Alan's Final Perspective!!

The last time that I actually applied my fingers to my BlackBerry (or a keyboard) was on the 1st July!! Why so long ago? Driving all day every day took a lot out of me and when we stopped for the evening the last thing I felt like was thinking about what to write, so it was a blessing in disguise when Fiona arrived and took to writing the blog like I took to drinking Jamesons!! Some of my thoughts were shared in Fiona's writings and all our daily activities were well documented.

My biggest regret about the trip is the fact that it was far too short for me!!! Whilst I felt that I needed to come home, there is/was no real reason to have done it other than that I had to be back at work on the 2nd August.

To have been able to spend more time seeing more of Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique would have been ideal for me. I feel that a lot of the time was rushed getting to places and when we got there very little time was spent looking around the actual towns we were in. (When we were in Tanga we met the couple from Namibia who were spending 6 months on a trip - now that is what I should of done!!!!)

North of our border is so different to what we have in South Africa - yes the roads are bad, the food served is different (but the same if you bought and cooked it yourself), being out of your comfort zone is not always great, camping is great if you spend longer than one day in a camp and have decent ablutions, hotel etc are fun to experience (well some of them), beers are great to taste, local gins are lovely (except the one made from banana in Uganda), all the people we met were so friendly and helpful and the beauty of the countryside is staggering to drive through.

The highlight of the trip was definitely seeing the gorillas. Whilst the journey on foot is not so memorable I will never forget the feeling of being so close to these wonderful creatures. I have watched the video that I took of them a few times and it reminds me of how regal and imposing they are. The mind boggles at the thought that there are actually people out there that actually kill these primates. May the gorillas be protected forever!!!!

"Lowlight"? None really other than The Beast giving me grief but with hindsight I am pleased that I was able to DISABLE the Steve Autoclinic so called modification.

I appear to others to have returned a different person (besides the tan) and on reflection of this I can honestly say that I have been re-energised at all levels.

Will I do it again? Damn right but this time I will be probably being doing it on a motorbike and for a longer period! After I met the chaps from Bulgaria and Italy, who have travelled through Africa on motorbikes, I would love to do the trip this way and forefill my initial dream. Clearly the logistics of this would be little different.

So for now that is me and I will be posting some more pictures this week-end and I will also try to attached a section of the odd video taken.