Bakary Cafe

The latest travel programme from the BBC sees Simon Reeve travelling around the coast of the Indian Ocean.

Ah. Tough job.

In the first two episodes, Simon goes from South Africa to Mozambique, Zanzibar, Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles.

True to form, he teases us with images of paradise and then goes on to uncover stories of human tragedies, ecological disasters and piracy.

So… if you do happen to have a conscience, that’s pretty much sixteen countries you won’t be visiting for a while…

Thanks Simon.

(From Oswell’s)

Elephants are everywhere…

We had a very pleasant day in St Ives.

A tad windy.

The tourist season hasn’t really started yet… so we wandered the streets, popped into delightful shops and had fun on the beach.

And then, over to Tate St Ives for art and cake!

Since 1982. Simon Fujiwara at Tate St Ives.

The free guided tour of the exhibition really helped make sense of what we’re seeing - what is true, what is imagined, what is made up. Is Simon Fujiwara writing or rewriting history?

Really easy to make and extremely tasty.

With a bit of heat.

That was the perfect brunch to kick start our long weekend.

Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain.

April was all about rain.

May?

May is all about rain and more rain.

The sky is continuously grey.

This is like going back to the dark times of winter.

Rainbows are rare treats.

There’s no one quite like Jesus and Mary Chain to capture how I feel right now…

I need this rain to stop.

Taken from the train.

That’s only half of it here.

Spectacular.

There’s this BBC interactive list where you can compare how many countries you’ve been to of the 116 countries the Queen’s visited.

Wow. She wins.

The Queen’s been to 84 countries I haven’t been to!

But only 64 more countries than me and I have been to 20 countries she hasn’t visited.

Not a bad effort, I say, considering our budgets are somewhat different.

Elephants are everywhere…

Whilst writing about the demise of Excess Baggage, I came across The Departure Board’s 7 Wonders Interview.

Going through the questions, I realised that although I always plan my trips meticulously, I always leave space for the unexpected and unplanned.

Yes, I do like to follow the guidebook on my first day somewhere, may be take the recommended walk. But there’s plenty of detours and free-form taking place as well.

As for checking the departure board for places I’d like to go to… well, yeah, of course! You mean some people don’t?

It’s almost part of our airport ritual: where we’ve been, where we’d go back, where we want to go next… and where we don’t want to go.

It can continue to rain all it wants… I have The Departure Board to explore and plenty of interesting reading to do on idontwanttogothere.