The other day, I came across a statistic that shocked me: Maturin, in Venezuela, is the 5th most dangerous city on earth with a recorded annual 86.45 homicides per 100,000 residents. Caracas, also in Venezuela, leads the field with 119.87. According to United Nations data, a staggering one third of global homicides occur in Latin America even though the just 8% of the worlds population.
There wer Read on...
Yesterday we had an adventure deep sea fishing on the Indian Ocean! It was a bit more than I expected in a lot of ways (the length of our boat trip, the swells on the ocean, and the disturbing nature of fishing itself).
Lets start at the beginning. We were up early as we were leaving at 7:30. It was raining when we got up, and while we were having our early light breakfast, but it soon stopped, a Read on...
Finally the world seems to be opening up again and I have been able to confirm travel plans to Egypt & Madagascar, however the planned stopover of two weeks in Ethiopia en route to Madagascar has been cancelled as the decided it was still too great a risk to take people there because of the civil unrest and fighting in Tigray.
Ethiopians in that area are really suffering and having a struggle to Read on...
Mon 6th we reluctantly packed up and headed south- we couldnt delay the inevitable any longer. We were aiming for Bladensburg NP, near Winton where we have stayed previously. This was a fairly long and uneventful drive and we arrived there just before dark, which was good as we needed daylight to recall where we camped last time. Luckily for us this had, just a few days before, been reopened sinc Read on...
Thursday. We were awakened at 08:20 with an announcement that our group would be boarding the zodiacs at 9:40. This was the first wed heard of it so we scrambled to get ready and made it to the unloading deck on time. The sky was gray. It was an in zodiac only excursion of the area around the ship with a lecture about the formation of glaciers, climate change and other related topics. Our guide ga Read on...
One Thursday morning we had our final tailoring class that will be with me. On Monday they have a trainer from the area starting with the ladies. She will be with them 3 days a week for 6 months so I expect they will be very good seamstresses by the time the course is done.
I had my first experience with paying off a police officer this morning. We back from Entebbe to the office and we admittedl Read on...
We could have easily slept in longer today but the alarm is sounding and we want to beat the heat. It is certainly much hotter here than in the mountains! We are off to Cadiz for the day. Our host has a route via the train and boat.
We set off at 7.30amits still dark! Again I am cursing booking old town Absolutely zero chance of hailing a taxi here and even less chance of one arriving if I try to Read on...
I had seen this tour before but during the day so it was nice to revisit at and enjoy the glowing images.
We started the tour by the Pest Castle looking down onto the famous Chain Bridge that will be closed shortly for a 3 year renovation. It was lit in green to celebrate St.Patricks Day on 17th.
The Chain Bridge was built between 1839 and 1849. The main driving force behind the project was the Read on...
Hier au je vous lavais dis, lhotel mavait mis dans une annexe, normalement au milieu des roses. Ne connaissant pas les lieux, pour me rendre au restaurant, jai repris la voiture, le thermomtre affichait 6°. Cest pour a que je sentais une petite fracheur, et que la grle a tenue longtemps.
Ce matin un temps bien bouch et de la pluie. Je reprends mais lenvers la route que javais prise hier au soir Read on...
No hurry this morning with only 65kms planned for the day. We got up without alarms and we were off just after 8:30am. We left from Yackandanda and travelled through Osborne Flat and then on to Allans Flat, a slight over shoot of our had us double back a couple of kms.
We are riding in the Kiewa Valley now which is very different from the Goulbourn Valley. We are flanked on both sides by mountai Read on...