To be continued...

Pyramids in the background

So here we are, sitting in Cairo airport waiting for our flight back to London.  We’ll have about 2 and a half days in London before heading back to NZ, where we have a little under 2 weeks before we head to Buenos Aires.  

It’s a little surreal to end the trip, after 4 months and over 17,900km through Africa, it is hard to believe that this chapter of our lives has ended.  We said goodbye to a number of friends and our great tour guides Andi and Grant.  Hopefully we will get to catch up with a lot of our friends when we make it back to the UK next year in Feb/Mar.  

Temples in the sun and sailing on the nile

Abu Simbel

Arriving in Egypt feels like arriving in any other developed country in the world.  The roads are busy, the infrastructure is positively modern in comparison to the places we have been, everyone wants to offer you a ride in their 'taxi', and they have McDonalds!!

Sudan - it's getting hot in here!!

Bush camping outside the Meroe Pyramids

From the start what struck us about Sudan was how flat the country was.  Coming from the rolling hills and mountains of Ethiopia it was odd to once again find ourselves in a country where the landscape was almost entirely flat in every direction.  Sudan also felt considerably more affluent, especially in its capital Khartoum, and orderly - the villages at the side of the road, although still constructed from mud, were separated by fences and the village layout felt much more organised than many of the other countries we have visited so far.

Ethiopia - 100% Unique

Lalibela priest

Ethiopia has been nothing like what we thought.  All of our preconceptions about Ethiopia and the images we are shown through the media have only served to confuse what the country is actually like.  In addition to Ethiopia been completely unlike our media-influenced expectations, the country is quite unlike anywhere we have ever travelled and anywhere else in Africa!  

The Long Dusty Road to Addis Ababa

Road Dust

Almost three weeks ago we left Lake Navaisha in Kenya for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  The total trip was a journey of a little of 1,500km, to be completed over about 7 days.  The trip involved some of the most barren, dusty and martian like landscapes either of us had ever seen.  Both spectacular and incredibly trying it is a journey we will never forget. 

Flamingoes and Rafting the Nile

After a day at the cricket in Kampala, where home team Uganda began the day by thrashing a much less impressive Ghana (less impressive than the day before that was), and ended the day with a loss to the #1 ranked team from Namibia, those of us who let the truck travel ahead of us (7 of us) caught up to the truck through a 2 hour minivan ride to nearby Jinja.  

Jinja is located right next to the Nile, and is very much an adventure-seekers paradise, with activities such as white water rafting, kayaking and now even jet boat riding available to the ever-increasing number of tourists (whilst we were in Jinja the campgrounds we observed were packed with a combination of other overland trucks and general tourists to the area).  

Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Mountain Gorillas

We’ve spent the last 10 days or so in Central East Africa, crossing over the equator 3 times and traversing through Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.  As I write this we are currently in Kampala, capital city of Uganda, and will tomorrow head to Jinja before heading back once again to Kenya.  

We had three nights in Nairobi.  We had been warned about Nairobi, so found the city to be better than we were expecting, although we did spend the majority of our time in an outer suburb which is regarded as slightly more affluent.  A recently built Galleria Shopping Mall possibly signifies a movement towards enhanced economic prosperity (the mall was very nice, but still only about 2/3rds occupied)?