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.

 

 

An African Safari

Since leaving Zanzibar we have headed inland to Arusha via the Lesotto mountains. Arusha is the safari capital of Tanzania being the gateway to a number of national parks including the Serengeti as well as Mount Kilimanjaro.

We decided on a safari to give Larry a break from the bad roads and also to take advantage of the local guides knowledge of where to find the animals given the size of the Serengeti as well as the cost to enter the national parks ($60 per person US per day, plus camp fees plus the vehicle fees of up to $200 per day).

Our itinerary had us visiting 3 parks:

Lake Manyara National Park is a beautiful national park which is green all year round being fed by natural springs. The park is noted for its bird life, elephants and not often sighted (us included) tree climbing lions. We spent all afternoon in the park entertained by elephants and huge families of baboons.

The next day we headed to Serengeti and it really is the must see park in Africa – it is quintessential Africa with wide plains full of wildebeest (home to the annual migration – they walk up to 600km each year), buffalo and the big cats. We spent hours watching families of lions and cheetahs and a leopard – unforgettable. Our next blog will have lots of up close and personal photos of the big cats – we took over 800 photos over the 4 days so it was hard to choose our favourite shots.

After 2 days at the Serengeti (which was not enough) we headed to Ngorongoro crater. The crater acts as a natural barrier allowing you to see a huge concentration of animals in a small area including lions, elephants, wildebeest, buffalos, zebras, black rhinos, hyenas and flamingos. It also seems to attract just as many safari vehicles!!

We have had the most magical time very much aided by the skills of our excellent guide and driver Godson – I would thoroughly recommend him. He knew exactly where the animals would be and he could spot them hundreds of metres in the distance (I couldn’t even make them out with my binoculars). He would say to us see that shape over there that is a lion and don’t worry it will come this way – and they invariably did. His favourite saying was “Oh my god I am alone in the car” when once again we would fail to see something that he could see plain as day.

We are off to Kenya in the next few days and I will be sad to leave Tanzania my favourite of all of the African countries we have visited to date. Very friendly people, beautiful beaches and unforgettable wildlife – you have to go!!!