karalo

When i was 16 i went on a cycling holiday with 2 girlfriends. We decided it was best to give ourselves a ride of 150 kilometers a day. We planned the route using a map of europe.Starting in Basel, cycling through France and then down to germany, back to Basel.We booked all the youth hostels before we left because we thought this was good planning. This worked well in France because it is flat, however, Germany isn’t The black forest area is freaking mountainous. We realised that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea using a map that shows distance as the crow flies!!!!! I have never been so exhausted in all my life!! 150 ks as the crow flies turned into 300 going up and down enormous hills that half killed us!!! Big lesson learnt…....had thighs like Arnie when i got back.

Travelled across the sahara, the sky at night is a blanket of stars that I will never forget.Sand dunes blow your mind they look so perfect. heat is incredible. You have the choice between drinking water that tastes like bleach or dehyrdating…it was a tough call!! We arrived at a small encampment where there was a tiny bar. We went to the bar and half way thoruhg the night I headed for the toilet. Suddenly, a sand storm whipped up, it was amazing, I couldn’t see two inches in front of my face and sand hurts!! I spent the night trapped in the toilet as there was no way I could make it anywhere.

This is probably the poorest country I have ever visited, had to stay up all night to guard the truck against marauders, full of very poor bedraggled children dressed in oxfam cast offs. Gives the place a weird time warp quality. People were lovely though, corrupt government didn’t look after them…sad to realise in this day and age that people are still suffering like this. I visited it 10 yesr ago…let’s hope it has changed since then….

lived just down the road from Jerusalem for two years. Truly amazing, but also sad to live in a place where religion has a lot to answer for. Lived with jews but worked with arabs,am thankful to both of them for teaching me things about life and giving me experiences I will never forget. Bethlehem on christmas eve, jerusalem and all its wonders, working the land and at night seeing the lights on the mountains. Seeing people die, seeing people born, attending religious ceremonies on both sides of the fence that were humbling. Nearly getting deported because we looked high from spraying the grapes with hormones!!!!!!!Stealing down to the farm to get food in the dead of night…...climbing masada, floating in the dead sea, it being too hot to leave the apartment…..getting stoned in Jerico….the kindness of strangers….stealing shoes from marks and spencers in tel aviv bacause we had no money and they still displayed them in pairs!!!!!Selling friendship bracelets to make money….bumming in eilat, meeting poeple who had lived there since the ‘60’s’!!!! scuba diving…being chased by a hammer head shark that we thought was going to eat us!!!!People babbling to me in hebrew and then poeple babbling to me in arabic(being dark, they all assumed I was one or the other)......driving the arabs back on a trailer attached to my tractor…DRIVING A TRACTOR!!!!!!.....being trapped in the flower house for 2 days by a huge swarm of bees…parties in the bomb shelters…..I could go on for days….......It was wonderful 1 more thing, buying cans of air!!!!!!!...Oh and drinking alcohol that nearly blew your head off….meeting two kiwis, Duncan and Greg who made life there even more enjoyable…....

Two things stick in my mind about Uganda. Seeing the absolutely amazing, stunning, beautiful, cute,frightening, handsome silver backed gorillas. Tracking them through the Ugandan countryside, up mountains was truly amazing.
The other side to Uganda which sticks in my mind is being taken to a church by locals that was full of human bones, almost to the cieling from a massacre that took place where over 200 people were killed with machetees.Truly a sight I will never forget as long as I live…...

Went on a boat trip down the Congo, amazing. The Congo is so wide that it feels like you are out at sea. You catch this boat that goes down the river where no cars go. People live on it. It has all you need. The boat goes to places where it is some people’s only contact with the outside world. People cook on it(MAINLY MONKEY BRAINS!), wash on it and to some it is their life. There are three levels depending on where you are in society, being white we were on the top level. Not all mod cons by any stretch of the imagination but truly an experience I will never forget.I still have the image in my mind of the locals riding up on canoes to try and attach to the boat to sell their wares, phenominal…...