Spain - Madrid, Toledo, Granada & Seville

It has now been a few weeks since our last post and since then we have been back to the UK for an overnight stay and have been travelling around spain. I also forgot to mention in the previous post that on the way back from uganda, we stopped in on dubai again for a 2 day stay and managed to catch up with one of jays mates from uni, chris. He works at one of the very plush hotels in dubai and is the transport manager for them. 2 other girls that also went to uni with jay also work there. Chris also had the day off when we were there and we manged in 1 day to visit 5 of the 7 emirates. There isn´t much past dubai except sand and mountains, but we did drop in on a new hotel in fujerah (sp??) which is about 2 hours from dubai. As you can imagine temperates soared to around 47 degrees.....boiling hot!

We also had dinner with chris and his gf, gloria, at a very classy joint call JamBase which is a supper club in dubai. All very funky and they had jazz music playing all night and dim lighting etc....great night and fantastic food! It was located in the Madinat Jumeriah which is part of the complex where chris and gloria works, so we had the added bonus of getting 50% off the entire night!


So, onto spain......


As usual on the trip there we had a delay... this was because there was foggy weather in London on the morning of the day that we left... didnt seem like it from where we were staying, so we had a lovely time sitting in gatwick airport for about 2.5 hours with everyone else whose flights were delayed.


We finally got to madrid airport at 1:30am.. and the attempts to get a reasonably priced taxi started. We had issues with about 3 drivers in the arrivals lounge about the fare to the Hotel ibis madrid airport. we could see the building from the airport but had no clue as to the roads that we needed to use to get there, but were not going to pay 20 euros for the 1-1.5km journey. we finally were able to bargain with a taxi driver from the departures lounge with the help of a spanish speaking guy that also knew english and was able to translate for us, so that we only had to pay 10 euro´s. so by the time we got to the hotel, checked in a very tired nay and jay had a quick 4 hour kip then went to pick up the busabout tour from a hostel in the city. this was a 20 euro taxi drive that also has a story.. but for another time!.


we got dropped of about 100 metres from the hostel as the roads are funny and dont always allow traffic on them. we walked this 100 metres that contained 4 less savoury stores and about 20 of the less savoury workers on the sides of the road. so far we have had a great intro to spain!!


The busabout tours started with a drive to toledo, about 2 hours from Madrid. It's a beautiful little city that is famous for its steel swords and marzipan. As it was a rather early morning we had brekkie here and gave us hot chips, eggs and sausages.....how healthy....there is also a really large cathedral here (like most european cities). As the cathedral took such a long time to build, it actaully has different types of architecture, so some of it looks gothic, while the rest has lots of sandstone, but you can really tell the difference.

Next, it was onto Granada, which is a university city, which of course means cheap drinks, but what we didn't realise until we got there, this also meant a full plate of tapas with every drink, therefore, not really any need for dinner! This was one of our favourities, so beautiful and relaxed. We also saw a flamenco show with the tour group which was awesome, the not so awesome bit was the start time of 11.30pm after being up so early.

We spent 2 nights in Granada and on the 2nd day of the tour we visited the Alahmbra, which is a huge kingdom, castle thingy....hard to explain, but it has a massive mosque. It took us 3 hours to see the entire place if this gives you an idea of the size. Lots of history of course and photos will show what we mean about the size.

The busabout tour was great, pretty much everyone was australian, and like us, young and out travelling the world. The dynamic was of course very relaxed and was lots of fun....would definately do a busabout loop/tour again. They are slightly different to contiki as they don't run entire tours, just basically provide the bus and guide and the rest you do yourself.

After Granada, we were onto seville. The further we went down, the hotter it got. Jay and I had the pleasure of being on the top floor of hotel we were in, so thats like 10 sets of stairs and no lift, so glad we travelled light. We managed to visit the bull ring in seville and they were so proud to tell us that only 1 person has died in their ring.

Of course, there is another massive cathedral in seville. This one is quite amazing as it used to be a mosque and has been converted to a cathedral. We did a walking tour in seville which was fantastic. That night the entire group went for a drink on a hotel rooftop which looks back to the cathedral. As it was a public holiday the following day, all the bells of the cathedral were ringing that night and what a sound that was!!!!!

After seville it was back to madrid.....a huge bustling city, with lots of great gardens and art gallleries......more to follow soon - valencia and barcelona...

Uganda - Part 2

well here goes for part 2 of uganda.

I don´t think we mentioned the babys home in part 1. We visited the babys home a few times in our stay in uganda. It is called watoto, bulrushes babies home and has only been open since january 2007. Already, it has 37 children in this home. Most the children have been left at the hospital or dumped in the city. There was one child who had been dumped in a cemetry and he was only a week old and had HIV. While jay and I were there on our last day, 2 girls were dropped off as there mothers had just been sent to jail. The children are so well looked after and range from 1 day old to about 3 years old. They kids are happy for you to play with them for as long as you can. Jay and i became quite attached to a set of twins, their names were zac and zoe. They were beautiful and cried everytime we put them down which was a little bit heartbreaking. Unfortunately you cannot adopt children from uganda unless you have lived there for 3 years, otherwise I think jay and I would be on our way home with them already! Jay also had the pleasure of being spewed on while we were at the babies home as he was feeding the kids too quickly! He really like the smell of the spew and was worried he was going to as well in sympathy, so we went and bought a new t-shirt for him (he still needs a little practice)!

On the last few days in Uganda when we were still in gulu, our host, Apollo came down with a dose of malaria. He was very ill and couldn´t even travel back in the car with us as the aches and pains were too much. He was admitted to hospital when he finally got back and we went and visited him the following day. Lets just say that i would never want to get sick in uganda ever. He was in an éxpensive´ clinic but it was very basic to say the least. No food is provided and it is up to your family to come and take care of you. Basically they only provide a drip and a very basic bed. No fly screens on the windows or mosquito nets over the bed and therefore you could get malaria again even though you are being treated for it. We saw apollo 2 days later and he was still in the same clothes as no hospital clothes are given out either.

I think thats it for now......spain here we come!!!!!

Uganda

We are now back from Uganda and the last few weeks have absolutely flown! I think we managed to squeeze an awful lot into a few weeks and were completely blown away by everything in Uganda.

The first few days in Uganda were a bit scary, as all the security guards and lots of people on the streets carry massive rifles. We even had a security guard with a rifle patroling our guest house each night. I was a little freaked out by this for the first few nights as i was thinking what if i scard the security guard or something, would he shoot at me?!

Anyways, our first task for Uganda was to build a house. It was hard work as each brick weighed about 5kg. We were very sore after the first day and our backs were certainly feeling it, but Rob, who was the building in the team, gave some great tips on how to stretch it all out! The house took about 5 days to build. The only thing that we didn´t complete was the roof, as contractors come in and complete this later. The house was complete with door frames and windows!

We have the privilege of visiting my mums sponsor child, Donas in the south of Uganda in a place called Mbaraba, which is about 4.5 hours from the capital city of kampala. On the day of the vist, we were picked up incredibly early by our driver who then drove us to the south. We were met at a hotel by Donas, her sister, Doreen and Christina who works for the project which Donas is connected to. It was a long drive on dirt roads to Donas´house and no one told us that she lived at the top of a mountain which we had to climb! We met Donas´ mum and she explained the situation of the family which is very sad, as the father died of maleria and the eldest son, who they were relying on to bring in an income for the family, died in an accident a few years ago and now the mother needs to support 9 children. The only child of the family that goes to school all the time is Donas, as the other children only go when the mother can afford it. The family also have only a small home and no mosquito nets. We realised that if Donas was not sponsored this family would have nothing. I encourage all of you to sponsor children as its not until you see the situations that these familys are in, that you can see the difference. When you sponsor a child, you are not only supporting the child, but the entire family. The family was incredibly generous and made gifts for us and nays entire family, plus they gave us a pineapple and paw paw to thank us for coming all the way to see them. By this time, jay and I had streams of tears and all through our video all you can hear are our sniffles! In Uganda, whenever you visit somewhere, they use the phrase ´you are welcome here´, Donas´mum kept saying this to us and hugging us, all very overwhelming.....plus Donas wouldn´t let go of my hand!!!

After our return to Kampala, the next day we were heading to Gulu, which is in the northern Uganda, about 20km from the sudan border. Previously, it has been incredibly dangerous in gulu due to the LRA (Lords resistance army) controlling this area and kidnapping children and turning bascially into killing machines that would go and terrorise their families and villages. Peace talks are now happening and the leader of the LRA has now fled with his family to Sudan. I had seen a documentry on the gulu area and was a little scared about going up their, especially seeing ´smart traveller website´says DO NOT TRAVEL TO NORTHERN UGANDA!!!! I was reassured several times by our host that it was ´very very safe naomi´.

Kampala Pentecostasl Church has now opened up a KPC - Gulu church which we attended the opening service. It was full of energy and hope for the changes which are now starting to happen in Gulu. Watoto hopes to start building another village in gulu in january next year.

In gulu there are IDP camps which stands for internally displaced people camps. These are full of people who have fled their homes in the country to seek safety near the city. There are about 15,000 people in each camp and there are 50 camps which equals of lot of displaced people. We stopped at one of these camps and were completely surrounded by the children within seconds. You could tell that some were sick as they were dripping with sweat and just didn´t look healthy and clean. A lot of the homes in these camps are child run homes, as their parents have either died or abandoned them, so watoto hopes to place some of these children in watoto homes when the village is built.

So much more to tell, however time is running out, stay tuned for Uganda part 2!!