East Africa Observations.... * Most roads are dirt tracks, or if they are tarred are generally quite bad condition with pot holes and cracks everywhere. * Women really do carry things on their heads! * Children really do play with tyres. * A lot of women have shaved heads. We never found out why, presumably due to the the heat, or maybe its because its easier to maintain, / wash, or not wash! * Most villages / settlements have water pumps. I was both surpris...

South Africa Observations.... * There are bars on many of the shop windows and doors, especially in towns and cities * You have to buzz to get into some shops * There are public security officers on street corners in some towns, they look like local people wearing orange bibs and i'm not sure how much of a good job they do, but it's a bit strange to see them! * There's a real divide amongst the people, both with race and wealth. * The towns are pretty well b...

I'd really been looking forward to South Luangwa, i'd heard it was a lovely national park and great for game viewing. We arrived about lunch time and checked into a Safari tent right on the edge of the camp grounds. There were only a few Safari tents available and we really wanted one, so when our guide asked us to decide amongst us who got the Safari tents, our tactic was to say nothing and hope everyone else volunteered for the chalets a bit further away from ...

Today we were picking up new group members from a hotel in a different part of Dar Es Salaam city, so we were up and out by 6am on the way. It took us over 2 hours to get there, through mental traffic, at one point being asked to keep a look out of the truck windows to make sure no one was stealing anything off the truck! Apparently that's pretty common. We did see someone syphoning petrol out of a tanker in front of us, at first he couldn't get the tanker open...

The next big highlight on the tour was Zanzibar. The tour was 3 weeks long but a lot of the time was actually spent driving long distances across East Africa, and there were only a few places we were stopping at for a few days. The rest were just stop overs for the night along the way. The first highlight was the Serengeti and the second was Zanzibar.  In order to get to Zanzibar we had to drive for 2 days from Arusha to Dar Es Salaam, where we were getting th...