Had a mini-reunion with Emma and took a drive along the Great Ocean Road

Saw the Twelve (or however many there are now) Apostles

Said hello to little Gracie

Farewelled the mullet (see how I got Telstra in the shot to cheer you up, Al?)

Picnicked with Cath’s family in Werribee

Lunched with Al’s family in Geelong

Scrubbed up for Fran’s wedding in Melbourne

Walked along the river a few times

Spent a long weekend in the Yarra Valley, and realised the impact of the bushfires

Tears, contrasts and regrowth

Local produce

Sunrise at Steeles Creek

Healesville locals

And… we’re getting married!

I’ve been back at work (!) for a week now – on a casual basis, so anything’s possible, but it is surprisingly nice to feel like a productive member of society again. Al has also been exceptionally productive while he has been home, churning out some more blog posts for your perusal. Our African adventure is now fully written up!

These are the latest:

Flowers of Spitzkoppe (Feb 16th), Sossusvlei and Our Last Bush Camp (Feb 20th), Fish River Canyon to Stellenbosch (Feb 24th), Cape Town Part I (Feb 26th), South African Road Trip (Feb 28th), Cape Town Part II (Mar 2nd)

Oh and thanks to Giselle, here’s evidence of the original, spontaneous Chitimba pyramid (same formation, but with more boring clothes):

During the week while all the normal people are at work, we’re also at work, trying to catch up on this thing! Our weekends and nights are for people-based, rather than computer-based, catching up, and they have been very extremely supremely good.

But it also feels nice and productive to update the blog:

LATEST POSTS: Livingstone – Walking with Lions (Feb 2nd), Livingstone – Victoria Falls (Mosi-oa-Tunya) (Feb 2nd), Zooming Down the Zambezi (Feb 3rd), Zipping into Zimbabwe (Feb 5th), Chobe River (Feb 6th), Mokoro Magic – The Okavango Delta (Feb 9th), Back in Maun (Feb 9th), Tsodilo Hills & Welcome to Namibia (Baobab Tree) (Feb 11th), San Bushmen & ‘Bush’ Camping (Feb 12th), Etosha National Park (Feb 14th), Cheetah Park (Feb 14th), Spitzkoppe (Feb 16th), Swakopmund (Feb 19th), Thunderstorms, Leaving the Tropics (Feb 19th), The Complete Guide to Hong Kong (Mar 9th)

And thanks to Vicky here’s a new photo for ya, from Kande Beach in Malawi:

While we were in the area, we thought we’d pop over to Koh Phi Phi and see how my favourite little tropical island was going. I absolutely loved it the first time I came to Thailand and was interested to see how it had changed – years of development, then the tsunami, then several years of rebuilding later.  

View from the ferry, Ao Nang to Koh Phi Phi Don

The fancy pier was new (last time the big boats stopped further out in the bay and we all transferred onto smaller ones to bring us to shore), but the very, very tempting, gorgeous, stunning water looked familiar!

High tide 

Same

Our bags, taking a break on the longtail boat from Tonsai pier to our accommodation

It’s about time our backpacks made it into the blog – they’ve been our trusty and constant companions. Mine’s the blue one, and Al’s (well, really his friend Virginia’s, since she kindly let it come with us) is the red one with the huge black thongs attached.  Those thongs were very popular in Africa – lots of people offered to trade Al some wood carvings in exchange for his shoes (it’s obviously a bit hard to find a pair like them in the shops in Malawi), but he clung onto them, so they’ve made it the whole way around with us as well. Meanwhile I have gone through two pairs of Havaianas. 

Our balcony!

We splashed out a little on our accommodation (mainly because it was a last-minute decision to come here, so there were no rooms at the Viking backpacker place we’d heard good things about, and we wanted to have somewhere booked so that we could focus on doing nothing for our last few days). If you ignored the smell from the pipes just outside (which should be pretty easy for you to do, assuming you’re not using your computer anywhere near raw sewerage), the place really was lovely. It was just far enough away from the busy part of the island that it felt quiet, and just close enough that we could walk along the beach for twenty minutes and find a bit more action, and tastier food.

We thought a hotel pool on an island like this was a really unnecessary touch. But with cushioned sun lounges and a ready supply of cool drinks, it successfully tempted us away from the beach on the first afternoon. I was also intrigued by the poolside chalkboard, which read ‘NEVER SCUBA DIVED? TRY IT FREE HERE TODAY’. I had decided a long time ago that if I ever tried diving, I’d do it in a pool before getting into the ocean, so I thought I might just take this chance while my schedule was otherwise completely clear. Unfortunately there was another couple having a lesson at the time, so I had to wait. Somehow we managed to pass the time, swimming, reading, sunbaking and napping – it was a struggle – and when they had finished I had almost convinced Al to join me. The instructor (Pierre, whose French accent made us think of him as an older, less sleazy version of Brendan Fraser’s character in Along Came Polly) did the rest of the convincing, so suddenly Al and I were all kitted up with weight belts and tanks and standing in the pool, learning how to breathe underwater and not drown.

As you might know, I love almost everything about swimming, while Al’s never really been the underwater type. And I’ve snorkelled a lot, with no difficulty. But I really struggled psychologically to put my head below the water and breathe through the SCUBA mouthpiece. Al was much more able to stay rational and trust the equipment, so he and Pierre were crouched underwater for a while signalling for me to come under, while I kept bobbing down, almost getting my face underwater, then standing up again. But eventually I just did it, then struggled to keep myself calm through all the ‘your mask has been knocked out of your mouth! Don’t panic but get it back as quickly as you can or you’ll die!‘ underwater run-throughs, and finally somehow found the guts to tip myself into a horizontal position and start doing slow laps of the pool, kicking my flippered feet. It turned out to feel a lot more comfortable than squatting in the shallow end. I still felt restricted by the weight, and by not being able to lift my head up to look around, but Pierre assured me this was only because the gear I had on was way too big. ‘That’s good’, I thought, ‘so now that I almost feel comfortable in a pool, that means one day when I feel comfortable with a reputable company in Australia I might actually be able to go diving in the sea’. After a couple more laps, taking in the view of the hairy white legs and beer guts of a few big German men, I was feeling satisfied. 

But for some reason, just as I had taken off the SCUBA gear and was enjoying the safety and warmth of dry land, I had a carpe diem moment. A few minutes later I was ticking the box next to the basil chicken I’d chosen for lunch on my diving trip the next day! I spent the night making Al reassure me it would be OK, and that I could pull out at any time if I felt uncomfortable. The day of swimming, sleeping and sunbaking he was looking forward to sounded lovely to me.

Fire twirlers – your Phi Phi bar is nothing if it doesn’t have at least one of these performing each night

The boat to Phi Phi Ley the next morning – the other couple booked on the diving trip had cancelled, so it was just me, the Frenchman and the driver.

I once again had trouble getting my head under water at first. I told Pierre I was going to come under, then come back up and get totally comfortable, then come under again for real and keep going. What actually happened was that I went under, went just a little bit further under, got into a horizontal swimming position, and then Pierre showed me on his watch that we were already at 3m. I felt surprisingly calm and started to enjoy the surroundings. Then Pierre showed me his wrist again – 12m! Wow, maybe I’ll actually be able to do this, I thought. Apart from a few moments when I found it hard to equalise my ears despite my best nose-squeezing and yawning efforts, it all went very smoothly. I did get very focussed on the ear equalising, and I’m sure I was doing it at least four times as often as necessary, but at least I didn’t get any pain afterwards. And that really was my only concern at the time (although later I did think it may have been silly to dive in just bathers and a t-shirt, with no stinger suit, once I knew the kinds of things that were down there)! It helped that I knew I was the only bumbling novice my instructor had to worry about. 

I absolutely loved the feeling of swimming for such a long time in the underwater world. It felt the way flying felt in a dream I once had – it was surprisingly comfortable. And the diving scenery was much more exotic and spectacular (partly since in the dream I was flying just a few metres above the ground, following a road). It was easy to forget how far down we were – there was so much going on around us that the surface above seemed irrelevant. It looked choppy and noisy up there, but around us was calm and quiet, apart from the noisy bubbles we breathed out. As impressed and excited as I was when we found the underside of our little boat (which had moved to where the driver knew we would finish), resurfacing really felt like I was coming back to the reality I had known and leaving behind a whole other, wondrous world. 

Fresh from seeing a black-tipped reef shark, some lobsters in their holes, a black and white-striped sea snake, a few pairs of clown fish, a lionfish (or leopardfish?), lots of other lesser-known but equally beautiful fish, and coral in almost every colour of the coral rainbow. All except that peachy-orangey-pinky colour lipstick manufacturers call ‘coral’, strangely.

Lunch stop – the basil chicken was deliciously spicy. We picked up about three supermarket bags full of rubbish from this tiny beach, and took them away with us. 

Just around the corner was Maya Bay, where The Beach was filmed – not quite deserted anymore. We didn’t stop.

My second dive was a little bit further around the island, more exposed to the waves than the first one. By the end, I was getting quite tired and ready to come back up, but I certainly couldn’t complain about not getting my money’s worth. It had been one of my favourite mornings of the trip, and it was capped off by discovering Al just sitting down to lunch at a table by the beach, so I could describe it all to him while he ate. I’m not sure he loved hearing about it as much as I loved reliving it, but he seemed to enjoy his food.

Night storm – we sought shelter in a pancake stall and bought a ‘milkshake’ (=ice-shake) as thanks

A couple of ladies sought shelter from the lightning in this PHONE booth, holding UMBRELLAS. Hmmm.

We found time for a bit of rock scrambling the next day.

Surveying the bay

The white pontoon in the background was apparently built as a floating restaurant – someone’s ‘good idea, wrong place’ according to Pierre

We managed to fit in a quick swim back at ‘our’ beach before this storm hit

Then walked to this bay on the other side of the island, avoiding nasty-looking pieces of corrugated iron blown loose by the wind. The rain set in, and we found an indoor table for a leisurely lunch and drinks.

Finding this lookout in time for sunset was not as straightforward as we expected. At one point, totally lost, we were relieved to see some other people coming along the path behind us, so we waited for them. Our relief was shattered when they said ‘oh, we asked some people and they told us to follow you!’

We got there eventually, but we never did find the Tsunami Memorial. The signs seemed to lead us in circles. We learnt not to trust signs.

This sign just made us laugh. But we still don’t trust that a lady can walk on water, like that one on the right, even if she does have a pole.

Breakfast on our last day in Thailand

Al’s final (and possibly his 23rd?) Thai massage

Kids at Tonsai Pier

Koh Phi Phi is certainly not suffering from a lack of tourists. The central part of it is more highly developed than I thought possible after the devastation the tsunami must have caused. Lots of shops and restaurants in town had a framed ‘after’ photo on the wall showing the extent of the damage – the whole middle strip of the island was almost completely wiped out. But apparently it took so long for new safe building guidelines to be developed that people started rebuilding anyway, in their desperation to get their lives back on track, with the result that now a lot of areas deemed unsafe are once again home to densely packed, fairly ramshackle structures. At least most of the actual housing for the community seems to be on raised land, mainly up the hill where we eventually found the lookout. The most poignant reminder of the day we saw was a tree with colourful ribbons, like the ones usually attached to the prows of longtail boats here, tied around its enormous trunk. It was near the bottom of the hill, and we wondered how many people it might have saved.

And suddenly it was Monday, and time for us to go. We caught the ferry to Phuket, then shared a mini bus from the pier to the airport, where the driver gave us an elaborate and fun handshake goodbye after seeing us high-five each other (in a corny but ironically cool way, you know) for completing the trip. 

Home time.

The taxi drivers are on to a good thing at Phuket airport.

We were actually staying in Krabi (Cath had been to Phuket back in 2001 and it wasn’t on the top of her must-go-back-there list), but Phuket was the only place in the region we could fly into using our round-the-world ticket, and the Lonely Planet told us we should be able to catch a bus from there to Krabi. So, all prepared for but not looking forward to a cramped and hot 4-hour bus ride, we ignored all the ‘transport?!’ touts in the airport foyer and tried to find out where the bus stop was. 

It turned out we would need to get a taxi to the bus stop on the main road to make it in time for the next departure. So we joined a few other backpackers at the official taxi rank, insisting to the drivers that we didn’t need a taxi the whole way to Krabi, just to the bus stop. We couldn’t help feeling we were being sucked in, and I’m pretty sure we were all looking at each other thinking ‘we might be gullible, but these other people haven’t found a better way to get there either, so at least we can all be suckers together’.

Ten minutes later we were zooming along the road to Krabi in the taxi. The driver was very persuasive, let us feel we’d driven a hard bargain, and turned out to be quite an entertaining singer. And he had air-conditioning. I wonder how many backpackers ended up on that bus!

I did regret our decision at times – mainly the times I looked at what was left in the wallet, or when I looked at the road and saw how close we came to having head-on collisions or taking out pedestrians in the emergency lane – but it was hard not to give in to relaxation, with the bright sun soaking us, tropical green plants whizzing past and limestone cliffs appearing. Even the Thai pop videos on the in-car DVD player were making me happy.

True to his word, our driver got us to Ao Nang more than two hours earlier than the bus would have. We were staying further west of Ao Nang, on Noparat Thara beach, but we had time to stay in town for a bite to eat. That first Thai lunch could best be described as a flavour explosion. We had missed sauces and spices and vegetables so much! I felt like all I ate in Hong Kong was noodles, rice, batter, dough, and a bit of potato. Basically beige, with a touch of soy sauce and chili. But here things were green and red and delicious and people realised that stuffing things with meat wasn’t the only way to make them tasty. Paradise.

And then a lovely and quiet Thai-speaking man came and picked us up and drove us to P.A.N. Beach Bungalows, a family-run collection of wooden bungalows lining each side of a rectangular paddock, with a small open-air restaurant and bar at one end. And at that end happened to be a white sand beach, an expanse of turquoise water, and an island in the bay we could walk across to at low tide.

Our bargain basement bungalow!

(One of the cheapest on hostelbookers – great find by Al)

The only reason I was still wearing my jeans was that it was physically impossible to fit them in any of our bags by this stage, and this was a quick photo before we unpacked and totally messed up the room. There was no electricity during the day to power the ceiling fan, so it was time for cold showers (again, no electricity – but they may as well not bother with a hot water tap in this climate), and then a bit of exploring.

Low tide

We walked over to the island, avoiding sea cucumbers underfoot (which Al kept referring to as ‘Sea Turds’ – gross), and trying to shoo off a mangy dog who seemed to want to play but needed to work on its social skills (it kept barking and rushing at my feet, and I’m not usually scared of dogs, but I really thought it might take a playful bite).

Reading in the hammock on the porch

Nap, swim, read, nap, swim, read – aah, there’s the turquoise water we were expecting!

Eat, drink, play cards

The restaurant served really tasty Thai meals, which were good value considering how isolated we were, and the family were really welcoming – the set up seemed to be that dad did the driving, mum ran the front of house, and the kids manned the desk and waited tables. A guy who seemed to be either a cousin or a young uncle ran boat trips, and even though our plan had been to just continue the nap/swim/read/eat cycle, we were convinced to join him one day and disrupt our relaxation with some snorkelling. 

Yellow and black stripy fish were everywhere, looking for a feed

Hong Island – that little gap is the only connection between the interior of the island and the sea outside

We were the only boat in the Hong Island lagoon, surrounded by the karst cliffs – our voices echoed

Lunch stop

After lunch (honestly, I was wearing 50+ sunscreen) 

Night out in Ao Nang, the place to go for Al to have a Thai massage and for me to have some very classy tropical cocktails

Nopparat Thara was really the perfect place to be for us right now. I know this will sound ridiculous to read from home, but we had really needed a holiday! We got one, and with it we got our travel-mojo back.

It was cool, it was rainy, we were tired. We arrived in Hong Kong lacking the energy to get out and explore it. But having seven days here allowed us to take our time and spread our sightseeing out, and mix it with late night internet sessions instead of sleep, as we are still on Europe/Africa time. Our standard day seemed to be 12pm – 3am…

Hong Kong did grow on us as we saw more of it.

Our modest accommodation was located in Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. I could stand in the middle of the room and touch each wall with my outstretched arms. But it was clean, relatively quiet and centrally located.

Our street in TST

The only thing we really did on our first full day was go to a Chinese medicine class in the Central district on Hong Kong island. It was basically a Powerpoint presentation mixed with a little show and tell. It was interesting to hear about Yin and Yang medicine – although a little more discussion on how this can link into Western medicine would have been useful.

Elevated, covered walkways in the Central district seemed a nice, futuristic way to get to work

A handwritten protest sign outside a bank (and there were many protest signs and loudspeakers outside many banks), one of the only indicators we could see of the ‘Global Financial Crisis’, read:

‘Mini skirts are skirts

Mini mooncakes are mooncakes

Then why aren’t minibonds bonds?’

On the way back we spent some time on the waterfront, enjoying the city lights illuminating the clouds.

Yes this is night time!

To learn a bit more about Hong Kong’s past we visited the Museum of History – which happened to also have an exhibition on the French Revolution, reminding us of our time in France – complete with replica guillotine for cheesy photos that local high school students seemed to enjoy. More enjoyable for us was our visit to the Nan Lian Gardens (a replica of a traditional Chinese Tang Dynasty garden) and adjoining Chi Lin Nunnery.

Waiting inconspicuously at the metro station

Beautiful architecture and flora set against modern apartment towers is a good example of what can be found all over Hong Kong – a mix of the old and new. This is sometimes harmonious, and sometimes clashing.

We decided to keep the flora theme going by visiting the flower market area of Kowloon. There’s probably about fifty stores lining two streets that look something like this:

That night we met up with my old school friend Jeff who lives in Hong Kong. By chance it happened to be his birthday! We went out to the suburbs, to the sort of area where most locals live in their shoe box apartments.

Hot pot birthday dinner with Jeff and his girlfriend Jenny

The next day we decided to go to Lantau island and get the cable car up to Ngong Ping village – which turned out to be a really cheesy and overly fake ‘traditional’ village. I would think most traditional Chinese villages would not have a 7-Eleven and synthetic trees. The big attraction, pun intended, is the world’s largest seated Buddha statue nearby. We followed this with what was billed as a traditional vegetarian meal at the monastery – this turned out to be niceish, but bland, cafeteria food served by grumpy ladies in a mess hall.

Cheesy

Cheesier – it’s what the monks would want

Cold, misty and atmospheric

The Buddha and surrounding statues all have amazing expressions of calmness

Po Lin monastery

Elaborate interior

What better way to follow the calm, peaceful atmosphere of Lantau than with the hectic neon commotion of Tsim Sha Tsui and some karaoke! This was to celebrate Jeff’s birthday.

Busy street scene below

Jenny and her friends were much better at this than we were. Meanwhile we were masters of collecting food from the buffet (and eating it).

Jeff and Jenny offered to spend the following day with us in order to show us a different side of Hong Kong. We first wandered around one of the older suburbs, near Jeff’s apartment, where he went to school and which has not YET been overtaken by modern high rises. People were out at markets, and playing soccer and basketball in the park on this weekend morning. The elderly were out doing tai chi or, more adorably, their own brand of exercise. One older woman slowly walked backwards past us whilst swinging her arms back and forth.

Jeff’s high school

After a quick Yum Cha dumpling brunch, we visited Wong Tai Sin temple and gardens, where Cathy had her fortune read. The results were mixed…

A visit to the Tai O fishing village rounded out the day. It was still cold and misty, but it was really nice to visit one of the only remaining villages in Hong Kong that still lives in a more traditional way. A highlight was an elderly Chinese man who came up to me for a chat. “Are you from Finland?”, “No”, “Sweden”, “No” (this line of questioning was clearly influenced by the mullet, and went on until we offered that we were from Australia). ‘Aah – are you from Pymbo?’! When we said we were from Melbourne, he said ‘I have been fortunate enough to obtain several copies of The Age and the Herald Sun’. He went on to ask us several questions about Pymbo (a town in NSW), Gundagai and Geelong! He explained that his relatives would send him copies of The Age, The Courier and other papers; also that he loved geography and had worked in a shipping yard that had maps on the wall – so he knew the names of many cities around the world but nothing more about them. We’ll always remember being asked “So is Pymbo warmer than Gee-long?”

Tai O village: simple, pretty, misty and smells like fish

A surprise treat – there is a Shaolin martial arts school here. Check out our form!

My style is classic wing chun kung fu whilst Cathy’s is more sloppy Karate Kid.

It was a great day that delivered the other sides of Hong Kong that Jeff and Jenny promised.

Probably the most popular sight in Hong Kong had not even been visible for our entire stay there, that is until the last day. The Peak was no longer covered in cloud so we decided to venture up. To do this, we took the ferry across to HK island, then walked through to the Mid-Level Escalators – a series of escalators that help people walk to and from work on the hilly island. 800 metres long and climbing 135 metres, the escalators see some 55,000 people use them daily (thanks Wikipedia).

What followed should have been a straight forward walk to the cable car station – but it was easy to get lost. Asking for directions three or four times helped us find the station eventually, and so we made it to the top for this fabulous view:

Another great surprise, two eagles swooping around the buildings and Peak looking for food. They soared only a few metres over our heads at one stage – amazing.

Walking around the Peak, Cathy was successfully sidetracked by this diversion I created

Which ended soon after

Before our final dinner with Jeff and Jenny (a tasty Korean cook your own bbq) we viewed the world’s largest synchronised sound and light show which incorporates buildings on both sides of the harbour. It tried a bit too hard to be Hollywood-style dramatic, and made us hope that Hong Kong uses green power wherever possible, but was a spectacle!

And that was Hong Kong. Despite the cool, wet weather and jet lag, we definitely warmed to the place and enjoyed the sites we got to see and the friends we were able to catch up with. It was a good stopover that had us ready for the sun and sand of Thailand!

But we still have no idea what this sign, outside an internet cafe, meant.

UPDATES 2nd APRIL – Lake Kariba – Eagles (Jan 29th), Lake Kariba – Houseboat (Jan 31st)

UPDATES 1st APRIL – this is not a joke – Egypt – with special guest writer AL! (Dec 30th), Obama Day, Pig Day, Bilharzia Day (Jan 22nd), Lilongwe & Chipata (Jan 24th), Lusaka (Jan 26th)

UPDATES 28th MARCH – Malawi posts: Chitimba (Jan 19th), A Killer Diversion (Jan 20th)

UPDATES 23rd MARCH – New Tanzania posts: Stone Town (Jan 12th), Zanzibar – Nungwi Beach (Jan 15th), Return to Stone Town (Jan 16th), Ta-Ta Tanzania (Jan 18th)

UPDATE – Serengeti post is now up (Jan 7th, Tanzania)

Click on the January archive and check out the new posts (Nairobi, Maasai Village & Ngorongoro Crater) from the 4th, 5th and 6th of Jan (Kenya & Tanzania) – hot off the press and complete with photos!

We’re out of Africa and gradually moving along through the grieving process – miss it, and the people we were with, a lot!

It’s been harder to find a reliable internet connection here than we expected, but we’ve just found this lovely internet cafe, and will hopefully be back later today after the Chinese medicine class we’re about to attend.

Keep your eye out for ‘new’ blog posts about things we did several months ago, which might be published over the next few days. Egypt (late December) is on the waiting list, and I’ve just posted a summary of our time in London over New Years. Look through the date archives or click on country names to find them. I’ll try to write an announcement like this whenever something is completed.

After saying some final goodbyes to more of our Oasis friends this morning, Emma joined us for the trip to Robben Island. During the seven kilometre ferry ride we focussed mainly on the video so as not to get seasick. But soon our attention was drawn outward as three whales were swimming some fifty metres away! We really felt like Africa kept on showing us new things every day, as if the continent thought we might be getting bored – so decided to add some whales to the shimmering sea.

After its previous existences as a prison and leper quarantine colony, Robben Island became the infamous Apartheid political prison in 1959. We had two guides today, both members of the ANC who had been incarcerated here. The first guide showed us around the cell blocks, discussing prison life and answering questions politely. Although he normally does not talk about such things, he admitted to being tortured several times – including by waterboarding. He mentioned how more or less rations were given to prisoners based on their race – solely to create an air of distrust and hostility. And, of course, he talked about Nelson Mandela. A visitor asked if he felt part of the reason Mandela was so revered was that he was the only anti-Apartheid activist most people knew, and in fact a lot of other people deserved some of the credit. Our guide (who was an ANC member) replied that although of course there are other people who deserve and receive credit, in fact Nelson Mandela should be celebrated even more than he is – that it is impossible for South Africans to thank him enough.

What most people came to see – Nelson Mandela’s cell for many of his 27 years of incarceration

The prison yards with the mainland viewable in the distance. The isolation felt by the prisoners would have been unbearable if they couldn’t talk to each other.

As our second guide (taking us on a tour of the island by bus) told us, Robert Sobukwe – the former leader of the Pan African Congress – did not have this luxury. He was thought of as such an influential threat that he was kept in a nearby cottage by himself for several years. When he was released he had difficulty speaking as his vocal chords had withered away during his solitary confinement. Even upon release, he was forced to live in an isolated part of the country, and forbidden to travel abroad or be involved in any political activities.

This second guide had such a regal and commanding, dramatic voice that he was a joy to listen to. He would tell stories as if he was reciting Shakepeare, and made an effort to mention how the countries of each passenger on his bus contributed to Robben Island and the struggle against Apartheid. This included Australians invading a rugby pitch in protest during a South African tour. His other mentions of Australia’s impact on the island were not as flattering: the introduced rabbits were a pest and the introduced thirsty Eucalyptus trees had assisted in depleting the island of any natural water supply. We did try to tell him that the English introduced rabbits to Australia, creating a pest that still bothers our country today, and that the Eucalypts flourish in Australia precisely because of their abilities to drink every last drop from the ground, to help them survive through dry times. But these facts would have got in the way of a good story, and we forgave him, because he was very funny.

Shipwreck – Table Mountain visible in the distance

The limestone quarry where prisoners were forced to work (in not the most satisfying way – moving the rock out, then later moving the rock back in) under the blinding, scorching hot sun. To this day, Nelson Mandela has problems with flashing cameras because of the damage his eyes suffered whilst working here.

On returning to the mainland (once again seeing the whales on the way), Cathy and I went to see a wildlife photography exhibition which was great. We almost felt like some of our animal photos could have made it in – if we were eligible for the under 13 age group perhaps. A final seafood dinner down in the waterfront area of town was the scene of our final, final goodbyes to some of our Oasis friends. It was a very bitter-sweet evening, and we wished we had a lot more time to stay and explore this really beautiful city (we had looked into changing our flight to a later date, but it just didn’t work with the rest of our plans).

We realised that we were not only saying goodbye to our friends, and to Cape Town, but also to Africa itself. We had been there for over two months, and the continent had shared with us its amazingly varied landscapes, beautiful wildlife, fascinating cultures and friendly people. We can’t recommend south east Africa highly enough, and would love to come back to spend more time in one or two places, with lots more money to spend at local markets and to pay local tour operators and businesses (probably the best way, as far as we know, to offset any negative impact tourism might have on local communities). And we’ve really only seen such a small corner of a huge, diverse continent.

We were off to the airport quite early the next morning – with some important news for our families. Sitting at Johannesburg airport waiting for our connecting flight to Hong Kong, we made the final decision that we would come home one month early and surprise our families and friends  – with plans to return to south east Asia a few weeks later. We wanted to tell only the people we thought needed to know we’d be home for our plan to work. So we called Cathy’s parents, my Mum, and then my brother Hamish (I decided the brother who picked up the phone first would be the one to be told). All were surprised and pleased to hear that we’d be home in two weeks – and we were starting to get really excited by that idea too!

In Tanzania, and Zanzibar particularly (outside Stone Town), the names were quirkily aspirational:

Nice Hair Dressing Salon

Aalya Beautiful Salon

Bob & Bad Boy Ritzy Barber Salon

Tulifo Modern Butchery

In Zambia, things tended to take a more philosophical tone:

Reasonable Shop & Take Away

Reasonable Restaurant

No Money No Power Grocery

New Deal Tarven (sic)

Be Strong Enterprises

Be Strong Barber Salon

Tropics Depot – for all your stationary, food, signwriting etc etc

Just Imagine Investments

Hope Dot Com (internet cafe)

Sex Thrills, AIDS Kills (billboard)

Namibian businesses seemed to have less personality overall, apart from a couple of interesting ones:

The Dog Is Hot Bar

OK Food (actually a big supermarket chain, where we bought food to cook for dinner, and yes, it was acceptable)

But one of the best signs we saw was in Malawi:

Road Signs Save Lives (painted on a road sign)