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)

Puerto Madryn - Patagonia

We arrived tired, dirty, and stinky after 40 hours of bus with a six hour romp in Buenos Aires in between. Puerto Madryn is in northern patagonia 1000km or so from Buenos Aires. It is your average little port town except from Aug to December where the bay is crowded with Southern Right Whales.

The next day we got up early to get to the dive shop as we couldn't resist the temptation of the possibility of diving with whales and the guaranteed snorkeling with sea lions. We had hoped the weather would clear up for us, as the forecasted howling northern winds were not suited to diving. We get to the shop but no dice on the water activities.....we were a little dissapinted as we had geared up for the freezing water and the crazy opportunity....but we hopefully will go out before we leave.

We decide to head to a nearby beach, playa c..... (cant remember the name) This beach is quite steep and at high tied whales frolic within 10 meters of shore....we get dropped off by the cab with a scottish guy named Colin in tow and spend the next couple of hours flabbergasted by whales up to 15m long hanging out just meters from shore......WOW.

The next day we head down to to another beach to try and find an Elephant Seal colony. We get picked up by a minivan and head a hundred or so kms on dirt and unsealed roads. It had been raining a lot so the guide said we will try and get to the colony, although we might have some trouble on the roads. We get most of the way with no trouble except the odd snakey as the road is slippery and muddy as hell. The driver doesn't seem to experienced in the conditions as he continually is changing gear in large holes of mud when he shouldn;t be....then we get bogged...takes us a good, but fun, half an hour to get the van out...we thought the worse was behind us,,,but. We pass 4wd who stopped to tell us that the road only gets worse so the tour guide decides that we have to turn around and head back only 3km's from the Seals....DAMN IT! We get bogged once again on the way home and eventually get it out and home 6 hours after we left home.

bogged

the problem.....nice road hey!

The next day we head to Peninsula Valdez and on a whale watching boat. The whales are awesome up close, we had one right next to the boat just submerged - it was incredible to be that close to something that big. We had more close encounters before heading out to see a small elephant seal colony and spot some emu like birds, more camelids and a little armadillo - who was too quick for the camera.

baby Elephant Seal....the big daddys weren't around

giant squid

We ended up missing out on the diving/snorkeling before jumping on our last long haul bus back to Buenos Aires.