Beardie wierdie - PART 3

The surprising thing about this photo is that it was hailing at the time, whilst we were in Ecuador, on the equator. We were at 4300m climbing a mountain overlooking Quito at the time.

Oh, and Rich lost a bet and shaved all his hair off too!

"I am tax-free!"...

...was one of the more bizarre greetings we received from one of the many shopkeepers we encountered in Buenos Aires, in Sarah's assault on the handbags of South America. At last Rich found something of interest in a handbag shop.

Buenos Aires

We spent a few days soaking up Argentinean wine and scrumptious steak in B.A., and did the tourist thing watching a Tango show. As well as watching Argentina's world cup win over Nigeria in a lively bar, having first consulted the trusty phrase book for essentials: "we still remember the hand of God in 1986" and "i was only joking". Awesome city.

Safari

Our final 3 days in Kenya were on Safari in Amboseli park, under Kilimanjaro (see photo). Am about to be thrown out of internet cafe in Jo'burg airport (carnival atmosphere all around, mainly revolving around horn blowing), so more on this later, but the Safari was awesome!

Beardie wierdies - PART 2

Happily we waved goodbye to the beard before sitting in the train's first class restaurant car.

Nairobi-Mombasa train

Our week in Kenya started with an overnight journey on the optimistically named, but deliciously romantic Nairobi-Mombasa overnight express train (the destination and implication of speed being the optimistic bits). While dinner is served in the dining car, the steward makes the beds, and you wake up in the morning travelling through the open plains of the Tsavo national park. Ok, so the creaking of the ancient carriages, and challenge of the squat toilet on bumpy track bring you back to earth, but considering this is the only operating passenger train in Kenya, its a pretty cool experience! Its notorious for massive delays, and having to get a taxi for the last hour, but we were lucky we got there, and almost on schedule at around 14 hours.

We then spent an amazing and relaxing 3 days at a secluded lodge on a beach outside Mombasa (Tijara Beach) with Rich's cousin Jonny and family. It had all the best things about a family holiday, including witnessing Joe's (nearly 2) cracking choice for his first 2-syllable word: TANKER, and also Bella's (4 and a half) swimming a width unaided. Sharing G&T time with Jonny and Kate watching the roaring waves of the Indian ocean break on the reef was also pretty special. We also squeezed in a couple of scuba dives, the highlights being several turtles, a box fish and octopuses, despite low (8-10m) visability cos of the season. What a place!

Spit

Two noises you hear a lot in Asia are throat-clearing and spitting - both loud and both very sociably-acceptable. Although as Sarah points out if blowing your nose in public is considered rude in Turkey but not Britain, is it nothing more than historical custom that determines what's rude and what's not? Does this mean we shouldn't have minded being woken at 5am sharp on the Annapurna trek, by the cook in the next room clearing his throat consistently for about a minute whilst preparing to make our breakfast.

Spitting often follows shortly after throat-clearing, although all our guides were smart to the fact that many westerners find both noises pretty surprising.

Until I saw one by our Hotel swimming pool in Kathmandu, I never thought that signs forbiding spitting actually existed. My Dad spent many years in India and I half remember the following, which he often quoted on family holidays when explaining what a limerick sounded like:

There once was a man from [West Ealing],
Who got on a bus for Darjeeling,
It said on the door,
Don't spit on the floor,
So he looked up and spat on the ceiling.