Two ways to drive across Africa

My two months of travel in Ethiopia was an epic trip, but it was nothing next to the African voyages of some people I know.

Previously on this blog I've mentioned my friend Thomas Tomczyk, who is motorcycling across Africa. He started in South Africa late last year and is now. . .I'm not sure where. When I was in Ethiopia he emailed me from Kenya, but he's since dropped off the map. I'm sure he's all right, though. He's like me, with a talent for getting into dodgy situations and then getting out of them.

Thomas' website, Africa Heartbeat, contains his stories and pictures of various NGOs and charitable projects he's covered along the way. His latest article is about Tunaweza ("Yes we can") a group of handicapped musicians in Tanzania who are pulling down barriers not only for handicapped people, but between religions--the members are both Muslim and Christian.

Hopefully he'll get in touch soon because I'd like to hook up with him later this year when he passes through the Sahara. Nothing like a reunion with an old friend in a scorching desert in summertime.

When Almudena and I were relaxing with a drink in a hotel garden in Gondar, Ethiopia, we met a South African couple who are driving around the coast of Africa. Steve Lorimer and Roxy Harvey converted a British Army truck into a cushy living space and set out to circumnavigate Africa from Morocco down the west coast to South Africa and then up the east coast, around the north and back to Morocco. Their website OverAfrica recounts this 25,000 km journey. They've had some tough spots, with breakdowns both mechanical and physical, but their journey has been mostly positive. I was especially interested in their account of The Gambia, where I plan to go next, and Namibia, which is also high on my list. Their site also gives lots of advice for doing your own road trip across Africa.

All this is making me want to hit the road again. . .

Painless travel with a four year-old

I just traveled from Madrid to Oxford with my wife and four-year-old son. This involved a twenty-minute taxi ride, two hours waiting at the airport (where I photographed a cop playing solitaire), a two-hour flight, an hour bus ride and another short taxi ride.

Doing this with a four-year-old? Piece of cake.

My son loves travel. Perhaps it's genetic, but more likely it's because he's enchanted with cars, planes, boats, buses, basically anything with a motor. Plus we make sure of three things when we're traveling:

1. He has enough to eat. A hungry kid is a grumpy kid.

2. He's comfortable. Not too hot, not too cold, and that he gets enough sleep.

3. He's entertained. We always bring coloring materials and some books, as well as a surprise. Usually it's a big glossy magazine about trains or cars. This time around it was a scuba diving magazine. We've been watching Jacques Cousteau together and I've promised him that we'll do scuba lessons for his 16th birthday. Flipping through pictures of sharks and coral reefs burned up more than an hour of flight time.

If you follow these three simple steps you can be pretty sure your kid will have an enjoyable travel experience and you won't want to kill them before landing. My son has traveled a fair amount and we've had no major blowups. Of course, we didn't take him on our road trip in Ethiopia. We'll have to wait until he's at least six for that.

My first week on Twitter: a travel writer's perspective

I finally broke down and got a Twitter account (@WriterSean). I've been slow to get into the whole technology thing, despite being a cybercommuting writer. I didn't get my first mobile phone until two years ago, and then it was a slippery slope of personal blogging, getting a job at the world's largest travel blog, getting an account on Facebook, and now this!

I've been on Twitter exactly a week. I've done 52 tweets, am following 113 people, have 95 followers, and have been listed ten times. I have no idea of the significance of all this and I don't really care.

I got onto Twitter for two reasons: to give my novel's fanpage a higher profile in preparation for the contest it's a finalist in, and to network with other writers. As far as the first reason goes, I've only gotten one more fan from my first week on Twitter--a Missouri history writer I'm glad to meet. Of course it takes time to build a following, so I'll have to wait and see how well Twitter can be used as a promotional tool. There's a fine line between self-promotion and spamming; I have to tread carefully.

The second reason, networking, has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I've met tons of interesting writers. Most of them are travel writers and bloggers who found me because of my links with Gadling. Their advice and retweets have given me leads to three different stories already!

So all in all I think Twitter is worth the time if you have a specific reason for using it. If you just want to blab with friends and strangers there are better outlets for that. My wife, for example, is an astronomer. She doesn't need to network through Twitter because the astronomy community is small enough that everyone pretty much knows everyone else and they have their own networking communities. She talks to distant friends on Facebook, her chosen timewaster, so she doesn't need to add Twitter. For writers, however, Twitter is fast becoming indispensable.

This Week's Madrid Travel Tips

My latest travel tips to Madrid are up on PlanetEye. This week I write about a multicultural fair in Plaza Lavapiés, a very cool Egyptian cafe, and the Titanic exhibition. Drop on by and check it out!

This Week's Madrid Travel Tips

My latest travel tips are up on PlanetEye. This week I talk about my favorite sandwich shop in barrio Malasaña, a cool museum that was once an artist's house, and the shrunken heads at the Museo Nacional de Antropología.

Today I finished my last deadline for the year, so you'll be seeing more posts from me for the next couple of months until crunch time starts again!

This Week's Madrid Travel Tips

Check out my page on PlanetEye for my latest travel tips. This week I give you a tour of some of the strange shops of Madrid (in case you need to look like a bullfighter or Dracula this holiday season) and I review an intimate café and a smoky rock bar.

This Week's Madrid Travel Tips

Yes, my postings on this blog have been a bit thin lately, but that's because I've been buried in work, not to mention being a single dad while Almudena works in Oxford and Bonn. I did post on Planeteye this week (it's a job, after all). You can check out my reviews of a great Indian restaurant and a literary café, and a recommended reading list about the Spanish Civil War here.

This Week's Madrid Travel Tips

I've posted this week's travel tips on PlanetEye. It's a month since I got this job and it's been a lot of fun. It gives me a great excuse to go out at night. "Research" has become a euphemism among my friends for "going out and having a good time." I need more jobs like this.

This week I cover two art exhibits, one on Star Wars and another on the art treasures of the Catalan monastery of Montserrat. I also review a pretty good restaurant in the heart of downtown. You can see my latest postings here.

Madrid travel Tips

This week on PlanetEye I'm talking about my favorite café in Madrid and my first experience with Senegalese food. Our editor also wanted us to review the dining options in our local airport, so if you want to know where and where not to eat in Madrid's Barajas International Airport, or the airports in any of the dozens of other cities we cover, check us out. I can't guarantee fine dining while waiting for your plane, but I can help you find a decent meal.

Madrid Travel Tips

This week's postings are up on the Madrid section of PlanetEye. I talk about an upcoming film festival, my favorite plaza, and my first experience with Guinean food. If there's anything you'd like to see me blog about on PlanetEye, drop me a line or leave a comment here.

Travel Advice About Madrid

Hello everyone. Sorry for not posting last week, but Almudena was away and so I was doing the single dad thing, plus I got slammed with work. Something had to give, and it was my blogging. I promise to be better this week.

One reason I was so silent is I've taken a paid blogging position with the travel blog PlanetEye. You can see my first week of posts here. They include a review of an excellent art exhibit, info on four Jazz festivals this month, an article on the Obama election party, and some more about little old me.

Travel Tip #2: Slow Down!

I was in the British Museum in London the other day, enjoying its fantastic collection of artifacts from all over the world, when I was yet again struck by how quickly most people rush through the main attractions of their trip. I was on the ground floor looking at some immense stone bas-reliefs from the Assyrian palaces, and people were shooting past like meteors. The scenes are amazingly detailed and well crafted, and although I've looked at them on dozens of visits I always find something new. This time I noticed that in one scene of a cavalry battle, there's a vulture flying overhead with some human entrails in its mouth.

Isn't it a shame that all the people flying past failed to notice this? It's not every day you get to see a vulture eating human entrails, and all those people missed their chance.

When I was in the huge Temple of Karnak in Egypt it was even worse. I got there at dawn in order to avoid the crowds, and for a couple of hours I had the place almost to myself. Even the vendors selling postcards and fake antiquities were still asleep. Soon enough, though, the air-conditions tour buses started pulling up, and the place was inundated with sun burnt Americans and Europeans. I sat down in the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of Amun-Re, a huge room nearly filled with massive pillars adorned with hieroglyphs. I'd sit admiring some of the pillars, then moved to see others. It was entrancing, and I ended up spending the entire afternoon in that one vast room, watching the shadows move, revealing new hieroglyphs and veiling others. It was the most memorable day of a memorable trip, and not one of those tour groups spent more than five minutes in the Hypostyle Hall. In their rush to see so much, they saw so little.

So when you're on a trip, slow down. It's better to see a few things well then a lot of things poorly. When you're on the road of life, always make sure you take time out to examine the entrails.

Travel Tip #1: Get out of the Capital!

I've been to something like 25 countries, and one thing I've noticed about all of them is that people are much nicer once you get out of the capital. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps the stress of big-city life or the natural arrogance of being from the country's most important city, but people in a capital city are much more likely to be rude, in a hurry, and completely uninterested in meeting foreign visitors. It's a shame so many tourists never venture beyond London or Paris or Cairo. Even Lonely Planet-toting "travelers" are often guilty of this, especially in developing countries where the capitals offer more of the technology and comforts rich visitors are used to.

Nowhere is the capital-countryside divide as pronounced as it is in England. London is a wonderful city, but it's rude, rushed, and often violent. But just an hour's drive away is Oxford, my favorite small city. Not only do you get the dreaming spires of the world's greatest university, but you get people who are much more friendly and relaxed. People even walk slower. So my advice to travelers is. . .get out of the capital!