28. The Western Desert Route to Cairo, Egypt - 23 February to 5 March 2010 Rather than the Red Sea coast, we decided to travel the Western Desert route to Cairo from Luxor, as we had heard it was a spectacular drive, especially the White Desert, famous for its brilliant white limestone formations that are the remains of microscopic marine animals deposited 80 million years ago. There are four oases on this Western Desert road. Magically, the water found in thes...

27. Aswan and Luxor, Egypt - 11 February to 23 February, 2010 Just before sunset, we had crossed the border into Egypt on Lake Nasser, aboard the ferry from Wadi Halfa in Sudan to Aswan. Once it was dark, we were rugged up in our sleeping bags, very snug and comfortable despite the flat hard deck underneath. Early in the night, we heard some activity around us, and sat up to see the awesome sight of the two temples of Abu Simbel on the western shores of the lake,...

26. Sudan - 31 January to 10 February 2010 After crossing the border from Ethiopia into Sudan, everything changed very quickly. We encountered so many roadblocks, mostly friendly and always asking for names and nationality, and very often requiring us to get out of our car into a little 'office' by the side of the road, where we showed our passports and they wrote down all our details. The elevation changed dramatically, down to about 500 metres quite qu...

25.Ethiopia - 9 January to 31 January 2010 Ethiopia has been our greatest surprise so far, certainly not the desert and famine that tends to be associated with the country. The vast majority of Ethiopians live on an elevated, very fertile central plateau called the Ethiopian or Abyssinian Highlands, and the landscape is truly spectacular, further enhanced by the Great Rift Valley. And definitely a bonus - the date is May 2002 on the Ethiopian calendar, and sudde...

24.Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya - 1 January to 9 January 2010 Our plan to travel the more remote route east of Lake Turkana into Ethiopia and then through the Omo Valley was taking shape, with the four families in the convoy making preparations prior to the New Year's Day departure. We hired a mini bus (matatu) to take all ten of us - Bob and Maria; Dickie, Claire and their girls Sonja and Natasha; Liz and Peter; and ourselves - into central Nairobi to the Immig...