Swahili for the Broken-hearted


Book Description

Question: What do you do when you're dumped by the Girl Next Door? Answer: Throw yourself into another madcap adventure and travel from Cape Town to Cairo... A week after breaking up with the GND (his travelling companion through Central America) Peter Moore heads off to Africa to lose himself for a while. In the grand tradition of 19th-century scoundrelas, explorers and romantics, Africa strikes him as the ideal place to find solitude and anonymity in the face of a personal crisis. What follows is Peter's journey from one end of the Dark Continent to the other. Travelling the fabled Cape Town to Cairo route by any means of transport he can blag (or if he must, pay) his way onto, it's an epic trek that sees our intrepid Antipodean experience everything from the southernmost city in Africa to the Pyramids, vast game parks and thundering falls, cosmopolitan cities and tiny villages as he journeys through the very heart of Africa. And travelling on his own, it's inevitable that Peter falls in with a motley cast of characters and has a myriad misadventures: including coming face to face with a wild Hyena with very bad breath, crossing the treacherous Sani Pass, the highest in Africa, narrowly escaping a riot by hiding in a coffin shop, saving oil-covered Penguins in South Africa, acting as an extra in a WW2 epic, not to mention dodging 20,000 single woman trying to catch the eye of the king of Swaziland during the annual Reed Dance. And then there was the time when he was kicked out of Robert Mugabe's birthday bash at gunpoint...







The Impact of Tourism in East Africa


Book Description

This book explores the relationship between imperial formations and individual encounters at African tourist sites – spaces of leisure, healing and work. It examines how encounters between tourists and hosts tend to be constructed along colonial thought lines and considers how players in the hospitality industry do not interact as coeval participants, but are racialised, scripted and positioned according to colonially-established order. The authors focus on the language of these encounters, not only speech, performance and response, but also silence, resonance, emptiness, noise – objectified, materialised, evasive and confusing. Through its exploration of language in these encounters, the volume shows that ruination is the one feature that is omnipresent in the multiple and diverse tourist settings of the postcolonial world. This book is open access under a CC BY ND licence.




The Full Montezuma


Book Description

Peter Moore’s wicked sense of humour and eye for the bizarre add to the pleasure of this cautionary tale for anyone planning to cross a continent with their significant other. From Mexico to Jamaica, Honduras to ancient Mayan sites and golden beaches, follow the highs and lows of one couple’s journey.




Dark Continent my Black Arse


Book Description

In 2003 Sihle Khumalo decided to give up a lucrative job and a comfortable life style in Durban and to celebrate his 30th birthday by crossing the continent from south to north. Celebrating life with gusto and in inimitable style, he describes a journey fraught with discomfort, mishap, ecstasy, disillusionment, discovery and astonishing human encounters. A journey that would be acceptable madness in a white man is regarded by the author’s fellow Africans as an extraordinary and inexplicable expenditure of time and money. Newly conscious of language barriers and regional difference in a continent still unexplored by the majority of Africans, the author presents a strikingly original and highly enjoyable account of a unique adventure. Each chapter is prefaced by a description of the ‘father of the nation’ of the country in question and ends with a hilarious ‘important tip’.




Do Not Take this Road to El-Karama


Book Description

Tired of tragic stories, Chris Harvie sets out to see the positive side of the ‘Dark Continent’ and to enjoy its life and laughter. Do Not Take This Road to El-Karama is the entertaining account of an epic road trip that takes him from his home outside the Kruger National Park to the banks of the Nile in Uganda – and back again. In his haphazard and somewhat eccentric travels, Harvie encounters missionaries and mechanics, locals and ex-pats, rascals and rogues. Delving into his own mixed British and South African identity, he tries to fathom – in his trademark witty and sardonic style – the post-independence national character of the southern, central, and east African countries through which he and his companions pass. Delightfully opinionated, brimming with interesting facts, questionable comment and dubious speculations, this book is essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in Africa, travel, history and people; in a good read; or simply in being alive.




Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik


Book Description

Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik is a spirited African adventure of a solo woman traveler whose overland excursion across the continent includes challenges, inevitable mishaps, and more than a few debacles. Author and world traveler Marie Javins is an unflappable narrator, who takes even the most bizarre and patience-trying situations with a dose of good humor. Javins fell in love with Africa when she traversed the continent in 2001 as part of a larger world tour. She later returned to spend half of 2005 revisiting the people and places that had so impacted her on her first trip. Javins was struck not by the desperation of Africa, but by its hope — the dignity of its people, the vibrancy of its cities, and the inherent adventure that is inherent it offered. Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik is a funny and compassionate account of the sort of lively and heedless undertaking that could only happen in Africa. Javins's brushes with wildlife are punctuated with more serious dilemmas. Through it all, Javins's experience of Africa is life-altering, and her witty observations make for the best kind of travel literature which takes its readers into the heart and soul of the continent.




The Wrong Way Home


Book Description

This hip, hilarious travelogue, which takes the author on the Sixties hippie trail — from the UK to Australia without flying — will strike a chord with all those travelers who have stood where Moore stood, and entertain and alarm lovers of off-the-beaten-track travel adventures with his characteristically quirky descriptions of places and people.




Transfrontier Conservation in Africa


Book Description

Transfrontier conservation is a global concept, which encompasses the protection of biodiversity spanning the borders of two or more countries in ways that support local economic development, international relations and peace. Nowhere is this more relevant but highly debatable than in Africa, which is home to a third of the world's terrestrial biodiversity, while at the same time hosting its poorest nations. This is one of the first books to account for the emergence of transfrontier conservation in Africa against international experiences in bioregional planning. The roles of the state and local populations are analyzed, as well as the ecological, socio-economic and political implications.




The Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World


Book Description

Whether you're heading off on a gap year or taking a sabbatical, the new full-colour The Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World will be indispensable when planning your trip. From the big things (entry requirements, round-the-world tickets) to the very smallest (how many pairs of socks you'll need), this guide has you covered. Beyond the inspirational section on how to enrich your trip, it includes maps, regional profiles, an FAQ section, a directory and plenty of practical, budget-conscious tips. The Rough Guide to First-Time Around the World also contains a well-researched selection of the best the internet has to offer independent travellers, from using your phone abroad to the best services available through the new sharing economy, plus information on staying safe on the road and how to pick volunteer programmes wisely. Planning your first trip around the world can be daunting for even veteran travellers, but the Rough Guides author leads you through the process with experience, insight and humour, showing you how to create your own journey - not just how to tick off everything you're "supposed" to see.