back home

In case you were collectively curious, I survived the Dark Continent, yet again, and am back in Canada, grinding away on Book Four.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Namibia: Golden Gate Coffee Shop, Windhoek

OK, so I'm actually in the Sardinia Cafe, but was just in the GG, and it seems like a cooler byline. Sipping Tafel beer. Good stuff. Ex-German colonies have their good points. Beers I recall: San Miguel, Flag, Castel, Brakina, Bock Solibra, Star, Export 33, Mutzig, King, Castle, Zambezi, Bohlinger's, Windhoek, Tafel, Lion. Much to report: >3000 km through Namibia's desert wastelands in the last week. Last Tuesday, long ride from Vic Falls. Rode w/ Jason & Liz & 3 local hitchers. Spent all of 2 hours in Botswana: passed through Chobe National Park and saw hordes of elephants. Then through the fairly lush, river-striped Caprivi Strip, parallelling the Angola border. Trouble struck 20K out of Divundu when the combie (VW van) developed a massive oil leak. Got a tow from a 16-wheeler(!) to town, and when the problem proved unquickfixable, a further 200K to Rundu, where we ate a fantastic meal and crashed in a tent outside the roadside gas station/supermarket/takeaway/...
Read more

How to rent a car

1) Get a driver's license. These are remarkably useful things to have, especially in North America. 2) Get a credit card that insures rental cars against collision and loss. Such cards often charge an annual fee, but will pay for themselves if you rent as rarely as once a year - buying that insurance from the rentacar company often costs ~$15 per rental day. Make sure that card is paid up, as the insurance may lapse if you're past due, and bear in mind you have to use it to rent the car. 3) Book online, in advance, preferably with at least one Saturday-night stay. I generally use Expedia to comparison-shop the various major chains, then go to the cheapest chain's corporate site and book a car there. I rarely wind up paying more than $25/day. 4) You don't need to provide a credit card number to rent a car, so feel free to book more than one, just in case. 5) Save money when you book. The bewildering rentacar business model includes all manner of "promotion codes...
Read more

Zimbabwe: Possum Lodge, Harare

Been a fairly slow ten days: I'm more-or-less kicking back and wasting time. Another couple days of sloth and then it's back to road-life again, I reckon. L.A. Kings paraphernalia everywhere. Forests of soapstone carvings. Sunset like crimson cotton-candy sky over the boulevards of Harare. Great Zimbabwe's Great Enclosure looming out of the mist of the Hill Complex. Great Zimbabwe quite impressive, though, as Kyra put it, not quite the Parthenon. Traipsed there through surprisingly cold wind & rain with John the Aussie & Luke the Luxembourger, after the bus dropped us 2K away. (oh yeah: night before, met a Frenchman who'd been travelling for >8 years, working at scattered Alliances Francaise and then hitting the road to the next. Was off to Antarctica to complete his grand tour. Admirably insane.) The Great Enclosure, layered stone twenty feet high, with a warren of narrow paths through many smaller buildings dotted with bulbous trees behind it. The Hill Comp...
Read more