23 Jan 2011

23 Jan

Well, we have been gone just over two weeks now, and are still having fun.  This morning we hired a small boat, and went out to one of the islands, and to Otter Point, where we had the most amazing snorkeling.  Vis was about 15 m, with thousands of small cichlids, of all sorts of colours, blue, gold, white, green and everything in between.  I only wish we had an underwater camera, to share this!  I rate it as better than a lot of the snorkeling we did along the Moz coast.  Water temperature was slightly cooler than the sea in Moz, so more pleasant, and fresh.  Daytime temperatures are also a bit cooler, although maybe its just that the humidity is a lot less.

From the snorkeling, we went around the island, and fed a pair of Fish Eagles, and hopefully we got some pics.

This afternoon I will talk to a local guide, about some bird watching, to see if I can find any new species.

We have a little over 4000Km, with very little trouble to speak of.  The border post into Malawi was the slowest so far, which was a bit unexpected.  The bikes are running well, although we saw yesterday that Sharon’s rear sprocket is not looking too good, after about 6000 km, and we had been told that this was very good quality, and would do 30 000 km!  Will probably need replacement long before that!

Tomorrow we will probably move up the lake, probably to Cool Runnings.  We will keep asking as we go along, what we should see ahead of us.  We met a group of people from Czech Rep here, that proved to be interesting.  The leader is a tour guide, who travels with groups of people throughout Africa, and he was able to give us some useful pointers about Turkey, Croatia and some of those places. We might try to visit them once we reach Europe, and might even be able to tie in some tourism / hunting business.  There is also a German couple in camp that have travelled with an overland truck all the way down West Africa, and are now heading up the East Coast, to Greece.  They will cross from Port Sudan – Sudan – to Saudi Arabia, via ferry, as they say it is a lot cheaper than crossing Aswan dam, from Wadi Haifa. They will also then skip Egypt which they don’t like.  We might think of doing the same thing, as we would then get into Jordan and Syria more easily, by skipping Israel.  Time will tell.

L