Kirmes

Germany has the best fairs: big wheels, roller coasters, wall of death and boxing rings. Cranger Kirmes is my favourite, and it's on for ten days!

GPS-less in the Middle East

Oh, how we love Sally, our voluble GPS, who has been guiding us through Africa with the help of Tracks4Africa, Garmin’s East Africa streetmaps and a useful Mac program for route planning called Roadtrip. With the help of Sally we have been able to cross deserts (although Anja and Jörg’s GPX tracks of the new Sudan roads helped a lot), been able to pinpoint those elusive ferry crossings in Kazangula, Dar Es Salaam and points North; and make sure that we always found a camp site every night, even in the wilds of Ethiopia (although for some reason it didn’t list Tim and Kim’s). But the further North we went the sparser T4A got and when we left Egypt, our GPSing finally stopped and we were officially back to paper maps. Unfortunately the Middle East is neither well mapped nor blessed with book stores where a lost traveller might pick up a route book, so we have mostly been relying on the US basemap Sally falls back on when she is as clueless as we are, and the - utterly unsuited to driving - town maps of various Lonely Planets and Rough Guides (the Bradt guides weren’t even in the running as navigation aides, as their maps seem to have been lovingly hand drawn by a casual visitor to the region without access to any of the freely available satellite imagery, i.e. Google maps). This has resulted in a lot of aimless driving round Arab city centres trying to establish where we are, where we are trying to get to and generally being aggravated with each other. Here is an example of our attempt to find the Baron Hotel in Aleppo:

As you can see we took a spiral approach to our destination, in fact we drove past the hotel a few times before we found it, despite asking a variety of extremely helpful but cartographically challenged pedestrians, peering at miniscule street signs in the dark and trying to divine the direction of North by trying to remember where the sun set an hour ago.

So now you know that GPSless driving in foreign countries can lead to frustration, arguments and eventually divorce. Don’t do it!

A sad admission

We are having MacDonalds on the waterfront, I am afraid. Overcome with the need for some perverse familiarity - and free wifi as well as spotless toilets. At least the sunset is home made Egyptian.

OMG Pyramids!!!

They are not so well known, they are steeper and smaller, they were built later and not by the Egyptians, but there's lots of them and wow, they are stunning. The pyramids at Meroe and Jebel Barkal and the assorted lion, Amun and Nut temples are hardly visited, lying a day or two north of Khartoum they are not that accessible, but going there is so worth it. Some structures are badly damaged, deep grooves showing the strength of sand and wind over the millenia, but on the inside of temples we saw lions and crocodiles crouching at the feet of queens and godesses, kings offering lotus flowers to ibis headed gods, prisoners leading elephants, broad shouldered warriors.

How cool...

Is this pillow case. We're staying in a hotel tonight (I know, again, but it's not a patch on the Serena, and this still is a camping trip, mostly) and they are obviously a bit worried about bedding going missing, so the sheets are tagged. I want to steal my pillow case, but Stuart said I'm not allowed. So I took a picture instead. Cool, not?

A flash dinner

Our creature comforts have been gradually diminishing as we move further into the heart of Africa, and as our budget takes a beating from all the Savannah (lately discovered South African cider) we drink wherever there is a bar. Hot showers, white sheeted beds and classy restaurants are rarely to be found, and rightly so in a place as basic and poor as Malawi. But occasionally we hit a jackpot, and this one came at an unexpected time and place. We had already spent a night in Blantyre, Malawi's financial centre in the South of the country, on our way to Mulanje mountain, and we were back again to break up the journey to Lake Malawi and for Stuart to meet with the CEO of a financial company to discuss business opportunities. We had stayed in an overpriced and under-cleaned place the last time and had had a long and aggravated bargaining session with another hotel for this one night, spending US$150 for a family room with a toilet that made a noise like an aircraft landing and a TV with only one working channel (our normal camping rates are in the region of US$5 per person, but there is no camping in Blantyre, so our budget was blown for quite a few days). Regardless, we were happy. There was electricity, so I could capture my footage, the movie channel had sound, and I had running hot water to clean the fridge. We had baths with smelly stuff, started cooking dinner and Stuart went off for his meeting. Lovely. But it got much much much better. Stuart returned within 10 minutes to tell us that we had been invited out for dinner. Yes! Merryl and I got dressed in our one non-camping presentable outfit, slapped on some lipstick and perfume, dug round the car for the one pair of ear rings and vaguely matching shoes (we ended up wearing matching tops, we really need to get alternative going out outfits!) and dashed off to meet Stuart and the CEO at reception, feeling decidedly underdressed as we slipped into the leather seats of the brand new Land Cruiser that would ferry us to the restaurant, doors shutting with an expensive clunk as the car automatically adjusted seats and mirrors. Grill 21, the restaurant adjacent to the Protea Hotel, was a time warp back to Melrose Arch for us. Inside was smooth elegance, a haven of luxury with leather couches and glittering candle light, a well-stocked bar and waiters in pressed shirts. We could barely remember the dusty city streets outside lined with faded shops selling nothing very much, peopled by normal Malawians wearing dull coloured clothes for want of a washing machine. Inside we sat at a polished table, choosing Cabernet Sauvignon, discussing tempura prawn starters. It was bizarre, specially as I had the previous day had a discussion with Robert about the school fees he is earning by being a mountain guide in Mulanje, so that he can go to college eventually. His term fee would have been covered by the cost of our main course. A long time ago I would have made a scene and refused to spend the money on frivolous food, but that night I sat and ate and chatted pleasantly, admitting the impossibility of the situation. I also realised how much I needed after almost two months of travel to experience a piece of civilisation, a moment of elegance, a snippet of my previous reality; to get away from badly maintained rooms and cheap furniture, shoddy arrangements and the implicit demands of people who have so much less, from feeling like an alien in my white skin, from being the provider of a week's income at the drop of a bank note.

African Nights

A few days ago we misjudged the distance from the Zambian border to our camp in the South of Malawi and ended up driving at night to get to our destination. It was a harrowing experience. There are endless bicycles on the road, but not one has lights front or back. Of course there are just as many people walking as there are in the daytime, and of course they are wearing dark clothes, and of course no-one carries a torch. There are no street lights anywhere, as there is little electricity, so the nights are pitch black when there isn't a moon, and other cars seem to be reluctant to use their head lights - I can't work that one out, is it to save energy, because they don't work, what? The roads are pretty hazardous in daylight, potholed and unmarked with no hard shoulder, with goats and cows and dogs wandering into the street, with masses of people crossing any which way in the villages and children playing by the roadside. But at night we felt blind and frightened that we would drive off the side of the track or into something - we have even been warned to watch out for elephants, who blend in nicely with the grey tarmac. We are determined not to repeat that particular stupidity. Our second theft happened at night, when we were parked in a hotel camp ground in Maun. Some sticky fingers got into the car through an almost-closed window (open a crack to cool the fridge) feeling for something interesting, but only got away with some bits of cabling from Stuart's camera bag, not the camera or the medical kit that lay below it. They could have opened the locked car, but were obviously worried about making too much noise. But not all nights are fraught with imminent danger or nuisance. At Livingstone a few weeks ago we saw a lunar rainbow curving into the falls, the white water spawning a milky arc where the full moon's light hit it. It was a perfect geometric shape amidst the chaos of falling water, the mist splashing back up to envelop us, the loud boom of the Smoke That Thunders (its local name) providing an aural backdrop. As far as sounds are concerned, ever since we left Namibia's deserts behind we have been going to sleep to the snorting of hippos proclaiming their territory, although we have not seen a hippo at night. They like to stay in the water or go off to graze when it is cool in the dark. We have listened to baboons loudly telling each other to shut up all night long like a rowdy group of drunkards in a dormitory, after giving us the fight of our lives at Third Bridge camp in Moremi (I guess we shouldn't have parked under their sleeping tree) We have seen jackals skirting the tents looking for shoes left outside tents and had our bag handles chewed off by them when the bag was too heavy to drag off, and we have watched elephants working off their testosterone on each other and on passing rhinos in Etosha. The best animal encounter by far came one night a few days ago when we woke up at 1 am to the sound of munching and shuffling to find a group of elephants next to our roof tent (hooray for roof tents!) crunching their way around the trees and tents in their desire to pick up the very last of the elephant biscuits - seeds that drop off the trees here, big spirally pods filled with protein goodness. A large specimen walked right past us as we held our breath in an attempt not to make a sound, watching him through the mosquito netting as he shambled past us at eye level. Eventually the grey shadowy shapes disappeared, but it was a most dream-like encounter.

Pig in shit part 2

Tonight we have acquired a kitty to sleep in our tent. Much more purry and less smelly than last night's occupant. Not Stuart, the dog.