Blog – Page 2 – Monty The Land Rover

01Nov 2009 by user No Comments

Day 32 – Egypt

Location: Ismalia House Hotel (Cairo) Miles travelled: 0 miles Weather: 30ºC - Sunny with some puffy clouds Today we mostly listened to: Shuffle on the iPod So Monty was supposed to be ready today. The good news is that they have all the relevant parts now, the bad news is it still isn't ready! Tomorrow we hope - Inshalla. So we returned to Cairo on Friday afternoon, back to the Ismalia House Hotel - it's like we never left! Yesterday we ventured over to the Islamic section of Cairo to wander around the spice market. A pleasant afternoon followed and we even managed to find a couple of antiques shops - one which tried to sell me a postcard for £5 - I offered him 5p before leaving the shop.…

29Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 29 – Egypt

Africa, Blog, Egypt

Location: Ismalia (on the Suez canal) N30.583171,E32.287905 Miles travelled: 80 miles (to Ismalia) Weather: 30ºC - Sunny with some puffy clouds Today we mostly listened to: New Moon and wailing music in taxis We're still waiting for Monty to be fixed, so in the meantime we have decided to head out of Cairo to Ismalia (on the Suez canal). We really like Cairo but the constant beeping noise and pollution does get to you, so a couple of days outside the city were in order. Ric was keen to see the wondrous engineering of Suez (yawn!), so we're in a nice hotel relaxing and topping up the tans. Before leaving Cairo though we decided to take in the 'Light and Sound' show at the Pyramids. It was like being at…

25Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 25 – Eqypt

Africa, Blog, Egypt

Location: Ismalia House Hotel, Cairo, Egypt Miles travelled: 0 miles (still in Cairo) Weather: 30ºC - Hot, dusty and Smoggy Today we mostly listened to: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (still) So we're still stuck in Cairo waiting for Monty to be fixed. Yesterday we visited the Egyptian museum - the mummies were incredible, but it was extremely busy and full of tourists. We could only stay for about 2 hours before the heat got to us and we had to retreat to somewhere cooler! We went for dinner on the Nile in one of the floating restaurants - yum. We've eaten really well since being in Cairo. Today was filled with us visiting the British and Sudanese embassies in order to try and get our visa for Sudan. It…

23Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 23 – Egypt

Africa, Blog, Egypt

Location: Ismalia House Hotel, Cairo, Egypt Miles travelled: 15 miles (around Cairo) Weather: 28ºC - Hot, dusty and Smoggy Today we mostly listened to: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (still) What can you say about Cairo - it's loud, traffic is bad, people are in your face - we LOVE it! We woke up at the Salma motel yesterday and decided to take Monty to the landrover dealership. Our guidebook directed us to the old showroom so we had to get a taxi driver to show us where it was. After much debate about the price (he started at 3000 E£ - the equivalent to £300!!!) we finally agreed on an amount significantly less than that and he took us the 40km or so to the garage. We were greeted…

21Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 21 – Egypt

Blog, Egypt

Location: Camping in the Salma Motel, Cairo, Egypt (N29 58.187 E31 10.535) Miles travelled: 306 miles Weather: 32ºC - Hot, hot, hot Today we mostly listened to: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol We left the Riveria Chalet this morning around 11am after catching up on some washing and filling up Monty from a jerry can we filled in Libya. After initially being excited by the place when we arrived we were soon disappointed by the lack of internet (that was promised when we arrived) and the breakfast of kidney beans (yuk!). We motored on to El Alamein to look at the Commonwealth cemetery there. It took us a while to find it as the sign posts were quite bad, but I was determined not to miss it! We finally arrived…

20Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 20 – Libya

Africa, Blog, Libya

Location: Marsa Matruh, Egypt (N31 21.563 E27 13.410) Miles travelled: 597 miles (over three days) Weather: 30ºC - Hot, hot, hot Today we mostly listened to: Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol We haven't been able to update the blog for a few days because of the lack of internet facilities in Libya, but it's been an eventful few. We left Ajdabiya and headed on the long desert road to Tobruk. The landscape was dry and flat and for long periods of time we didn't see another car on the road. Apart from a short coffee stop courtesy of our camping espresso maker (thanks Ali) we motored through to Tobruk and all was well with Monty. We stopped at the Commonwealth War Cemetery on the outskirts of Tobruk around 4pm with…

17Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 17 – Libya

Africa, Blog, Libya

Location: Ajdabiya (N30 47.303 E20 13.717) Miles travelled: Day 16 = 240 / Day 17 = 310 Weather: 30ºC - Stormy and hot Today we mostly listened to: A variety of "Dad Rock" The last couple of days have been a mixture of some awesome sights and some less awesome landscapes. We visited the arch of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of Tripoli and after a short trip to the supermarket to get some supplies we headed for the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna. It really is a rather awesome place, particularly the Roman theatre where you can get a view of the entire city and beautiful blue sea in the background. There were a few coach loads of tourists there, but not that many (I don't think Libya is…

15Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 15 – Tunisia to Libya

Africa, Blog, Tunisia

Location: Triploi (N32.54446 E13.16070) Miles travelled: 316 miles Weather: 30ºC - Hot sunny and dusty Today we mostly listened to: Kings of Leon We set off early this morning from Sfax, if you're planning to do this trip plan to avoid Sfax, it's an uninviting hole in the desert. Stay in Sousse or DJerba. As we travelled south the landscape turned from Mediterranean to desert quite quickly and before we knew it we were at the Libyan border. Tip: Fuel is a lot cheaper in Libya so don't worry about filling up before you get there. Our border crossing was quite painless, under two hours which is good apparently. On the Tunisian side they did ask "do you have any beer or whiskey" to which we replied confidently "no". We…

14Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day-14 Tunisia

Africa, Blog, Tunisia

Location: Sfax Miles travelled: TBC Weather: 28ºC - Cloudy with sunny spells Today we mostly listened to: Paul Simon (Today), Tunisian music in the front of a recovery vehicle (yesterday) Although Tunis is quite a nice place we woke yesterday glad we were going to get moving. We picked up Monty from the garage at about 3pm, the new clutch had been fitted and we were ready for the road. Then the noise came back, not the same noise but more of a heavy squeaking. Eager to get on and convinced it couldn't be the clutch we pushed on. 37 miles later there was a big bang then a lot of rattling from under the footwell and looking in my mirror and seeing a large piece of metal skipping along…

12Oct 2009 by user No Comments

Day 12 – Hammamet & Tunis (again!)

Africa, Blog, Tunisia

Location: Hammamet (N36.24236 E10.33664) and Tunis Miles travelled: 50 miles Weather: 26ºC - 30ºC - sunny with big storm clouds too Today we mostly listened to: Prince (today), Arcade Fire (yesterday) Useful info: The campsite we stayed at was called Camping/Hotel Samaris (just outside of Hammamet) - hotel.jasmins@gnet.tn So we spent a fine day in Hammamet yesterday walking along the beach and running in to huts everytime a big storm cloud came over. We ate lunch in a nice hotel (blowing the days budget in one go). We must have walked for about 5km in total so feel like we've done our exercise for the week. We went back to the campsite around 5ish and made dinner whilst it was still light. Scrabble and more gin followed. I cant remember…