Sting Rays and Exploding Lungs!

After the excesses that came with spending a week with the lads on Koh Samui we made our way over to the tiny island of Koh Tao to have our first ever go at scuba diving!

We decided that instead of just going on a fun dive we'd go all the way and complete our open water certification course - making us fully fledged divers.

After a few classroom based sessions on how your lungs can explode we put all the gear on and were thrown in the deep end (pardon the pun!!). Kneeling on the sea bed we had to practice taking our masks off and had our air tanks switched off to check we wouldn't panic! I found it quite scary which was a bit stupid really as we were just kneeling down in quite shallow sea - if I stood up I could breathe normally!

We had to sit an exam before we were actually allowed to dive properly - felt very random to be sitting an exam wearing my bikini (before we get any random e-mails about Adam wearing a bikini this is Ellie writing!)!. Got our marks back the next day and I got 2% more than Ad - wish we'd had some kind of bet on it now!

Diving is amazing - it's so surreal to sit at the bottom of the sea, 18metres below the surface, watching sting rays and baracuda swim past. We are both completely hooked and can't wait to go diving again.

In fact, we got so enthused that we headed off to the nearest Scuba shop and bought masks, snorkels and fins. Seemed like a good idea at the time but not quite sure how we're going to get them round the world!!

Biker Gangs and Beers!!

After our long drive up through South Africa we flew into Bangkok . It was great to be back in Thailand and as an added bonus some of our mates from home were flying in on their way back from Oz! They landed at 22:30 and were flying out to Koh Sumui the following morning so it was going to be a very brief catch up! As we were staying on the Khoa San road there were plenty of places to while away the hours over a few beers. However after 11:00 no beer could be served, well it could be but we all had to pretend that we were drinking tea!





After a few drinks we decided that we should travel down to Koh Samui to meet up with Bolts, Beast Man and Wuka properly and spend a few days on the beach. Waking up the following morning to go and buy the train tickets was painful, my head was killing me and the thought of more days drinking was not very appetising. After a night train and a good nights sleep things seemed much better and we met back up and enjoyed a few more beers followed by some midnight swimming.

While we were on Koh Sumui we went to see some Thai Boxing. The sport looks really painful and makes normal boxing look as dangerous as knitting. There was a huge amount of respect between the boxers though, who shared the same dressing room and were best friends again after the fight (where they had punched and kicked each other until one of them couldn’t walk!) The best knock out of the night though came courtesy of a young German lad. He was walking to the toilet when a young Thai lady caught his eye, not looking where he was going he walked straight into a metal post. He knocked himself out, got up and tried to walk on to the toilets falling over several time. Don’t worry he was fine after we sat him down and give him some water and ice (ice for his head!)

Deciding to explore the Island we all rented scooters and set off. Given the bikes small size and subsequent lack of power we started a new motor cycle gang, Satan’s Mice (See attached picture of the notorious bike gang! Hmm really scary! - especially Wuka's toilet blue bike!!) On the way round the island Bolts, Tim and Wuka got blessed by a Buddhist monk, very rock and roll guys. This kind of blessing is usually reserved for the pure members of society and not ones sporting love bites (Beast and Wuka!)



Aswell as being in motorbike gangs and doing other ladish things we also had time to be a bit more refined! We had some great seafood meals (and had typically male fun looking at the intestines as they fell out of the cut open fish!) on the beach and let off some Thai style balloons (after spending one of our first nights wondering what on earth the strange glowing spots were in the sky and being convinced - after a few beers - that they were UFO's!)

We had a great time on the Island even though it resembles Blackpool with sun rather than Thailand. The sunshine combined with seeing our mates again though made up for the Blackpoolness - it was really great to see our friends again.

Cheers lads for letting us crash your week in the sun!

Cook the books? No lets freeze them!

The following day we started our journey up towards Jo’burg. We had planned to stay in a town called Bloomfontain which was about half way but the crazy old couple who ran the guest house told us we should visit but not stay as they thought it was a dump! They then continued to talk to me for almost an hour about anything they could think of beofre I finally escaped.

In Bloomfontain we visited the Anglo – Boer war museum and then had a walk into town. To be fair they were right as there wasn’t much to see or do, so we drove on towards Jo’Burg stopping about 90km outside. There was no chance of us driving into Jo’Burg after dark as we value our lives and wouldn’t want to deprive you of our company in the future!

Leaving just a short drive for the next day also meant that we could visit both the apartheid museum and go on a tour around Soweto, both pretty depressing but a must if you’re ever in the area.

The apartheid museum was shocking; as you arrive you get given an identity card which states your race. This then determines which entrance you go through. Ellie and I were given different racial cards (I was a non white and she was a white) and as we went through our seperate doors and began looking at the information in a long corridor I immediately started to wonder what Ellie was doing and what she could see. It was a really effective way to get you in the right frame of mind for the rest of the museum and a shocking insight into the unjust system that was in place. The rest of the museum was equally as shocking and made even harder to comprehend by the fact that it all happened so recently.

That afternoon we visited SOWETO which you can probably remember being the centre of the anti apartheid uprising and a strict no go area for white people. Things have changed a little since then so we were safe! We went to Nelson Mandela’s old house (he lives in a mansion now in the richest part of town) and a church that had been raided several times by the police during the uprisings. It was crazy to see bullet holes in a church!

We also went to the slum area of SOWETO which has no tarmac roads, very few houses with running water and toilets, and people cook on paraffin stoves. It was just like being back in Tanzania and was actually a lot more developed than the area that we used to teach in! We met one young lad who was training to be an accountant (idiot!) and he took great pride in showing me his “library”. Going into his house I was amazed to see he had a huge fridge freezer, until he opened it to reveal all of his books!! The freezer was broken so he decided to use it as a bookcase.









Leaving the slum area and getting back on the bus made us feel really awkward. We have been used to walking around areas like SOWETO and not showing our relative wealth but just talking to the poeople we meet. The rich tourists who were on our trip however thought it would be a great idea to hand out presents in the forms of pens and pencils to the children who were following us about and trying to hold our hands. The chaos that followed was crazy as some children got pens and some didn’t. The ones that didn’t get pens started fighting with the children that had them. It symbolised everything that we had come to hate about tourists visiting developing countries and throwing gifts at people they meet as a way of 'helping' and 'making themselves feel as though they've contributed'. It makes so much more sense to try to make a sustainable contribution by giving the pens to the local school who you have to trust will use them wisely.

Our long journey

Next morning we drove up through the mountain passes and had breakfast on a cliff top looking back over the valley and all of the vineyards (Oh yes, this is where we called our friend Liz from on her 30th birthday. That’s old - a real chikamoo!). Driving on through some great mountain passes full of winding roads and sheer drops a few feet from the car and the most amazing scenery was fabulous. However, these winding roads were a stark contrast to the miles and miles and miles and miles (you get the picture) of straight roads that we followed as we headed for Graff Reinit in the middle of SA. Things couldn’t have been better. We were having a fantastic day, until we came over the brow of a hill.

The sight that greeted us was unreal, a minibus (the size of a large transit van) with trailer had swerved across the road, flipped over several times throwing people out of it’s now shattered windows, and come to rest in a field on our side of the road. We have travelled in this kind of vehicle loads during our time in Tanzania and the sight of this accident was all the more frighting with the knowledge that this could have happened to us. As we drove up we could see that there were a few people helping, but there was no ambulance. The accident had happened literally a minute before we got there. Getting out of the car and walking toward the crash site I suddenly had the most overwhelming sense of being totally useless. What should we do? Where should we start? Who should we help? Who could we help?

As we got nearer to the site the true size of the accident really kicked in. The bus had been carrying about 25 people, a large proportion of these had been thrown from the doors and windows as the bus had rolled. There were two people who I think must have been caught under the bus as it flipped as they were already dead, thier bodies twisted horrifically. We noticed two girls that must have been thrown from the bus as it first left the road as they were 30 feet away from where the bus came to rest. We went over and started to talk to the older girl (aged 15 and called Porcha) as the younger girl (aged about 4) had some talking to her already. We had a look at her injuries and were shocked by what we saw. She had been thrown from the bus with such force that when she hit the ground her thighs had shattered, the waste band on her jeans had split, along with a large proportion of the rest of her jeans. I have never seen denim torn in such a severe way. After she had hit the ground she had slid off the road across gravel which had taken the skin off one side of her back until she went over a jagged rock which had gouged a hole in her lower right back 10” long 2” wide and about 2” deep. She was in absolute agony. We stayed with her until the ambulance arrived keeping her conscious and holding her hand in a desperate attempt to help her with the pain.

I then went to help the ambulance men move other casualties into the ambulance, while we were putting someone in the ambulance the person next to us died. As more ambulances turned up I went back to see how Porcha was and noticed that the smaller girl was on her own and had stopped moving and was hardly breathing. I immediately called for help, a paramedic rushed over started swearing and she was rushed away. Although she had had an initial treatment and assessment she had been forgotten about due to the shear size of the carnage.

While talking to Porcha we found out that she had been traveling on the bus with her mother. No one had left for the hospital at this point and her mother had not been asking for her. Trying not to sound too concerned we asked what her mother was wearing. It was at this point that the full horror struck us, her mother was lying about 10 feet away but Porcha was unable to see her as she was lying behind her. Her mother had been alive when we arrived but had died while we were there from internal injuries. There was nothing anyone could have done. We told her that her mother had probably been taken to hospital in an ambulance and luckily Porcha didn’t see her body as she was being taken to an ambulance.

After helping for about an hour and a half there was nothing more we could do; the area needed to be cleared by professionals and the final walking wounded were making their way to ambulances.

Driving onto the town we checked into our accommodation and went to a place called the valley of desolation. It’s a valley that has the most amazing rock formations and looks very beautiful as the sun sets. It felt very strange just to carry on with our journey having seen such a horrific accident, but I suppose life goes on and we did the best we could. It has however given us a renewed respect for people in the medical profession!

Drinking and Driving!

Well after a fantastic time in Tanzania and a great New Year in Zanzibar we finally started our travels for real. We flew from Dar Es Salaam to Jo’Burg and after a night in Jo’burg we flew down to Cape Town .

We spent a few days in Cape Town and had a great time. Felt fantastic to be sitting on top of Table Mountain , having a drink and watching the sun go down. Thought of you guys back home having a cold January and starting back to work, HA! The views are amazing especially where the cold mountain air meets the warm sea air and you get a fog literally “dripping” off the cliffs. Definitely worth a visit if you are in Cape Town.

Also went to an apartheid museum in “District 6” of the city. This used to be a slum area that was inhabited by mainly black families. The government at the time decided to pull down this area, claiming it was for hygiene reasons, and moved all of the residents to Townships outside the city. These racially segregated areas were just as crampedand uninhabitable. They pulled down all of their old homes and they planned to use the land for ‘white’s only’ facilities as it was in such a prominent position!. These people had been living in an area in the middle of the city where they worked and socialised and were now 20 or 30 miles away. I was even more shocked to discover that this only happened in 1966. It seems so recent for something like this to have happened.

Anyway after a few days in one place doing serious stuff it was time to move on! We decided to hire a care and drive from Cape Town to Jo’Burg as the roads are good and we could come and go as we pleased without having to worry about time tables. We hired the cheapest care available, which turned out to be a mark 2 VW Golf. This style of Golf are still made in SA and so it was brand new. It was really cool to be driving around in what looked to be an old classic!

Our first day “on the road” was short lived as we drove to the wine region. As I said enough of the serious stuff bring on the wine drinking….. er . . .I mean tasting, of course! Anyway 3 vineyards later (in the Franchoek area for those of you in the know!) and several tasting sessions to the good I decided that most of the wine in SA is pretty tasty. We had our favorites but I just can’t remember what they were called (must be all those tasters!). Sitting amongst the amazing scenery, drinking good wine in the sun will be one of the highlights of SA and defiantly something we (especially Ellie!) would like to go back and do more of.

No window frames... but card games!

It was absolutely fabulous seeing my sister in Zanzibar. She arrived on an early morning flight into Dar es Salaam and we all immediately got a so called 'fast' (it ook about three hours instead of the promised hour and a half!!) ferry over to Zanzibar.
Spent our first day and night exploring Stone Town, shopping and enjoying the first of many 'sun downers' (am I the only person never to have called a sunset drink this before?!) together!

The next day we headed for the beach - we'd had a bit of trouble trying to book accommodation in advance as there were three of us, it was NewYear and as usual I'd left it to the last minute. Our room, if you can call it that, was up a steep set of steps above a circular shop which the owners wife used as a workshop for her retail business. It had a roof and that's about all - no walls, doors or windows- just timber poles supporting the roof and curtains hanging in between them. It was fantsatic - the views were amazing and you got a fabulous sea breeze at night!

Spent our days sunbathing (obviously!), fishing and cycling. Cycling along the beach was great on the way there when the tide was out and we could cycle along the hard wet sand. Coming back however when the tide was in and our only choice was the soft, fine sand wasn't so much fun and really hard work!! We also hired a car one day - well it was actually a taxi - the owner worked out he could earn way more if he just gave it to us for the day instead of trying to get his usual fares. Before we left we obviously needed to fill up with fuel and as the nearest petrol station is over the other side of the island the owner said we could have some of his store. We expected him to come out with one of those little petrol tanks you keep in your boot but instead he arrived with about 15 half full water bottles containing petrol. He then spent the next 5 minutes pouring the contents through a funnel into the car- only in Africa!! Spent the day exploring the island- in our taxi driven my Adam - with our Bongo Fleva CD blaring out authentic African tunes (cheers Liz!). At one point we were pulled over by the police for a routine check- we thought we'd have difficulty explaining why there was a mzungu driving the taxi instead of the real taxi driver but the police weren't at all concerned - weird!

The days we spent together were fabulous but I think I speak for all of us when I say the highlights were definately the evenings. With our swahili and masaai language skills we managed to befriend some of the local Masaai who worked at one of the neighbouring bars as watchmen. We spent a couple of evenings chatting to them and trying to teach them card games - it was absolutely hysterical!! After the first game the picture cards came out - they were way too complicated!! Our limited language combined with cards they had never seen before and a few cocktails turned snap and chase the ace into the worlds most complicated games. To try to make it easier for them to understand the games had to be renamed- snap became simba as you had to pounce like a lion (their idea!) and chase the ace is now know as mbaya (bad) as you didn't want to be left with the bad card!!

Was really sad saying bye to Katy at the end of our stay - we were also kind of worried as one of the Masaai men had taken a bit of a liking to her and was wondering if she'd like to go to his hut that night - she politely refused but of course had no way of bolting the door to her room as there wasn't one and so spent the night in fear!! Really looking forwards to catching up with her again in Oz!!