Hello everyone,
Hurray. No blood paracytes from Malawi!

Well I survived and had one amazing last stint of traveling in Tanzania before heading home. We got our plane to Dar which by the way was falling to pieces and smelt incredibly bad, I thought the buses were bad but at least they were ventilated! What they failed to tell us about the flight was that it flew from Malawi to Dar but via Niarobi. Now if your a little unclear about the geography it basically levels down to this. Instead of flying two hours East to Dar, we had to fly 3 and a half hours North to Niarobi and then 3 hours south East to Dar after an hour on the runway.

Fun.

But basically we were starting to expect this by now. Oh and we had a 2 hour wait/scrum/maul to get our visas at the airport!

So needless to say we were a little late to Zanzibar so instead of heading down to the coast and getting a boat we took a plane and by plane I mean a VW Beetle with wings! But we survived and had a really chilled out time on the island which is possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world, although is full of tourists of which Americans are in the vast majority. Not saying thats a bad thing, but it ain't good! It did mean that everything was ridiculously expensive and it had lost a little of its African charm, but like I say very chilled and very beautiful so I wasn't complaining!

After which we headed back to old Blighty and were met by the smiling faces...no wait the sour faces of EVERYONE! Turns out we in the west are a miserable bunch. Oh and the joys of airport security hit home nice and hard. I love how theres such scrutiny of people and luggage leaving London but hardly any on the way in. Obviously there is a rule that planes can only be hi-jacked on the way out of a city!

Anyway it was amazing getting back to seeing all my friends and family again, and was even better getting home for the first home game of the season and going back to St.James Park!

But since being back I have been getting a little bored. Not really interested in TV after getting by so easily without it. However I did start watching Ewan McGregor and Charlie Booreman's the Long way down, as A) I really liked the long way round and B) just in case you happen to see a 6ft ginger guy walking around in the background of their filming!
I did find it funny with all the training they go through to avoid danger in Africa, when basically that sort of thing so very unlikely to happen and completely unavoidable if it does!

It did get me right in the mood for another road trip though. As I basically have come to the conclusion that if you are going to travel and we're no talking about holidays (vacation) here then the road trip is the only way to go. Buses are boring and planes are too. But we had so much fun on the rally I began thinking about another trip. I even began asking my friends what sort of vehicle would be best (the consensus was a big bus by the way)

But as if by fate, an email arrives from my good old american travelers about something new (we sort of new) A road trip.

Perfect timing, my feet were just getting itchy

P.S. Interesting to note the rally people won entrepreneur of the year by msn. Oh and Jack Osbourne has been everywhere ruining the rally, but at least we can say we all did it when it was still cool.