Getting going



So we've just arrived in J'burg en route to Livingstone. We have a couple of hours to kill and probably the last wifi access for a month. The journey so far has gone well. Paula booked us a limo to pick us up from Hill Farm and get us to Heathrow, and that made the trip go faster, with the girls able to watch Shark's Tale rather than asking for progress updates for the entire 2 hours.



The plane journey was also ok with everyone except me getting a reasonable amount of sleep. After watching Meet the Fokkers (it really did seem like the best choice) I listened to 80 of the songs of the playlist I was given. They really are excellent, with lots of funky tracks that I didn't know alongside a few dozen great tracks that I didn't have - not one track so far was already on my mac/iPod. I'd like to call out some particular tracks but it seems invidious. (Though could someone ask Hiten if Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is Hindi for Fix Your Own Damn Computer Now?)

So my first experience of sub-Safaran Africa is sitting down with a decent cappuccino in a wireless hot spot, with the only local accent so far coming from our malaria tablets (we're using Malarone).

I might note how the idea for this trip originated. Paula reminded me of this recently, and I can't swear that I remember it myself but... Apparently when we still lived in Cranleigh we looked at a house that would have required us to borrow a pile more money that we don't have (I do remember this part). Though it was a perfectly nice house my heart wasn't in it and I suggested that with the extra money that we'd need we could rather do something that would be more enriching, like going travelling for a year. I do recall that once we started to talk about taking a year away I suggested that we do twelve places for a month each, since neither of us had any appetite to be spending too much time in transit. I wrote a list of a dozen places straight down that we discussed, and that's not too far from what we're doing now. Order, timing and so forth had to fit in with seasonal considerations and what we could reasonably negotiate with work.

Will be writing more this month and post when we get to Cape Town.

Posted: Tue - April 5, 2005 at 01:22 PM              

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