Getting Busy

Suddenly lots of things are happening. I've got a job interview lined up at a firm in Lower Hutt, near Wellington on January 28. I'm quietly confident about my chances. Christina and I will drive down to Wellington for the interview. We're leaving this Monday, which will give us plenty of time to see some sights during our drive south. We plan to first head to Hawkes Bay on the East Coast and follow the coastline down from there.

We also re-read the immigration requirements and feel that Christina has an excellent chance to get a Work Permit for New Zealand on the basis of my citizenship. We'd been advised against doing this by the NZ Consulate in Geneva, but we're confident and will give it a shot. We are in the process of filling out the application form. Once we submit it, together with a medical report and police certificate, we should know the answer within 30 days.

Jewel of the Hauraki Gulf

Christina and I were up in Auckland for the birthday of a friend, so we took the chance to visit Waiheke Island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. We got to the island by ferry. The weather was hot and sunny so we did a nice coastal walk, took a couple of swims and headed back to Auckland in the evening. What a top place!



View across Fossil Bay on Waiheke Island



A late-afternoon view of Auckland on the way back from Waiheke Island

Job Hunting

Reality is slowly starting to kick in: It’s now 2008 and Christina and I need jobs. Unfortunately, now is not the best time to get one: the job market is always quiet over the Christmas/New Year period so there is not much we can do except wait. My goal is a job by the end of January, and Christina's goal is to get a work permit, then a job.

It's a hard life

Whangamata Wedding

I’ve spent more New Year’s Eves at the Mahoney’s place in Whangamata on the Coromandel Peninsular than I can remember. With its beautiful hilltop setting overlooking the harbour and the town, it is the perfect place to be to celebrate the start of the New Year. But this time it was extra-special: Thomas Mahoney, an old friend from high school days and his fiancée Nikki chose this New Year’s Eve to get married.

The wedding took place in the garden of Tom’s parents’ house up on the hill. The weather was perfect and ceremony was relaxed and intimate. In his own inimitable style, Eric, the Best Man, mixed up the rings for bride and groom - but made up for it with a great speech afterwards. A barbeque, party and fireworks at midnight rounded out a brilliant evening. Congratulations to Tom and Nikki.



High school reunion - Tim, Tom, Eric and Paul

Christmas 2007

Christmas was a low-key affair at my mother’s house by the Waikato River in Hamilton. I almost didn’t make this one, so to say I was happy to be a part of the celebrations would be an understatement. My grandmother and grandfather were there, together with my mum and Christina. We ate a delicious salmon and various salads for lunch, and spent the afternoon relaxing.



Christmas lunch with my family and Christina

Tapotupotu Bay

When we arrived at Tapotupotu Bay, Christina and I chose a shady spot a bit away from the other people on the beach and headed down to the water for a swim. At first it was fun to play in the waves. The water was rough but only knee-high when still and we felt in no danger. Suddenly, before we knew it, we were caught in quite a strong rip and the water was over our heads. As soon as I realised that we were in danger, we started swimming back to the beach. Christina made it to a sandbar where she could stand, but try as I might, I could not get more than a toe to the sandbar. I got sucked out again and again. In desperation, I yelled to Christina to go for help. I felt unable to make it back to shore on my own so decided to float on my back and wait to be rescued. It seemed to take an eternity, but was probably about 30 minutes. I remember looking up several times and wondering what on earth is taking them so long? The problem was the waves were too large for a swimmer to come out and get me. Two rescue attempts tried and failed. In the meantime, I had drifted even further from the shore. I didn’t know it, but the only chance I had was for someone with a boat to come to my aid. Fortunately, that is exactly what happened.

By sheer chance, a man with a boat arrived at the beach and was able to bring his boat out through the waves and pluck me from the water. I was getting very weak by that stage. I’d swallowed a lot of seawater and hypothermia had set in. I was delirious and my head was going under but I remember hearing the boat arrive, some shouts and attempting to scramble in myself. That effort must have drained my last reserves of energy, as after that I have no recollection of what happened next until I woke up shivering uncontrollably in a car being driven south to Houhora. Christina was with me and she had to keep me from falling asleep again. At that point I realised everything would probably be OK.

I was in worse condition than I thought, however, and the paramedics who examined me in Houhora had no hesitation in calling the air ambulance. I was short of breath and very little of the air I was inhaling was making its way into my blood. A short time later I was in a helicopter and on the way to Whangarei Hospital. Christina arrived later in the evening after collecting the car and driving down. She did a great job of cheering me up and supporting me. It took a while for me to recover, thanks to the seawater I’d swallowed, but after two nights in hospital I was back to normal and free to go.

Only later, after talking to and thanking the man who rescued me in his boat, did it sink in just how close I had come to drowning. Many New Zealand beaches are known for being treacherous and over 100 people drown in New Zealand each year. I am extremely lucky to be alive.



Tapotupotu Bay

Northbound to Northland

After a couple of days lazing around at my mother’s place in the countryside just out of Hamilton, Christina and I decided to use the remaining week before Christmas to explore some more of New Zealand. We chose to visit Northland, the prosaically-named long finger of land that stretches north of Auckland. I hadn’t been up there since I was a kid, and never further north than the Bay of Islands. We decided to go all the way to Cape Reinga, the almost-northernmost point of New Zealand and, according to Maori folklore, the jumping-off point for spirits on their way to the Underworld. It’s also the best place to see watch two great bodies of water merge: the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean.



Heading for Cape Reinga!

Not many people live in the Far North, the region of Northland north of Kaitaia. It’s a starkly beautiful place of endless rolling green hills and long, deserted beaches. We wanted to walk from Spirits Bay on the eastern coast via Cape Reinga to Ninety Mile Beach on the western coast. We were having a brilliant time until 2 pm on the second day, when we decided to go for a swim at Tapotupotu Bay.



Climbing up from Spirits Bay, on the way to Cape Reinga. We started at the far end of the beach

Welcome Home

Flying into Auckland Airport is usually a pleasure. When coming from faraway lands, the contrast of New Zealand’s emerald green - almost fluorescent green - landscape with the monotonous blue of the Tasman Sea is striking. Upon landing the welcome by immigration and customs officials is invariably friendly and with a personal touch. And this time I was extra-excited, not only because Christina and mum were waiting at the airport for me, but also because this place would be home for the foreseeable future.

So it was galling when I ran into trouble with New Zealand’s extremely strict biosecurity controls. I thought I’d declared everything that might pose a biosecurity risk, but somehow I’d forgotten about a small container of honey in my carry-on bag, absent-mindedly picked up from an airport lounge during my Dubai stopover. I was promptly marched off to an office and told to pay an on-the-spot $200 fine. Just when I thought my grand homecoming would be ruined by getting busted for bringing undeclared honey into the country, the customs officer suddenly had a change of heart and let me go. I think my story of how I was returning to the country to live after a long absence did the trick. Or else my good looks. Anyway, moral of the story: If you ever fly to New Zealand, fill out your customs declaration form CAREFULLY.

Feeling exhausted but pretty relieved to have gotten off the hook, I walked out into the arrivals hall and into the waiting arms of Christina and mum. A few minutes later we were in the car heading south to Hamilton and home. It was a good feeling.

The End of the Road

After a week of idleness on Zanzibar, it was finally time to travel north to Nairobi for my flight home. In doing so, I closed my loop around Lake Victoria and also caught a glimpse of Kilimanjaro on the way. Upon seeing the mountain for the first time, I realised why so many people want to climb her. Impressive as Mt Kenya is, Kili is in a different league. She is truly massive and beautifully formed, with a broad, flat snowy summit wearing a halo of clouds. A challenge for next time. Perhaps.



Kilimanjaro in the evening...



...and early in the morning



My route from Cairo to Nairobi

Life is Bole Bole

Within a few hours of arrival, I had established that Dar es Salaam is one of the dullest cities on the planet. At the first possible opportunity, I boarded a ferry for the island of Zanzibar just off Tanzania’s coast in the Indian Ocean. I’m not the person who can spend an entire holiday at the beach, but after 11 weeks of non-stop travel and plenty of nights in rather insalubrious accommodation, I'm ready to relax. Zanzibar is the clichéd tropical paradise, with perfect white sandy beaches shaded by coconut palms, turquoise blue water and dhows pulled up on the beach. Bole bole (slowly slowly in Swahili) is the way of life here. Not much to do but sit back, look lazily out to sea and reflect on my East African experiences….

In short, I enjoyed this trip more and more as I headed south. The Islamic countries, Egypt and northern Sudan, were interesting but not actually much FUN. It was fascinating to follow the Nile south through the desert and explore ruins and remote villages along the way, but it was also hard work. I must be getting older. Sudan was special for the friendliness and helpfulness of its people. In Ethiopia I had the most intense ‘cultural’ experience. The curious locals never hesitated to engage me in conversation. Sometimes a good friendship developed, on other occasions the guy turned out to be an idiot, or else just wanted some money. Quiet moments by myself were a rarity. It was also a tough battle to pay the same price as the locals, or at least a fair price. Looking back, these frequent and often intense interactions with the locals are what stick in my mind the most and make Ethiopia one of the most memorable countries on my route. It is certainly a very special place.

I had a particularly good time in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania). Mt Kenya, the Masai Mara, rafting at Jinja, the Murchison Falls, the gorillas and Zanzibar were all highlights. The climate was pleasant, a cold beer was always close at hand and I met many good people. I never ventured far from the well-trodden tourist trail on this trip but generally felt safe everywhere I went. I am now very curious about the countries in southern Africa (in particular Mozambique, Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa) and would love to explore this region by bicycle some day. All in all, it has been a successful (if slightly unspectacular) trip.



The sweet view from my bungalow

Street Fish

My last two weeks in East Africa were spent in Tanzania. First, I took the ferry MV Serengeti across Lake Victoria from Bukoba to Mwanza, and there I connected with the Central Line train to Dar es Salaam on the coast. The 40 hour journey across the Tanzanian savannah was most memorable for what I ate. Just prior to the train’s departure from Mwanza, I bought a grilled Tilapia fish from a street stall to take with me as a snack. I should have been more cautious after my earlier experience with ‘street fish’ in Uganda, but I was hungry, so I just tucked in. Sure enough, after a couple of mouthfuls, I took a closer look at what I was eating and there they were: dozens of maggots crawling inside the fish. Not again! I spat a mouthful of fish into the small sink in the corner of my compartment and decided that this time I would get some justice, since the train was still in the station. I dashed back to the street stall and demanded my money back from the lady. She muttered something (probably unkind) about Mzungus then took the fish from me, turned it over and shamelessly put it back on display! Reluctantly, she eventually handed back my money. Vowing never to eat street fish again in Africa, I ran back to the train and got on just as it was about to depart. I soon realised it had been a big mistake to spit the mouthful of rotten fish into the sink in my compartment. All attempts to clean the sink and remove the smell failed and I was stuck with the smell of rotten fish for the rest of the journey.



Boarding the ferry at Bukoba on Lake Victoria



On the Central Line train across Tanzania



A massive mango tree



Shopping made easy

Sardine Cans and Rolexes

Travel a little while by backpack through East Africa, and you’ll soon encounter a couple of specialties of the region. The sardine tins, otherwise known as matatus or daladalas, are Toyota Hiace vans. ‘Licensed to carry 14 passengers’ is always written on the driver’s door, but don’t pay too much attention to that. Twenty or more (not including children) is the usual number and when things get really full, someone will sit on the roof as well. Combined with poor maintenance, excessive speed, bad roads and reckless driving, they are deathtraps on wheels – but unavoidable if you want to get to out of the way places. After a near miss (and I had a few), the event is soon forgotten and everyone soon chatting and laughing again. Such is the mentality of the people here.

The conversations while squeezed into a matatu with 20 other passengers are often quite revealing. Some questions come up time and again:
· Does the West have a cure for HIV/AIDS? or,
· Why does the West not give Africa the cure for HIV/AIDS?
· Your government sponsors you to go travelling, don’t they?
· Are black people still slaves in your country?
· Do Rambo and Arnie really kill all the bad guys in the movies (kids kept asking me this)?
I always try to correct these misconceptions, but I doubt anyone actually believes me!



Nice angle-parking

The ubiquitous rolex is my street snack of choice in East Africa. First, the rolex guy fries up a doughy pancake (a chapati) on his little street-side hot plate. He then fries up a 2 or 3 egg omelette, lays it on top of the chapati, rolls the two up together and serves it to you on a scrap of newspaper. Fantastic: a fat-soaked, energy-rich, calorie bomb for less than US$1. For some variation, I replace the omelette with a banana, which incidentally are fantastically cheap here. On a normal day, I devour 3 or 4 rolexes and a dozen bananas. Who needs a balanced diet anyway?!



A rolex assembly line



The wrapping paper's main function is to soak up the excess grease

Gorillas in the Mist

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda is one of three places in the world where you can still see some of the 500 or so remaining mountain gorillas remaining in the wild. DR Congo and Rwanda are your other two options, although DR Congo is more or less off-limits at the moment.

The normal procedure is to organise a gorilla permit weeks or months in advance from the Ugandan Wildlife Service headquarters in the capital, Kampala. Dan and I never bothered with this. Instead, we just showed up at the gate of the national park and hoped that a permit would be available. As soon as word got around among the guides and campsite employees that we didn’t have a permit, we were approached about the possibility of seeing the gorillas ‘privately’. In other words, a corrupt Ugandan Wildlife Service guide would show us the gorillas privately and pocket the money himself. Considering the normal fee is US$500 per person, and nearly all of that goes to the government in Kampala and only a fraction to the local community, Dan and I did not immediately rule out this possibility. After some brief negotiations, though, we quickly realised that we were being played for fools. The web of corruption ran deep, and the only real winners would be the fatcats at the top. Fortunately there were legitimate permits available, so we each took one and did the whole thing above board. I’m glad we did because seeing the gorillas in the wild, just meters from us, was a wonderful and unforgettable experience.

The Jewel of Africa

Churchill called Uganda the Jewel of Africa, and I don’t think he was far off the mark. Although right on the equator, Uganda still manages to have a temperate climate, thanks to its high average altitude of around 1000m above sea level. Rivers and lakes are numerous, and the result is a lush, green and fertile countryside.

Bucolic Ugandan countryside looking West to the Rwenzoris

Shortly after arriving in Uganda, I ran into Dan again. We met in Jinja, the place where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria and begins its long journey north to the Mediterranean. Jinja’s one of the best spots in the world to go white water rafting, so if you want to experience the rather exhilarating feeling of being flushed down a giant toilet, this is the place to go. Highly recommended.



Bujagali Falls -nothing compared to what came next

After Jinja, we headed north to Murchison Falls National Park. Things got off to a bad start here: I ate half of a grilled fish in darkness before realising too late that it was infested with maggots, and then I slipped over on some gravel and badly cut my chin. We also had no luck hitchhiking. We waited a whole afternoon but no ride materialised and we ended up spending a night camped outside the park gates.



Mmmm, nice cut

Fortunately, our luck changed for the better the next day. We bagged a ride into the park on the back of a truck, arriving just in time for the ferry to take us up to the base of the Murchison Falls. At this point, the Victoria Nile is forced through a 6 metre wide crack in a cliff, creating undoubtedly the most powerful, thunderous surge of water I’ve ever seen. We got off the boat and walked up beside the falls for a closer (and wetter) look. Apparently this used to be Idi Amin’s favourite spot for disposing of his political enemies. What a nice guy he must have been!



Cruising up the Victoria Nile



The falls from the bottom



The falls from the top

Nairobi Pitstop

My camera broke down while on safari in the Masai Mara, so I headed to Nairobi to buy a new one. In doing so, I unintentionally completed my Road to Nairobi a few weeks ahead of schedule. Nairobi is a pretty edgy place with no real ‘sights’, so I stayed only as long as necessary to get a new camera and organise my finances, then boarded a bus bound for Uganda. The plan: Travel in an anti-clockwise direction around Lake Victoria through Uganda and Tanzania, then return to Nairobi for my flight to Auckland, New Zealand on December 12.

Safari in the Masai Mara

I got my chance to do a safari while in Nakuru, Kenya’s fourth-largest city. After a bit of hard bargaining, a tour operator offered me a good price to join a tour to the Masai Mara game reserve. I saw a nice selection of animals, but missed out on rhinos, cheetahs and leopards. The wildebeest had already migrated south to the Serengeti and although there were quite a few stragglers left behind, I don’t think I saw the Masai Mara at its best. Even though it was low season, there were quite a few tourists cruising around the reserve in Hiaces and Jeeps. The pressure was on the guides to show their customers the ‘big five’, so if anything ‘special’ like a lion or elephant was spotted, there was always a mad rush. If anyone found a lion, for example, half a dozen vehicles would suddenly converge on him, ruining his peace and preventing him from hunting. On another occasion, I observed from a distance as a harassed elephant suddenly turned and charged the convoy of three vans that was following him. Seeing such things made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Surely not all safaris are like this?

Via the Vertical Bog to a Beautiful View

Mt Kenya is a 5199m giant, the highest mountain in Kenya. The mountain is crowned by several rocky summits, many of which can only be reached by technical climbers. However, Point Lenana at 4985m is a relatively easy climb and by far the most popular summit on the mountain. I decided to give it a crack.

After some initial problems finding a reliable local guide, I finally found a good one at the Mt Kenya Guides and Porters Safari Club. His name was John Mike, a nuggety guy at least 50 years old and one of the original founders of the club. Despite his age and gear that was almost as old as he was, he set a pretty smart pace. We spent the first night at 3000m. The highlight (actually a lowlight) of the second day was the so-called ‘vertical bog’, a miserable climb through endless mud and slime from which no pair of boots emerges unscathed. We finally reached Mackinder’s Camp at 4200m and there I pitched my tent. We were both in bed by 8 pm as we wanted to be on Pt Lenana for sunrise the following morning.



Me and the Boss

We set off still half-asleep and in darkness at 3.30 am, plodding with torches and small backpacks up a seemingly endless scree slope. I was wearing every item of clothing in my backpack, a total of 8 different layers, and was still frozen. Fortunately I didn’t feel the altitude too much. John Mike was suffering a bit though, and 150m below the summit, he had to stop. The horizon was already a spectrum of colour, with a few stars still visible up above – day was breaking. I was not about to stop this close to the summit, so I pushed on by myself, running on adrenaline. With every minute, it got lighter and the spectacular view revealed itself. With a final scramble over the rock and ice, I hauled myself up to the summit and immediately collapsed huffing and puffing. The sun crept over the horizon and started casting long shadows over the plains far below. I’d made it!



Just before sunrise



That's where I was

Moyale with Cheese

Actually there’s probably no cheese within 1000km of Moyale…I was just thinking of Jules’s line from Pulp Fiction :-)

Moyale, a grotty border town on the Ethiopia-Kenya border, is the start of a long, hard, tyre-destroying road south to Isiolo in the more populous Central Highlands. An occasional bus runs these days, but the only regular transport is by truck. I stocked up on bananas, biscuits and samosas, handed over 600 KSh (about US$9) and found myself a place up behind the cab. Most of the other travellers lay on the truck’s cargo (sacks of beans), which were under a tarpaulin to protect them from the rain. I fashioned a seat by criss-crossing some bits of rope between the steel bars that supported the tarpaulin and this became my spot for the rest of the journey.

Don't fall off!

One of the Ethiopians on the truck with me was particularly friendly and we became travelling buddies. His name was Antenah (easy for me to remember) and he was on his way south to Uganda to look for work. It was his second attempt. Three years ago, he’d tried to make it to South Africa but had been picked up in Zambia and thrown into prison for 6 months because his papers were not in order. Now he was having another crack. I admired his spirit!

A breakdown somewhere on this 600km journey is virtual certainty – the question is what will break and how often? For us, this time, it was the tyres. One hour after leaving Moyale, we got our first puncture. The tyre was swapped, but a few hours later there was a bang like a gunshot and we had a tyre blowout. That meant a longer delay as the first puncture had to be repaired and the wheels swapped again. We ended up spending a night in the town of Marsabit and set off again at dawn the next morning. As we descended Mt Marsabit in the grey light of early morning, I spotted several elephants grazing in the bushes by the side of the road. Sitting up behind the cab gave me a great view out across the acacia-covered savannah stretching unbroken all the way to horizon. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were all nice in their own way, but here for the first time I felt I was seeing the ‘real Africa’. Whatever that is! Anyway, we soon struck more problems as one of the wheel hubs cracked. There were further delays as the tyre was removed from the hub and the hub replaced with last remaining part of the spare. By this stage we had absolutely no spare kit left so we rode our luck for the next 7 hours to Isiolo. Fortunately, we made it without incident.

The real Africa?

We limped into Isiolo just before dusk on the second day, 40 long hours after setting off from Moyale. Asphalt roads, ATMs, bars and restaurants signalled a return to some sort of civilisation. This was my jumping-off point for Mt Kenya, so I left the truck and set about finding a bed for the night. It turned out to be pretty easy. In the half-darkness, I spotted a white face coming the other way and waved the guy over. In a nice bit of serendipity, he turned out to be a kiwi called Dan. He’d even studied for the same degree as me at the same university back in New Zealand. Dan offered me the spare bed in his room, and we spent the rest of the evening downing Tusker beers and discussing the options for climbing Mt Kenya – something he’d just done a few days ago. Perfect.

Roadtonairobi is Back (again...)

After a long delay, I'm in a position to post again. I know I suck sometimes. Loyal readers: Respect!