Africa
Africa
Driving South Africa’s Garden Route
We left Cape Town heading east on Saturday for the first of a few days on which we would travel along the Garden Route. On our first day, we travelled to Oudtshoorn., the Ostrich capital of the world. The scenery was quite rugged and very arid. It is known as the Little Karoo (dry area) which […]
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Our Three Days in Cape Town
On Wednesday, our first day in Cape Town, we had a leisurely start and following a nice breakfast at the Raddison Hotel, we caught their shuttle down to the V&A Waterfront Centre, just around the headland from the hotel. This is an area of dockland that has been regenerate in the style of Darling Harbour […]
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Travelling On The Blue Train
Over the last two days, we have been travelling from Pretoria to Cape Town on South Africa’s premier luxury train, simply known as the Blue Train. The route covers approximately 1,600-kilometres and is reputed to be one of the most luxurious train journeys in the world. Each carriage of four compartments has its own butler, […]
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Pretoria, South Africa
Here we are popping up in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. We are here to join a tour commencing tomorrow morning that begins with a trip to Cape Town on the famous Blue Train and then a tour of South Africa more generally. I spent a week in South Africa in around 1982 […]
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BeetleCams
At one of the places where we stopped to take photos in Kenya, we came across these two fellows who were taking extremely close up photos of lions. They weren’t crazy; they were using self made device that they call the BeetleCam. Today, I found their website. We had wondered how their photos may have […]
Read MoreJambo Bwana
It seemed that everywhere we travelled in Kenya, we came across a silly little song called ‘Jambo Bwana’. It was sung when we were greeted at a hotel / resort, when the waiters came with a birthday cake for a guest and almost any other situation that was happy. It has a funky tune and […]
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Zanzibar
Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania, in East Africa. Originally settled by Arab and Portuguese traders who visited the region in early times, it was controlled by Omanis in the 18th and 19th centuries. Up until the late 17th Century, it was a centre of the slave trade for the […]
Read MoreOn to Zanzibar
The name, Zanzibar, reeks of mystique and magic. It is one of those African names like Tashkent or Morocco that have a similar sound to their name. We are now here in a waterfront motel in Stone Town We returned to Nairobi from our last lodge at Kichwa Tembo, arriving for a late lunch. A […]
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Our Last Game Drive
We finished our time in Africa on Friday with a final game drive and it was a good way to finish this Safari part of our trip. We left in the late afternoon and travelled the plains and close to the Mara River. It was a warm day and quite dusty. On our morning game […]
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Kichwa Tembo Camp
We moved here last Wednesday – a little way west across the Maasi Mara – and from where we could see a little more of this vast area from a different perspective. This tented camp is very nice. It is situated in a grove of trees at the side of the plain and the swimming […]
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Maasai Mara
We are now at Fig Tree Camp, which is situated on the Mara River in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in south-western Kenya. This huge expanse of open plains is actually the northern continuation of the Serengeti National Park game reserve in Tanzania. It is named after the Maasai people (the traditional inhabitants of the […]
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