Into Uganda

Welcome to Uganda....the only nation bold enough to sell the actual source of the Nile to a beer company. My first impressions were that as Australians, we would fit right in.

We have driven little Larry across the equator and into Uganda and onto more adventure. We both thought we would reflect on what happened in Egypt as we left ........and that's enough of that. The men were generally vial towards Tanya, and apart from some wonders of the world I see no need to go back.

Whilst is Egypt, I booked Larry into  landrover expert (Bush Rover Nairobi) to have his chassis braced to stop any more cracking problems. They did a great job of making him into the terminator. They welded more steel on to the chassis than your average Abraham's tank. Larry is now indestructible (touch wood). The work was incredibly cheap....it would almost be worth freighting your home projects to Kenya to get done.

Prior to rolling out to Uganda, we went to a Giraffe rehabilitation center....the picture says it all.

Our crossing into Uganda was crazy....it really was like a scene from the Star wars bar...there were animals and people that could only have been movie props...but apart from being stopped by heavily armed police in colourful uniforms...Uganda has been pretty cool. I went quad biking along the Nile which was hard corp boy cool. There seems to be no problems driving quads on the roads here, and when we left the dirt, I was easily blowing past most cars on the road.....I'm not sure this was covered by our travel insurance...but it was fun.

The Nile and Lake Victoria are all you could imagine....and now we are starting our journey south to walk with the gorillas.....sux to be you all home at work.



Luxor Egypt

The highlight of our trip to Egypt was a very much jam packed day and a bit in Luxor. Luxor was the ancient capital of the New Kingdom with most of the sites dating back to up to 4000 years ago. First port of call was Luxor temple which we were able to see under moonlight - sure helped with the moodlighting.

The next day we must have set the world record for Egyptian sightseeing - visiting 7 sites in a little over 10 hours (it still didn't mean I was able to get to sleep on the overnight train back to Cairo - not one of the more pleasant experiences in Egypt - so much for the romance of train travel).

We visited Karnak which is a temple complex which was originally linked to Luxor temple by a 3km avenue of sphinxes - they are currently digging up most of the centre of Luxor to try and unearth the entire avenue.

The West bank of the Nile is definately the highlight of Luxor, which includes the Valley of the Kings and Queens housing the tombs of the pharohs including Tutankhamen. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take photos inside the tombs but they are amazing - covered with colourful and really well preserved paintings (Dave reckons the paints would do Dulux proud - lasting over 3,000 years). Most of the important mummies that they have unearthed have been removed and are in the Cairo museum in some pretty macarbe exhibits.

I was very much impressed by the Temple of Hatchepsut - she was actually a chick who ruled Egypt for 20 years - she prevented her stepson from claiming the throne by convincing the masses that she was the result of a devine birth. She spent the years that she ruled dressing like a man and her tomb is actually in the Valley of the Kings. Unfortunately when she died her stepson did take revenge when he claimed the throne by removing her pictures and statues from all of the monuments and claiming her victories as his own - talk about holding a grudge - but she was left with a temple with an unbeatable backdrop of the Valley of the Kings. 

I must admit by the end of a very long day the temples were starting to blur and to keep ourselves amused we started making up our own version of history. Below is Ibis - the god of rubbish dumps (actually the god of wisdom hard to see how they associated wisdom with an ibis) as well as Dave at the Temple of the Pidgeon and finally a picture of a guy Dave was convinced was the first cocktail maker recorded in history.

Aswan

Tombs of Aswan by night

We took a sleeper train from Cairo to Aswan. The train made Tanya promise to never criticise Larry's comfort levels again (I personaly think the train tiolet was the clincher on that one).

The city is 12hrs South of Cairo and on the banks on the Nile. We set up camp on a cruise boat, and spent a day touring the city. The Aswan toombs dominate the skyline, and at night are beautiful. They are over 3,000 years old, and we had a nice private walk through them... when I say private I mean, a guide and a strange man carrying a sub-machine gun. If you feel uncomfortable being around guns, don't come to Egypt. There are strange heavily armed men everwhere.. and they all seem ignorant to whom they point their gun at.

The small temple on the top of the tombs made for a nice walk, and gave a great view of the city.

We visited the Temples of Philae and Komombo (Sobek & Haroeris)... which were very nice. It is difficult to appreciate these were all made before Christ. The condition of some of the statues and reliefs are amazing. Many of them are still painted in vivid colours that seem to have defied times efforts to fade them.

All of the temples were impressive, however, they all looked better at night. Most of them were open quite late to allow night photos...and we tried to visit the good ones right on dusk.

A guide tried to tell us that this hyrogliphic shows a doctor....I rejected that as nonsense as it is clealy someone making a cocktail.... it appears the Egyptions were truly party people..... but tying to get booze here now is a bit more problematic. 



I have no idea which god this statue is of....but I assume it represneted all of the pidgeons who had taken to crapping all over the temple.



Our Egyptian Adventure - Part 1 Cairo

Well we have spent the last amazing week in Egypt thinking that given Nairobi is about as high up in Africa we are heading it was an opportunity too good to pass up to take a quick detour to Egypt and Dave has a bit of a thing for Egypt having watched every Indiana Jones movie at least a hundred times.

The first couple of days we have spent in Cairo doing all of the tourist things you should do whilst in Egypt - visiting the pyramids of Giza and the sphinx, riding a camel and seeing the nightly sound and light show at the pyramids -the script was corny beyond belief but an amazing sight seeing the pyramids lit up at night along with about a million other tourists.

The sheer magnitude of the pyramids is something special - apparently I was suppose to appreciate the magnitude of the logistics behind the engineering task - or so Dave reckons anyway - I was happy just to take in the view on top of my camel Mickey.

Cairo is an absolutely crazy city - 28 million people living in what is a constant traffic jam around the Nile River and the pyramids of Giza.  I am missing the relative tranquility of Africa already.

Lamu Island

LAMU ISLAND

The Island of Lamu is off the central coast of Kenya. They say it is 'more Zanzibar than Zanzibar. I think a better description is more DONKEY than Zanzibar.

The Island has no roads, and all land transport is by donkey. There really are donkeys everywhere, used for everything from construction work to garbage disposal. They are very nice, except every hour or so one just goes bizzurk, running through the narrow streets, making a noise you could not imagine. Once the 'episode' is finished, they just go back to what they were doing. It's kind of funny...until it happens all through the night!

Whilst some readers would applaud this move to green, donkey power...it does have one critical drawback....they crap everywhere, and eat everything. As the great sage J. CLARKSON would say, as a form of transport.... they are rubbish....but cute.

This little fellow took quite a shine to Tanya. It was all going well until he started to eat her beach sandals. Even a donkey should have know better than to get between a woman and her shoes. The love was quickly lost.

We spent a day sailing out to a Swahili ruins at Tilwa. The fort was from the 16C, and quite interesting, but learning to sail the dhow was way more interesting. The boats are made of very thick mahogany nailed to mangrove wood frames. I would guess ours must have been over 3000kg. They sail very well, and for a wide heavy boat, they are surprisingly quick and responsive. The foolish captain gave me the till and main sheet for a few hours... and it was awesome. Whist I didn't get asked to join his racing crew, he did invite me to go 'out on the open sea' to see how she really handled..... unfortunately, we had to fly back to Nairobi the next morning.



Swahili Ruins- 16AD

Main drag - Lamu Island

Amboseli National Park - Kenya

Amboseli Park is in Kenya, and in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. We crossed the border  from Tanzania and scooted straight into the first park we came across. It really is a beautiful park, however, the drive in was a bit rough.

We set up in a 'banda' in the park for a few days and spent our time driving Larry wherever we wanted. This park is infested with elephants, and we have never seen so many happy elephants in one place. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say we could see over 500 elephants on the great plain each evening.

We only were charged at once, and it was by a cranky bull who's heart wasn't really in the chase. He gave up after a few metres. It was a really pleasant change from our elephant experience in Mozambique.

We came across two lion brothers having a snooze in the sun. We have found out that brothers will take on a pride together, sharing the 'Alpha' role in the pride. There is no 'competion' between them and these prides tend to become quite large and powerful; as opposed to a single male who will need to fight off competition on his own.

There are plenty of hyena's in the park, but unlike their buddies in the Serengeti, they tended to be on their own rather than in packs...they also seemed much bigger and fatter!

The park is dominated by Mount Kilimanjaro, and I couldn't resist a Larry photo.

More Animals of the Serengeti

Well I did say we took alot of photos whilst on safari in the Serengeti - below are some of our favourite animal photos that I hope bring you a touch of Africa (a mum and her 4 cheetah cubs, a leopard, a sleepy baboon, who said hyeenas aren't cute, an elephant and a posing giraffe) .

The Lions of the Serengeti

Whilst we have been lucky to see some amazing wildlife in Africa to date it has been a little short of lion sightings for my liking so we very much went to the Serengeti in the hope of seeing some male lions as well as a pride of lions. Thanks to the skills of our guide Godson we were not disappointed. The first morning in the Serengeti we got up early and after the mandatory sunrise photo we stopped near an outcrop of rocks. Our guide then said to us "see that over there that is a lion and don't worry it is coming this way" (I couldn't even make out the lion with my binoculars).

We then watched in awe as a female lion walked our way and then jumped up on the rocks right in front of the vehicle content to snooze on the warm rocks with a full stomach (you could see the blood on her stomach from her kill that night).We spent the next hour watching as a big male lion, several juvenille males and females slowly walked over and got settled for the day on the rocks right in front of us with not another safari vehicle in sight.

Below are some of Dave's and my favourite photos (it was hard to choose given we took morew than 800) of the beautiful lions of the Serengeti.