Kwaheri.

All good things (and rambling blogs) must come to an end.

Still.

We travelled approx 18-20 000 km of African roads. We travelled by boda boda, dala dala, matatu, rikki, public bus and private tour bus. We went by landrover, by ferry, by plane. We survived a dhow, a speedboat, a rubber raft and a bicycle taxi too.

We saw a host of animals, the big 5, 5 types of monkey, 4 or so national parks, Victoria Falls and 9 African countries.

We meet many people from many walks of life and had a conversations with them in rough english, gilted swahili and battling french.

Thanks to everyone who has read this blog over the last few months and a special thanks to those who offer encouragement to keep writing. My/our first Jeffari is now over and so I guess the blog updating is too. I just hope the next jeffari isn't too far away.

It was awesome.

Dubai, Aussie and Home

Hello.

Well before we hit Dubai we had an unexpected stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This was totally part of the schedule but news to us. Still, we got a wee look at the city and it appears nice through the left hand side portal.

6 hours of comfy seats later and we land in Dubai. We had a fair idea what to expect (i.e heat and construction) but weren't really prepared none the less. We got through customs reasonably quickly only to spend 90 minutes between 1am and 230am queueing frantically in 38 degree heat trying to grab a blasted taxi. Kate had been expecting crushing efficiency and we were solely disappointed.

Anyways, we got to Dave's apartment quite happily around 3:30am. After a bit of a sleep we hailed a cab and headed to Madinat Jemeirah. This movement would be a familiar one for expats (i.e the A/C room, A/C car, A/C mall combo) This mall-etta is an upper class, smallish mall right next to the famous Burj hotel. Anyways, we partied there for a bit before hitting up the Mall of the Emirates. We shopped for ski gear, sports gear, fashion gear, shoes, perfume and cinnabons. It was a western style paradise. Greatest mall I've seen thats fo-sure. Cheap too.

At night we (Kate, Dave and I) headed into the gold souk for a looksee and a cheap dinner. We rounded off the hectic day with a nice impromptu dhow ride on the Dubai river. Good times!

Next day was more of the same but instead we hit the Ibn Battuta mall. He was some Marco Polo type explorer of Dubaian origin and we were again in awe. After much kerfuffle we finally managed to meet Dave who treated us to an Arabian meal of some note. Halloumi, Hummus, Shisha, Shish kebab, vineleaves and the obligatory cinnabon and we were in heaven. Big Special thanks to Dave and his massive hospitality. We both needed and appreciated it immensely.

Sadly after that was the trauma of a 4 hour sleep, a long day of flying, 45 minutes sleep the next night and finally an arriveal in Sydney at 7:50 am. It was great to see Jan and Bill and great to see a nice bed with innersprings too. We slept for ever that night and awoke happy but flu-ridden. It was raining :( Anyways, we also managed to catch up with Alex, Loz, Mike, Jess and Marcel which was excellent.

Saturday involved a quick flight to NZ, a bus ride and finally a taxi to home in Timaru. It is now tuesday and it hasn't stopped raining. I am still flu ridden but happy at home while Kate is now into her second day at Timaru District Hospital. She reports it is very nice. We are off to Tropic Thunder tonight on cheap Tuesday and really, it's like we never left...

Uganda, Rwanda

Hey Everyone.

Turns out I haven't blogged for the entire duration of the olympics. Clearly blogging and olympics watching eat into the tiny amount of spare time that I actually do have. Apologies for that. This post will cover our last few African adventures.

When we last reported in we were about to scurry off for the opening ceremony. We hit up the cafe next door, ordered a coke and sat down waiting for the action. Alas, there was none. Undeterred we harrassed the cafe staff to search all 392 channels of DSTV to find the ceremony. They couldn't and we were subsequenty furious. FURIOUS. We jumped on mototaxis and barrelled home to complain. Anyways, our mototaxi driver tells us it starts at 2pm. We find this odd as it is nearly 230pm according to us. Turns out nobody told us that Rwanda is an hour earlier than Uganda and we'd been living the wrong time for nearly 3 days. That of course explains why nobody else was at the restaurant for dinner the previous night.

Back at our hotel we discover the olympics on the TV in our room (like any decent 1 star hotel). We decided to forgo lunch and dinner and sat through all 4 hours of the opening ceremony. It was spectacular and all rather impressive. If only it were real...

The next day we headed out to the genocide memorial. This was donated to Rwanda after they misbehaved in the early 1990's by an apologetic European nation. It is thus a western style fancy museum. It is utterly fantastic and devastatingly sad. They chronicle the genocide and then compare and contrast it with other 20th century genocides in Cambodia, Yugo, Armenia and Germany. Let's just say that after it all we didn't really feel like speaking for a good hour or so and were generally peeved with the human condition.

To cheer ourselves up, we did as we are inclined to do, we watched olympics and dined out. For 3 straight days that is! We had chinese, indian, chez robert (pronounced shay roberrrrrrr) and watched more olympics than anyone. We even switched hotels to find one with more supersport channels. This cost us unnecessary extra which was recouped through missing meals in the pursuit of other peoples perfection.

Oh, as an aside, don't buy Hugo Boss Deep Blue aftershave from some guy on the street. No matter how well packaged it is, it is still toilet spray. I hope that $5 bucks made him happy. It was excellent toilet spray though. Country Garden flavour to be precise.

Next was the return trip from Kigali to Kampala. We were dreading this one as it was our last on african buses and we knew it was gonna be 9 hours plus. To mitigate our upcoming pain we decided to upgrade and book on the Jaguar Business Class coach. However, these people, they were not serious. Turns out the business class coach is broken and we have to go on the cramped regular coach. This didn't mean we got a refund for our higher priced ticket. It simply meant they could squeeze another 30 people onto the bus who were all paying the business class price. Grr. This bus ride was also amusing insofar that the first 3 hours are on the right hand side of the road and the last 6 hours are on the left. Admittedly the differences between the two sides of the roads are less apparent on that particular pot holed strip of tarmac. 9 gruelling hours later and we crack into Kampala.

To celebrate we eat fast and then run to the mall to catch Batman (we knew to adjust our watches this time). It was excellent despite not finishing til 1am. The next day was spent shopping and drinking coffee at the 1001 cups of coffee, coffee house. Excellent.

Next day - Rafting!!! We woke early and left Kampala for Jinja to hurtle down 35 km of the Nile on a 4.5 metre boat. Cool!! I was dressed in togs while Kate opted for a nice pair of my old boxer shorts. Hilarious. 2 hours later and we're sitting there practicing our stroke. After quickly learning how to unflip the boat we were off. First stop was a waterfall of grade 5 fury. It was awesome. Especially awesome was the bit where we suddenly flipped and got destroyed in the white water. He he. The rest of the day followed much the same pattern. Kate got progressively more terrified. It was great.

Sore and tired we got home late and slept in nice and good. After a couple of hours in the Emirates office sorting out our tickets we headed the 37km to Entebbe to stay the night in relative peace. We didn't count on a power cut and the squishiest bed in roll-together history...

Our last morning in Africa was spent in a wild life sanctuary. We visited injured chimps, eagles, rhino's, lions and shoebill storks. I photographed them all and plan to pass these photos off as genuine wilderness photos..

Our last act on the continent was to hire 2 dudes for 1500 shillings each ($1USD) to take us on the back of their scooters to the airport. We were one step up from the Kerrigans and happy as larry. 90kg of Jeff and 20kg of pack made the 50cc scooter struggle mightily though.

Next stop...Dubai.

Rwanda

Bonjour.

We are now in Rwanda, our ninth and last country in africa. Rwanda is made up of mountains (for Africa) most of which have some how been tamed with terracing and cultivation. The people speak French and Swahili and are generally very friendly. The other obvious thing is that there is a massive international aid presence here which, without knowing more, feels like a guilt trip over the events of the early 1990's.

Where we last left off was Fort Portal. We enjoyed our few days there including a lovely side trip to Lake Nkuruba(see left) where we were the only guests of their camp site. We saw heaps of colobus and vervet monkeys playing/battling each other which was cool. From FP we caught another (hopefully our last) traumatic bus. This time we traversed a million pot holes and ended up in Kabale in the south west. We spent a night there in the lovely House of Eridisa hostel before heading to Lake Bunyoni. This lake is a famous R&R spot in possibly the most beautiful setting we have come across. We planned to hang out there for a few days but ended up coming back after only one (got bored). After another day in Kabale we headed west into Kisoro.

Kisoro is a nice, small town 12 km from Rwanda and about the same from the (purportedly) evil DRC. It is home to a million motor bike taxis and a large, cheap market. We stayed at the rather average Virunga hotel before heading into the hills. We decided, perhaps unwisely to make the 37km trip on motortaxi. Nice plan but after 90 minutes of bump, bump, bump I had sore legs and a massive bruise on my tailbone/backside. That night we stayed in the tiny Nkuringo campsite in the middle of nowhere many meters above sea level. It was very basic but cool in it's own way - picture two single beds in a little hut thingie with a tin roof. At about 4pm it decided to hose down with rain - maybe 6 inches or more and thunder continuously all night. Twas indeed crazy. Unlike the food there which was horrific and, it turns out, full of bugs.

Righto. So we rock up to the Nkuringo wildlife office next morning excited to track real life mountain gorillas in an impenetrable forest. The first hour was great as we left civilisation and followed a nice wee track. Soon after though our guide told us the Gorillas were only 2 hours away. Little did we realise this meant descending through thick foliage down a steep mountain pass. All 6 trekkers ended up on their butts numerous times with injuries abound. One trekker was a 68 year old lady with a replacement knee and it must have been tough for her. Anyways we finally reached the Gorillas and let me say, it was awesome. Kate was trembling with excitement. We had imagined them to be sitting still in a group where we could watch. Instead we spent an hour scrambling up and down tiny wee paths after the Gorillas as they moved around and ate. They were magnificent creatures and so very human like. Great photography too (see right). We only had an hour with them but were exhausted by the effort of tracking the blighters.



So now all we had to do was get back to basecamp. The simple task of retracing our steps was made an absolute ordeal by the rain which suddenly became torrential. So picture us freezing, absolutely saturated (goretex schmoretex) and trudging through thick mud/morrain straight up hill. Then, of course, the dodgy beef struck and, well, enough said...

The cure for the aforementioned exhausting struggle came in the form of some lovely gentlemen on our trek. They climbed the tortuous mountain ahead of us and returned to their fabulous resort called "The Clouds," This resort had been open 5 days and is spectacular/pure luxury. These nice chaps invited us and the gorilla guides over to their "place" for high tea. So we turn up saturated, covered in mud and frozen to be greeted by massive fluffy white towels, a hot fire, comfy sofas and an enormous afternoon tea. The hotel even gave the older lady a t-shirt to get dry in! Needless to say we love that place!! Jam and Cream Pikelets, Meatball thingies, Jam rolls, individual pots of tea and so much more. Glorious.

Next day we headed into Rwanda on motortaxi. We scurried through immigration and headed on a nice wee minibus to Gisenyi or as Lonely Planet calls it "the Costa de la Kivu." This was possibly a tad generous but we did have a nice meal at the Stipp. Interestingly enough the pleasant atmosphere was often disrupted by large planes taking off from nearby Goma airport (in evil DRC). Apparently this is the Congo govt restocking in their war against rebels! Scary.

Yesterday we headed into the capital town of Kigali and today we are sipping Bourbon Coffee - an attempt to make Rwandan Coffee into a luxury item that we were too happy to support. This arvo we hope to catch the olympics opening ceremony and then tomorrow we're off to the Genocide Memorial. Contrasting aspects of humanity I would imagine.

Congratulations to Dave and Mary (little bro and his new fiance). Also Congrats to Ro and Jo who also got engaged recently.

Finally, we changed our flights again. Off home late next week! Hurrah. Visiting Dave in Dubai and people in Sydney before getting to Timaru in a fortnight.

Party on.

Jeff and Kate (who, sadly, isn't feeling 100% today)

PS duelling monkeys....