Our hearts were singing as we approached the Norway border, ready for the final stretch to Nordkapp. They were singing not just because we were approaching our goal, but also because we had just spent a few days in unspoilt Lapland. The Lapland area of Finland and Norway was the first real wilderness we had encountered since the desertscape of Wadi Rum in Jordan, which was 3 months, 17 countries and 14,000 kilometres earlier.

Our first view of Nordkapp - on the right

We had been told that Albania is the “Africa of Europe”, meaning that it is wild, third-world and perhaps “Just a little bit dangerous” (one of the tracks on the 3-CD set of music – “Cape to Cape: the Official Soundtrack” – compiled by our Finnish friends Jani and Hanna). Well, in my opinion, that statement is rather unfair on Africa, since nowhere in any of our African travels have we encountered such extreme levels of litter or a capital city with such bad roads as we did in Albania. It is, it seems, a land of plastic bags, potholes, peasants and pimps – although we'll have to take the pimps on hearsay, since we didn't notice any of them, although there were an extraordinary number of Mercedes Benz cars on the roads ...

Contrasts of Albania

Albania sounded like just our sort of country – completely off the beaten track and largely unvisited and unknown.

What do you do for a challenge after having climbed Kilimanjaro (see story "Kili Safari for one")? Well, of course, Kili is only a dormant volcano. There is, I learned from a Dutch tourist at the end of the Kili climb, an active volcano in the Rift Valley only a hundred kilometres away, which can be climbed in a day. He had done it a week before. “What is it like – can you actually see the lava”, I asked him, already hooked.

Pat with our Maasai guide, Ntakawa, and the active volcano in the far background

Latest news: At the beginning of April 2006, the volcano erupted again, forcing thousands of villagers to flee their homes. Fortunately, there was no reported loss of life.

Yes, I know this is an oldie, but we have no interesting news at the moment ...

We were aiming for Vilanculo, gateway to the Bazaruto Archipelago, to do a so-called Dhow Safari through the islands. Dhows are the ancient Arabian-style sailing boats, with their characteristic triangular sails, still very much in use along the eastern coast of Africa to transport people and goods. We enquired with the biggest local operator, who said that the next Dhow Safari would only be leaving in two day's time and would take two days. This would mean another four days at Baobab Beach – an undesirable sacrifice in terms of time and cost. We were therefore very pleased when the barman at Baobab Beach informed us that there was another dhow operator who could offer flexible trips and who would be in the bar later that evening.

The sort of motorised Dhow that we were expecting

Here is a day-by-day list of places we visited and stayed at in Europe:

• Turkey
• Greece
• Macedonia
• Albania
• Montenegro
• Bosnia & Herzegovina
• Croatia
• Slovenia
• Hungary
• Slovakia
• Poland
• Lithuania
• Latvia
• Estonia
• Finland
• Norway

Here is a day-by-day list of places we visited and stayed at in :

• Egypt
• Jordan
• Syria

Here is a day-by-day list of places we visited and stayed at in North Africa:

• Ethiopia
• Sudan

Here is a day-by-day list of places we visited and stayed at in East Africa:

• Tanzania
• Zanzibar
• Rwanda
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Uganda
• Kenya

Here is a day-by-day list of places we visited and stayed at in Southern Africa:

• South Africa
• Lesotho
• Botswana
• Mozambique
• Zambia
• Malawi

Everyone told us such horror-stories about African cities that we were dreading them. Well, having visited them – and driven in them – we were generally pleasantly surprised. Here's a summary of our large city safaris, in the order visited:

Cape Town, South Africa
Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Gaborone, Botswana
Johannesburg, South Africa
Maputo, Mozambique
Beira, Mozambique
Blantyre, Malawi
Lilongwe, Malawi
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Stone Town, Zanzibar
Kigali, Rwanda
Kampala, Uganda
Nairobi, Kenya
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Khartoum, Sudan
Cairo, Egypt
Alexandria, Egypt