After the gorgeous beaches and dinners on Zanzibar, I forgot to mention the awesome meal we had in Stone town at the big fish market called Forodahnis. It was like nothing I had seen before, Basically,  there were 20+ stalls that were all selling every kind of fish from shark and crab skewers to lobsters and crayfish. They gave you a plate, pointed out all of the different fish and then you haggled for your dinner.  Stef and I between us eded up getting skewers of lobster, marlin, tuna, baby shark and snapper and two chappati for the equivalent of about 3 pounds each.  It was lovely.

The awesome food continued when we were in Malawi when our legend of a cook Duncan taught some of us to mkae Chappati’s.  Its really not as easy as it looks, its really involved and there is lots of oil involved.  We managed to get the hang of it in the end, which was impressive especially as cooking chapatti for 20 people means that lots of chappati were needed!

The beaches in Malawi are wierd, you really dont feel like you are on a lake as the lake is huge!  It feels far more like being on the med than a lake!  There were apparently loads of fish in the lake, we didnt see any, but I guess they swam away as quickly as possible when they saw us!

We spent most of our time being lazy laying on the beach again, although there were a couple more volleyball matches.  We had planned to swim out to an island about 500m off the coast of the second campsites beach but the day we decided to go it was too rough and so there would have been strong currents, so we lounged and played cards instead, going for the occasional paddle inbetween.

On our first night in Kande, the second campsite we stayed at in Malawi we had a bad taste party.  This began with all of us being allowed 500 malawi quatcha from which we had to buy a bad taste outfit for someone else on the trip.  Some of the outfits were interesting to say the least! An eski (cool box) full of punch was also made and consumed, leading to a really funny evening!

On our way down to Zambia we stopped in Iringa, a not particularly exciting campsite except for the steamy showers and chocolate muffins.  Both were much appreciated as the campsite was at quite a high altitude and so really cold compared to the other campsites we’d stayed at in the few days beforehand.

Before leaving Malawi we had one more treat in store.  As in Malawi there are people everywhere we couldnt make lunch on the side of the road as we normally did.  Therefore another plan had to be devised.  This plan involved going to Nandos in the capital city of Luksaka.  As excited as we all were for getting to go to Nandos it wasnt quite english Nandos.  However, we enjoyed it all the same.

Zambia was a quickly passed through country as we were limited for time on our trip and there wasnt really anything there that was of particular interest.  So drive days were the name of the game.  We stopped off in Livingtone for a while, but its not really that big as a city for tourists.  There were lots of bulidings, but like Nairobi its a practical city adn not necessairly a pretty one full of cullture or pretty buildings.

Victoria falls, the next stop, was the last destination on the trip.

I’m now in Malawi after two long drive days.  And the internet is really expensive, or we think it is at 15 Malwian quatcha or something like that per minute!

After some random times meeting one of the girls I know from uni in Zanzibar we had to leave and return to our beachside camp in Zanzibar.  I managed to get in a long beach walk and we had some amazing t bone steak and rice with veg for dinner cooked by our amazing cook duncan.  He said its going to get even better as well as we’re spending a few days in the same place now.  He’s going to give me and one of the Kaths (there were three, now only two as one left in Zanzibar) how to cook chapati

I’m still having an amazing time, and we’ve had big bus games of nominations (the card game) and dad you’ll be pleased to know you’ve taught well, although I didnt win getting my tent put up, I was out by three after about 3 hours!!!

The next five nights in Malwi should be really relaxing along the lake, with lots of possibilities of sunbathing and volleyball.  We’ve already been playing this evening although our use of rules was probably quite lax!!

I’ll write again when I can

Olie – how did you do exam wise?

Lea – random seeing you, hope the rest of your trip goes well if you see this!

Lucie – glad you loved Sweeden, we’ll have to swap abroad stories when we get back

everyone else – hope your’re all good, I’ll write again when I can but no promises!

Our four days on zanzibar are now over, following a haze of sleeping on the beach, volleyball, swimming and eating lots of seafood.

Stone town, the main town in Zanzibar is really pretty in an old colonial style, and has the most amazing food market which is open in the evenings selling all types of fish on skewers.  Stef and I had really nice lobster, tuna, malin and something else which was awesome!

We then headed up to the north of the island for a few days on the beach.  Stef and I shared a quad room with Benjamin and Elaine, which was so much fun, complied with our excessive Englishness starting the evenings with gin and tonic sundowners on our veranda!

Lazy days on the beach was the name of the game except for yesterday afternoon when we went out for a sunset cruise on a traditional sail boat, and actually got to sail for a lot of the time since the wind was in our favour.  A massive jumping competition off the top of the boat then insued before sunset swimming, which was amazing.  Zanzibar is such a beautiful island,I dont want to leave!

But we’re back to Dar today (possibly for another midnight swim as our campsite is on the beach!) then two long drive days down to Malawi.

So:

Rest of the Moot: was really good fun, the international night was an awesome party that started  with lots of pizza from the British CMT and then a  really good party  which Tom and I spent with other Scouts from within our unit. There was lots of playing of this is africa, the world cup song!

Our day out to Nyeri: was un-eventtful to start off with as Ian from the British CMT were organising our departure, but then the fun started.  It began with our bus trying to overtake up hill, around a blind bend with a sheer drop to one side, much to our amusement.  Cars / busses / lorries / trucks etc all like playing hicken when overtaking on single track roads here!

Nyeri was actually really small, and not so much there, but we saw the museum and the hundred of scarves that had been left by visiting scouts.  We also went to the grave where many photos were taken (I’m assuming by the 76 notifications I received on facebook some of the photos are there, but this internet is too slow and expensive to look!)

Scout safari: we saw  lots  of animals including lions, elepahants, giraffes, lots and lots of wildebeast and  zebra, crocodiles, hippos, gazelle,  impala and wahtever else I’ve forgotten!

We also had a campfire one night as the people running the lodge thought because we were scouts we would like one. It was really nice to  just be able to  sit around a  campfire and chill, as lots of the campfires  on moot were lots of effort! The masi men that were making the fire for us hung around and joined in some of our campfire songs, and since we taught us some of our songs they taught us some masi dancing, which was hilarious as the mens  dance is jumping as high as you  can, and the brit guys were not a patch on the masi!

The lodge  was really nice and on the second day between  our morning and evening game drives we got  to  spend some time in the pool,I got so clean!!

Back in Nairobi: I met up with stef  at  our hostel, which was lovely!  The garden tents were such a nice change  from a proper tent as there was a bed and a duvet and such a nice  atmosphere which was a nice in between from the relaxation of safari and the rest of the trip. We also went back to the giraffe sanctuary so stef  could get kissed by  a giraffe (I’d already been with the scouts on pre-moot)

Second  safari: It was  different to the first one as rather than being in little 8 seater vans where the sun  roof lifted up enough for you to stand, we were in a massive truck.  So although we couldnt get to so many off the track places we got to see things from a   different angle. For me it was nice a s I  didnt take nay photos as I had loads  already  and it was a similar drive to one I had done with the scouts, so I just enjoyed watching all the animals.

Now we’re in Arusha in Tanzania, after a minor epic, preparing for our trip into the serengeti and norongoru crater tomorrow or it was when i started writing this.

The serengeti was very animal heavy, and we got to see more lions eating as well as a leopard that I hadn’t seen previously. Despite being ill on the first day, for no real reason, I still enjoyed my third safari and all the facts our awesome driver Charmy was telling us.

Following the safari we’ve had a massive drive day down to Dar es Salam, which is the most crazy city, especially as its currently the middle of ramadan and we arrived at sunset when everyone was coming out to eat.  Our campsite in dar is right on the beach which was lovely falling asleep to the sound of the waves rather than another tour group having a party like the night before!

We’re now in Zanzibar for the next five days, and we’re going swimming with dolphins tomorrow, snorkelling and having a lot of lazy beach time!  Its gorgeous sunshine and looks really nice, Stef and I are off exploring the town this afternoon before meeting up with others for dinner.

And I think thats it for the moment!

Hope everyone is good back home.  Parents/ Olie/ Jones’s hope holiday was good an d good luck Olie and John for GCSE results

So I realise I havent updated this in a while, but I’ve been kinda busy and without decent enough internet to make this worthwhile.

Sine I last uipdated, we arrived back at Rowallan, had a few days of activities and some big international parties, went on safari and stef came out to join me for the rest of my trip.

I’ve noted loads down, but dont actually have it with me right now, so I’ll have to do that at another time.  Maybe tomorrow morning depending on how organised I am!!  We start our actual tour tomorrow, so internet might be intermittent.

But I’m haivng a great time, and there should be some photos up on facebook.  I’d find links if the internet here wasnt so slow and annoying to look at photos!

Hope everything is good back home

xx

I’ve just been busy and without internet fast enough to bother to write a blog.  I’ve made notes on all of our death defying overtaking stunts and animals that we’ve seen so I’ll be able to update when I have time.  That should hopefully either be tomorrow or saturday depending on what we do.

Because you can’t. More on that later.

Arriving at Rowallan campsite on the outskirts of Nairobi was incident free, if you don’t count many near crashes as incidents!  Travelling on matutus, small minibusses, you are at the mercy of all other road users, where normal rules of the road dont necessarily apply!!  Anyway we arrived and got our tents up and then became aquainted with the monkeys which are about as common and tame as Thriftwoods squirrels!

Dinner was interesting.  This is the first camp that has ever been in Africa, of any size, and although at only 2000 people its not big by british standards, it was enough to make food distribution run 4 hours late.  But it was ok, we got talking to the scouts in the queue next to us and ended up playing a few random games.

It all picked up the next day with the opening cermony, attended by the president of Kenya and his millions of secrity staff.  Thats in addition to the security staff that walk around the campsite with machine guns!

Machakos, our expedition centre from the sounds of it was one of the better sites as we had proper toilets and camp showers that had been built especially for us.  There was also plenty of food and bottled water.  Cooking has been interesting at points because of the differences between Kenyan and Western food and the fat we are cooking for ourselves in a group of 50, but we’ve got there with organisation and there has always been hot food so I cant really complain.

Our first full day was spent doing  a mammoth hike, which i still dont know how long it was or whether we took the route which we were actually meant to take or not!  Despite not ever knowing where we were going and just following our local guide it gave us lots of time to get to know the other scouts in our group.

Our group has two english (Tom and I) two Scots, two Aussies, three Danish, two norwegian, two swiss, two angolans, two luxembourgians, two spanish, two rwandans, two burundians and the rest to make up 50 are from uganda and kenya.

Our second full day started with a trip to a local school where we did some tree planting for them and then played games with the kids, which is where the trying to outrun the kids came from.  We were looking for an easy game to play that the kids could pick up easily with a low understanding of english, so we decided to play duck, duck, goose.  So you go around tapping kids on the head saying duck, and then when you say goose, the kid gets up and starts running around the circle with you chasing them trying to catch them, where if you catch them they start tapping people on the head.

The first kid i chose was probably about 8, and thinking it would be like playing with the beavers i didnt try very hard.  I was wrong and ended up about 10 meters ahead of me after 50 meters of running.  And so it went on with me chosing smaller and smaller kids, and being unable to catch any of them.  Eventually i gave up and megan, one of the aussies took over and did just as rubbish!  Luckily we were saved from too much humiliation when Ceasar, (Other name Julius, no joke) took pity on us and managed to catch a kid on his first go!

Our final day on the camp was spent building a bus stop with very few tools,  no expertiese and pieces that didnt quiote fit together.  So despite taking a whole day for what was supposed to be a half day activiy we got there in the end.

The next day, the first, was spent coming back to Rowallan, settling in and catching up with the other groups.

Yesterday we went to the national museum of Kenya, the best bit of which was the coffee shop.  The worst bit of the day was the bus ride back.  Our driver seemed to have forgotten how to drive so bounced the coach every time we accelerated or braked.  It was also really hot adn dusty which amde it even better.  And he drove like some kind of maniac.  Lucie you would have loved it!!!  And this was a new bus company that was supposed to be better than the ones that took us to Machakos which were sacked because their buses kept braking down.

Today i spent the morning being lazy and trying to wash some of the dst of my single pair of non scout trousers and then queuing for this, which although free is in high demand!!  This afternoon we are going to spend doing GDV things, so could possibly end up as not a lot!

Tonight is a international carnival, tomorrow an onsite activity day, thursday we are going to BP’s grave in Naieryi and then the closing ceremony finished it all on friday.  We then set off on safari on saturday until monday when i come back and meet stef for the next part of the adventure.

Thats enough essay for one day.  Some photos are on the moot website if you are interested,  http://www.scoutmoot2010.org/index.php?option=com_imagebrowser&node=Machakos+Camp&Itemid=185 is one that I’m in.  Its of our group at the school and I’m somewhere at the back wearing my aussie hat.

So, after getting to the airport and the departure gate as i was about to walk in the guy checking us into the departure gate kept having something flag up on my ticket, which he said was “unfortunately” that I had been moved to a bulkhead seat, so one with more leg room.  However as soon as i got on the plane I found out this wasnt as good as it sounded as it was the seat with the cot, and i was next to an albeit really nice woman, but one with a 7 week old baby and a really really fussy mother!! So after take off I swapped with the babys grandmother and got a normal seat again.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful, I didnt sleep much and not much else happened.  Food was ok.  Arriving in Nairobi there was the longest queue for immigration with a million forms to fill out, especially as our visa fee was waivered for the moot.  We eventually all got through and got all of our stuff, which also took ages.  But then piled onto minibusses, known here as matutus with about 22 seats, including seats which flip out into the isles on each one.

The journey from the airport took about 30 mins, which following room allocation was swiftly followed by a much needed breakfast!! I’m sharing my room with tom, who is my moot partner, but its a nice room so nothing to complain about.  The shower works and is hot, and the beds arent too bad, so we’re happy.

The afternoon was spent out and about i the city seeing bits and pieces, but we were all so tired it was a bit of a blur!  We went to an italian for dinner last night, which was very nice, if a bit unauthetic.  But probably a good thing following the curried bananas that were served among normal breakfast things at breakfast!

Today we’ve been to an elephant orphanage, a giraffe centre (where we got to feed the giraffes), a bead factory and shop, and the Karen Blixen museum (who wrote out of Africa)  The elephants and the giraffes were all immensely cute and I have lots of photos, that I may attempt to put up if i get better internet and pc than this!

We’re off to a restaurant called carnivore this evening where we possibly get to eat most of the animals found in the bush.which should be nice   Tomorrow we are off to Rowallan campsite, where the moot is actually being held.  That should be exciting to get out of our hotel and actually onto the moot proper.

Hope you all enjoyed your mondays, and Lucie sorry this isnt an email, but the last blog post for this is mainly for your amusement!

xx

After a year in Austria we have found out many things, namely:

Kunst is a really rich guy with lots of houses (Kunst is German for Art, whatever Aleks may think)

We will never find the einbahn.  Its magical, much like the end of the rainbow, or a one way system…

Spitting has been, and always will be classy.

And guys, *holds face in hands* I’m really drunk.

p.s. I’m still on really good terms with your mum.

I’m off to Africa today for nearly 7 weeks, so the blog may become even more erratic than it has been up until now.  hopefully I’ll get to update it at some point on my travels, but I’m on Moot until the 11th, then on safari until te 14th then a three week tour from nairobi via Zanzibar to Victoria falls.  Two days in Vic Falls, two days in Johannesburg and then I’m home again on the 9thseptember.

June so far has been varied.

It started off with Ali going home early as the labyrinthitis (makes you dizzy ear infection) he’d had for the previous month hadnt got any better and he generally wasnt feeling very well.  It was sad to see him go, especially with our last trip out to brandauers as a group, but ultimately he wasnt well and getting better was more important.

The first weekend was another (I know, isn’t it nice for us) long weekend, with thursday and friday off.  The weather continued to be rubbish for the thursday and friday, but picked up epically on the saturday, which was topped off with a visit from Zen and Ross.  Much sigghtseeing was done, along with muchos cake eating.  The saturday was topped off with a visit to Brandauers where Ross managed the ribs, and half an apfel strudel!

Zen and Ross at the Gloriette in Shoenbrunn looking over Vienna

Sunday was more sightseeing, and cake eating, before spending a lovely afternoon relaxing in the Stadtpark.  After seeing Zen and Ross off on a train back to Graz, where they were visiting one of Zen’s friends from uni, we headed off into town to enjoy the sunshine at the Hermann Stadt Bar, a big bar with beach chairs on the canal.  There was however one deck chair empty…

Me and Anna with our cocktails

The chair that was missing Ali

The rest of the week continued pretty uneventtfully, with both Lucie and I making it finally to the pool for the first time this year! Although we havent been able to go back since   as the weather has again been too rubbish.

The following tuesday was the annual Shoenbrunn Sommersnacht konzert, basically 100,000 people or so in Shoenbrunn park listening to a classical music concert put on by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for free.  The theme this year was stars, moons, and planets; so basically Star Wars and the song Mars from The Planets as well as a famous (apparently) piano player who came in from New York and played something by Franz List.  Despite not being the biggest classical music fan I really enjoyed it.  We took along a picnic with Pimms and made a really good evening out of it.

The stage, plus lasers with the Gloriette in the background

The following weekend we headed off for our final trip to Munchen.  A pretty uneventful train journey (although Lucie is adamant she nearly died!) for us got us to the central station and our hostel, which was about 10m away!  After dumping our stuff we headed down to the bar to plan our evening, where we were met by loads of English people!  Our planning lead us through the town and past an awesome band busking on hte main square to Sausilinos, a mexican themed bar where for dinner we had tortias with chicken, tacos, chicken wings and other bits and pieces all in a massive tower of food.  Our evening ended back at the hostel bar with tiny free beers.

Lucie and her free tiny beer

The night spent at the hostel was unbelievably hot, so none of us got a particularly good nights sleep.  To wake ourselves up on the saturday morning we headed back into town for breakfast at an amazing find of a cafe.  I had french toast with fruit, Aleks and Anna had full English (American) breakfasts and Lucie had a lovely looking patisery (sp?)  A morning of sightseeing later and we headed off to the very un-English English gardens.  I’ve never seen English gardens with a nudest area, a surfing wave and a fast flowing stream that people willingl swim in.  Needless to say even though it was warm we didnt swim, we dabbled our feet and wrote postcards, like the good English kids we are!!

Our wander through the English Gardens culminated with finding the biggest outdoor permanent beer garden in Munich.  It was an off-shoot of the famous Hoffbrau haus beer hall in the centre of Munich.  And obviously, when in Munich one has to do as the Munichians? Munichites? Munchens? do, and so we ordered litre tankards of beer, pork knucles, and pretzels as big as your head.

Anna being mummy and cutting up our pork knuckle

Lucie mit bier and brezl

Our afternoon was spent watching England direly attempt to play football against the US in the world cup, before heading out on the town to a really fun electro club, via a cocktail bar which we found when attempting to find the club.

Sunday started slowly, very slowly.  Munich beer is strong!!  Breakfast in a cafe near the station was “improved” by the random German TV show, whose hosts managed to change the words of the england football song “three lions” to three lines on a shirt to fit it to the German team.  It was all very odd.  A trip to the Nymphenburg palace for a hangover curing walk, a quick look around a random comic museum and a trip up a tall building overlooking the Rathaus in the centre of Munich finished off the weekend.

To top off a busy week last friday we headed to the Staatoper to see the ballet Mayerling.  Despite not following much of the story (its basically about a guy in the Austrian Royal family who kills himself and his lover after having lots of other lovers) it was a lovely classy night out.

This evening we got to speak to Ali on skype and he is getting better which is really good news.

Later this week we have the BI sommerfest to look forward to as well as seeing Albin’s band, among others at the Donauinselfest, Europes biggest free music festival.  And then, a week tomorrow it will all be over and i’ll be on my way home