27/1/07

Hey there and Mma ache to all you funky monkeys and smelly pant elephants

Well, we are currently at The Mole Hotel in Mole National Park which a REALLY cool elephant reserve in the north of Ghana, and… man… it would have to be one of the BEST kept secrets in these parts!

Basically the Mole Hotel/Resort that we are staying in, is built on a small cliff overlooking two huge waterholes where wild elephants hang out.

So we literally have spent the last 2 days sitting by the poolside with a beer in our hand watching elephants frolicking in the waterhole below… as well as having wart hog families just scrounging around our room, and monkeys just casually sitting on our porch.

And not only that… Ghana is such a dirt cheap country to travel in at the best of times, since it is easy to live on $15USD per day… But we couldn’t believe how cheap it was to come to this park which only costs 3 Euros entry, 17 Euros a night accomodation, and a 2 hour elephant walking safari only cost us 1.50 euros each compared to $100USD per person in East Africa!!!

…AND although there is not the variety of wildlife that you get in East Africa, you can get MUCH closer to the elephants here which is actually quite cool… um… UNTIL they charge at you!!!

But although watching elephants was what we came here for, we TOTALLY didn’t realise that it was like “Who Watches The Watchers”, and it was actually US who were being watched… by BABOONS!!!! Continue reading →

23/1/07

Aga po Seo, oumana seo, ounou seo and yahana seo to all you Dogon Bogons and flying pygmies

Well, we are currently in Ouagadougou (pronounced Wagadoogoo), which is the capital of Burkina Faso and it would have to be the coolest named capital city that we have been to outside of Tegucigalpa in Honduras and Llubjlana in Slovenia.

But the ride here was one of the most god-awful trips that we have done, since we literally got jammed like sardines into a rusted minibus full of holes and with no suspension… And since it was a dirt track the whole way into the country, we ended up covered in red dust that was so thick that it even stained our friggin TEETH!!! And to make it even more painful the van could only go at 30km an hour, drawing out our misery.

But anyways, we have now left Mali which is actually REALLY sad since we had a FANTASTIC time here despite all the bad things that we had read about the place before we arrived.

And it’s a also bit sad, now that we are travelling on our own again since we met some really COOL people along the way including 2 London girls Gaby and Sofia, who we have been travelling with almost the whole time we were in Mali, and who really made our trip a heap of fun.

But …man… On reflection, Mali DEFINITELY has the lion.s share of cultural attractions in West Africa and we were COMPLETELY surprised us at how amazingly diverse and interesting the different cultures are here in Mali… especially for a country that doesn’t get much tourism outside of the French… And that’s not even mentioning the internationally acclaimed blues and roots music scene, World Heritage level textiles, and elaborate jewelery and woodwork that you see all over the country. Continue reading →

15/1/07

Bonjour to all you mighty Tuaregs and smelly Toerags

Well, we are now back in Sevare in central Mali after arriving from a week in Timbuktu which included the 3 day music Festival au Desert in Essakane… And all we can say is that getting to Timbuktu was easy, but getting back was FRIGGIN AWFUL!!!

Man… the last music act finished at 4am yesterday morning, but we only made it through to 2.30am since we were so knackered… and THEN after only 2 hours sleep, we had to get up at 4.30am ANYWAY to take down our tent and pack up the campsite!

And to make a long story short… after 22 hours, one busted tyre and several malfunctioning headlight repairs later, we rolled into Sevare at 2.30am this morning which SUCKED even worse than you can imagine since I had a migraine the whole way back on roads so bad, that our truck almost vibrated itself to pieces.

Basically it was a fucking ROTTEN trip, which was sad since it was actually a very depressing way to finish what was an absolutely AMAZING experience at the Festival. Continue reading →

10/1/07

Bonjour Tout Le Monde

Hey Holy C’rap!!! We thought that if we were sitting at home in an office, then it would be really cool to get an email from Timbuktu!!!! ….So here it is

WE ARE IN FRIGG’IN TIMBUKTU!!!!!!!

This is only a short email since the internet is a bit crapp’y and slow, and we actually have a blog about our last week here in Mali but it is still on our laptop… so we will upload it later along with the story about how Avril got threatened by a crazy lady with a machete…

But for now all you need to know is that Mali ROCKS!!!

Mali is really hot, dusty, dirty, and poor with open sewages everywhere… And the capital city Bamako is so polluted that our noses have been bleeding, but we love it!!! Continue reading →

9/1/07

Bonjour and I ni sogoma to all you funky cats and grande femmes d’Afrique

Well, we are currently in a dusty little town called Sevare in the middle of Mali, and after 5 days here Mali is DEFINITELY living up to its reputation as a hard travel destination.

So far we have sat in a chicken bus to a fishing village called Segou on the Niger River, choking and coughing and covered in fine red dust since the wheel arch of the bus was completely rusted open with holes filling the bus up with dust…

And we also managed to ignore the guidebook and get on a bus NOT recommended by locals, which then broke down leaving us stranded in the scorching sun on the side of the road for 3 hours while the driver completely dismantled the engine.

And THEN since the normally 6 hour journey ended up taking 14 hours, we got dumped a cross roads on the highway late at night where we had to hire a decrepit Peugeot with no brakes, which we then had to push onto a river ferry since it could only be started with a push start! Continue reading →