Everything takes much longer than one would imagine over here. As an example, let me share with you today’s task, which was to organise a 4×4 camping-car for an imminent tour of Namibia. We are currently in Botswana, the car-hire firm is based in Namibia, next door. Our mobile phone does not work in Botswana […]

In the UK, we have many different detergents for many different uses. For us, we choose a soap on purpose and frangrance. For ourselves, a tea-tree cleansing soap for our faces, a sea-mineral spa-gel for bath and shower, a colour and hair-type matched shampoo for our noggins, an anti-bacterial handwash and perhaps even a exfoliating […]

As I have mentioned previously, communications have really sucked in the southern African countries that we’ve visited so far. It’s by far the worst in Zambia though. We’ve been here nearly two weeks and have not been able to make or take a call on our Zambian mobile phone SIM card. The network has been […]

As a child in the UK, we often used to make up excuses to explain to our school teacher why our homework was late, the classic being “Sorry I’m late, my dog ate my homework!”. The other day, our driver was over an hour late and he apologised: “Sorry I’m late, there were elephants on […]

In the UK, our street adverts and billboards are mass-produced. In Africa, they are more commonly hand-painted. The artists are talented for sure, but every now and then we are fortunate enough to to see what the artist didn’t at the time — click the picture to enlarge it.

In the UK, and other western countries, we carry things using our hands (or sometimes, our shoulders in the case of backpacks). In Africa however, people carry all manner of things on their heads. Picture this: We’re getting strange looks for carrying things with our hands! Imagine the raised eyebrows if this lady were to […]

So after enjoying a meal in a busy restaurant, I raised my hand, caught the attention of the waiter and did The International Symbol for The Bill. You know, the one where you sign your name with an imaginary pen onto the palm of your other hand? The waiter brought me a pen.

Compared to The West, one of the many cultural differences that we’ve noticed in Tanzania is the acceptance of ‘customer multitasking’. Whilst we recognise that organised queuing is a uniquely British pastime, in my opinion it is far preferable to the African equivalent in which the server invites everyone who approaches their counter to make […]

We’ve been blogging about the things that we do as we travel. Here in Tanzania, as well as the things that we plan to do everyday, lots of things just seem to happen to us. Amusing little things that seem funny becuase they wouldn’t happen at home. They don’t warrant a full blog in themselvs, […]

After filling our boots at the Billabong factory outlet shop in Jeffreys Bay, we drove to Port Elizabeth airport and hopped-on a short flight back to Cape Town to spend our last night in South Africa. Tomorrow we head north-east into a different country and continent — the United Arab Emirates in the Middle-East, Asia. […]