The Vastness of the Land The morning started with our usual muffin & Lucky insisted I have some tea so I relented to keep him happy. We then headed off at about 6.45am as the sun was rising. Most of our walks are done in silence as we don't want to disturb the animals plus conversation is more difficult when I'm following along behind. This leaves a lot of time to look around, admire the beauty of Africa & contemplate life's big questions like, "I wo...

Let's go Buffalo We were all up early the next morning & chatted for a while in the cold as all the normal people drank their coffees or teas & I drank some cold water. Yes, I'm strange, I know. Poor Yaz had "quite a large headache" but was absolutely certain it had nothing to do with the 4 Savannahs from the night before ...! After munching on a muffin, we all went out to catch a glimpse of the herd of buffalo that had been spotted, just across the ...

Leaving Civilisation Behind After an uneventful afternoon & evening in Johannesburg, where I made the most of having a phone that worked again by returning a few calls & doing some last minute emails, I headed to the airport the next morning & departed for Maun ("mar-un", not "mourn" as I was previously pronouncing it!), a township on the southern outskirts of the Okavango. After getting my ticket, I took out my gym bag, packed just the stuff I ne...

I'd booked myself one extra day in Luanda (which sounds remarkably like "Rwanda" when the local people pronounce it, a fact that frequently confused the heck out of me when they were talking until I remembered the similarity). One day turned out to be plenty of time to see the main sights of the city since there aren't very many. I'd still like to go out to see Angola's famous waterfall, which has the second biggest span in Africa, but this is about 5 hours dr...

Luanda: Not what I Expected Angola was interesting & quite different to what I had expected. The city is a real mixture of some quite nice developments & some pretty terrible old buildings that look like they should've been pulled down about 20 years ago. There's also a curious mix of cleanliness standards. On one hand, so many of the streets & pavements are kept immaculately clean by owners & stores that sweep them every day. You then have t...