Yup - we've finally made it to Livingstone. The obligatory Stanley joke was made and we are firmly ensconced in the wonderful Chanters Lodge. After sleeping in tents for 12 days and traveling in a box for about 6-8 hours of those, Chanters offers a welcome relief with Internet access, TV, bar and general lounging aroundness. It is also close to the river that thunders and walkable into town.

Next up is Maputo and up the coast to Tanzania...

Hi Guys and Gals!

Well, Africa is sporadic for internet access (unsurprisingly). We are currently in Swakopmund travelling with Thimbi Thimbi Safaris based out of Windhoek (Vindhook). We have a nice group of people and have had our forming storming norming and some performing too!.

So far (we left on Monday - today is Wednesday) ...

Sesreim - the Dunes for Sunset - spectacular
Sesreim - the Dunes for Sunrise - spectacular (but very tired after a 5am wakeup)
Sossusvlei - a vlei - meh
Dead Vlei - a vlei in the dunes - spectacular (can you see where we are going with this?)
Sesreim Canyon - an empty canyon (with a little puddle) for sunset - spectacular
Walvis Bay - a beach town with a salt works - surreal.
Swakopmund - a beach town with some surf (Cads probably won't be able to go :( )

And that's where we are. We'll post what we've got when we get better access!

Oh - a vlei is literally a "lake" but in Namibia it really means a hard pan where there isn't water anymore and hasn't been for a good long while.

We're still trying to work out if it counts as seasickness if you get Food Poisoning courtesy of Coral Sea Resort Airlie Beach North Queensland Australia. We wandered over to the Coral Sea resort (admittedly not our regular scene - very much catering at this time of year to the sort of Gran Canaria, Costa Del Sol British tourist) to see if we could go paragliding. No such luck - apparently the boat has been out of action for 2 months according to the operator on the end of the jetty.

We decided to have a light snack though - Emma had the Rare Beef Strip Salad and Caedman had the chef's special sandwiches - Cheese and Egg Mayo. Emma found her salad to be far too covered in dressing and Caedman had no dressing on his garnish/salad. No problem, Caedman gave Emma his salad and they shared the green leafy bits with Emma eating the meat and Caedman eating the olives.

Both of us admit that the food was lovely the first time around. But that was the problem. Around 5-6 hours later Caedman got to re-experience the food. This time coming up the wrong way. Besides the ignominy of vomiting copiously over the railings of a sailboat BEFORE SHE'D EVEN LEFT HER MOORING, this really put a damper on the upcoming 3 days. For a while, it appeared that it might have been a one off, but then Emma had the exact same reaction about 5 hours further through the night. As the only thing that we had shared that and the previous day had been the salad, we have to conclude that something was off with the salad dressing.

The poisoning knocked us out for the entire first day of the sail, which not only meant that we couldn't dive, but that people on the boat couldn't enjoy themselves as much as they might out of consideration for the nauseous and "crook" Emma and Cads.

We have to say that if this is Luxury Dining in Airlie Beach, stick to bringing your own sandwiches or at least eating elsewhere.