Egypt

Next stop Egypt. First stop Cairo, a week or so before we arrived the government decided to 'interupt' a protest and subsequently killed 20 or 30 people...so we were a little weary coming here. All was good though. The Pyramids and Egyptian Museum were awesome, we rode our way around the Pyramids and Sphinx on camels, we barely saw a single person while we were there...The Museum is just enormous, 300,000 + exhibits including the artefacts of Tutankhamun's tomb and a dozen or so mummies. We were exhuasted by the time we finished, went out for dinner and Steph got some food poisoning that lasted on and off for a couple of weeks...ewww. We sleeper trained down to Aswan for a Nile Cruise and tour of the East and West banks of Luxor...but before the cruise we headed down by overnight Police convoy to Abu Simbel, and happened to stumble across a celebration that happens twice a year, and features some statues at the back of the inside of the temple being lit by Sun at sunrise....talk about some exact architecture.
The tours of the temples and tombs of Luxor was great....Ancient Egypt is to be seen to be believed - Abu Simble was the highlight for us.
We then flew to Sharm El Sheikh to head to Dahab for some backpacker style diving for a couple of days before heading to Sharm for some more Red Sea action including the world's most famous diving shipwreck - The Thistlegorm.

Our guide took a serious of  photos....

most of them cheesy...

especially this one....

Abu Simbel

One of the temples of the east bank

The Ramasseum

The propellor of the Thistlegorm

Gun on the Thistlegorm

Old school jeep IN the Thistlegorm

Pretty....

Morocco

We spent two weeks travelling to Casablanca, Marrakesh, Essaouira, and Fes. We caught up with a couple of mates, spent endless hours wandering through the chaotic streets of medinas across the country and ate some good (and very rich) food. An honorable mention for the mint tea they drink constantly throughout the day - that they have named "Moroccan Whiskey" - like they think we all drink whiskey all day everyday....It is very nice but very sweet - 3 or 4 teaspoons of sugar for every glass... The markets were crazy, cheap food, heaps of crap to buy, snake charmers, monkeys doing tricks, and no alcohol in sight. We got out into the mountains for a strange day trip to visit some waterfalls, with the guide stopping at all his friends shops all day to try and make some sales and commission - everywhere we went with a guide the shop would be charged a 'finders fee'. We had a guided tour of the medina in Fes, a warren of 9000 streets - we would of been stuffed without the guide. More weird and wonderful stalls there, including witnessing a live chicken order and subsequent beheading...ewwww. Essaouira was the favourite, a chilled out beach town, with the strangest ocean mist that slowly crept over the city every afternoon.The PT across the country was really good, catching trains backwards and forwards across the country was cheap and very easy. A lovely country, just a shame about the hassel and rudeness of alot of the people - minus one of the hundreds of Mohammeds we met - a taxi driver. He spent a couple of hours with us while we tried to send some junk home, including three stops, some translating, and a supermarket junket -  yet he tried to only charge what was on the meter.

Morrocan Tajine - Lamb and Prunes, my fav

Snake Charmer in the madness of Marakesh

Steph wandering through one of the millions of stalls of the Medina

The food stalls that magically appeared around 5pm each night in the centre of Marrakesh

Steph & Ro at one of the food stalls

Chameleons were kept in cages around the place....he was a little grey and unhealthy looking

The crazy sea mist and sea birds of Essaouira

The delicacies of Steph's cooking class in Fes

Sarah & Steph with our street food feast as well as some wine we smuggled into the medina in Essaouira.

Cape Town to Kenya - Africa Overland

45 days...11,000 km's overland from Cape Town to Nairobbery -  South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya. The Serengeti.  Ngorongoro Crater. Okavango Delta. Etosha, Chobe, Lake Nakruru and Nairobi National Parks. Lake Malawi. Zanzibar. Cape Cross Seal Colony. Dune 45. The Namib and Kalahari Desert.  Victoria Falls. Sandboarding, Quad biking, serious White Water rafting, a helicoptor safari, and game drives, game drives and more game drives.......thousands of zebra, wilderbeest, gazelles, springbok ( and masses of other antelope type things, everything from Oryx to Dik dik's). Heaps of Lions, Elephants, warthogs, Giraffe, Buffalo, Hippos and Hyenas. A handful of Rhino and Cheetah and a very lucky leopard sighting. AWEESOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! GO to Africa ASAP.

Stork. This guy got really close while we had some lunch, looking for some scraps

Hyenea. These guys are bigger than you think and scary looking....Steph had a close encounter at a toilet block with three rummaging through a bin

Masai warrior

Buffalo - Poachers claim the most dangerous animal in Africa

Namib Desert

Impala at Etosha National Park

Someone's lunch

Watering hole at Sunset at our campsite in Etosha NP. We were lucky enough to come across a herd of 50 + elephants one afternoon

Easiest way to carry a heavy load

This lioness walked next to our truck trying to cross the road

Pumba (warthog in Swahili)

Baby elephants at an orphanage in Nairobi. These guys had been rescued from across the continent

Baby Cheetahs running across the road in front of us

Massive hippo grazing

Baby Rhino

Warthogs scared by our Helicopter....

Steph on the edge of Victoria falls, Zim side

I think Steph was a little surprised we flipped....

Sunset on the Okavango Delta

Buenos Aires

So, we arrive in BA after another 20 or so hours on the bus. No more buses, hooray! We stay in the city centre which we are fairly familiar with after a couple of stops here already (Steph bought her boots finally on the last stopover - so no more shoe shops EXCELLENT!)

We have a few things to organise before flying out to Africa - the most important is finding some $US to pay for our Africa trip....who would of thought it would be as difficult as it was....we needed a resonable amount of $US (which the company requested in post 2005 bills - this takes a while to explain in broken Spanglish)...Argentina is quite hard on for financial services, the banks don't give $US to forigners. The ATM's only give out 1000 pesos ($250) at a time, and only 2000 pesos a day($500), except for Citibank - which my card wont work in, but Steph's will - but her account was empty so we had to wait a couple of days before we could get the pesos....thank god for "Casa de Cambio" or foreign exchange houses...so we eventually got what we needed but it took us 2 days to do it!!!!!!!!! It was frustrating......

street tango

We had great weather for the day we did a graffiti tour of one of the barrios (neighbourhoods) of BA. It was awesome, the skill of some of the artists are really incredible. Argentina has some more relaxed graffiti rules, you only need to obtain permission from the owner of the property to paint.

This is the wall of one of the trendy restuarants in the area.

not sure if these guys were really police or not.....

I went to a Boca Juniors footbal match one night, which was really good. The atmosphere at the stadium was incredible - they really are passionate for their soccer.

We also went down to the San Telmo market on the Sunday, this place was also really cool. Not so much the market, but for the really talented street performers. An awesome Tango band ( piano, 3 piano accordians, double bass, violins) playing traditional Tango music. A couple of old dudes playing some crazy classical guitar, a swing jazz quartet, and a dude doing a small puppet show....We missed the Tango, but that was around as well.

Puppet show

$5 steak...mmmmm

Our last full day we headed to Reccoleta Cemetary which has some crazy tombs/mausoleums of famous and important people thoughout Argentinian history (including Evita). Another strange but eerie place (and cats galore).

Our last night we were going to go to a Jazz club, but I decided it would be mean not to take Steph to a Tango show...so we went to a mid priced show - intimate and no too 'showy', more traditional than a lot of the tourist orintated shows. It was really good, Steph really enjoyed it, and sje ended up with the best seat in the house right in front of the stage.

Well after a crazy six months out Latin American journey has ended. We have had an amesome time, met some great people, seen some spectacular things, and have some incredible memories. Next stop Africa, which we are really, really, really, really excited about......

We wont have much internet so we might be a little slow on the blog updates (well even slower than at the moment)