South Africa - Day 7 - Adrenalin and Adventure

We knew that we had a busy day ahead today so we got up nice and early. Rob however had been out taking his time lapse pictures until 3:30am and I felt a little guilty waking him a 7:30.

Once dressed we went to the buffet breakfast, they had the usual favourites although it wasn't until my second course that I found where the bacon was hiding, close call! I managed to properly stuff myself as only buffets allow which May have been an error as the first activity of the day was a quad biking safari. 

We met up with our guide and boarded an army truck style vehicle which would take us the short journey to the game reserve. SA has taken a leaf out of the UK's books here and we had to sign waivers just for boarding the bus!

Rio, Pandaman and Rob kitted up and ready to quad.

Once at the reserve we had our briefing, signed more waivers and headed out to the quad bikes. They had a couple of off-road motorbikes out there too but they wouldn't let me taken one of those instead. Eh guy talked us through the rules of the quad bike; no donuts, no slowing down and speeding up, no weaving, no overtaking, etc. PM started to cry a little but the guy said at the end to treat it like you do your own car which was a contradiction to everything he'd said earlier.

There were two groups of us, our group of four and another group which included some kids, I think there were five of them. The bikes were in a line and they'd already chosen the five at the back so I chose the one just infront of them, I wanted mid pack as they'd be a guide at the front and one at the rear, so no chance they could see me misbehaving in the middle.

A quick stop while we waited for everyone else to catch up

We set off and my blindspot plan worked immediately as I managed to get it sideways on every turn. I had Rio in front, with Rob just in front of him armed with a Go Pro and then Pandaman immediately behind the guide. 

We had a bunch of fun and the terrain was quite rough, having kids in the group kept the speed down unfortunately but we managed to make the most of it. I accidentally kept ramming Rio everytime we stopped, it must have been the brakes :). PM also got told off by the guide for sliding around too much, this 'advice' was largely ignored.

We saw some animals too, kudu (BIG antelopes), zebra and a giraffe. We also went up some pretty steep rocky slopes which tested the quads out properly. It was on one of these slopes where Rob stalled so he dropped to the back of the pack, later when we all bunched up again I waved him into a gap I'd left and then bunched forward putting him behind me, I wanted some of that Go Pro footage :)

Soon it was time to bring them home and as soon as we saw the end in sight people started ramming each other, going so sideways the Duke boys would have been jealous and from some people, even the odd donut. 

With the helmets off we all looked like a bunch of pandas from the dirt!

Back at the hotel we got changed and headed to the waterpark, it's a big complex with some crazy slides and a legendary wave pool. Of course we started with the biggest baddest slide, a vertical drop from the tallest point in the park. I went first and Rob was on point with his camera... It's safe to say that you get some serious speed on that thing, and my advice to any one who gives it a try is to keep your legs crossed!

Various levels of panic as we tackled the vertical slide

We hit a few more slides, Rio got stuck in one and had to paddle her way down and even got overtaken somehow by a youngster. When we'd tried all the slides we hit the wave pool despite the sub zero temperatures.

The wave pool isn't like any other that I've seen before, instead of pushing out constant waves, a horn is sounded and then pressure is gradually built up and it releases one giant tsunami. I tried to remain standing for the first one but got completely knocked off my feet, so opted to surf the rest.

After a full afternoon in the waterpark we got changed for our final sorted a proper game drive out in the wild. It started at 4pm which is a good time to see the animals although our guide warned us not to expect too much.

Careful where you stick that

Not long in we saw a kudu feeding and some gnu. Further in and the amount of wildlife increased with zebras, springboks and wildebeest being surprisingly common. Soon, however we saw some rhinos, our first of the big five. We were the only truck to have spotted it and we tracked them as they slowly walked next to the road. Another tour bus from another company came past and asked what we were looking at and our guide told them it was just kudu so they drove on. Genius.

It's like he'd never seen a bus full of tourists before

Eventually everyone else cottoned on so we moved on and very shortly saw some elephant, that's number two of the five. Next to them were giraffe and just down the road was a baby jackal who came right up to the truck.

All of these photos were taken with my camera which
has no real zoom, so it shows how close everything was.

The sun was setting now and we were losing hope of seeing a big cat just as we saw a couple of cars parked ahead. One of the rangers had told them that 40m into the grass was a male lion lying in the grass, so we stopped and waited. Soon a dozen trucks were waiting and we could see its head popping up now and then. Our driver expertly positioned our truck for he best view and as darkness came the lion eventually rose.

All the trucks fired up their engines and drove next to him as he strolled around like only the king of the jungle could. He was about 4m from our truck on my side, unfortunately my camera phone isn't the best at night so I opted for some video footage instead (which obviously doesn't do it justice).

After a few hundred meters he lay down again and the truck lights showed why, he'd been stalking a pack of springboks who were now only about 50m away from him. We thought we'd leave him to his lunch as he'd never have caught anything with the noise of the trucks and the lights and took the opportunity to head back to the hotel.

Not bad for my first game drive, 3/5 of the big five seen, the other two being cheetahs (which are invisible) and water buffalo which are ultra rare, so I was more than happy with that, especially with the close encounter with the lion.

Following the game drive, we had some food and took the 2 hour drive back to Joburg, we were all knackered so sleep was welcome.

The next day is just me getting home, in fact I'm writing this part way into my 20 hour flight back to Manchester, so that's it for this adventure.

Thanks to Pandaman, Rio and Rob for letting me stay, showing me around and the general good company, and of course thanks for reading!

Stay tuned as Mark will return in June for another epic biking trip in Europe.

South Africa - Day 6 - Sun City

Arcade

Sleep

The plan today was to travel to Sun City, a resort a few hours north of Joburg which was buult up around a casino and now boasts 4 large hotels/casinos, waterpark, etc.

As per tradition, we went out for breakfast and had an even bigger breakfast than the day before. Pandaman had the chef make up something unique for him and I basically had a mixed grill complete with steak and everything! Best breakfast so far.

We hurriedly packed and PM and I jumped in the Audi. Rio and a Rob were going to join us after work later. 

On the way we stopped off to look at a large dam, which was very pretty and I was glad to see that there were no sharks in there. Just a bit further on however the satnav took us off the main road onto some roads we'd not been on before and we passes a "Warning: Risk of Hijacking" sign. We briefly considered putting the too up on the car but opted for just driving faster instead.

The dam in all it's glory

Back on the freeway a Golf GTi had to feel the wrath of the Audi S5 as he tried to race us but as we slowed from 225kph he was just a dot in the mirror.

We soon arrived at Sun City and attempted to blag an upgrade which failed. The rooms however overlooked the lake, and are very picturesque.

The view from our hotel room

We went to reception and booked up for a few things over the next 36 hours first of which was the jet skis. Now, surprisingly, I like jet skis and have been on them a few times but never have I seen them so controlled. The guys insist on sitting on the back to start with and talk you through doing a lap of the lake, then if they think you're ok, they jump off and let you do three more laps. None of this go where you want action.

We tried to stick close together so that we could at least jump through each other's wake but we got told off for that so we just had to cruise around for a few minutes. Luckily a speed boat went past so we hammered it through the wake and finally got some air. When the time came to go in, Pandaman tried to spray everyone who was waiting, but the bully guys blocked him with their jet ski.

As we were bone dry still after the jet skiing, which is a very unusual occur acne, we decided to go into the pool. It was getting late in the day so the pool was in shade and no one else was in there. We jumped in and woke up the hotel with our screams of how cold the water was and then swam around quickly to try and stop the onset of hypothermia.

We soon acclimatised of course and this is where we realised that neither of us had remembered to take the hotel keys out of our pockets. Mine was ok, just wet but PMs had floated off somewhere, oops.

Afterwards we hit the pool bar while we dried off and I sampled their Long Island Ice Teas which were very good. Once dry we travelled up to the entertainment centre, a building the size of a casino except filled with arcade games, places to eat and things to do.

Mark finally got to drive his Porsche

We decided to have the Europe vs Africa air hockey championships with me and PM in the final. The first two games were drawn and then I edged ahead and PM won the final game so it was a draw if not very close to a draw at the end. We had to stop however as we were both getting the hang of it by now and sonic booms could be heard as we were hitting the puck.

Rio and Rob arrived, so we met up with those guys and went for something to eat, Rob was close to gnawing his own arm off he was that hungry, and the answer to every question posed to him was simply 'FOOD'.

Mark, Rob and Pandaman on our own game drive

After pizza we hit the arcade again and won some of those tickets that you need 3.2 million of to win a pen. We only had about 25 tickets so I think we're allowed to use them to look at the sky or something. There was a cool basketball game however where I could use my height to my advantage and just lean over the barrier and drop the basketball in. Cheating rules.

At about midnight we called it a day and returned to our hotel, Rob wanted to go out and do some time-lapse of the stars and the rest of us were tired and had an early start the next day.

South Africa - Day 5 - Depressing bus tour

It's Thursday, and the plan today was to do a bus tour of Joburg stopping off at some museums and whatever else looked interesting.

We had a healthy breakfast of chocolate and caramel muffins (I have to balance out the vegetarian meals with some shit that's bad for me) washed down with Cherry Coke.

We then started the bus tour, it was open top of course so we sat in the sun and plugged in our earphones to listen to the automated tourguide. The bus went everywhere, and in the centre of Joburg the roads were barely wide enough for the bus to make it's turns. It's a very diverse city, the centre is built up with skyscrapers and roads lined with trees and it's incredibly busy. Other parts are more open, single story buildings much like some of the American cities such as LA.

These guys liked to dance and shout a lot.

Some parts of the city we didn't venture into such as the notorious Hillbrow, where the autoguide diplomatically advised you not to go there alone unless you're with a VERY experienced guide. I took this to mean that it was full of Nigerian drug dealers and I'd need a flame-thrower to get through.

As we headed into the suburbs towards the poorer parts of town we turned a corner to see a black woman face down in the road with a car next to her, obviously been run over. It didn't look good, she wasn't moving and I didn't fancy her chances...

We then stopped at a casino which was very grand, and from here we caught a smaller minibus to take us to the Soweto, one of the townships where the non-whites were force-ably moved to during the apartheid times. This was really eye opening as I thought it was just a few city blocks, but it was huge. According to the stats 4-5 million people live in Soweto but in reality with the shanty towns it's more like 8 million. This place was huge.

White people were not so welcome here a
few years ago.

There was a stark contrast too between the districts of Soweto, the middle class had matchbox houses which were tiny, the more upper class had matchbox houses that had extensions built or even a what would be described as a small house, but with no room around it. The lower class were like sheds and then there were the shanty towns which were made up of corrugated iron and whatever else would keep the roof on.

We made a few stops for pictures and saw the site where it all kicked off in 1976. The police opened fire on the unarmed students who were protesting killing several of them and this sparked the uprising which went on to see over 3000 deaths over the next few months.

Outside Nelson Mandela's tourist trap, I mean house.

We then moved on to see Nelson Mandela's house which was on the same street as Desmond Tutu's place. The only road in the world where two nobel peace prize winners have lived. This was all powerful stuff.

After a couple of hours in Soweto we went back to the casino and grabbed some lunch. We went to the main restaurant in the casino and ordered some drinks. The waiter wasn't sure what beers they had so went to check and eventually I was able to order one. Pandaman wanted a Tab, but they didn't have that, so he ordered a Virgin Mohito. They didn't have that either. So he ordered some other non-alco cocktail, but they didn't have any cucumber, so we asked him what he did actually have and he just laughed. Just for fun we asked if he had the Nachos that PM wanted, no, ran out of that too, so we just upped and left. How can you run a restaurant where you don't have any of the food or drink that is on the menu?

The next restaurant that we tried was a buffet, but they didn't cater for vegetarians, so that was no good, how hard is it to eat in this place?

Luckily the third restaurant had some good food, so we filled our faces and then took the bus to the Apartheid Museum.

Man, this place is depressing. The horrific things that were being done, as recent as 25 years ago is crazy and there were lots of graphic pictures and stories there. It's a massive museum with replica cells, nooses, armoured trucks and so on. It's well worth a visit, but don't expect to come out smiling.

After an hour or so there it was time to head home, in the car, PM was talking to me and I just wasn't speaking, it's crazy what this place has been through and it really shows why everyone here is so friendly and happy all the time! It sounds like I had a rubbish day, but I didn't and despite the dead bodies in the street (highly unusual!) and the depressing subject matter, I'm glad I did it all and well recommend it. 

Bunny Chow, I should have taken the picture before
I threw it everywhere

Back at base I had chance to get over the days education and we sat down for a traditional meal called Bunny Chow. It's basically a gravy like curry with beans in which is poured into a hollowed out loaf. It was really unusual but pretty good.

We then chilled for a bit and went to Sandton Mall to visit Milky Lane, an ice-cream parlour that makes just the best sundaes. Rio fell for the ol' "does my ice-cream smell funny to you?" trick, and had a spoonful of ice-cream on her nose as a result. 

Rio's ice-cream, all part of the
healthy vegetarian diet :)

On the way home we saw one of those new Mercedes A45 AMGs, the fastest four cylinder production car. However, it was no match for the S5's supercharged 3.0l V6 as we both booted it off the lights in downtown Joburg. Both cars sounded awesome with the exhaust note echoing off the buildings. No video unfortunately, the g-forces were preventing me from getting my phone from my pocket.

South Africa - Day 4 - Humans

Today's plan changed a little, we opted for getting the car fixed and then heading outside of Joburg to get some cultural history. Pandaman had described where we were going as "caves and shit", maybe he should consider a role outside of the sales industry...

We went to Audi and PM managed to blag a loan car from them for the day despite them not doing loan cars any more, he's a very good customer.

It was breakfast time so I had a fat bastard special and PM tried a Welsh rarebit before heading off into the wild.

Outside of Joburg, South Africa is transformed into these lovely grassy hills and plains. We followed our directions heading towards the Cradle of Humankind. Obviously we got lost, it seems that road signs don't exist in SA or sometimes road names don't exist so you have no references for where you are or where you're headed. 

We eventually found out where we were and managed to not get eaten by lions or driving into a watering hole.

We reached the Cradle which is where they found the oldest human remains which are millions of years old known as Mrs Ples (which they recently found out is actually a guy, embarrassing. Must have been from Thailand).

The evolution of man, with me at the end being
the ultimate creation of course.

It started with a walking tour where the guide told us lots of stuff that would have creationists seething in anger, how the earth was formed, how the continents shifted and so on. We then got on to the dawn of man and how they'd found Mrs Ples, a 2.3 million year old skeleton. However just a few years ago in 2000 they found Little Foot who is even older and is a more complete skeleton, so it's still an active archival site where they're finding more shit (not literally, that's all in France).

"Caves and shit"

We reached the caves and donned our cool looking hard hats and did our best bob the builder impressions before heading inside just as it started raining outside. The caves were huge, very large caverns like something out of The Goonies or so. 

Towards the bottom was a cool underground lake that has yet to be explored properly due to it being quite dangerous, I reckon that the Ultron or something is down there or some underwater aliens... Unfortunately our cameras couldn't do it justice, but the water was so clear it was unbelievable.

Pandaman chilling out having barely made
it out alive

We started to head out of the caves when the guide said that the next part involved going through some tight spaces. I'm 6'3". He wasn't kidding and I had some flashbacks to 'nam when I was crawling through those tiny Vietnamese tunnels. We made it alive, I think maybe some Americans got left behind but no one seemed that bothered, so we climbed these steep steps back to the top. No need to go to the gym tonight!

From there we went to the adjoining museum, it was a strange circular building half build into a hill like a James Bond baddies base. The tour started at the bottom where you got in a boat to go down some rapids, this was no ordinary museum. The boat rude simulated the earth forming with us going through a nice tunnel (real ice), snow was pumped into the air and then through some flames and a blue bit (not sure what happened there), it was pretty cool.

In the museum itself, everything was interactive with one of the strangest buts being able to use a phone to call a mammoth, didn't know they had phones back then, Alexander Bell must have been a rip off plagiarising bastard.

The blue tunnel, not sure what this was representlng,
answers on a postcard.

Our stomachs got the better of us so we hit the restaurant and PM told me that his initial description of this place was to lower expectations, which worked as it was a good place to visit.

On the evening Rio made some lentil curry which was nice and tasty, this vegetarian lark isn't too bad...

South Africa - Day 3 - Lions

Boy did I sleep, I didn't wake once (except for when I woke), which is a new record. It's nice here, even in the third bedroom, there is an ensure which is larger than my kitchen back home.

As the Audi had a flat tyre, PM made some calls to get that sorted which meant we had to change the order in which we did things as we didn't want to do a big journey with the space saver tyre on.

We headed out to breakfast at Mugg & Bean which was nice, I had a typical English breakfast except the sausage had a strange name like the guy who typed the menu had sneezed when he typed it but I was assured it was real. We had a chat for a while and took in the warm sun and gazed at the cloudless blue sky.

They're just like Bella really

After that we headed to the Lion Park, it's kinda like a park but there are lions there. I was surprised that I had top go to a lion park instead of just seeing them roaming the streets, but I guess it's the wrong season or something.

I've got to get me one of these.

We started by looking at the pens where they kept the lion cubs in, these things are so cute and they spend 18 hours a day sleeping and then get fed a massive steak each at night. Doesn't sound like a bad life to me. The cubs in the youngest pen were 3-6 months old and we were looking at them when they opened the gate to let us in. We were allowed to go over and stroke and pat them which was really cool and we didn't get eaten once. All these guys wanted to do was sleep and they'd piled up on one another to use each other as pillows.

These guys hurt!

After the cubs we go some animal food and fed the giraffes and ostriches. Pandaman was impressed that he'd found something that was taller than me. The ostriches were bastards, instead of eating out of your hand they'd peck your hand knocking the food to the ground and then eat it there. The damn things nearly had my finger off!

Tina Turner has really let herself go

It was then time for the main tour, we jumped in a caged truck and drove around the park itself to look at the lions. You could drive your own car around if you'd wanted to but we didn't think taking a convertible in was a good idea in case they were hungry.

It's like a movie is about to start.

These big lions were seriously impressive, they have lots of space and will hunt given the chance. Apparently not long ago two people saw them sleeping and thought they were drugged so got out of their car for a photo. Dead as fuck.

The guide was really good and we went around five parks in total seeing more lions, wild dogs and cheetahs. I ended up taking about 200 photos (don't worry, there isn't a slide show to accompany the blog).

Afterwards we headed home and attempted to get the tyre fixed only to find out that not only that it couldn't be fixed but another one was ruined too, dammit.

On the evening we got the laptops out and wound up the internet for long enough to be able to search for a restaurant. We initially struggled to find something local that did meat and would cater for vegetarians but eventually settled for this posh place that uses the word 'jus' a lot on their menu.

The food was really good, I mean really good, there wasn't a lot of it so we managed to fit in desserts which basically blew us away. Then, in case we weren't full enough they gave us some fancy sweets to finish us off. I hadn't looked at the prices so thought that this could hurt, back home this sort of meal would be £50-60 each, easily. I looked at the bill, did some conversion and it was £50, but for all three of us. I'm still liking these SA prices :)

South Africa - Day 2 - The first real day

It's not that clear at the moment when one day ends and the next starts at the moment having not had much sleep on the plane, but getting off the plane seems as good a place as anywhere.

First up was security, and there were three choices, South African passport holders (not me), 'others that need visas' (also not me) , and then tucked around the back was 'others not needing visas'. So I headed down this third lane which was when it dawned on me that I might actually need a visa, the clue here was that I was the only person in this aisle, everyone else was in the visa required lane.

Oops, I figured it was too late now, and really, how strict can they be? Anyway, it turns out I didn't need a visa and the Frenchies were wrong, phew.

My luggage popped straight out so I headed out to meet up with Pandaman. There he was, waving around a picture of a Porsche so that I'd find him, he knows me well! It was good to finally meet up after 20 years and say hello.

The Christmas decorations are still up
"because of reasons"

We then departed in his nice Audi S5, I must get me one of these, it has more gadgets than KITT, and it's even armour plated. Although one of these gadgets came on while we were driving telling us we had a flat tyre, dammit. Here is where I found out how SA works, they have guys for everything. We pulled into a garage and a tyre came over to check it out, we didn't even have to get out of the car! This was particularly welcome as we didn't want to get savaged by lions at the side of the road.

We arrived at the house which is really nice and spacious, for those worried about my safety it's in a compound with armed guards and then the house itself is surrounded by an electric fence, there will be no need to call in Michael Caine to help recreate Zulu.

Here I met Rio, Pandaman's lovely wife and his friend Rob (a fellow biker), who had all just come off a 72 hour Diablo III session, so I wasn't the only sleepy one.

Always be on the lookout for wildlife in SA,
always.

We grabbed some lunch, now this is where it all starts getting a bit "Idiot Abroad" as both Pandaman and Rio are vegetarians and I'm, well, the opposite of that... However we had some tasty soya burgers which were spiced up with some Nandos sauce, I can see that sauce helping me out a lot this week :)

We spent most of the day chilling out and catching up and watching Liverpool on TV (PM is a devout supporter) which was nice as I was starting to feel the effects of the plane journey and had about as much life in me as a quadruple amputee sloth.

Me and Pandaman in mini-Vegas

We decided to have an easy night of food and cinema, so we went to this casino complex that was really cool. It was designed so that the inside was like being outdoors in Italian streets except with less crazy moped riders. Tnd there were lots of bars and restaurants there so we had some pizzas at an Italian place. The whole meal with drinks and stuff only came to about £30, I'm going to enjoy this exchange rate.

We chose to see 'The Legend of Hercules' at the cinema which isn't the greatest film ever made if I'm honest, but it meant we could leave our brains in the foyer which was good as I think I'd left mine somewhere well before that. If you're considering watching Hercules then I fully recommend reconsidering, there were decent fights and it's a blatant mashup of 300 and Gladiator but written by a twelve year old.

On the way home we took a tour around the down town commerce area, so to put that in context, we went out without armed guards, drove around at 11pm at night, even stopped at some traffic lights and didn't once have to use a flame thrower to defend ourselves. The parts I've seen so far have been really nice, all without the feared crime and deadly wildlife.

Time to crash.

Rob on his bike with Pandaman about to attack

South Africa - Prologue

It's been a long time since I've been away, so I needed to make my first trip of 2014 a good one, and I think I've chosen wisely. I'm going to take on South Africa...

A good friend of mine, Pandaman, has lived there for years, and we needed to catch up, so while chatting online, he mentioned that he had moved into a new house. I jokingly asked if he'd got my suite ready and he told me to get the hell over there, so there we have it. A few days later flights were booked and we're set to kick ass :)

Having never been to South Africa before I've had to do some research, I have an idea in my mind of course, but I needed something more reliable than what my brain was making up. I skipped the encyclopaedias, travel guides and avoided speaking to anyone who had been there before, I wanted the truth, I wanted to know how it really is, so I watched some movies.

I'd seen Invictus not too long ago, so I didn't waste time watching that again. Instead I watched Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom which surprisingly didn't feature Morgan Freeman. Then, I watched District 9, a factual story about apartheid, I can't believe this shit really happened. To finish off my research I had to go with the grand daddy of South Africa films, the one everyone thinks of; Lethal Weapon 2!

Now, just the packing to do, so I started with my anti-tiger spray (only kidding, I know there are no tigers in Africa, it's anti-lion spray really, besides everyone knows it's a rock that repels tigers).

People keep telling me that South Africa is dangerous, especially Johannesburg where I'm staying, but I don't see how it can be, I mean you can see elephants from miles away and I've been training so even though I can't outrun a lion, I can outrun other people meaning they'll get eaten first, so I don't see what all the fuss is about. Plus if I get into trouble with the law, I've been practising my accent and will just state that I have "diplomatic immunity"!

Anyway, the posts throughout the week will be on this site, so click the subscribe button or 'follow this site' to keep in touch.

South Africa - Day 1 - Flying

I left the house with plenty of time, heading for Manchester airport, the main surprise was that there were no roadworks on the M6 and the traffic was flowing. Initial thoughts were that I was on the wrong road but as I got a few miles north I spotted the average speed cameras and the roadworks began.

I've never flown from Manchester before so didn't know if it was any good or not, I was hoping to bump into some Man Utd fans, happy that they'd only lost 2-0 to Everton, but soon came to my senses as they'd be well on their way back to London by now.

In the departure lounge I visited the shop and purchased the "meal deal", some deal, it cost about the same as my flight!

The announcement came over the speaker system in a voice so devoid of life that I thought Winter was coming telling me that my gate was open. For the second time today I had to pinch myself as my gate wasn't the furthest one away for a change, normally I'd have to walk half way down the runway to find my plane.

My flight was with Air France which meant that we had to stop in Paris to stock up with onions. The flight attendants looked as though they'd had a makeup fight in duty free they were wearing that much, if only they'd had a perfume fight instead they wouldn't have stunk of garlic so much. Stinky French.

The flight was mostly empty as my covert photo shows (Ok so it's a tad blurry but I didn't want to get pounced on again for taking a photo of a plane, think of the terrorism!).  There was one stupid woman though who was trying to photograph the eifel tower from 4000 feet with her Ipad, at night. If you thought my photo was blurry, you haven't seen anything.

After a short stop off in Paris, I boarded the next plane for my final leg of the journey. The plane was an a380 airbus which is one of those super massive double decker planes. I'm impressed, sat in my seat I don't feel like a sardine, it's only 3/4 full also so I've taken over the seat next to me. The food was also pretty good, especially the chocolate moose.

I can never sleep on planes and as it's a night flight, I kinda need to do that, so I played by Tim's rules and accepted every free bit of food and drink to make me sleepy. Oh, I also washed down some sleeping pills with some beers. For those who have seen Wolf on Wall Street, imagine the plane scene except with less hot chicks.

In other news, I'm now in Africa!

Ammendum: sleeping pills suck.
Ammendum 2: I stole the French guys pillow when he wasn't looking. Muhahah