Egypt

Our two weeks in Egypt have been nothing short of amazing; it is hard to capture the essence of our experiences with a simple chronological account, so for this post we have chosen to write about some of the key aspects of Egypt that have struck us as we have travelled through…

People & Politics

If we tried to sum up the Egyptian people in one word, it would have to be ‘proud’.  Overwhelmingly as we have travelled through this country, every person’s pride in being Egyptian – or in some areas their pride in their regional identity – has really stood out.  This pride manifests in so many ways. 

Firstly, almost every person we met in Egypt greeted us with a big (often toothless!) smile and a “Welcome to Egypt!”  Similarly to Jordan, we felt that these welcomes really came from the heart, and are rooted in a deeply-seated pride in their country.  Even the touts at the major sights such as the Pyramids or Abu Simbel would, once they realised they weren’t going to convince us to ride a camel/buy a fake-soapstone trinket/pay them to take a photo for us would smile broadly, ask where we are from and wish us an enjoyable time in Egypt, “in ‘shallah”.  We found this such a lovely surprise, as we had been warned by many other travellers that the constant touting grew tiring – and while we admit that it did, we found that a firm “La shukran” (no, thank you) and a big smile were the best ways to deal with the demands.  As we navigated the public transport systems across the country we were also a source of much fascination for children - including this group of schoolkids who were on the ferry with us in Luxor...

Tess being shown how to eat dried sunflower seeds in Luxor

Schoolkids in Luxor

Secondly, being in Egypt during such a complex and fraught socio-political time really highlighted to us the passion that people here feel for their country.  We spoke with many people about the political situation and the diversity of views, as well as the strength with which these views were held, was striking.  From the taxi driver in Alexandria who was adamant that “Morsi is a good man, and good for this country; his constitution will strengthen our culture” to the hotelier in Upper Egypt who expressed strong concern that the new rulers of Egypt planned to implement strong Islamic laws reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban; everyone has an opinion.  We were also surprised to hear quite a number of people say how much better things were under Murbarak, particularly tourism.  It seems that while he was tyrannical and dictatorial, many feel that at least there was relative stability under his rule, and for some of the people we spoke to the date of the revolution is the date at which they mark the downturn in their business, which has still not picked up.  We will be watching with interest what unfolds in the referendum, and simply hope that whatever happens it remains peaceful.  One thing seems certain through it all, is that Egypt is going through a time of profound change as the people look hopefully toward a future characterised by stability, democracy and self-determination.

History

In another manifestation of national pride, as we walked through the airport on our way to the gate to fly out, we saw a poster quoting a world leader (presumably quoted at the time of the 2011 revolution), which stated “There is nothing new in Egypt.  The Egyptians have been making history for millennia; what is happening now is simply another example.”  This quote rings very true for our time in Egypt.  The people who have inhabited this land over the past 4 ½-thousand years (or more) have left behind some of the most incredible examples of history-making that we have ever seen.  From the ubiquitous Ramses II, whose narcissism resulted in so many monuments we lost count (from Abu Simbel in the south to Cairo in the north), to Nasser and Murbarak who indelibly left their mark with the dams and cataracts on the Nile, the people of Egypt seem to have forever been ruled by determined, innovative and often ruthless leaders.

The Temple of Hatshepsut

Abu Simbel

As we walked around the various Pharaonic monuments across Egypt, we found ourselves time and again marvelling at the seemingly unwavering self-obsession that seems to have characterised the existence of the ancient Egyptians.  We had to acknowledge how successful they were in their exploit.  Take Ramses II as an example; he built the mighty temples at Abu Simbel as a way to immortalise the deified image of himself and his favourite wife Nefertari and provide a spectacle for his people to witness his ascension to God-King.  Not only was this successful in the 13^th century BC, but there we were, 3,500 years later, marvelling at the images on the wall describing his ascension to the level of the gods.

Similarly at the Pyramids around Cairo, the experience of climbing inside a 4,500-year-old tomb and marvelling at the precision and accuracy of the construction was evidence of the determination of the ancient Egyptians to realise their dream of everlasting life.  Indeed, if everlasting life is conceived as a person’s continued presence within the common consciousness, through building these breathtaking structures that have survived so many millennia, the Pharaohs appear to have achieved this better than any civilisation to date.  Let’s hope that the Egyptian people are able to continue to preserve these treasures for future generations to continue to marvel at.

Food

We had expected Jordan and Egypt to be great food destinations, and we weren’t wrong.  Egypt followed up a great week in Jordan, and indeed gave Jordanian food a run for its money!  Breakfast of fuul (stewed broad beans) and tammiya (falafels) each morning was amazing, and was often followed by a glass of mango, pomegranate or sugar cane juice.  Lunch (when we found the time to have it!) was more often than not a fresh salad of tomatoes and cucumber, washed down with fresh lemon juice and mint.  Dinner was equally delicious on most occasions; in Aswan on our arrival at our hotel they prepared us fresh Nile river fish with ‘all the trimmings’; in Luxor we had amazing moussaka and shakshouka; and the highlight (for Alick at least) was an amazing BBQ chicken from a street-stall in Siwa – delicious!

Meals were often a great time for conversation with other travellers, hotel managers and locals, and again were an opportunity for the fiercely-proud restaurateurs to assure us that their version of an Egyptian staple was the best!  One of these memorable moments was in Siwa Oasis, when after a stall-holder in the street had helped us with directions, he offered to close up his shop and take us out to his desert camp and have some tea around the fire.  Given our recent scam experience in Alexandria (when we’d been lucky to get away with only ‘losing’ around 400 Egyptian Pounds to a couple who claimed they spent the day with us ‘for friendship’) we were a little suspicious, but after he assured us that we didn’t need to pay him anything, and gave us his tour-guide card, we thought we would trust our intuition and go out with him.  After a cold 30-minute at-times hairy ride in his tuk-tuk, we were relieved when we arrived at his camp and he lit the fire and prepared tea.  The next two hours were spent drinking strong sweet tea, playing cards and talking with our new friend Osman about life in Siwa.  It was a wonderful experience, and that evening spent under the stars will certainly stay in our memories for years to come.  We were also both relieved that we had not completely lost our capacity to trust people after our Alexandria experience!  Experiences such as this really typified our time in Egypt, and there were so many others that we simply can’t fit in this blog post – but we have tried by summarising a few of them below….

Other highlights, lowlights, and memorable moments!

• Feeling like we were in a computer game as we swerved, dodged and whizzed through Cairo’s traffic at 100km/h with our slightly crazy driver, who insisted he ‘needed to drive like this to stay awake’.
• Shivering our way through a night without proper duvets in Siwa Oasis as they experienced some of the coldest weather for ten or so years – we had to pull out our Kilimanjaro gear!
• Marvelling at the longevity of monuments such as the Collosi of Memnon, which have been attracting tourists for around 3,400 years.

The Colossi of Memnon

• Being once again horrified at the treatment of horses at the Pyramids of Giza.  We won’t go into it so much this time, but suffice to say that everything we said about Petra holds true for Giza also, sadly….
• Finding ourselves warmed by the caring relationships between young men and their donkeys in Siwa Oasis as we rode a donkey cart from the bus to our hotel (there are no ‘taxis’ in Siwa, although donkey carts are increasingly being replaced by motorbike tuk-tuks).

Siwa Oasis

• Sharing tea and discussing Myers-Briggs and Jung with a fascinating fellow-Australian who had moved to Siwa as an escape from her high-flying corporate career.
• Drinking mint tea, tea with lemongrass, strong Siwan tea, hibiscus tea, and good old Lipton tea – all heavily laced with sugar – in markets, shops, restaurants, houses, deserts and train stations.  Tea certainly drives Egypt!
• Being perpetually laughed at whenever we tried to cross the road in Cairo – we often had to use locals as human shields, which they thought was hilarious!
• Alick changing his name to ‘Ali’ and Tess using Tessa (and at times wondering if she should adopt a completely new name) when people we met struggled to get their tongues around our usual names.
• Seeing cats (and quite a few dogs) at every turn wherever we were in Egypt, all of which Tess insisted on giving water and/or food to whenever possible!

Contemporary resident at Abu Simbel

An Alexandrian cat

• Being asked for baksheesh (tips) for everything from being given hand-towel in public toilets, to having blatantly-obvious monuments pointed out to us, to having our tickets checked at the entrance to a pyramid!  It certainly made us appreciate the advantages of having plenty of small change handy…
• Rushing to get to Luxor railway station for our 10 am train, then being told that our train was the ‘next one’ until 1pm, when we finally boarded and made our way to Aswan.
• Crossing the River Nile in a tiny motor-boat in the pitch dark at 3am en route to the mighty temples at Abu Simbel.

A Nile taxi...

• Perfecting the art of crying ‘You break my heart with your prices’ as we played the game of haggling with stall-holders in souks all across Egypt.

A souq in Alexandria

Jordan

Without a doubt, the most outstanding and memorable parts of the 8 days we spent in Jordan were the friendliness and generosity of the people and the delicious Jordanian food.  That is not to detract from the spectacular sights and scenery around Jordan – which certainly lived up to their reputation.  It was just that we were not expecting to find ourselves in a country where locals would fall over themselves to welcome us to their country (often crossing major roads and chasing us for many blocks to simply say “Welcome in Jordan!” [sic]), invite us into their homes to share in their home cooking and go so far out of their way to make sure we reached our destinations without issue.  We’re certain that the beautifully trusting environment of Jordan was particularly heightened for us given that we arrived while still carrying a level of security consciousness suited to Southern Africa, and it did take us a couple of days to adjust to the safety of the street and the optional nature of car and hotel door locks!

Meeting Sami, the owner of a Jordanian roadside cafe - complete with Sami's headscarf gift to Alick

In planning our Jordan itinerary, it felt like the 8 days we allowed ourselves was more than sufficient to take in some of the highlights of a country that is little more than 300kms in length.  We could not have been more wrong – our time in Jordan allowed us to take in a tiny sample of what Jordan has to offer and we are already hoping to be back at some point in our lives to experience (some of) the rest. 

On arrival in Jordan, we picked up our hire car and headed south to Madaba – getting a quick crash course in the local roads rules, or lack thereof, in the process (thankfully without any actual ‘crashes’!!).  The most important things to remember about Jordanian roads is that lane markers, indicators and a large proportion of traffic lights are purely for decorative purposes; looking at the road is always a secondary priority to texting and reading, and why bother finding a car park when you can just stop and leave your car in the middle of the road (often with the drivers-side door left wide open)?!

Madaba is a sweet little town, famous for its mosaics and churches – which we had a good potter around.  The five hotels in town are each managed by a cousin of a local family and Odeh, the manager at the Black Iris Hotel where we stayed, was a wealth of information about the area – including pointing out all the best local eateries (particularly the local falafel places – yum!) and making sure there was a fresh pot of cinnamon tea brewed for us on our arrival back to the hotel.  On our first night in Madaba we wandered into a local sweet store, and we obviously looked so confused that one of the other customers promptly told us that we needed to wait five minutes to get what he ‘knew’ we wanted to order.  He wasn’t wrong!  Before long, the shop owner brought out a steaming tray of a dish called ‘kanafe’ – a layer of goats cheese, topped with a sweet cake and covered in sugar syrup.  It was just incredible and has resulted in us trying to seek out kanafe whenever opportunity presented itself throughout the rest of our travels in Jordan.   

We used Madaba as a base to float in the Dead Sea (such a strange feeling – you simply can’t swim!) and see some of the local sites – which included many biblical sites.  Although we’re not guided by any particular religious affiliation, it was fascinating to see these historical sites.  Our experience visiting Jesus’ baptismal site was however rather bizarre, as we arrived in the car-park to a full tourist bus with a conductor yelling at us to get on quickly so they could depart.  We jumped on the bus and didn’t realise until after departure that the guided tour was optional and we could have self-driven!  The guide told us we need to listen to the individual audio guides we were given when buying our tickets, with the audio divided into different ‘chapters’ for each site.  The problem was, the audio tracks were significantly longer than the distance taken to drive between each site and we fell terribly behind with the guide shouting out that we were listening to the wrong track!  The comedy of the tour continued as the bus was primarily filled with older tourists and it took a bit longer than usual to get off the bus at each stop, so by the time we got to each site, the guide was telling us we were too late and had to leave!  Notwithstanding all of this, it was a fascinating experience to arrive at the River Jordan, with Israel no less than 10 meters away from us on the other side, to see those who had made the pilgrimage to bathe and/or be baptised in the ‘Holy Water’ (those who arrived with our group to do so were under strict instruction from our guide that they could take four steps in, duck their head under three times and then get out straight away).  Bathing in the water was obviously a deeply spiritual and emotional experience for some visitors, causing some to seem to speak in tongues or collapse – all of this under the watchful eye of the armed army servicemen stationed at the site to oversee the Jordan/Israel border.  It was quite a profound experience overall.

Floating in the Dead Sea - such a strange sensation to not be able to swim! 

From Madaba, we made our way south to Wadi Musa (the village next to Petra)–with the driving conditions and occasional gaps in street signage making the journey somewhat longer than anticipated.  We arrived after the gates to Petra had closed for the day, though, in noting our disappointment, the manager at our hotel suggested that we instead spent the remnants of the afternoon wandering around ‘Little Petra’ instead – a smaller collection of monuments located about 15 minutes from town – which proved to be a fantastic introduction to Petra proper.  At the far end of Little Petra was a steep set of stairs, leading to a gorgeous viewpoint where a local Bedouin man named Awad was packing up his stall for the day.  After chatting to Awad for a while, he invited us back to his house in the village for dinner with him and his wife, Sina – a Danish woman who converted to Islam prior to marrying Awad.  Awad explained that, like most of the Bedouin in the area, he had always lived in the caves around Petra, though three weeks prior to our arrival, he and Sina had made the move into one of the properties offered by the Jordanian government to the local Bedouin as an incentive to move out of the tourist areas.  From what we could gather, Awad and Sina’s move to the village was also driven by Sina’s desire to live with electricity and plumbing following many months of adjusting to life in the cave!  It was fantastic to spend the evening with Sina and Awad, sharing their delicious food and hearing about their lives.  Their generosity with two complete strangers was so touching.   

After just an initial peek at Petra proper we quickly realised we wanted to spend more time than we had planned in Wadi Musa and made some changes to our itinerary to allow us an extra day and night.  Over the course of the next two days we were able to experience many of Petra’s nooks and crannies – and were fortunate to have many moments of getting the major sites of Petra all to ourselves!  In all the pictures we’d seen of Petra, we’d fallen into the trap of thinking that the iconic ‘Treasury’ building (or is it a carving?!?) was the major attraction, and the sheer size of Petra in its entirety blew us away.  It’s estimated there are over 800 ‘sights’ to see in Petra (with more still being discovered) and it would take over a week to see them all.  One of the other things we hadn’t realised were the distances to be covered in Petra – which saw us walking at least 20 – 25 kms each day (more than we did in any one day on Kilimanjaro!), often up very steep, winding tracks – and that was to see just a fraction of the sights. 

The distances within Petra and basic level of fitness required of tourists seemed to be a fairly common underestimation, resulting in a massive donkey ride industry within Petra’s walls.  The impossibly steep and treacherous routes these donkeys were required to walk up many times each day (often bearing the load of some very large tourists) was absolutely heartbreaking and it was common to see donkeys with gaping wounds rubbed raw by the girth and the chains often used as a halter.  Alick in particular had to turn away when we were passed by donkeys and horses being ridden in a particularly horrible way, or being kicked by their handlers from the ground, or when we passed people screaming with delight when a donkey stumbled on a steep step shouting ‘this is just like an amusement ride!”  Pretty disgusting we thought.  At the entry gates to Petra, there were signs about a welfare organisation called ‘The Brooke’ who advocate for the welfare of the working donkeys and horses in Petra, providing information on how to make reports about witnesses of maltreatment.  We are looking into this though given the volume of donkeys within Petra it’s very difficult to know exactly what to feed back.  In the interim though, we only hope that the demand for these donkey rides in Petra is soon reduced – either through increased awareness about the level of fitness required to get around or more humane forms of assisted viewing.

On a more positive note however, it was quite humbling to walk through the wadis and siqs of Petra, reflecting on the skill, not to mention the idealism and narcissism, of the Nabatean royals.  Most of the monuments at Petra, while given monikers like ‘The Treasury’ and ‘The Monastery’ to tourists, are in fact tombs for the kings and queens of the ancient Nabatean people.  Many of these tombs were being built before the Romans had even conceived of the Colosseum – indeed later in its life Petra was taken over by the Romans, and many of the monuments were modified to reflect their aesthetic preferences.  The diversity and sheer scale of the site was astounding, and some of the most impressive components of the site were the water storage and channelling, which enabled the city’s citizens to have drinking water, as well as bathing pools and fountains!  The best-preserved monuments were those carved into the rockface of the mountains; we marvelled time and again at the workmanship involved, not to mention the manual labour that must have been required.  Compared to some of the ‘monuments’ that we build today, the relics of antiquity really shine!

The famous first sight of Petra's Treasury. (Indiana Jones memories anyone?!?)

Tess getting friendly with one of the many cats that live at Petra.

Beautiful sandstone cave....

The magnificent 'Monastery'.

The Monastery

A tomb near the High Place of Sacrifice.

During our first day at Petra, while we stopped for lunch in the theatre of the Great Temple, we also received the exciting news from home that we have a new nephew!  Alick’s brother and sister-in-law Kif and Anna had been expecting a baby in late November, and Theo was born on November 26^th.  We were absolutely thrilled to hear that both Anna and Theo were happy and healthy, and Kif and Anna’s 2 ½ year old daughter Poppy was excited about meeting her new brother!  We can’t wait to meet the wee man, and must admit that the news did make us feel a little far away! Given that we were on the other side of the world, we thought it only appropriate to memorialise the moment with a photo…..

Welcome to the world Theo Weber!!!

Following our stay in Wadi Musa, we made our way south to the Wadi Rum desert.  There, we met our guide Rhadi, and spent the next few days hiking and ‘scrambling’ to springs, across natural rock arch formations (which certainly tested Alick’s fear of heights!) and up Um Adaami – Jordan’s highest peak with spectacular views over the Saudi Arabian border.  The Wadi Rum desert was just beautiful – at times reminding us of a slightly more precipitous version of the central Australian desert.  On the first evening we were joined by four other tourists at a desert camp – great company and a perfect way to get lot of tips for our onward journey. 

Middle Arch, Wadi Rum

Burdah Arch, Wadi Rum

On the second evening, following the departure of the other tourists, Rhadi kindly invited us to have dinner and stay the night in his mother’s tent, near the Wadi Rum village – it was such a privilege to be asked, that we jumped at the opportunity.  Being a Thursday evening (and therefore the start of the weekend) Rhadi’s broader family had all come in from the village to share in a meal, and were also joined by cousins from neighbouring tents, so it was a real family experience with more people around than we could count! Rhadi’s mother’s tent was divided into two sections by a cloth wall – with one side for the women and children and the other for the men.  The men were very welcoming to Tess, as a Westerner, being in the male area, although Tess was also fortunate enough to be able to sit with in the women’s tent while the women prepared the evening meal on the fire – a traditional Saudi/Jordanian chicken and rice dish called ‘Kabsa’. For Tess, this was one of the most unique Jordan experiences.  The women in Rhadi’s family spoke minimal English, and the five or so Arabic words Tess knows only stretched so far, however language didn’t really matter while watching the preparation of the dish.  It was incredible to watch the constant instructions given to the younger girls in the tent, so they would remember how to cook the dish in future, and the involvement of everyone in the process (most notably, in holding iPhones over the pot so the dish could be seen given the lack of electricity in the desert!).  Once the meal was prepared, Tess was sent outside to eat with the men - we were both so grateful the communal dish was placed in the dark, on the dirt outside the tent, as it meant the massive chunks we dropped while getting used to mushing rice into a ball and tearing off chunks of chicken with our right hand weren’t quite as noticeable!!!! Dinner was followed by much sweet tea and conversation with Rhadi’s brothers, before everyone left and we slept in the men’s side of the tent next to the fire.  Beautiful!  In the morning, we experienced our first camel ride to get back to the Wadi Rum village and made our way up north to Jerash. In stark contrast to the use of donkeys in Petra, we were really touched by the sensitive and caring relationships between owners and their camels in Wadi Rum - possibly aided by the fact that one camel costs more than a small car in Jordan!.

Heading back to Wadi Rum Village

The drive to Jerash was much easier than our previous trip along the length of the country, and notwithstanding some ‘missing’ directional signage through an extended road-works zone around Amman, we arrived in Jerash with no incident.  Having checked into our hotel we headed out to explore the Roman ruins for which the city is famous.  In 15 minutes we found ourselves walking down colonnaded streets, with ruts in the pavestones from the many Roman chariots which were driven along the streets over 1500 years ago.  The ingenuity of the Romans was incredible – complete with ‘singing’ colonnades to warn of earthquakes, underground cold food storage chambers, and ornate fountains.  The site is being progressively restored, and there was a wonderful juxtaposition between the modernity of the cranes, and the antiquity of the building blocks that they were moving. 

After returning to our hotel we headed out to explore the town centre of Jerash, with a view to getting a small bite to eat and heading back for an early night…. Little did we know that this would be out of the question!!  We bought a delicious shwarma from a street-stall (and had a bizarre conversation about gloves with a guy on the street – long story, you’ll have to ask us), we walked past a small juice-bar with three or four guys sitting around smoking sheesha.  They sung out to us, and Alick popped his head in to say hi and check if it was OK for Tess to come in (we had read that in some parts of the middle east it is not appropriate for women to go into places where men are smoking).  They assured us that we were most welcome, and we told them that we’d be back in five minutes (we had a craving for some kanafe from a sweet store).  On our return, they greeted us with much excitement, and ensured that we had tea, water and a narguileh pipe all to ourselves (what sheesha is called in Jordan).  The next three hours were an absolutely quintessential Jordan experience…  The group of three young men grew over the evening to five (six at times!), and we had great conversations (albeit in often-stilted English and with much gestured communication) about all sorts of topics.  One of the young men was going to Syria the next day to get married, so we realised that we had inadvertently crashed a bucks-party of sorts – but it seemed that we were something of a novelty, so we didn’t feel too guilty!  On hearing that we had only had a shwarma for dinner, one of the young men dashed out to his car and brought in a dish piled high with chicken and rice.  He re-heated the chicken and proudly presented us with the plate of mensaf, which is a traditional meat and rice dish eaten in Jordan on Fridays.  Despite being quite full from the shwarma and the sweets, we managed to make a good dent in the mensaf, which was delicious – especially when washed down with an apple-molasses flavoured narguileh pipe! In the end we didn’t leave the little bar until around 11pm, when one of the boys drove us back to our hotel.  It was an amazing experience to spend a few hours with a group of young people in Jordan, and to hear their views on the political situation in the region, to learn about their working lives and dreams, and to share much laughter and stories. 

Crashing a sort of buck's party in Jerash

Our time in the bar with the group of young men was a perfect way to draw our time in Jordan to a close…  It epitomised the experience we had had across the country of a pround, open and welcoming people, with strong values and deeply seated loyalties, but a gentle approach to the complexities of life in one of the most turbulent regions in the world.  We left Jordan much feeling enriched by the history, the fresh air and exercise, but most of all the amazing people that we have been lucky enough to meet and share our time with.

Five Days in Cape Town...and Farewell Southern Africa!

The first thing we were told whenever we mentioned to anyone that we were heading to Cape Town was how beautiful it is – and we can certainly see why!  To mark the end of our travels around Southern Africa, we booked an apartment in an area called Tamberskloof (a locality that came recommended by Tess’ sister Jo and brother-in-law Neil).  It was a really sweet little place underneath a gorgeous old house which had been converted into a little self-contained space by it’s owners, Renier and Alec.  From the front of the house we had views right over table mountain and it was in a safe area which meant it was really easy to walk around at night.   So nice to have a space of our own spread out in for a full five days and night and we even had the first proper sleep in we’ve managed to get since leaving Tanzania.

We were unashamedly tourists during our time in Cape Town – sampling some of the many nice bars and restaurants along the Long Street strip (which was only a ten minute walk from our apartment), climbing Table Mountain (which is actually quite a hike up!), hiring a car and driving down to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point (where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet), and visiting some of the city’s famous museums – in particular the Cape Town Holocaust Centre.  All of these were fascinating experiences which we thoroughly enjoyed (or, in the case of the Holocaust Centre, were very moved by).

We were also incredibly spoilt in Cape Town with two very different, though unforgettable experiences given to us by Tess’ sister Maddy and brother-in-law Greg, and Jo and Neil. 

One of our goals for this trip was to set ourselves some personal challenges – and Maddy and Greg decided to take that to the extreme by sending us swimming with sharks off the coast of Gansbaai.  It was terrifying though we’re both very glad we did it (and especially glad that we still have arms and limbs attached).  We have both come away from the experience with newfound respect of the power of these magnificent creatures.   We think the pictures speak for themselves on this one….

A little nervous as we get in the water! 

As those close to us will know, good food and wine is a pretty big part of our lives and Jo and Neil made it possible for us to experience an incredible culinary experience in the stunning Delaire Graff winery in Stellenbosch.  It was so special and we were able to make a day of it by also attaching visits to a number of neighbouring wineries along the way.  The pictures from Delaire Graff go some way to highlighting the beauty of the area but even they don’t really do it justice.

Lunch at Delaire Graff

In Cape Town we also had a truly unique experience of doing a township and gospel tour with a company called Camissa tours – who were just fantastic.  Unfortunately, we got the strong sense that the value of their work is at risk of  being undermined by some less responsible tour operators, and so thought we’d share a little more detail of this as an example of the importance of careful selection of tour operators and doing a bit of background research. 

Our first full day in Cape Town was a Sunday so we booked ourselves into a tour of a local township of named Langa (population approx. 50,000) that included attending a gospel church service. Camissa is run by a husband and wife team – Khonaye and Samantha – who both grew up in the Langa township, and maintain a strong connection with the Langa community.  Their tours are structured in such a way as to support the local community, and Camissa are passionate about showing off the vibrance and positivity of daily life in Langa, rather than offering ‘poverty tours’.  Ours was a group of five, lead by Samantha, who provided us with fascinating insight into the history of the forced displacement of previous inhabitants of the Cape Town area of District Six into the townships.  Within Langa itself, one of the local guides, Ziggy, showed us around and talked through his experiences in Langa (he has lived there for 22-years, having moved from his rural home over 1,000km away looking for work as a teenager); we were so moved by Ziggy’s sense of pride in his community, and his honest, raw yet refreshingly un-politicised account of his life experiences. 

The experience of visiting the Langa Baptist Church was one which we won’t forget, and the voices sent goosebumps up our spines.  It was such an absolute privilege to be there!  Samantha explained that the Langa Baptist Church has always been one of the more progressive congregations, whose deliberate efforts to support and involve a diverse range of people is reflected in it’s membership of some 3,000 people.  Samantha explained that, having been involved in the church for many years, she and Khonaye approached the church 6 years ago to see if they would be open to Camissa bringing in some tourists to the gospel service (in exchange for a contribution from tour fees).  Despite some initial hesitation that the church services would turn into purely tourist entertainment, church leaders eventually agreed on the basis of the support provided through Camissa and increased awareness of their work – hence the tour that we were on. 

Sadly, the popularity of the tours at the Langa Baptist Church has now become known and there are a number of other tour operators who have started bringing in tourists by the truckload – without seeking permission from or giving any support to the Langa community.  Samantha expressed to us that a number of regular church go-ers are starting to become very concerned that their services are becoming a ‘zoo’.  For this reason, while we can’t speak highly enough of the experience of going to a gospel service, we strongly recommend that anyone thinking of doing so select a tour operator that supports and gives back to the local townships (such as Camissa in Langa Township). 

All in all, our experience in Cape Town was a fantastic combination of relaxation, sight-seeing, fear (in relation to the shark cage diving) and being incredibly spoilt.  It has felt rather sad to farewell the Southern African leg of our journey though we are also very excited about the next step.  We write this post from a transit stop in Doha airport where we are about to board our flight to Jordan.  Will update you about our time there at the next opportunity.

Love Tess and Alick xx

Self Drive Tour - Victoria Falls to Windhoek

Well, for those of you who expressed some concern about the safety and potential difficulties of completing a self-drive tour across Zimbabwean, Botswanian and Namibian borders, we’ll cut straight to the chase – we made it without serious incident (save for the odd flat tyre and getting sand bogged) and had an absolutely brilliant time in the process!  In fact, we couldn't more strongly recommend hiring a car in this part of the world; it provided us with such flexibility and autonomy – particularly in National Parks where we could do our own game drives and in the areas of Namibia where public transport is next to non-existent and car hire is the only tourist alternative to group tours.

We had organised this leg through a company called Discover Namibia – who made all arrangements with the car hire company, plotted out a route that showed off some incredible aspects of the countries we travelled through and made all the relevant campsite reservations.  It was all very easy and an experience to remember!    We are so thankful to Tess's Mum Julie for making this leg of our journey possible.  

Alick and our hire car 'Heidi' in Vic Falls at the start of the journey

We have included below some detail on our experiences in each destination, starting off with our experiences with roadside ‘requests’ along the way.  All in all, it makes for a rather long blog post though we wanted to make sure we got these memories down so we don’t forget them later on! We hope you enjoy reading them too….

Roadside requests

At the roadblocks and border crossings along the way, we had our first experiences of the ‘additional’ (aka bribe) requests that we had been forewarned about.  It really was quite comical and, over the course of the next two weeks, we certainly came to expect that the general flow of these conversations would be as follows:

Us: Hello, how are you?

Official at Gate Post: I’m not good at all today.  I haven’t had any (Insert drink/food item) today.  I’m very (thirsty/hungry).  In fact, I think that if I’m not able to find some (drink/food item), I will be so unwell that I will not be able to continue doing my job and open this gate post!

In fact, much later in our self-drive trip, a worker directing traffic through roadworks didn’t even bother with the ‘I’m not good’ song and dance – coming straight over to Alick and very casually stating ‘Just give me your sunglasses’.  We both started laughing at the bluntness of this request, as did the roadside worker who, on realising it wasn’t going to happen, followed up with ‘Well, maybe next time then.  Have a good day!’

Another classic stop was at the foot and mouth disease control post just before the Zimbabwe/Botswana border.  There was a massive sign that said we couldn’t bring milk (or milk products) into Botswana, in order to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease.  We hadn’t realised this and promptly disclosed that we had an open container of milk in our car fridge.  However, on opening our fridge to get it out, the quarantine officer decided that actually, the milk would be fine to take in (he wasn’t a big fan of milk), though he did see that we had a block of cheese and some limes – both of which he would have to take off us before we entered Botswana.  As we drove away from the quarantine post, we had a lovely vision of him unwrapping and biting into the confiscated cheese in our rear view mirror!  All of these experiences were in essence harmless, and certainly gave us some good amusement as we passed across borders!

One of the traffic hazards on the road from Victoria Falls

Chobe National Park, Botswana

The two nights we spent in Chobe Safari Lodge really highlighted the benefits of having our own car so we could spend as much time as we liked driving around looking at animals – the campsite was filled with other 4 wheel drives doing the same thing and there was a lovely sense of camaraderie amongst the cars, and whenever we passed on the roads, the drivers would wind down the windows and share where they had seen game and tips on where to look (and, it turned out to be a good thing that we had built up a friendship with some of the other drivers seeing as we needed to call on them one morning when an over-active car fridge saw us wake to a flat battery!).  It was at Chobe that we were so lucky to see two lionesses right beside the road, resting under a tree while carefully guarding an impala carcass from a kill earlier that morning.  Seeing our first lions in the wild, dozing after ‘breakfast’ really brought home to us the power of these beautiful creatures!

On our second night in Chobe we did a sunset game cruise through a company called Chobezi (who were recommended by a guy we met in Vic Falls).  The Chobe River (around which the Chobe National Park centres) was absolutely teeming with elephants, buffalo, hippos and crocodiles that evening and we couldn’t quite believe how close we were able to get.  

Crocodile, Chobe National Park

Camp Kwando, Caprivi Strip, Namibia

After crossing into Namibia, we stopped along the Caprivi Strip, camping at the beautiful Camp Kwando.  One of the great things about this stop was that we were able to self-drive in the nearby Mndumu National Park – which is slowly regenerating its wildlife populations after they were nearly wiped out by poaching in the 80’s.  While re-establishing itself, the Park currently has a very relaxed attitude to letting visitors drive around of their own accord with no instruction, and we did find ourselves in some rather hair-raising situations with a large herd of elephants!  Thankfully we could draw upon the information from Liwonde National Park about the bull always being behind his ‘wives and children’ and to never place ourselves between the bull and herd, so we could keep that in mind when determining when to proceed after elephant herds crossed the road in front of us.  The roads in Mndumu were rather difficult and after a few hours we came across a lady who had been bogged in the sand since the previous day.  Luckily Alick was able to tow her out, though we were certainly on lion and leopard lookout when getting out of the car to tie the ropes on (even though we wouldn’t have had a clue what to do if we had seen one!). 

The conservation efforts at Mndumu National Park include a partnership with the Lianshulu local community – as a means to both maintain cultural traditions and local awareness of conservation strategies.  One of the ways this is done is through a kind of ‘living museum’ where visitors can learn about traditional village life, customs and hunting – it was a very interesting tour. 

N’Kwazi Lodge, Kavango, Namibia

After we left Camp Kwando, we had an overnight stopover in the Kavango region to break up the journey to Etosha.  N’Kwazi Lodge was a beautiful setting looking over the river to Angola (we worked out this was our seventh night in a row where we were camped by a river with a different country on the opposite bank!). We had the camp completely to ourselves that evening,  which was lovely though the staff were very quick to assure us that the night guard would remain on shift throughout the night. 

N’Kwazi Lodge funds a local pre-school which we visited with one of the N’Kwazi staff members Isaac the next day.  It was great to see the school and meet the teacher and kids, though the highlight of this visit was the conversations we had with Isaac on the hour-long walk to and from the school about his life in Kavango, and Namibia more generally.

Alick and Isaac, Kavango

Namutoni and Okakeujo, Etosha National Park, Namibia

From Kavango we made our way to Etosha – where the wildlife was unlike anything we’d seen on our safari adventures yet.  We stayed in Namutoni camp for our first night there and on going for a quick afternoon drive before setting up camp were lucky enough to see a leopard right next to the road!  Amazing to see another big cat at such close quarters, although we felt a little bad as we were sure that the few cars that had pulled up to gaze at and photograph the leopard had interrupted her (or his!?!) plans to stalk and make dinner of the springbok grazing across the road…  At this point, we’d also not seen many zebras or giraffes in Africa and that certainly changed as soon as we hit Etosha, with large herds of both animals (in the case of zebras HUGE herds!) frequently crossing the road in front of our car as they made their way to water sources across the dry plains of the park. 

On our second and third nights in Etosha we stayed further west in Okakeujo camp – which had a floodlit waterhole right on the camp for night-time viewing.  We sat there for hours each evening while the wildlife soap-opera of elephants, rhinos, lions, springbok and giraffes played out before us.  Late on the first evening in Okakeujo we even saw a lioness kill a springbok at the waterhole just a few metres in front of us; such a unique experience to see the lions in action though so brutal at the same time. 

On our final morning in Etosha we went for an early morning game drive, and while initially kicking ourselves that we had overslept a little and had not made it out of the camp until 7am, we were amazed when we approached one of the furthest northern waterholes in the camp, and watched as a pride of around 15 lions (including heaps of very playful cubs) made their way calmly from the waterhole, across the road about 10m in front of our car, and into a nearby thicket.  It was fascinating to watch the dynamics in the group as ‘senior’ lionesses watchfully tolerated the antics of the cubs – who relished the opportunity to play, clubbing each other and rolling around in the grass, and to hold up the tourist cars by lying down for a quick rest in the middle of the road! It was an incredible gift to see on our last morning, and made us thankful for our laziness!  All of a sudden our timing for the moment felt perfect!

We really don’t know how else we can go about fully describing our Etosha experience, so hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves when we are finally able to get them onto Flickr (hopefully in the next week or so!). 

Mowani Mountain Camp, Damaraland, Namibia

As we left Etosha National Park and headed to the Damaraland desert we found ourselves with a flat tyre, literally 2km after hitting our first real gravel road for the drive.  We were so thankful this had occurred after we had left Etosha and we were at least able to get out of the car without risking being eaten by a lion (or trampled by an elephant)!  With the tyre changed (thanks to Alick!) we were able to continue enjoying the stark Damaraland landscape and mountains, which we found very reminiscent of our time in Central Australia a couple of years ago – just with springbok and oryx, rather than kangaroos and emus, roaming the plains!   We stopped off for a look at the petrified forests surrounding the area and spend the night at Mowani Mountain Camp.  This was by far the most picturesque of any of the campsites we stayed at on our journey and was so beautifully set up with a private bathroom including a stunning outdoor shower (interior designers take note!) and kitchen sink.  For anyone heading to the Damaraland area, we highly recommend staying at Mowani.  Simply stunning.

A picturesque place for a flat tyre! 

View from our campsite at the beautiful Mowani Mountain Camp

In the morning, we had a tour of the rock engravings at Twfelfontain (Namibia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site), with our tour guide Raymond providing some very interesting insights into Namibia’s (and more broadly Southern Africa’s) current political and financial situation.  We also visited the Living Museum of Damaraland where we had a bush walk tour of the medicinal plants in the area. 

At the Living Museum we did get an understanding of how remote the facility was, and how difficult it was to get medical attention in a country as sparsely populated as Namibia (the second-least populated country in the world, with an average of two people per square kilometre!) when one of the staff asked us if we had a band-aid we could give to the cashier who had fallen on a rock earlier that morning.  The cashier had her hand wrapped in a bit of plastic, however on removing the plastic, we could see that her fingers were shredded, with huge chunks of skin hanging off – clearly in need of stitches, however the girl explained that the closest hospital was over 100kms away and wasn’t an option for her anyway. All we could do was give some alcohol swabs and bandages and were grateful that the girl’s friend took responsibility for applying them, given we were both very cautious about the amount of blood involved.  Not for the first time on the trip, we both felt we were really lacking in some practical nursing skills (where were you when we needed you Fi!?!).

Swakopmond and Walvis Bay, Namibia

From Damaraland we made our way relatively uneventfully south-west to Swakopmund on the Atlantic coast – into a completely different landscape and climate once again.  We felt absolutely freezing on reaching the ocean, after the heat we had become so accustomed to inland.  We found Swakopmund to be quite a bizarre experience.  The town itself is completely flat with wide open streets, which though surrounded by coast on one side and colossal dunes on the other and covered in fog for the majority of the time.  The Lonely Planet describes Swakopmund as ‘more German than Germany’ and we certainly did feel that in the majority of places in Swakopmund, German was far more widely spoken than English or any of the local languages.  On arrival in Swakopmund  we checked into our guest house and were actually quite relieved to have the opportunity to sleep in a real bed for the first time in over a week!

While in Swakopmund we did a tour called the Living Desert Tour, which provided us with a huge amount of information about this section of the Namibian desert itself and it’s inhabitants (known as Namibia’s ‘Little Five’).  The founder of the Living Desert company was instrumental in petitioning for the desert surrounding Swakopmund to be re-zoned into the Dorob National Park in 2010 (the area was previously known as the West Coast Recreational Park and was suffering from the impact of unrestricted walking, horseriding, 4 wheel driving, quadbiking and sandboarding activities).  The tour guides were passionate about the desert ecosystem, and showed amazing skill at being able to track and find the various different lizards, beetles, spiders, snakes, geckos and chameleons that inhabited the dunes.  It was a fascinating experience that really brought the dunes to life, and demonstrated to us how many unique species were supported by such a seemingly desolate environment.

One of Namibia's 'Little 5', Dorob National Park, Swakopmund

Following two nights in Swakopmund we headed down to Walvis Bay as our great friends Owen and Bec had kindly arranged for us to do a seal kayaking tour – thanks so much guys!! The tour itself was at a place called Pelican Point – about 40 minutes drive out of Walvis Bay itself along the sand in what really felt like travelling through a moon-scape.  The unique scenery took us through the fog, with salt mines and flamingos being the only really visible figures (except for the very strange encounter of us stumbling across a film crew and Charlize Thereon who were filming a scene for Mad Max 4 in the area – so random!).  On arrival at Pelican Point we passed an old lighthouse and port control building (which is now being converted by a wealthy Belgian businessman into boutique accommodation), and kept driving for about another two kilometres before reaching the point of the peninsular.  We were puzzled as to why the lighthouse was so far from the end of the point, and our (very knowledgeable) guide Francois told us that Pelican Point was continually accruing more sand, and was growing at a rate of 25m per year!

The seal kayaking was absolutely amazing; we were able to paddle right up to seal colonies numbering in the hundreds (if not thousands), and float in the bay with countless seals playing around our kayaks – complete with playful splashing and barking!  Given that it was mating season, there was quite a lot of noise from the shore as large males battled to protect their harems of females, fighting with much gusto with any potential usurpers!  It was wonderful to be able to see these beautiful creatures from water-level, and we’re sure we were the envy of the people crammed onto large sight-seeing boats that made their way into the bay to also see the seals!

Seal spotting, Walvis Bay

After our seal experience we returned to Walvis Bay and after a quick stop to restock and check our tyre pressures, we were off on the 5-hour drive through the desert to the famous dunes of Sossusvlei, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park.

Celebrating the milestones along the road!

Sesreim, Sossusvlei, Namibia

We arrived at the Sesreim campsite quite late in the afternoon with just enough time to head out to one the closest dunes to the campsite (Elim Dune) to watch the sunset.  It was a beautiful view though we underestimated how long it would take us to climb to the top so we ended up watching the sunset from the half-way point – which was still incredible all the same.

The next morning we made sure we were in the park as soon as the gates opened at 5.15am in order to be at Dune 45 (45 kilometres inside the gate) by sunrise.  This was our first experience driving in the dark in Africa and we were greatful that nearly everyone else in Sesreim campsite had the same idea about getting in early so we could drive in convoy to deter the springbok’s from crossing the road infront of us.  The climb up Dune 45 was actually rather big (though definitely worth it for the views from the top) and we were both amazed at how quickly we seem to have lost our Kilimanjaro fitness!

After breakfast we wandered around the dried up lakes of Dead Vlei for an hour or so until the sun was almost unbearable and we realised how knackered we were.  Just before leaving we met some other tourists who had just gotten bogged in the sand on the 4-wheel-drive track coming into Dead Vlei (we’d found the road somewhat difficult coming in) so we were quite wary on the 5km drive out and sure enough, about half-way along we found ourselves completely stuck.    The worst bit was that after a few minutes, a safari truck full of tourists came past and the driver though he’d do the kind thing of coming over to tow us out – however he also managed to get completely bogged before he’d even reached us.  So there was now about 20 people all stranded, trying to dig the sand out from under the wheels of the two cars! Eventually, another vehicle approached, driven by a National Park Guide who asked if we needed help.  He then got in our car and, with a little bit of pushing, managed to manoeuvre it out of the sand – luckily Alick didn’t have too much pride invested in his 4-wheel driving after he’d already made so many failed attempts to do the same thing!  The worst bit was, once the car was out, he instructed us to keep on driving so we maintained the movement (actually what he said was ‘you need to go on ahead so that when I come past later I can help you when you get stuck again up ahead!’) so we had to drive past the other vehicle who were still trying to get out.  We felt absolutely terrible! 

Sossusvlei

After more incredible sunset and sunrise viewings over the following 24 hours (including having a massive area called ‘Hidden Vlei’ completely to ourselves the following morning), we farewelled Sesreim and started the trek back to Windhoek – via an incredible bakery called Moose McGregors in a town called Solitaire (approx 100kms from Sesreim). 

Windhoek, Namibia

Following a short overnight stay in Windhoek, Namibia where we returned the car and prepared for the next leg, we boarded the 22-hour Intercape bus to Cape Town where we are currently enjoying our time in the sun.  We will post another update from our time in Cape Town shortly. 

Love Tess and Alick xx

Blantyre to Victoria Falls

There’s something so refreshing about staying with friends in a home while in the midst of a holiday – getting a sense of the realities of life in a particular place as opposed to just getting the touristy highlights.  After leaving Liwonde National Park we were so privileged to have been staying with Kate and Dom at their place in Blantyre, Malawi.  During this time, we have thoroughly enjoyed such simple things - like being able to make ourselves breakfast and lunch, recoup and enjoy some real rest and relaxation, run around the backyard with Kate and Dom’s ridiculously cute Labrador puppy Shula, and catch up on all of our washing (though that one was all thanks to the lovely Linus who works at Kate and Dom’s place.  We were very spoilt). We were able to experience day-to-day life in Blantyre through everyday tasks such as finding the local supermarket and navigating the fruit and veggie shopping at Blantyre market (with Alick getting his first taste of driving on Malawian roads!).  Kate and Dom gave us brilliant instructions to accompany each task before we embarked, and were so patient with our constant questions while we tried to make sure we were prepared (ie. What’s the best driving strategy to avoid hitting a goat? Are we supposed to pick one of the young boys surrounding our car to show us around and carry our bags in the market? How do we choose which boy? How much do we pay?’).  All in all it was a great experience and we had such a ridiculous sense of achievement on returning from each small venture!

Most notably though, Kate and Dom generously provided us with loads of opportunities to visit and find out more about the community projects they support through their business, the Responsible Safari Company.  We were able to join in project site visits where Kate and one of the Responsible Safari Company staff Chimwemwe discussed potential volunteer placement opportunities for future clients, and developed a greater understanding of a number of both well-established and still-developing social enterprises near the Blantyre and Mulanje area – in particular, Friends of Mulanje Orphans (FOMO), the Nancholi Youth Organisation and the Nchima Trust.  We were both so impressed at the careful consideration given to appropriate placements and tasks when discussing volunteer opportunities, and the emphasis placed on supporting local businesses and social enterprises that helped communities to help themselves, rather than become dependent on outside aid.  We’re struggling to find a decent internet connection that will allow us to upload our photos from this time though will put them onto Flickr over the next couple of weeks.

Toward the end of our time in southern Malawi, Kate and Dom treated us to a weekend away with them at a tea estate called Lujeri, in the beautiful foothills of Mount Mulanje (the tallest freestanding mountain in Central Africa – no, we weren’t tempted to climb it – at least not this trip!).  The Lujeri Tea Estate is a huge expanse of tea plantations, workers villages, drying factories and everything else that goes along with a large-scale team operation – including a sumptuously appointed Estate Manager’s residence, which has been converted into self-contained accommodation.  The house itself is beautiful, surrounded by lush gardens and a wide balcony (perfect for daytime reading and late-night card games), and a pool in the front garden completes the picture. We were also joined at Lujeri by three of Kate and Dom’s friends who are living in Blantyre: Alex (a water engineer working for a firm over here installing water systems in towns and villages) and his partner Millie (who volunteers at a Blantyre orphanage called Samaritans), and Emma (who is teaching at an international school in Blantyre).   All three were great company, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them all throughout the weekend. Overall we were thoroughly spoiled over the weekend (self-catering in this case meant brining our own food and then having two cooks prepare, serve and clean up after us – amazing!), and would highly recommend an escape in the tea estates to anyone visiting Malawi.  Kate and Dom were so amazingly generous throughout the time that we were with them, and the weekend at Mulanje will definitely go down as one of the (many) highlights of our trip so far.

It felt quite sad to leave Kate and Dom’s place given how comfortable we felt there – we said our farewells last Monday morning and started the 3-day trip north to Livingstone (the Zambian side of Victoria Falls) – with two overnight transit stops in Lilongwe (Malawi’s capital) and Lusaka (Zambia’s capital) along the way – and experienced many more memorable African transit adventures along the way!   We have absolutely loved spending three days taking in the wonders of Victoria Falls on both the Zambia and Zimbabwe sides – truly breathtaking!  We’ve had a wonderful combination of wandering around the walking tracks and enjoying some of the tour options that are only available in the current low waters –the Devil’s Pool (where you can jump into a small pond and sit on a ledge at the top of the falls – thanks Jo and Neil for the recommendation!) and whitewater rafting (which really got the adrenalin pumping!).  Again, we will upload photos from both onto our Flickr account in the next few weeks. 

From here the next chapter of our trip begins!  When we arrived in Zimbabwe we picked up our hire car (a dual-cab Hilux with a roof tent – named ‘Heidi’) and this morning we begin our two week self-drive tour across Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia – today’s destination is Chobe National Park in Botswana.  As we write this post we are in the final stages of packing and provisioning, having had a toast over breakfast to the conclusion of our first month of our travels.  What an adventure it’s been so far and we can’t wait for the next five months to come!!!

Will provide further updates at our next possible internet stop – which we anticipate may be in Windhoek, Namibia in approximately two weeks time.

Tess and Alick xx