Working Away

With most of the Middle East and Northern Africa in the midst of a revolution, we are off to explore Europe. We settled on Pierre. A 1998 Peugeot 306 Metallic Blue (67,000 miles), with all the options including power steering, sun roof and cassette player. He set us back 1,000 quid.

It had been quite a shock to be back to 4 degree maximum temperatures of London, after living around the equator for 2 months. So we can now say that Simon and Sarah's postman arrives at 12.20pm (with our insurance certificate) and we were then off to Dover to catch a 4pm ferry to the continent. The security guys had a quick glance in the boot, the passport control waved us through like they were controlling traffic and the ticket office man checked our tickets and passport. The trip takes just under 2 hours, and we lost sight of the white cliffs 10 metres from shore, saying goodbye to the English rain and fog.

We arrived on foreign soil at Dunkirk and thought we would just find a road-side hotel for the night and begin the drive the next day. Unfortunately, road-side hotels don't really exist in France (as a side-note, they are everywhere in Spain). So we ended up driving in the darkness and rain, for about 2 hours, until we reached the town of Rouen. Where we finally decided we had to start looking a bit harder, so we headed off the highway. We found an Etap hotel. We checked-in with a vending machine and had a sound night's sleep.

We headed off the next day after a delightful breakfast at the local boulangerie, pain au chocolat et cafe for around 2 euro (Chocolate Croissant and coffee). Welcome to the continent. We drove for around 7 or 8 hours, mostly on expensive French toll roads. Great, quiet roads but we spent at least 60 euro on tolls that day. We made it to Hossegor. A surf town in the south-west corner of France. After spending about 2 hours checking if any of the 6 camp grounds were open, we eventually found out no, and then found a cheap hotel.

The next day we drove through the rainy mountain country in northern spain and then through the wide open nothingness. We made it to Merida and found a camp site open. From here, it was only about 3 hours to our first workaway destination of Zahara de la Sierra. A Pueblo Blanco (white town) in the Sierra de Grazalema. A cool town, perch on a hill, over-looking a lake complete with spanish castle on top. This was to be our home for the next two weeks. Awesome.

To make our money go further in Europe we are using a website www.workaway.info. It connects people in Europe who need some help around their place, whether it be a farm, B&B or whatever. They usually provide food and accomodation, in exchange for about 5 hours of work per day, 5 days a week. Work can be anything from gardening or housework, to helping with construction. It suits us as we get a chance to explore the more rural parts as we have already travelled some of the big cities filled with museums and churches.

Our first hosts were Anja and Gonzalos, a spanish/german couple, with a 3 year old boy and a new born girl. They have a small little B&B and farm with around 60 olive trees. It all went really well. A little bit of work and plenty of time to explore to area, which was great. Lots of little villages and mountains to hike around in. I spent most of my working time on the end of a wheel-barrow, but also helped removing the plaster from the wall on 100 year old stone farm house. Bella did a bunch of things, from housework to sewing to babysitting. We had a mixed bag with the weather, a few rainy days, but also some great sunny days too. Much improved upon London.

The roof of Cinco Lunas, our hosts.

We did two major hikes in the area. One into Garganta Verde, a cool gorge with vultures flying around over-head and one to the top of El Torreon, the highest mountain in the area (around 1600m).

The photo below is of a nearby town called Ronda. They certainly like to build them in dramatic positions.

The little things that make the day's great. Some supplies from the local panaderia (bakery), awesome pastry with custard and covered in icing sugar. 80 euro cents.

We spent 2 weeks in Zahara. We then moved to another workaway in the area, but this time a coastal change. A little town called Los Canos de Meca. It's just south of Cadiz and it is the off-season, so it's very quiet.

I think we should be able to handle it.

Photos

Andalucia

AFRICAN ADVENTURE - Tanzania

Wow, sorry, lost internet there for a few weeks. So to finish off the African story.

We caught a bus across the border into Tanzania. It was all pretty standard and nothing too out of the ordinary. Just standard no idea on where to go, just join a line, pay some money to a guy in a uniform, get a stamp and say no to all the guys trying to exchange money. We were still in need of a relaxing beach camping experience and this part of the north coast of Tanzania has quite a few options.

We stumbled upon Peponi Resort, just south of Tanga, and ending up staying for just short of a week. Nothing much to do. A nice quiet beach with no hustle and a nice campground. Perfect. Plenty of lazing about, sun-baking, reading and swimming.

We also relented after 4 weeks and went for a snorkelling trip. It was another great day out in the dhow, with lunch on a white sandbank. The snorkelling was good too. Plenty of healthy coral and little fishes.

From Peponi we headed straight out to Zanzibar. We arrived in Nungwi, in the North. We were surprised both by the beauty of the place and the development. Amazing white sand and turquoise water. Equally amazing amount of resorts stretching for kilometres in either direction. More sun-baking, reading and less relaxing (wanna buy this, wanna go snorkelling, wanna do this tour, etc.).

We then headed down to Zanzibar Town and Stone Town, which is the old part of town. A little disappointing from the too touristy angle, but an amazing place with an amazing history. Made famous by Arab and Portuguese sailors trading there, and was its own state until 1964 when it joined Tanzania. Plenty of wealth in times gone past, looking a little worse for wear now. We spent most of our time eating cheap snacks and walking around alleys looking at doors.

We then headed back to Dar Es Salaam to spend the night before heading up to Lushoto the next day. This is probably the craziest bus station we have ever seen. Both trying to buy our tickets the day before and also catching the bus at 6am the next morning. It doesn't help that it is 10kms out of town. Let's just say there are lots of people and lots of buses. In the end we made it where we wanted to go. And it was great.

Lushoto is up in the Usambara mountains, so with a little bit of elevation we gained some relief from 6 weeks of constant sweating 24 hours a day. Not that I am complaining. Let's just say the 20 quid tent bought in London, doesn't have suitable ventilation for the tropics. Neither do the 0 degree sleeping bags, that spent most of the time rolled up.

After wandering around the green hills for a couple of days, we organised to go for a 3 day hike to a nearby village called Mtae. It was a nice cruisy pace with a good balance between up and downhill, even a few bus rides thrown in. No real peaks to speak of, just a nice view at Mtae. The whole area gets about 2m of rain a year, and when it's not bucketing down, it's sunny. So the whole place in one big veggie garden. Most of the hill sides are terraced and are farmed. Mostly in small family holdings with everything down by hand. About 60% of the population in this area is employed in primary production.

They also have Chameleons.

Lushoto and Mtae both look out into the The Great Rift Valley. Below is near Mtae.

We headed back to Dar Es Salaam on the Friday on one of the just too long bus rides, ended up about 8 hours. We had Saturday and Sunday to kill in Dar Es Salaam, with our flight to Cairo scheduled for 2am on Monday morning (Sunday night). We had a walk around on Saturday, found that most things were closed, including the museum. But we spent about an hour in a air-conditioned book shop and then had a long lunch at a dodgy fast food place. We went up to the rooftop bar at the Kilimanjaro Hotel, which has a nice view, although we couldn't justify the beer when it was 4 times the price of the YCMA.

Sunday there was even less open. Not even the internet cafe at the YCMA where we were staying. We were counting on that to kill a few hours. So we eventually relented around midday and paid the exorbitant price at the Holiday Inn across the road. It was pretty fast internet and as a result I checked a news website for the first time in two months to discover that riots had broken out in Cairo and 300 people were dead. Not great news for the city we were due to fly into in 12 hours.

So we headed to the Airline office, our friends at Egypt Air (see part 1 of African Adventure) expecting the worst. They were closed, but had a phone number. They gave us a palm off for a few hours. So we went around to the office around 3pm, and by 4pm we were booked on flights back to London with Qatar Airways (with a delightful 7 hour stopover from midnight to 7am in Qatar).

So we missed out on our 3 weeks in Egypt. But it could have been worse. We could have been in Cairo when it all went pear shaped and then had to deal with Cairo Airport again. So we have just brought our Europe plans forward.

Stay tuned....

PHOTOS

Tanzania