation of the delay though we think he discovered the mess tent he promised us was missing and he had been trying to sort it. In the absence of a mess tent the table and chairs were set up outside our tent and our meal was lit by candle light. Rather nicer than sitting in a mess tent really. It was quite a cloudy night so we were nice and warm in our tent.

Clouds cleared in the morning and we got a view of Kili up close for the first time. Doesn't seem too big when you're already 3000m up.

Day 2 on the great Klimanjaro trek and the Bennetts are on their way to Shira Hut at 3800m.

It started as a lovely day. Had breakfast in the sunshine. The clouds came down just before we left, the drizel started an hour later and turned into real rain just before we reached Shira hut. This is when you really start to miss a mess tent. Our tent is good, it's warm, it's light to carry, it stays dry inside, but it's also tiny. You can't even sit up in it. you have to lie down side by side, facing each other, pressed back against the tent walls and put the dinner in the two square feet of space not already covered by your bodies.

Emanuel the waiter (you know you're being looked after when one of the porters in a dedicated waiter) brought us....

Two bowls,

A pan of soup,

A plate of bread,

A tray of butter,

a flask

two mugs,

a brimming sugar bowl
a box of tea bags

a tin of powdered milk
a pot of honey,

a pot of coffee

a pot of hot chocolate

a t-spoon, soup spoon knife and fork carefully wrapped in a paper napkin.

We thought we had it sorted, we discarded the bowls and shared the pan of soup and stuck everything else but the sugar bowl outside in a plastic bag.

Then Emanuel brought us...

a brimming plate of rice,

a brimming bowl of vegetable sauce.

a plate of chicken.

Eating was difficult, then the altitude combined with the over feeding and the gasoeus discharges that were to become the signature of our Kilimanjaro tent living began. Eating became a nightmare, except when it was your stink, then it was funny!

As the weather stayed rather wet we remained in our tent for the rest of the day playing Liar Dice and attempting to read one book between us.

Guides porters and cook all sharing tents.

Day three of the great Kilimanjaro trek and the gaseoooous Bennets are on route to Baranco hut 4000m

The weather broke briefly to give us a view out from last nights camp onto the Shira plateau. Pretty.

The walk to Baranco takes about 6 hours according to the book and theres an optional side trip up to Lava tower which takes you up to 4500m for a bit of extra acclimatisation. This is where the extra time on Meru started to show it's worth. Most guides were walking their groups at snail pace to let them acclimatise and in many cases so that they could cope. We were much quicker and never out of breath. Even after dawdling around Lava tower to get the best acclimatisation we completed the walk in 4.5 hours.

We were particularly glad of the fast pace because it either rained, snowed or sleeted all day. For some reason we never expected to be in snow, we were in Africa after all, but snow it did and it was a case of head down walking to get to the next camp. It was nice to be able to walk fast and get out of it. Though I felt the real benefit was in the pleasure of walking past a group that left 2 hours before you looking all organised and keen in the morning and looking knackered as you walk past.

This is a picture of me just after watching vicky push the 'power off' button on the camera instead of the 'take a photo' button (again)
they have big flowers here. they only grow above 3000m, they told us the name but we can't remember it.

Today on arrival at the camp we told Emanuel to stick everything in one pan and give us two spoons. Didn't help with the farting though.

We also asked for two bowls of hot water so we could make some attempt at washing. There are no showers at the campsites just a very basic long drop toilet. I (vicky) went and hid around a rock and splashed some water around a bit. It helped but didn't remove the prevailing smell of mingingness that was starting to accompany us and our clothes/tent. That was to be the last 'wash' we had as after that water became a bit difficut to come by. From then on wet wipe washes were the best we could hope for! You kind of had to grin and bear it and try to ignore the state of the long drop toilets particuarly after used by 30 people not all with the best of aims.....

The weather cleared just defore sunset, tomorrow the route goes up that cliff on the right of the picture, they call it 'Baranco Wall'. If you weren't impressed by the porters ability to walk happily for hours with 30kg on their heads, you'll be impressed by the time you've seen them climb a cliff balancing the same bag on their heads like a circus performer. Think we may have converted our porters who carried our bags. On the first day despite outdoors companies spending thousands on research to establish the best back straps for carrying your bags the porters still preferred to carry our bags on their heads. However, after Phil adjusted the straps for them and packed the bags up with all their stuff they seemed to take to carrying the bags on their back and carried them that way for the rest of the journey. Could not persuade them that the hip straps were a good idea though!

Sadly the wall is infamous among porters and we're told a few have broken legs here. I suspect that if the fall they took could break their legs, it could do worse and I'd bet a few have died here. There's a stretcher at Karanga 1.5 hours away, but your friends have to carry you that far and then its another 3 hours down on a stretcher to the gate. You need strong friends. With our park fee alone coming to $1200 you'd think the park could afford some metal bolts and a few lengths of rope. The route up isn't much more than an easy scramble and a fixed rope would probably prevent all the accidents. The porters have managed to organise a society and so at least they (and their families) recieve free basic health care at the park gate. Break a leg and it's still no income for 6 weeks though.

Day four of the great Kilimanjaro trek and the Bennetts are lazing their way to Karanga.

Nice weather at last. Up the Baranco wall with a pleasing absence of broken bones and at the top we got a view to reward us. Meru looks a lot smaller from up here. It's 4800m high so still 700m above our current height, but you feel you should pat it on the head and say 'Ahhh'. After all we're on Kilimanjaro now.

After that we drop into and out of two valleys before arriving at Karanga 3900m up after an hour and a half. The weather turned so we hid in the tent for a while, but it improved about 3pm so we walked up to the pass that leads to Barafu hut on tomorrows walk. The pass is about 4300m and Barafu is 4400m. The view was great so we sat around until 4:30 and then headed down. On the way back down we passed the two Austrian women we'd seen on the way up. On the way up they asked if we weren't cold and gave us an incredulous look for wearing shorts and T-shirts. The sun was out, we were storming uphill and were plenty warm enough. On the way down they asked what was wrong? No, No we explained, we're not going the wrong way. We only came up here to acclimatise, for a bit of a walk, something to do. We're staying at Karanga tonight. They gave us a mix of evils and incredulous looks. It must have been a little disheartening given that they'd been walking for 4 hours to cover a distance we'd done in 2.5, still had another hour to go at their pace and had to get up at midnight to start the journey to the top.

This is the view from the pass.

That evening we were treated to a really spectacular sunset. Was really very special.

Day 5 of the great Kilimanjaro trek and the Bennetts are acclimatising again.

Got up early and were on route to Barafu by 8:30. Arrived about 10:30 and had a cup of tea. Then headed on up for some acclimatisation. We're 4400m up at the camp and the air feels noticably thinner. Mark has gone to bed with paracetamol and an altitude headache so we're headed up with Leavin again. He's well named, despite Marks warnings of 'slowly slowly, his pace is almost too fast for us. We reached 4700m in about 40 mins. and sat down for a well earned rest. It's 12pm and we can see a few groups decending from the mountain. The first couple of blokes were a little surprised that we were just up there acclimatising, but happy to accept some sweets in return for their stories on the mountain. The third of their group joined them, She'd thrown up every day and about 20 times on the way to the summit. She still made it.

The next person we met was a girl who'd had to surrender at Stellar point 45mins and 150m in height from the summit. she was so effected by tiredness and altitude she could hardly walk and her Guides were helping her down. Leavin took over from the knackered guide and earned himself a hug from the girl (and vicky) when we got back to camp.

We sat in the tent the rest of the day, ate too much in preparation for the top and farted LOTS.

Mark came to see us and suggested we leave at 1:30am rather than the customary 12 midnight as we tend to travel fast. Some people were leaving as early as 10pm. We were happy with the idea of extra sleep. Sadly neither of us slept more than 2 hours. I blame a combination of overeating, farting, altitude and excitement. Whatever the cause, we could have done with more sleep...

Day 6 of the great Kilimanjaro trek and the Bennetts are STORMING IT!

Got up in the dark at 12:30 to discover it had been snowing. Which is good news, the snow makes it much warmer it was around 0 degrees instead of the clear skied -10 we'd been expecting. It can be colder than that if the wind is blowing and it was dead still. So we had pancakes and tea in the relative comfort of the snow.

We left at 1:30 and Mark set a slow pace compared to Leavin the day before. It took us an hour to reach the same point we'd got to yesterday in 40 mins, but within an hour and a half of starting out we were passing the first of the groups that set out before us. We never stopped...

Mark was asked something by a guide who's group we passed. We speak enough swahilli to work out that he was asking why Mark was leading white people (Msungu's) so fast. The tone of voice implied we were over doing it. Mark's reply was 'My Msungu's are crazy, they don't know what slow is'.

We passed everyone in sight, around 10 groups by the time we reached Stellar point and 5700m at 5:30. I picked up a headache at around 5500m, but paracetamol sorted that out and Vicky showed no signs of fatigue whatsoever. The only concern was just before day break when our hands and Vicky's toes were starting to get very very cold. At that point we were both a bit apprehensive as to whether the clothes we were wearing were good enough for these conditions (our best warm gear was left in england as generally it didn't tend to drop beneath freezing in africa!). However, as soon as we reached Stellar point and the sun came out we warmed up a treat.

We had a hot drink on Stellar pint and enjoyed the sights of day break for a few minutes before heading on to the top.

Vicky had a little happy dance with the guides.

The worst is over by the time you reach Stellar point. The last 500m on the way up are like a sand dune made of volcanic ash and they're very steep. After Stellar point it's all easy going by comparison.

We got to the top at 6:15 in time to enjoy the views. We passed a 5 groups coming back from the top on our way up from stellar point and there were 4 more groups on the summit. (I'm sad I admit it, I was counting, I wanted to know how many people beat us there.) The views are amazing. It was Vicky's first sight of a glacier, she was amazed and I'm looking forward to seeing some big ones in Patagonia with her next year. The Kilimanjaro glacier is small by glacier standards really.

Vicky: being at the top was such an amazing experience for me. Without wishing to wax lyrical (which I'm not going to be able to avoid) it was probably the most stunning place I'd ever been to. I was completely and utterly flabbregasted and when we reached the top I felt really quite emotional and had a little cry I was sooo happy! Kilimanjiro was in a way what inspired me to want to come to Africa - it kind of grew around that. So it had been a dream for over 4 years. To be one the top after thinking about it for so long was probably the best point of the trip so far for me (particuarly after hearing so many horror stories of people failing to make it I'd kind of prepared myself for the possibility of not making it). The fact that both of us made it and felt well enough to enjoy being there on top of africa was just perfect.

We headed down after about 10mins on the top.

This is a picture of the route up and down.

The route down is so much easier, you get to scree run down for 1000m! the whole journey down took us less than 2 hours. We passed 4 of the 9 groups which were ahead of us and came into camp on the tail of the 5th group. Mark was enjoying it, he kept telling other guides that we were the last ones out of camp and the first back down. 'strong group, strong group'. This did not assist me with my desire to show off, you may have noticed?.

We packed up within about 30mins and headed off again. The cook had prepared pasta, but all we could manage was a bowl of soup, we wanted to get lower. 4400m is still too high to recover from the top. By 12pm we were down at 3100m at the next camp.

Day 7 of the great Kilimanjaro trek, but the Bennetts finished yesterday!

Oh, didn't I mention. ? It's only 2.5hours from the last camp to the gate and as it was only 12pm, we had 10mins rest and, driven by the thought of a hot shower and proper bed, we marched out to the gate at 2000m. That's 4km of vertical decent!

Job done !

We have spent the last two nights since leaving the mountain drinking beer and wine! We had given up alcohol for about 6 weeks before the treks to help us be fit enough for all the mountain trekking coming up. We've taken a particular delight in drinking Kilimajiro beer!

Mt Meru

2007-10-16T12:16:00.000+01:00

We made it! 2nd highest mountain in Tanzania just Kilimanjaro, the biggy, to go. Starting that tomorrow (Wednesday - it takes 7 days to get to the summit and back).

Mt Meru is really nice. One of the best treks we ever done. The trek takes you through Grass land full of giraffes, zebras and buffalo on the first day up to 2500m. The second day you get treated to rain forest with amazing trees and flowers all over the place because the rains are starting here now, and leopards roam around so the ranger has to carry a gun. We got to 3500m that day and then walked on up to 3800m to visit 'little meru' and then back to camp.

Camp by the way is not a suitable word for it. We thought we needed tents, but when we arrived it was a private room with comfy matresses and even showers! Not exactly roughing it.

The next day is supposed to start at 2am. But that means you have to walk the ridge in the dark and miss the views. So we persuaded our guide we were strong enough to start late and get day break on the ridge. There was much muttering and warnings of the sun coming up and the air getting thinner and us not making it. But we opted for the extra sleep anyway. Ironically Vicky was so excited and high on sugary food that she only slept for an hour. The walk is supposed to take 5-6 hours to reach the top. We covered it in 4 and a half hours with 12 Pee breaks, (determined not to get dehydrated and once the seal is broken...) 3 photo stops, and a very slow speed overtaking manouvre excecuted upon the wussy group that left 2 hours earlier than us. Are we smug, you bet, the wussy group kept us awake talking loudly and drinking and then woke us up again when they left at 2am. We asked them if they felt ok in a sort of condecending way, SMUG SMUG SMUG...

The walk follows a ridge looking down into a crater, it's a bit like Snowdon horse shoe but 4 times the size and with a volcamo in the middle instead of a lake. It has an 'other world' like feel to it with black volcanic sands and fabulous views over to Kilimajiro. We walked this part as the sun was raising and the colour of the moutains was spectacular.

We got back down in 2 and a half hours and then back to the first camp in another hour and a half. The sun was baking hot when we arrived and we really wanted a cold drink, sadly the previous group going up the mountain had drunk everything so we had to make do with ht chocolate since the water had to be boiled before we could drink it. Refreshing it was not! We both had cold showers after and felt much better for it.

Summit of the mountain

The Big K in the distance.

Mt Meru is 4650m and we were really pleased to find that altitude wasn't really an issue and after our trek through the Usamabara mountains we are pretty damn fit! We were very well looked after by our tour guides and any hope we had of shifting a few pounds on the way up were shattered when we realised that every meal would be a three course feast! The guides also know what they are doing and make you walk 'pole, pole' which means 'slowly, slowly'. The speed really was slow until our last day and even then it was slower than we'd walk in the UK, but it worked to get us up to the summit!

This trek should hopefully put us in good shape for conquering Kilimanjiro. We are going with the same trekking company who took us up Meru so we'll be very well looked and shall enjoy lots of nice food what ever happens! Tune in next Thursday to see if we made it!

Safari adventures

2007-10-12T14:42:00.000+01:00

Well we should have gone on safari on Sunday, but when we got there, they had a 4Wdrive minibus and 6 people, not a nice comfy toyota landcruiser and 4 people as originally agreed, so we refused to get on board. That was at 9am. At 11am we gave up trying to sort it out and went home, leaving 4 other tourists still sat in the minibus ( and no doubt very annoyed). We saw them in the serengetti two days later and their minibus didn't look too comfortable, but at least they still got there.

So we left on Monday. As the safari company wanted to keep us sweet they ended up sending us on our own private safari in a nice landcruiser for no extra cost. All worked out very well for us. Our guide and cook spolit us rotten.

Had three days driving around the serengeti and one in the Ngorongoro crater and saw, lions (thanks to eagle eye Vicky) two leopards, a cheetah, which refused to move from under the tree, elephants (about 50 in one herd which was amazing), rhino, huge crocodile, wart hogs, three baby leopards, hyena, hippo, hyena eating hippo, zebra, zebra chasing hyena away, buffalo, wilderbeast, vultures, maribou stalk and a partridge in a pear tree.

We also saw a lioness which was quite happily hiding from the sun in a tree. Had probably been there a good few hours and would have remained there most of the day until things got a bit cooler. The safari guides were certainly pleased with the sighting. The way things work in the Serengeti is that one of the guides make a sighting of one of the 'Big 5' and word spreads around the park so all the other guides race over in their vehicles so that their guests get to see the sight too. The guides probably thought this was a safe viewing for the rest of the day. That was until the lioness sensed the presence of an alpha male in the vicinity (phil). This alpha male had already several times marked its territory in the park several times and the lioness must have caught his scent. That may have encouraged it to move by itself however, when alpha male decided to climb on to the top of the 4wd in a position higher than the lioness that was too much for the poor creature. It acknowledged it's inferior status and sloped off out of it's tree scared off by alpha male. Still, not many wives can say their husband scared off a lion!

Heard hyena in the night, which made midnight p trips a little more interesting. thankfully we didn't see them, or any eyes reflecting the torch light back in the darkness.

It was also interesting to see the Masaii tribes in the ngoro crater. The Masaii are a tribe who refuse to give up their traditional way of life which involves leading their cattle to grassy plains and moving their homes accordingly. They have been given special permission to remain in ngoro as they don't threaten the animals there. So, amongst the ngoro there are these tribes who wander around with their cattle. They create a very striking image. They dress in red cloaks (to look like fire to scare off big predators) and the woman wear lots of jewelerry (the older they are the more jewelerry they wear). The men and woman tend to be tall and both shave their heads. All in all, the ngora ia a visually stunning place.

Usambara Mountains, Vicky hits Phil!

2007-10-06T13:45:00.000+01:00

And so began the trekking chapter of our travels. Recognising that after two months on the beach we were not quite in form to leap up Kili straight away we decided to go village trekking in the Usambara Mountains which is in north east Tanzania.

We used Lushoto as our base. We stayed in a nice lodge in it's own little forest with monkeys jumping around the grounds and after the hustle and bustle of Dar the calm was very much welcome.

After a day of chilling we started our village trek. Our guide book recommended taking a local guide with you on the tour. We looked into this and thought that was an unnecessarily expensive option so decided to do it ourselves, mainly relying on our GPS, Phil's ability with a compass, the directions from our trekking book and a tourists guide to Swahili. Not many tourists venture off on their own and this kind of added to the appeal for us.

The trek unfolded as follows:

Day 1

Lushoto to Lukosi via Forest Commission

We set off and walked up hill. We carried on walking up hill pretty much all day with a slight detour to the forestry commission. It hurt! We were right about the effect of lazing on beaches had on us - our bodies weren't used to it and after 19 k we were glad to arrive at our first night's lodging. The moutain scenery during the day very much reminded us of trekking in the himalayas and in asia. The colours, vegetation and the way the villagers cultivated their land looked just like the views we saw in India.

We were starving when we arrived at our first lodge. Not much english was spoken so through sign language and our dodgy swahili we communicated that we needed lots of food and that was certainly delivered - we had a banquet! It's amazing how far a smile and I want to eatsign language can get you. Got a room too, the swahili book had the word for room in it. Sadly it didn't have the words fro dust free matress in it and we spent half an hour sneezing.

Day 2 - Lukosi to Rangwi

Whilst Lukosi is quite small it is famous for it's market and people come from all over Northern Tanzania to have a shop. The atmosphere changed from the previous day where the road had been busy with vehicles to a much more rural self reliant environment. So, as we left the village the road was very busy with people carrying their produce and pottery, usually on their heads - until you saw it you wouldn't beleive the size of the stuff the women carry! Sadly we were told by a doctor doing her out here that the older women all have arthritic necks as a result.

As ever, we were a novelty and people would crane their knecks trying to get a look at us. The children's reactions were particuarly funny. They were either very enthusiastic or petrified of us. They identify us as 'Mzungo' which basically means 'white person'! When ever we entered a new village it was usually accompanied with a chorus of 'Mzungo' 'Mzungo' with lots of children pointing at us - not very PC! The clever ones would also say to us, 'Mzungo - how are you?' or 'Mzungo - where are you going?'. The naughty ones (in the minority) would say,'Mzungo - give us money'. May not be a surprise to know that 'white person - give us some monry' did not induce us to put our hands in our pockets! Sometimes a child walking opposite us with his head down would only look up and notice us when we were right in front of them. The fear in their eyes when they saw how close they were to a Mzungo was very funny. They then seemed to perform an assessment of whether they would be safer throwing themselves off the mountain side rather than walking any closer to us. A game we developed when the children followed us (they would never turn their backs on us!) was to let them get close then suddenly turn round and say 'Boo'! Until they realised we were playing there was almost tears of fear from some!!

This kind of reaction happended throughout our tour. Adults would also stare at us but people are very courteous out here and nearly every conversation is started with asking how you are. So, when people stared we said hello and asked how they are. This always elicited a huge smile and a return of pleasantries. When we were lucky this ended the exchange and they were left with the impression that maybe Mzungoes aren't quite such uncultured, odd, heathens as they can speak a bit swahili. (7 words to be exact!) Adults were also keen on introducing their young children to us. Pretty much every people were curious about us but were very warm and welcoming, particualry when you had a go at their language.

Anyhow, back to the trek. This was a beautiful day's trekking. We passed through beautiful mountain village scenery and lovely cool forests easily finding our way even when leaving the road.

We were however glad when we reached our second nights stay -Rangwi. Here we were staying in a nunnery and it was lovely! We were very well looked after, had clean rooms and had masses of food. The nuns were very friendly and were very impressed with us for finding them without a guide (smug Bennetts). They were even nice to us after we got the 'grace' rituals wrong during the two meals we had with them (once my fault, once Phil's fault)! Strange, but the whole place was full of white lace coverings, tables, windows, bookshelves, seats, I think it must be a rule for the nuns to get as close to their steriotype as possible.

Day 3 Rangwi to Mtae

Another morning's beautiful trekking through villages in the mountains. The afternoon however was the highlight as we had views over the plains, a national park and the mountains.It was really stunning. The mountains just drop off 1500m into the plains within a mile or so and then the plains stretch out flat to the horizon with mountains occasionally pock marking them along the way. Unfortuantely our batteries ran out so we are relying on a nice couple we met to send us their pictures before we can add them here!

Day 4 Mtae to Mlalo

We decided on this day to find a different route rather than retracing yesterdays trail. It was all going well until we decided to ignore the directions from a local and instead follow the pointers on the geko (GPS thingy). This led us on a narrow path through thick forest where you needed a stick to waft spiders webs out of the way and defend yourself from the forest beasties (ok - a complete exaggeration but it had that feel).

The geko stopped working due to the tree canopies so we were left choosing direction based on instinct. We got lost...The picture of Phil below was taken just after we had left the forest. At that point we were feeling rather pleased with our navigation...... Phil said he knew exactly where we were.

Yep, we got it completely wrong and ended up doing a 360 degree circle through the forest and ended up coming out pretty much at the same point as we went in!! Phil did know exactly where we were, we were back where we started. We would have got it even more wrong if some surprised locals we had seen in the forest hadn't pointed us in the right direction. We did have a compass with us but for some reason we decided to ignore the fact it was telling us we were going in the wrong direction and go with our instinct! Good lesson learnt there!

When we came out of the woods and carried on down the path, following the route a local had pointed us on earlier and one i'd recommended to phil we should follow....we found we had been 5 mins away from where we had wanted to be all along. Oh how we laughed!! (I despute this, but as Vicky hit me! and told me I'd taken her the wrong way, I figured it must all be my fault after all and took the huff, Vicky just laughed at me, life is so unfair, HUFF HUFF HUFF, PB)

The route for the rest of the day was beautiful but quite hard on our legs. We were glad to arrive at our final destination and I was even glader when the local hotel was booked out and we had to splash out on a very western guest house out of town!

Whilst we had big blisters and our legs were sore we thoroughly enjoyed our trek, meeting the villagers and trying out our swahili. The phrase book was completely useless by the way. Whilst it enabled us to ask things such as "is there any post" "be quiet and listen to me", "this food is over cooked' it didn't tell us how to ask, for example, for a room for the night, or a meal! The swahilli language is very blunt, the reason the kids say "give me money!" is that they have one word for 'please can I have' in Swahilli and it's mis trasnlated as 'Give Me'. As a result of this culturaldifference, we've been unable to offend anyone, the street touts that you tell to 'get out of the way,' or 'go away' just translate this into Swahilli and hear 'you wouldn't mind moving asside would you?' and 'I'm a little busy right now, maybe later.' Phil tried taking a card from one of them and throwing it immediately away, that didn't work either. (hoping to learn 3 more Swahili words so I can say, "piss off twat", to the street touts, which might do it, PB)

The next day we got the bus back to Lushoto. On the bus there was a family taking their clearly very ill son to hospital. The differences between our two cultures was very apparent.

On return to Lushoto we walked to a local farm for their home made brown bread, cheese and jam. Was a very yummy treat!

We have now left Lushoto and are in Arusha. We've change our plans somewhat (due to blisters and sore feet!) and are booked on to do a safari tomorrow (Sunday) for four days followed by trekking up the Mighty M (Meru) and the Big K (kilimanjiro which we've had our first sights of and aer already in awe!!

Zanzibar stage 2

2007-10-06T13:15:00.000+01:00

So we headed to Nungwi, party capital of Zanzibar.

We arrived, we booked diving, we slept on the beach, we ate dinner, we drank 3 beers, we went to bed at 9pm, we woke up with hangovers.

Thankfully the morning dive was cancelled, so we resumed beach sleeping. I (Phil) went for an afternoon dive to Leven Bank. It's a sandbank reef that rises up to about 25m about 3 miles off shore. At the dive centre, they told me it was a 30m dive, cool. By the time we reached the boat, it was a 35m dive, when the dive brief came along 3 miles off shore it was a 40m dive. Now that's ok with me if I know it's coming, if I've been drinking water all morning, haven't got a hangover, and had time to get my head around it - after all I've done lots of 30m dives and one 50m dive.

I had a hangover, I hadn't had that much water and I had about a minute to get my head round it. I sensibly decided that diving to 40m was a really dumb ideal and then jumped in anyway. Hey I was 3 miles off shore and there was the posibility of seeing sharks, some things you just can't turn down.

Straight down to 40m in about a minute as planned. saw a huge Ray. That would have been cool except I had a massive case of nitrogen narcosis. (for the non divers, it's not dangerous, it's just a bit like being drunk, you think slow and do stupid things). As a result I spent the next ten minutes trying to remember what the damn creature was called. Finally Steve Irwin popped into my head and I remembered it was a ray.

Did see some cool chimney like coral though.

Re-surfaced, got sea sick and threw up. Got onto shore, had food and slowly recovered, felt rough all night. Not a good dive.

Next day we both headed out diving. Really pretty diving at nice shallow depths on Mnemba Atol. Saw a turtle and some cool sand eels.

Had a nice night out, took a photo of the sunset, got drunk again and then headed back to Dar es Salam the next day.

There's not much to tell about Dar. Went to bank. Got Ugandan visa. Ate sushi at a really nice westernised area of Dar. Moved on...

Zanzibar

2007-09-22T17:26:00.000+01:00

So it was time to leave Selous and head for Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. Another early start. Up at 3am to get the some time between 4am and 5am bus. We’d anticipated the journey to take around 8 hours. We were soooo wrong. We sat on the local ‘In God We Trust’ bus at 4.30am. It started it’s engine and started beaping it’s horn. Thought we were going to leave. It didn’t. Made the same wrong presumption at 4.45, 5.00, and 5.15.

At 5.20 it set off then stopped around the corner. The owners of the camp site had put us on the bus with some reservations as the local buses had a reputation for going very fast and then breaking down. Speed was clearly not going to be an issue!

Finally left at 5.40. At times, it would have been faster to walk. It stopped at every village and loaded on masses of people, vegetables, wood and bricks. The journey actually took us closer to 12 hours but by the end of it after seeing the bus in action we fully appreciated how ‘lucky’ we were for it to actually arrive in Dar.

But arrive in Dar it did with only a short time left to get the ferry over to Zanzibar. Anyone who has ever being to Dar will know it’s not really a place in which you can travel anywhere fast. They will also know of the con men who hang around the ferry port hoping to relieve unexpecting tourists of their cash. They swarmed us but we were well prepared and pushed our way through avoiding a few attempts to fleece us without any trouble.

Really, we were very surprised to be on the ferry at all. Many points earlier in the day we had expected to be staying the night on the roadside or in Dar so sitting on the ferry, speeding along with the wind in our hair and great views around us was lovely.

Zanzibar

We arrived in Zanzibar just before sunset. Dropped our bags off, had a much needed shower and went off to explore Stone Town.

We went to eat in the gardens over looking the sea. Here locals have set up food stands in the gardens offering all kind of fish and meat dishes. You then choose what you want and they warm it up on hot plates. Very ambient. We tried Zanzibar pizzas which was really yummy (see ‘Rate the local food’).

It was very odd to be somewhere where there are lots of other westerners. We had kind of got used to being the only ones. We both agreed that we preferred the atmosphere when it was just us and the locals.

The next day we spent wandering the streets of Stone Town. This is a quirky place that was once an important trading island. As such, it has many different cultural influences ranging from Swahili, other African countries, Arabs, Portugese, and British. You can see it in the architecture and dress. It is very different to the other places we had visited, far more asian and a very atmospheric place to wander around.

We had a look around the museum then did more strolling. In the tourist area it’s very hassly with touts trying to get you and shop owners trying to sell you their products. However, walk a few streets back and you are in the ‘real’ Stone Town. In the space of about 5 mins we had left the other westerners behind, were in the busy local market and were again getting curious looks from the locals. Found that far more interesting. Later on we mooched around the shops and I (Vicky) am tempted to buy a large wooden African mask to send home. Phil bought a new hat to replace his ‘ride or die’ which is a great loss.

Today (Sunday) we hired a motorbike to tour the island.

It was a 250cc and rode pretty well. Phil did all the driving - I just clung on! (Took me a few minutes to get used to a bike again and I was just starting to feel good about riding when Vicky discovered she could grab a roll of flab on my belly and cling onto that. Way to ruin a mans ego! PB) We went over to the east of the island where all the best beaches are and worked our way down the coast (around 250k in total). The beaches are incredibly beautiful. The sand is like flour in colour and texture and the water is turquoise. Palm trees line the beaches and colouful fishing boats bob around in the sea. (turns out flour is tricky to ride a motorbike on, specially with a pillion, PB)

We stopped at some beaches where there were no other people in sight, some just frequented by locals, another that was a chilled westerners spot and another which was a bustling fishing village. Nice way to see the island.

Vicky's cool Biker look.

Vicky's not so cool Biker look!

The Selous Game Reserve

2007-09-22T16:10:00.000+01:00

Another 5am get up to catch a bus. On embarking the luggage guy tried to get us to pay a lot of money to put our bags on the coach. This led to Vicky arguing with him for about 20 minutes. (I just stood and watched her work with an occasional shake of my head when the man looked at me for help PB). He cracked before we did and our bags were put on without any additional charge. Proper coach this time, but they put 5 little seats across the width of it instead of 4 and the leg room is too small for Vicky. Anyway we got off at the right town at 12noon and got a soda. We texted the owners of the camp we were heading to and as they were passing through on the way back from Dar they picked us up about 2pm. Sat on the back of their truck for 4 hours, but being in the fresh air was a welcome mode of transport after the bus seats.

I saw some of the weird birds with the big beak that eat poisonous snakes and anything else that moves.

On approaching the camp a herd of elephants walked out to greet us. Vicky was of course ecstatic. The camp owner wants to bottle and sell elephant poo to westerners, so she was pleased to see the elephants too. (Mike, be gratefull customs won't let her or we'd have posted you a 'Poo in a Pot'.)

The camp itself was in a lovely location next to the river side which hippos were cooling down in. It was really cool listening to them grunting and talking hippo language to each other.
You had to take your own supplies to the camp and they set up a fire for you to cook on next to your tent. It’s very atmospheric with the stars above you, the bush on one side and the hippo’s chattering away on the other side. And we had it all to ourselves.

Next day we chilled through the morning and then took a safari drive in the afternoon. Saw Elephant, Crocodile, Lion, Hippo, Vultures, Egyption Geese, spoon billed stalk, Water buck, endless Giraffes and Impalla (deer). Learned some cool facts too, the camp owners are qualified game wardens so we had our own personal safari tour and rarely saw another car.
Egyptian geese live in a pair, If one dies, the other just gives up on life and snuffs it voluntarily. Not sure how evolution came up with that solution!

Lion's try to eat Hippo's in the night. They walk up to 8km from their water hole to feed at night and if a Lion attacks they just run to the water all 8km if necessary. They run through thorn bushes and their skin is an inch thick so the lion has a bit of a job in stopping them.
Giraffe's hearts are about 50cm across and the blood pressure is so high to get the blood to their head that they can only drink for about 30 seconds at a time before raising their heads again to avoid passing out.

Went on another safari the next morning and saw lots more including Hyena taking an impala. Zoom in on the photo.

Saw a crocodile skull, even still looks like a Croc.

Crocodiles make us laugh when they walk.

Had a sunset cruise and then headed to bed ready for the 3am start...

2007-09-22T15:30:00.000+01:00

Mtwara.

When we got off the truck we sat outside an ice cream stall in the shade for a while. I walked off to get some money, a sim card and some new flip flops.

(My shoes have devolved…. Started off with Teva’s worth 50 quid, they got nicked, progressed to nice flip flops worth a fiver over here, left them behind at the border, bought a pair for 75p, seemed the best option. If I have to get a fourth pair, I’ll probably just gaffa tape cardboard to my feet)

Think we’re the weirdest pair in town, there aren’t many westerners around and all the ones we saw came in their own air con 4WD’s. We arrived on a pickup covered in 3 days of road dirt. Vicky sat with the taxi drivers and got them to teach her Swahilli (remember it’s a muslim culture here so women sitting around with the men in town is a little uncommon.) I walked barefoot around town asking for a shoe shop and a bank (burnt my feet a little on the hot sand too).

We got ourselves a nice hotel to recover in, it was just within our daily budget as long as we only drank water. But still, after 3 days on the road we figured we deserved it. Vicky was so happy she bounced for a minute or so. Pretty location and clean western standard en-suite room. See photo’s.

Had nice meals, the curry dishes were delicious, but our bodies are not used to fatty dishes or spice anymore and we were both making regular trips toilet-wards in the morning to be rewarded with that burning feeling curry’s are famous for.

Went into town the next day. The two hotel dogs which we had being nice to decided we were part of their pack and followed us all 2km of the way there. If we looked like the odd ones out the day previous, this sealed it. The locals don’t keep pets and are very frightened of dogs. One of the dogs ran into a shop before we realized and sat happily behind the counter forcing the owner to climb up onto a 100kg bag of maize like a cartoon housewife avoiding a mouse. Dogs followed us all the way back too. Had curry again, against our better judgment, but it is nice.",

Next day we sat around at the hotel and went swimming off the shore to look at the corals. Our constant companions, the dogs were determined to follow us where ever we went and kept trying to swim out with us. Again, the locals thought we were weird. Pretty corals to look at, I spotted a stone fish, which is a first for me. The current was against us for the first half of the swim out and then swung around twice as fast to push us out to sea. It was hard to swim back against, especially for me as I needed another post curry toilet session and had to swim back using my arms only. This blog seems to be rapidly descending into a record of our bowel movements, will try to find more interesting topics in future.

The great Hitchhike Extravaganza.

2007-09-21T19:03:00.000+01:00

Mistake #1 Don’t start hitching at 12 noon, start at 6am, there’s more traffic in the morning.
Mistake #2 Don’t end up sat in a local village for 4 hours, unable to speak the language.
Mistake #3 Don’t look too friendly, the local mad man will flash his nuts at Vicky.

However after a less than ideal 4 hours, we got a lift from a Frenchman (3rd car to pass) who’s opening line was “how the hell did you get here, this is the arse end of nowhere.?”

He gave us a lift on the back of his truck as far as a road junction bout half way to the nearest town. Both of us spent the entire journey grinning – travelling at speed through a beautiful setting in the open air with the wind in your face is a simple but true pleasure. We stopped along the way to buy wood (well for the Frenchman to buy planks, we were not in need of tree bits, having recieved a couple along the way from passing tree branches)

We were in an area where the locals do not see many white people - particuarly travelling on the back of trucks so the local kids thought we were a bit interesting and crowded round to look at us. At first they were curious but kept their distance. However, the power of a smile works where ever you are in the world and they started to grin, say hello and strike poses. In return, we started to take their pictures and they loved it! They’d never been in a digital photo though and when we showed them their pictures they were delighted and were jumping around to see them selves on the back of our camera. Eventually nearly the whole village came out to wave us off. Was a lot of fun for them and us. And nobody flashed their nuts at me (vick) which was also a bonus.

Anyway. When we got dropped off at the road junction in a little village the Frenchman told us to camp where we were and hope for a lift in the morning. He left us with a sort of “they’re nutts” shake of his head and headed off down the road we didn't want.

We sat and waited, it got dark. We communicated needing a P to the locals in a mixture of bad Portugese and possibly very good sign language and they pointed us in the right direction. Then we sat and waited for another 2 hours or so.

Eventually a truck came past loaded to double decker height with stuff and with about 30 people sat on top. We scrambled up, I found a nice spot at the back with a comfy seat and a local drunkard to converse with. Vicky perched at the front holding herself on with her left foot and the bags on with her right foot and squeezing up to the bloke on her right for warmth. I did ask if she was okay, she said yes, so I went back to getting the drunkard to tell me where the hotel we wanted was. Conversations with drunk people who speak the wrong language are remarkably effective. I discovered that he makes roads for a living and lives nowhere near where we were, but he did point at a dark building in the background and say "hotel" when we got to the last stop for the night at about 10pm.

We found a hotel (pretty minging VB, basic but fine for a night PB), checked in, ordered a take away beer and walked off to the market to buy dinner. We had Donuts, Chicken and bread, which is about all they serve. The food comes out of a plastic bowl and it's handed to you in an old newspaper. Double bonus for us, it didn't have sand in it and we didn't get the squits (always a worry when ordering cold chicken from a plastic bowl thats been sitting around in the market all day.) We opened one of our cans of tuna in the hotel room to go with the bread, it was lovely, but did have the effect of attracting an army of ants to our hotel room.

The bed had a slat or two missing in the middle, so the matress kept trying to fall through the middle of the bed. If felt a bit like a camp bed trying to fold up on you. I slept like a log, Vicky, er.. did not. She said that every time I turned over the bed squeeked, woke her up and then when she turned over it kept trying to fold up on her. I think she got about 2 hours of sleep.

Then it was time for day 2

and for Vick to take over as narrator...

Learning from the previous day we got up good and early. As it was now daylight the locals were able to see that two weird white people were in their town and it led to the usual curiosity, people pointing us in the right direction and generally laughing at us, (easy to do given that phil had bought himself a white cap with 'Ryde or die' on the front, hee hee VB ). (best of a bad lot and better than sun stroke and with the added bonus of amusing both Vicky and the locals, one of who shouted Ride or Die at me from across the street. PB)

We knew that a bus would turn up at some point but had decided to get on the first thing going in our direction. This happenend to be the local form of transport which was a pick up truck. Fairly small, but it can hold a lot of people, vegetables, chickens, grain, wood, pretty much anything - all at once. So we clambered in which was a challenge in itself. Standing on the side of the truck looking down at a sea of people already covering the bottom of the truck you have to wonder where on earth you are going to fit. However, the locals knew better than us and made space. Again Phil got a comfy seat, hmm. I saw enough of the floor of the van to see maggots crawling around but was then pleased to see a rather large lady sit on them. Maggots no longer a problem.

Being on the truck is the equivalent of rush hour on the tube. Difference is on the truck there is a real spirit of comoraderie. People talk, laugh and give you advice when the place you have picked will likely lead to you falling off when the truck moves! There can also be no squeamishness about bodily contact and you can kind of forget which leg is yours in the squash. Phil, on his comfy seat was raised above all and was surrounded by a group of female friends. One was sat pretty much between his legs and despite not knowing any portugese it didn't take much for me to work out the women were laughing with each other about being between a white man's legs!!

Probably not that many westerners have being in these vans and we again provided a great source of amusement to those in the van and the villages we passed through. However, the people took us to heart and offered us strange looking vegetables to eat (people sell them on the road side) and were kind to us. Very friendly feel which we'd have missed out on a bus.

Between being bounced around on a metal floor being in the van is also a good place to people watch. In North Mozambique there are still old traditions in place so on our van were ladies with tatooed patterns on their face and people in all different types of clothes depending on their background. All very interesting.

We arrived in the next down after a long, bumpy (the road was pretty much all unsealed), hot but enjoyable journey. We had the option of staying there and getting a bus the next morning or carrying on in local transport making our own way. Guess which Team Bennett chose.....

Yep, we got on to another pick up truck for another four hour journey. Usual squashed and uncomfortable journey. At one point I realised that I couldn't feel my foot and this was because a big bag of corn which was on top of it. I managed to squeeze my foot out by leaving my shoe still under there.

This was probably a worse road than before. However, our attention was soon taken off the condition of the road and the corresponding bashes to our bottoms by the sudden downpour that hit us. A nice goretex rain jacket is of no use at the bottom of your ruck sack so we basically got soaked. It was a true topical storm that lasted for about five minutes. As the roads were sandy great puddles formed at the side and the water that splashed up at us from the puddles was really warm!

After the rain passed I must have looked like a little drowned rat feeling pretty sorry for itself as a local lady gave me a scarf and indicated at me to wrap it around and cuddle up under it for warmth. This was really sweet of her and worked a treat! It also gave the others on the van a lot of amusement. They continued to look after us and gave us different vegetables to eat on journey. It was a really jolly journey.

We arrived at our destination (Palma) just after dusk. We stayed in another minging hotel (I quite liked this one, it was part of someones house and was clean PB) and our evening meal consisted of bread, peanut butter for me and peri peri sauce for Phil because that's all we really wanted. They were selling nice food in the market and the hotel offered to make us something. Whilst walking around town we ran into the nice lady who gave me the scarf. I managed to communicate how grateful I was to her and we gave each other a nice hug. (they both sort of hopped from foot to foot a bit too to show they were happy. PB) Then went to bed as we had a 3 am start for the next morning's journey in to Tanzania.

The Dreaded Ruvuma crossing!!!!

(PB narrating again)

Got up at 3am and clambered aboard another flat back Toyota. (Clarkson was right, it’s true the Toyota flat backs are indestructible, they use them everywhere and repair them with hammers and welding torches.) Worst road yet, which is cruel given that its dark and you can’t see the bumps coming. Arrived at the Mozambique border post and had our bags searched. We’ve got BIG bags and the border officials just opened the top flap, looked at the task ahead of them and we were allowed through. Then we headed off to the Ruvuma river which forms the actual border. We’d been warned to watch for pick pockets and Vicky had spent the past week reminding me once a day to “be vigilant”. I was getting a little irritated by this which was encouraging her and my case was not helped by leaving my flip flops behind at the border post!

The Ruvuma river is about 500m wide and sadly the dug out canoe crossing the guidebook promised has been replaced by heavily overloaded wooden boats with little motors on the back. Passed a hippo in the water, a little to close for everyone’s liking given how low in the water the boat was. Then the other side was manic. We spent 10 minutes circling around as the driver refused to dock as we were arguing with the price he wanted us to pay. On docking there were 30 people all trying to help with your bags and get you to use their truck to get to Mtwara. We got sorted anyway, I think we’ve seen it too many times now to get worried about it.

The Tanzanian border post is far more modern. The dark huts with no lights of Mozambique are gone to be replaced by whitewashed concrete walls and fluorescent lighting designed to keep the reflections off the border officials computer screen. Bought our visa. Walked to the police post, very nice people, friendly chatty. Quite enjoying the conversation until the woman starts asking Vicky if she has a ‘gift’ for her. She tried ‘no sorry’ and ‘we don’t have anything that would work as a gift’ but the lady persisted and it dawned on us this was a bribe attempt. Vicky tried the blank look and the open handed stance that seems to be universal sign language for I got nothing. Then when the lady asked again Vicky asked me if we had anything. I said we had some broken biscuits she could have. Vicky nearly snorted. Woman gave up, seemingly broken biscuits were not what she was hoping for. Still we are very pleased with ourselves to have avoided the bribe.

Then an hour on the road to Mtwara...

2007-09-17T13:34:00.000+01:00

Maraja.

Maraja is a massive area of wild bush, purchased by an eccentric German called Dominic. He basically bought the area ten years ago, paid the local villagers to leave started to employ rangers and to create his own personal national park. We went along for a few days cos the thought of seeing Elephants in the proper wilds and going for walks in the bush sounded interesting.

The place is beset with problems, there are Chinese logging companies trying to cut down all the hard wood trees. There are people setting snares and poisoning the animals to eat them and to get the ivory. And it seems likely one of his own rangers nicked his mobile phone while we were there. In summary, he’s a nutter. A really good person with endless energy and dedication, sure. Fun to be around and fascinating to listen to, yes. But in the end a true eccentric.

He picked us up in town, and after waiting 3 hours for a mechanic to join us he drove us out to Maraja via his farm, and a roadside village fruit and vegetable stall. See photo.

Sadly, it appears that despite our best bargaining powers, we were still paying double or treble the price for fruit and veg at the market. Still, I can live with that when the whole days food shopping costs a quid.

His house in Maraja is a rebuild of an old Portuguese colonial place, which at one time included a fort during the fight with Frelimo for control of the country. It’s a lovely place to stay with stunning views out over the surrounding bush. The main house at the top has a great breeze and stays cool all day. A very nice place to relax and chill. There are Isleburgs around too. Little mountains of granite left standing tall when everything else around them washed away.

The first night there we climbed the nearest Isleburg. Check out the shadow in the background for an idea of the shape. Sundowner beers at the top (to bring beers the ranger had to leave his gun behind and bring the beer cooling box - who wants warm beers?!) and a first view of what we imagined Africa should look like (endless trees and bush as far as the eyes could see with no sign of human habitation). We both loved it, Vicky was really really happy. I think we were both glad to escape the sand of the beech too.

The next morning we were up at 5am with the dawn for some safari walking. The old man guiding us was still drunk and we though the animals would be scared off by the smell, but we actually saw 2 elephants. They’re really hard to spot because the undergrowth is really thick and you have to get within 20m to stand a chance of seeing one. Plus, because they’re still hunted here all the elephants have been shot at, wounded, or seen a loved one die, so they head off at the first sign of man. In truth, I saw an elephant’s head and Vicky saw an elephant mooning her as it headed off into the trees. So between us we only saw 2/3s of an elephant although searching for animals on foot is really good fun and the build up of excitement as you realize you are getting close to the animal is pretty cool. Also saw local deer like things, some wild pigs and a few little things.

We spent the afternoon doing nothing, sleeping and admiring the view and then headed out for another walk.
Saw a wild pig and didn’t see the really cool deer like thing because we thought the guide was pointing at some fowl. He was rather too excited by the sight of birds in our opinion, but that’s what a language barrier does for you. Despite not seeing any animals it was a beautiful evening walk.

We had our evening meal in the old house and then watched the stars for a while which were amazingly clear – the milky way looked like a mass of dust in the sky. Next morning we were up again and went for another walk. Saw baboon butt after 3 hours of hard walking. Not the best but still a pleasant walk.

Then we got dropped off at the road junction to start hitching to Tanzania. That is a whole new story, but we're out of time on the internet here, so it'll have to keep for another day.

Weapon of MOZZ destrution

2007-09-17T13:11:00.000+01:00

The greatest single weapon in the fight against the Moquito to be invented since they banned DDT.

The electric tennis racket

Pemba

2007-09-10T12:57:00.000+01:00

After leaving Maputo we flew up to Pemba which is in the north of Mozambique. From here we plan to travel up the coast and cross the border in to Tanzania. We'll then carry on up the south east of tanzania stopping to do some sight seeing, diving and safari viewing along the way. This is described as 'adventure' travelling as most people only go to North Tanzania so this route should be interesting! Looking forward to it really as it will be nice to get off the beaten track well pounded by overlanders, south africans and 10000s of backpackers. So far, those times when we have left the main tourist areas have proved to be the most rewarding as the local people are friendly, curious and as much interested in you as you are them. Around the cities and other popular areas people seem a bit more cynical (and one of the beggars knicked our sandals whilst we were swimming in the sea - how the smell did not put them off is a mystery!!) .

But, for now we are in Pemba. More stunning beaches but we are getting a bit bored of them (the hardship, eh?) so tomorrow we are going into the wild to join a local community project for a couple of days. After that, continue up the coast to Tanzania.

Tofu: The final installment!

2007-09-10T11:07:00.000+01:00

After a few days more of lounging and doing very little, we found a way to improve our piece of paradise - we moved to Turtle Cove. An even more chilled, laid back place that served delicious food including our fave, Sushi. Our idyllic lifestyle continued until the Bennett v Mosquito wars entered into a new phase: Weapons of Mass destruction.

After reaching pretty much a level playing field something had to give if either side wanted to win the war. So, us Bennetts got a weapon of mass destruction - basically a tennis bat with an electric current running through the middle so when squatting mozzies it lets off a satisfying 'zap' noise and fries the little beggars. Very very effective. Our killing spree leapt into treble figures with me (Vicky) proving to be the weapon of mass destruction master. Recognising me (again Vicky) as a formidable foe, the mozzies used their weapon of choice - malaria.

Despite taking mind bending, poisoning chemicals to prevent malaria the force was strong in the mozzies and one of them managed to drop off it's little parasite into my blood steam. After feeling a bit ropey for a couple of days we decided to get the malaria test as out here it's what people do. Mine proved positive. But out here malaria is pretty much like the common cold. In fact maybe more easily treated. So, after taking prescribed medicine for three days and taking it easy I returned to fighting form (Howard - as ever, you were a star and thank you for your assistance). A few days ago I took another malaria test which came out negative - yeah!! Fully recovered (so no one need worry at all, ok?!). The mozzies may have given me malaria but i recovered and nothing short of a miracle will bring them back to life after frying on our weapon of mass destruction - ha!!

Anyhoo, back on my feet we wanted to make sure we left Tofu with nothing but good memories so we changed our plans a little and spent a few more days diving and going on snorkelling safaris. This paid off, Phil dived in the best conditions Tofu had ever seen and we got to swim with whale sharks (they are massive!!) and have very close encounters with hump back whales and dolphins.

And then it was time to move on. We got the bus back to Maputo (incredibly uncomfortable 7 hour journey but lots of chattering locals to keep us entertained- on one previous bus journey a very drunk lady spent the hour propositioning Phil!) where we spent the night eating pizza, eating cake and drinking beer. Maputo certainly seemed a busier place after spending over two weeks in Tofu!

Tofu

2007-08-24T14:29:00.000+01:00

Part 2
Still in Tofu, have tried surfing a few times with little success, though Vicky got stood up a few times. There's been a strong on shore wind most days so it's all to choppy. More diving tomorrow. Other than that, we've pretty much sat on the pristine beach in front of the turquoise ocean thinking about how tough life is here. There was a cloud in the sky one day, so we went to the local town to re-stock with nice grub. We're leaving on the 4th Sept when we'll be heading for another idyllic coastal location, followed by a marine reserve for more diving.

Part 1
We left Maputo last Sunday and have now spent five days here in Tofu surfing, diving and chilling amongst white sands and turquoise seas. Humpback wales are currently swimming in our bay and this morning Phil snorkelled with whale sharks and dived with Devil Rays and saw a Manta Ray and turtle close up from the boat. We went diving yesterday and heard the hump back whales singing to each other. Very surreal. King prawns are caught daily and are cheaper than a coke so phil is inventing lots of ways to cook us up a treat. Last night he used two coconuts to cook us a thai dish. Yum yum. More diving planned for tomorrow then surfing the day after. Both rated as world class spots. We are going to spend another week here as when things are this good, why leave?!

Mozambique - Maputo

2007-08-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

Arrived on Thursday. Immediately the atmosphere changed. Friendly again. People in the street say hi and point you to the backpackers place without being asked. Had a nightmare with accomodation. First place had messed up our booking so we ended up camping on a concrete roof somewhere else.

First night of many in a tent.

Went back to the first place in the morning to move into our room and they'd stuffed it up again, but we got a nice room in a hotel on the 8th floor in the end. The 8th floor is just about the tallest building around here so it's a nice view.

After eating brekkie at the most well stocked cake shop i have ever been to anywhere, we went to the markets and for a walk around town. We also visited the art gallery. Vicky's viewing time = 45 mins. Phil's viewing time = 5 mins. The architecture here is really mixed up. There are some lovely art deco houses and buildings. Then there are some buildings with balcomies the way you imagine New Orleans houses. And then there are some really decorative buildings, I don't know what it's called but it's the kind of detail you get on royal palaces and things like that. The best is when they mix it all together in one building. There's a Mosque here where they've done that and it looks really odd.

We went for lunch on the waterfront. We'd done 3 or 4 hours of walking and I almost ran there to get fed (PB). We went back for showers and then headed out for a night on the town. I felt a bit knackered and had a couple of cokes to start the evening off. The result of which was that Vicky drank the first bottle of wine herself. She felt a little rough this morning.

Anyway, we had Tiger prawns for dinner. The UK supermarkets are lying to you all. Prawns are the same size here. But medium prawns are a bit bigger than king prawns in the UK. Queen prawns are huge and Tiger or King prawns are THE SIZE OF YOUR HEAD!!! See the photo.

There was a live band on, but they were playing chill music to eat by so we asked them where the local Jazz cafe was. They sent us to Gill Vincente. Top night. Really good music,and a lively crowd, Jazz is excellent live.

Pretty Flowers here too.

Also went to the national art museum. They have statues of 'pile on people'. They're quite cool and look just like a group of deformed people with long faces, beer bellies and big saggy boobs would look if they all piled on top of one another. Vicky enjoyed the museum, but I thought it looked lake a group, of art students had made everything last summer. There was nothing older than 1980 there, so If you want to be a national artist come to Mozambique, there isn't that much competition.

There was also a lovely bakery, could have stayed all day to eat our way through the 20m long counter of cakes.

Johannesburg - City of razor wire

2007-08-15T15:33:00.000+01:00

We arrived in J'burg a couple of days ago. Hated the place truthfully. Doesn't have much to reccomend it. we're staying at a place called Sleek backpackers which is full of church groups from all over Africa attending a Faith Healing seminar. It's sad, irritating and funny at the same time.
Sad because some of them are really ill and they're all hoping for a miracle, the positive mental thing might work for some, but a lot go away dissapointed, some have left already.
Irritating (in my opinion, pb) because of my general intolerance for deeply held and voiced religious belief.
And funny, cos the driver from the backpackers place lost his mobile phone, The girl in the front seat started praying to Jesus of Nasareth for it's speedy return, and when we called it, it turned out she was sat on it.

Anyway, the noisy twin room we got instead of a quiet double, and the insane driving on the way from the airport combined to make for a bad start.

You can't really get around here without a car, as a result we failed to get to the Mozambique embassy in time yesterday and had to stay another day. Went to the Cinema and had Sushi to cheer ourselves up.

Today was better, got a taxi to the embassy and handed over our passports to get visas. We had a 4 hour wait, so we disobeyed the rule of not walking anywhere in j'burg and went for a walk to the local shopping mall. Got lost and found downtown j'burg instead.

Phil's version:
Cool place, really interesting. Not as run down as I expected from the horror stories of the locals, though we did go to the area they're trying to regenerate. Felt a little nervous when we realised we were in downtown, to quote the guide "You'd have to be crazy to walk around the central area at night." But as it was the middle of the day, I figured we were safe and tried to keep Vicky's wide eyed watchfull look from spreading to me. Figured out where the Africa Museum was and went for a walk through downtown to get there. Really enjoyed the walk, interesting to see the area, the local market and the people. Vicky thinks I'm crazy and should stop smiling happily at strangers in dangerous areas of town. She also says she's braver than me, cos she feels the fear and overcomes it, while I'm just too dumb to realise it's dangerous.

Vicky's version:
Was certainly interesting and the best part of our visit to J'burg. Also, was good to actually see the place rather than spend the few days we are here hiding in the posh suburban shopping malls (where all the affluent people spend their time as it's safer than the city). However, when we realised that we were in the area that the book and most people we've spoken to warned us about I did feel like getting in the next cab and getting out of there. However, knowing what a geek I am Phil found something to appeal and keep me there - the museum. So we walked there. Whilst Phil strolled around smiling at everyone we passed I tried to counter this by giving out my "all things evil" stare to anyone who looked at us.

We made it safely to the musuem which was really interesting - south africa certainly has a hell of a history to display. Still don't like the place. Every house and building has either razor wire and "armed response" signs, or an electric fence. The taxi driver who dropped us off in the dark last night wouldn't let us get out on the wrong side of the road and walk the 20m to the front door. Went all the way up and back down the road to get us 15m closer. That's no way to live.

Leaving tomorrow

A Day in a Local Village (Shongwe)

2007-08-14T13:24:00.000+01:00

We had a day or two to spare so we took a trip to a local village to experience village life. It's not really an organised trip, you just turn up and ask for the head woman, She charges you a tenner and makes arrangements for someone in the village to put you up and give you a tour of the village. They don't put on a show for toursists so you see village life as it is, or at least it's as close to normal as it can be with us paying to be there. Best of all, they haven't learned to hard sell you carved things you don't want, they didn't try to sell us anything actually.

The tour began around the village school. We met the deputy head (who is also the girl guide commissioner for the area) who told us about the pupils - 320 in total from the ages of 7 to 16. It follows the same principals as the english school system with the pupils divided in to grades based on their age. Unfortunately, the kids were also on their school holidays so we didn't get to see them in the school but we got a pretty good impression of how it all works - they wear a uniform, there are school prefects, clubs and associations. The school is very much dependant on outside funding to buy books, provide food to the pupils etc but they make the most of what they have.

After the school tour we visited the rest of the village. As it was a sunday there were lots of people at one of the 7 churches (each a different kind of church). It was nice to hear the singing. Also, as it was a Sunday the rest of the village was fairly chilled with people sat around in their family groups talking and passing the day.

All going well. Until lunch time. The night before i'd had a very bad belly and could only just cope with the idea of eating very plain food. Thought it would be ok as all Zambians eat is Nshima which is as plain as it gets really. However, for lunch with our Nshima they gave us a dish full of around 60 tiny fried fish in sauce. We'd been to a local market a few days back and seen these things piled up in their thousands on market stalls, covered in flies and stinking. Made my weak western senses contract at the time. So, to be presented with a bowl of them after a night of running back and forwards to the loo nearly made me cry! Still, chin up, rolled up my nshima and made a good show of putting it in the sauce, pushing it around and avoiding the thousands of littlle eyes looking back at me from my plate. At one point though, our guide saw that I had one of the evil beggers on my nshima and as pushing it off may have caused offence i had to chow down on it: gip gip gip. Thankfully it just tasted of salt and not much else. Phil, though, did us proud and happily chomped away.

The rest of the day consisted of wandering around the village, meeting the locals, seeing how the women collected the water from a local well and carried it back on their heads, seeing the children play and the kids play football. We also met the Head man from a neighbouring village. Both he and his wife and friend were fairly schozzled on locally made alcohol (read phil's description in rate the local liquor on the left). They were very friendly and welcoming (in the way that only happy friendly drunks can be) and at one point i thought they were going to ask me if they could adopt phil they took to him so well.

We had our evening meal which was nshima with veggies and actually pretty tasty this time. The guide taught Phil how to make Nshima. He did a good job of it although making it seemed strenuous rather than tricky! Then one of the villagers told us some very odd stories and quizzes before bed time. We were staying in one of the local huts - made of mud and a straw roof. There is no electricity so made our way with candle light. Meant the stars were amazing. Could see the milky way so clearly. I spent the night hidden in our mosquito net watching all the massive spiders (and they were massive despite what phil may say) and other bugs crawl around the walls whilst Phil snoozed away. Thankfully, my belly had righted itself and i didn't need to spend the night running to the hole in the floor behind the village!

So, visiting the village was in all a top experience. Until then, we'd seen Livingstone but given it's tourism its not representative of Zambian life. Seeing the village life was much more 'real'. Subsistence living is definately tough, but people there are very chilled and family orientated. There was lots of music, chatting and laughter. The people were friendly and curious and we were made to feel very welcome. Would be interested to see if and how it has developed in 10 years time.

To finish off a good day we saw two elephants at the side of the road as we left. Made me smile much.

Living the high life around Vic Falls

2007-08-11T12:28:00.001+01:00

After taking the photo bunny role for Phil on rapid 1, spent another lovely morning chilling around Vic Falls with a nice kayaker who was taking the day off. With lunch time beckoning we decided to go posh and visit one of the hotels around Vic Falls. This was a very different world to our much loved hostel, Fawlty Towers. It markets itself as giving its guests, "A real african experience" which basically means it has brought in lots of zebras and monkeys to walk around it's grounds. And a very nice place it was too. The entrance is tightly guarded to keep out riff raff like us and it took a bit of persuading and a few sceptical looks at our clothing (shorts and t-shirt are starting to look backpackerish already!) to allow us in. Lots of very well dressed folk taking lunch so we joined them with a couple of beers and a double g & t.

After our liquid lunch we jumped on board a helicopter for an aerial view of the Falls. This was pretty fine and you can see the views from the photies. Saw my first wild elephant crossing the river (yeah!).

A lovely day finished off with a pizza with a very pleased and happy Phil and a couple of kayakers at a local restaurant.

A Kayaker Re-born!

2007-08-10T15:30:00.000+01:00

KAVU DAY!!!!!
Paddled the top ten. Did a good job of it.
It's a long story, feel free to stop reading here, you've got the jist now.

Sorry for all you none Kayakers out there, this is going to get a bit technical and go on a bit. Sorry for all the kayakers out there. I've gone on a bit and you're going to be hearing me re-tell this story for years too.

Smiling above Number 1, but not really meaning it.

The right line on number 1! This is the smallest rapid of the top ten.

the view downstream from number 1
Me, Mincing about, should have bee 30 feet to the right in the eddy, instead of in this chos.

The long version of the story....

Last night I found that i couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about the river and finding myself lying in bed all tensed up. Fanally dropped off and woke at 8:30 with the same nervous feeling.

Sam picked me up about 9:30 and we headed to the falls. Vicky and a guy called Rob joined us and took photo's and video of the first rapid.

Number 1 - Boiling pot.

It's just a ferry glide really, the hard work is making the break in. after that it's fine. Had no problems.

Number 2

Big wave chain, just good fun really. The waves are 8 feet high, but there's not much to do except keep paddling.

Number 3 - The Mother.

It's just huge, and it's well named. Choice words were coming to mind.

The run in down the glassy top wave lasts a few seconds and all the while the big white wave builds up in front of you till its about 12 feet I recon. Slammed into it and submerged. Stayed underwater upright for a couple of seconds and then popped out nose first. Spent a few seconds trying to get the nose back down, but couldn't manage it before the next wave. Got flipped and rolled up on the third attempt, you just cannot roll on the upstream side, the water is way too powerfull. So I switched to the left side (which doesn't normally work for me) and poppped back upright.

I've performed 3 rolls on my left here, came up first time every time. My lifetime total of sucessfull left hand rolls on a river now stands at 4.

Number 4 -

Huge hole. Sam led me a fantastic line and I punched through a little opening in the left hand wall of the wave. The next two waves crash on you from left and right, but the met just before I came through and created a lovely saddle which I just paddled over. Really good run. Still loads of big waves and boils and things but it's all fine after the first two waves.

The Rescue.

No not me! Someone called Richard. I did not swim.

There's a big flat pool below 4 with two crocodiles in it. Saw one, still couldn't spot the big un. Always nicer to actually see them and know where they are.

Below 4 the two hydroelectric stations (one for Zambia, one for Zimbabwe) feed back into the river. It the river wasn't big enough volume already, it is after this. This is still mid high water, they've only been rafting the top ten for a week. The river still has five meters to drop before low water runs!

Anyway, there were a group of rafts on the side so we went over to see if we could help. A guy called Richard had a broken leg. Someone in the raft with him had been thrown across the raft on number 4. He landed holding both ends of the paddle. The middle of the paddle and all his weight landed on Richard's calf. It snapped, bone showing, toes pointing 90degrees the wrong way, the whole lot.

They were a bit short of strong people to carry him out so Sam and I lent a hand. We got him as far as the powerstation and then waited for the doctor. We were going to head off, but the raft guide was flapping a bit, talking about other bad injutries he'd seen and basically not being very helpfull to Richard's state of mind. So we hung around.

The doc came down and I can't say I was overly impressed with him either. He needed a spare hand to remove the needle he put in and he didn't have a sharps box, so I had to stash it back in it's original case. Yes Mike I know! I would have given him a lecture for you, but it wasn't the time. Besides, I was already in his bad books, just before sticking the needle in he said "small prick" so I said, "I'm sure it's nothing to be ashamed of" I got a laugh from Richard and a scowl from the Doc.

Then we got a tour of the powerstation right through the turbine hall to the lift. You can hear the water thunder through the place.

The lift was tiny and we had to stand Richard upright to get him in, so some inventive strapping to the stretcher was called for. We finally got to the top and left him, ready to head on down the river.... and then the rafting trip leader asked up to safety kayak for him because one of his safety kayakers had popped his shoulder out on number 1 and they were down to one kayaker!

The company is called Clombwe or something similar. If you come here use Safari Par Excellence instead, they know what they're doing.

Anyway we declared the two of us to be worth 1.5 safety kayakers headed on down to

Number 5

Huge waves. You travel down a chute between them for about 30m as they get bigger and bigger around you and them punch out river right, just before they fold on you. Anyway, I was pleased with myself cos I'd paddled it well enough to make the safety kayak eddy and wait for the rafts.

The eddy was boiling and surging 3 feet up and down. Sam asked if I was ok. "Fine, no problems." And with the last sylable of problems, I was flipped upside down by a surge. I rolled and then went to the next eddy and waited there.

Number 6 - devils toilet bowl

Is fine, It's a huge wave chain, but it's ok. I took a roll. I also saw the largest whirl pool of my life. Damn thing was 20 feet across. I wasn't in it thankfully. Guess they named the rapid suitably.

Number 7

We inspected. There's a huge boil of water pushing left to right. There's a huge wave/hole in the centre of the river which pushes right and there are two big rocks with the water pouring between them on the right. The right is not the place to be!

Getting left is hard, hard work. Ferry gliding amongst 10 foot waves and a big hole over boiling water. But hey, we were there, there was a line, so we ran it.

Got the break in ok, through the first two small (3-4 foot) wave and drop ok and then started the ferry glide. Paddled as hard as I know how and was doing ok until the 10 foot crashing wave.

It's at this point you realise why it's the rapid everyone worries about. Ferry gliding requires you to point upstream, getting through the wave requires you to point downstream. Not getting through the wave requires you to get spanked hard by the journey between the rocks on the right.

The wave fliped me, but I'd hit it hard enough to avoid getting swept right. Rolled. Hit the next wave, flipped, rolled, turned and hit the next wave head on. Ran straight into the pressure wave of the two bottom rocks. Flipped, smacked my elbow on the rock and rolled up. Did the undignified "rock parry with a flapping paddle while travelling backwards" maneuvre past the second rock and then turned to face the last of the waves. All good from there down. Not a good run, but good enough, two rolls and a sore elbow are acceptable consequences.

Number 8

8 was fine. Just main line down through the huge waves.

Number 9 - Commercial suicide.

Suitable named and in my opinion rightly graded 6. It's just in a whole new league. The upper river is 2 miles wide. The pictures you've seen on here of the sunset, that's not the far bank you can see, it's just an island. The falls themselves are 1.6km wide. Rapids 1-8 this whole river gets pressed into a gorge about 100m wide. At number nine it gets pressed down to 50m at most. The first two holes are massive and the breaking wave below them is 30 feet high. No exageration. I've seen a kayaker on it to give it perspective.

I walked, without so much as a second thought.

Number 10 -

Another wave chain. Huge, hard work, but fine.

We paddled down through 11 12 and 13 too, but while they're big, I'd run them already and didn't have any problems.

The walkout up the gorge is hard hard work. 40 minutes of stomping up a 45 degree slope. There was a cold beer at the top.

The porters have been carying my kayak for a few days now and I don't know how they do it. They sell hand carved necklaces of Nyami Nyami the river god. I bought one and paid too much for it as a thankyou (8$ instead of haggling to 2$). Besides after 6 years away from Kayaking I figure Nyami Nyami may well have been looking out for me.

See you.

Vick has some top updates for tomorrow, but she's had a hard day drinking G&T today and has gone for an afternoon nap.

Booze Cruise

2007-08-09T18:12:00.000+01:00

They run a booze cruise sunset tour of the river, and as we're on a chill out day, we thought why not.

Saw the sunset and the wildlife and drank free beer. Things could be worse.Getting her priorities right
Double click and zoom in, check out the teeth.

Tired?Friendly looking isn't he!

Kayak the Zambezi - Take 2

2007-08-09T17:54:00.000+01:00

Much better day yesterday.
Kayaked from 10 to 23 and only took one roll. And as that was on the first pressure wave before I got used to the boat, I'm happy. Felt much more like old times.

I drank 6 free beers on the truck back home, (we travelled with the rafters and they all pay $135 and get free beer, all the kayakers drink it cos the rafters are too stunned to enjoy the beer). It was at this point that I decided I was ready to face the top ten rapids and so I booked myself a place for tomorrow! Can't wait. Very frightened of number 7, otherwise it should be fine.

Decided on a chill out day today to recover before doing the top ten rapids. Pretty much every muscle in my body is aching, I'm nowhere near kayaking fit.

More updates after the top ten.
Oh and for the kayakers out there who are not yet feeling too jealous, Google Ginger in Uganda and the Nile river. I may have spelt it wrong, but it just got added to our agenda for October! Reputedly the best play wave in the world!

CU

Zambezi slammer - the kayaking update!

2007-08-07T19:04:00.000+01:00

This post could have had a few titles....

Why you should practice more often than every 6 years.....

Nostril cleaning by water injection does work!.....

Why not to breath in while travelling through a wave......

But saddest of all....

Screwed over by the Zambezi, swam rapid 11!

It all started so well, The rafting from 1 to 10 made the river look easier than I'd expected in a kayak and I was full of confidence. The lines are really hard to hit in a raft because it's so slow and having swum twice on the upper section as a result I was itching to get in a kayak. Swimming from a raft is just as unpleasant as swimming from a kayak.

In below 10 and on down to 11. All seemed fine. Attenpted to speed up for the wave on 11 and succeded in plowing the nose of the boat under the water and going no faster... I pulled the nose back out of the water, but worry had set in...

Got through the wave and entered the boils. front down, back down, bit of a flap about and I was upside down. NOT GOOD!

Rolled, didn't even get my head above the surface. I felt that this might be a bad sign.

On my 12th roll attempt I was running through the excuses I could use. I was slopping aroung in a badly padded boat, My knee was under the deck instead of under the knee brace, there were boils, it was difficult. However none of this gave me any comfort as I attempted the 12th roll which I knew was just as unlikely to work as the previous 11 and realised I was going to have to swim.

And swim I did. The only saving grace was that it wasn't a bad swim, I'd already run the 100m of the rapid upside down and had no big waves left to contend with. Slightly ashamed I thanked the rescue kayakers who laughed at me as I got back into the boat. (swim beers apply here too, so I had to cough up in the bar later)

I jammed some foam down the front for a footrest and thankfully, being that bit tighter fitted in the boat brought my roll back to life.

Rapid 12 was frightening, 13 was really scary, but by 15 I felt a lot better and had started paddinlg with a little dignity, though I flapped about a lot all day in the boils.

River improved all the way to rapid 23 and after 2 beers I decided I was ready to try again tomorrow. I've asked for an old school long boat, preferably the size of a large ship and they're having a look to see what they've got.

Totally wicked river, massively above my ability level, going back tomorrow for more fun.

Sadly I doubt that rapids 1-10 are on the agenda. They're a whole step above the rest of the river and I don't see me doing anything but swimming nastilly.

See you for more updates tomorrow.

Zambezi slammer - the rafting update!

2007-08-07T18:55:00.000+01:00

Big white waves coming at you from all angles. Big washing machine like holes pulling you in. Massive big bouncy rapids. IT WAS WICKED!!! And also slightly scary. The first grade 5 we did we messed up and swam. The second grade 5 we did, we messed up and swam! Thankfully I've spent many years perfecting the art of bailing out of a boat so clung on to the boat for dear life and it was sweet! After the initial teething problems our raft got it together and we nailed the rest of the ridiculously massive rapids. Hell of a ride. Beautiful scenery too and saw two crocodiles at the side of the river looking sinister!

Victoria Falls!

2007-08-06T19:15:00.000+01:00

Nuff said about the falls by the pictures. Click on them for larger images.

Lower Zambezi Kayaking and rafting tomorrow! Can't wait! Met a man happy to let me get in a playboat. It's roughly cork shaped and he's called Sven 'Thunderlord'. Both of which are worrying.

Arrived in Zambia at last

2007-08-06T18:56:00.000+01:00

Sunset on the Zambezi

Our first wildlife sighting! excited or what?

First night in Zambia, sitting on the banks of the Zambezi.

I (Phil) stopped the plans again! Turns out I'm allergic to Larium, my anti Malaria drug. Which is a huge hassle as we had to sit around for another week in Newcastle waiting for him to get better. (many thanks for looking after us Mum and Dad, spoilt rotten). After three days of diahorrea I was still just as full of crap as before, but was starting to feel better.

Anyway, we've arrived now and seen our first wildlife!

The Plan!

2007-07-24T13:34:00.000+01:00

The leaving party!

2007-07-24T12:01:00.002+01:00

Us
Mike, you win the fancy dress competition! Amazing home made effort.
Best impression of a 3 year old

If you're going to go away to africa for 5 months, you might as well have an African Themed fancy dress party before you go.

Broken Ankle

2007-07-24T12:01:00.001+01:00

The trip to Africa was planned for Jan 2007. Phil went skydiving for his 30th Birthday and broke his ankle, "properly". As a result the trip was delayed for 6 months.

Meet Team Bennett

2007-07-24T11:52:00.000+01:00

Our previous trip away was a trip up the West and North Coast of Scotland on a Tandem.

Which didn't always go to plan, for example, a broken wheel in the first five minutes was not really part of the plan.