On This Day

I honestly didn't wanna keep doing these On This Day posts so often, but today's was too good to pass up, sorry....

On This Day in 2009: Just wanted to get a pastry this afternoon in Nouakchott, but instead got tear gassed and chased by riot police during an Allah Akhbar/Death to Israel protest.

On This Day in 2010: FYI, Congo is a super expensive shithole. But on the bright side I'm only 20km from a volcano that erupted yesterday and 50km from the frontline with the Interahamwe (aka the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide)!

(Also) On This Day in 2010: OK, so one grilled fish dinner (and two pints of local beer) later, and I realise I may have been a little harsh on the place. It's definitely no Rwanda, but I suppose that this little lakeside sliver of the Congo isn't that bad - at least not from the inside of the heavily-guarded compound that I'm in.

On This Day in 2011: Harari coffee makes good Italian espresso taste like shitty Nescafe™ - needless to say I'll be bringing some home.... [NB: Hindsight this might have been slight hyperbole]

On This Day in 2014: Went to pick up my rental car this morning and got a free upgrade to a brand new Mazda 6 - promptly put 700km on it to show my appreciation......

On This Day in 2020: We're not going to lie, Cairo is an unfathomably chaotic shithole of a filthy 3rd world city with 20 million inhabitants, most of whom seem to be clinically insane, scurrying around like it's the end of times. But for some reason we've loved every second of being here, and it's been the perfect place to start 2020. Does the fact that we've been using Egyptian vodka in lieu of water to make our morning instant coffee(s) take anything away from this positive assessment? Of course not. Why would it?

When you just wanna get a pastry, but one of the flash points of a major protest is just outside the bakery and someone throws a bottle at riot police, who then charge at you, and you just get into the bakery, where the owner locks the door and then yells at everyone he saved while the police mill about outside….

This is Goma's volcano warning system, or at least it was in 2010. Boards all over the city with flags flying to let people know approximately how fucked they are.....

A lovely boulevard leading down to the pristine waters of Lake Kivu, lined with villas built by totally honest businessmen and incorruptible politicians in Kinshasa - one of whom (I recall it actually being a minister of something or other) had me kicked out of my hotel with no warning at 7.30am the next morning, because he had rented the entire complex.....

Visiting this coffee roastery was the highlight of my time in Harar (or a close second after watching a guy feed hyenas raw meat from his mouth). The gentleman relaxing on the floor while the lady does the heavy lifting has a mouthful of qat, so he's pretty much going to be useless the rest of the day, and by the look on his face he knows that I'm judging him because of it....

The coffee was €3/kg, and I debated getting 20kg and buying a checked bag, but in the end decided not to - and still regret it to this day. I did however leave quite a bit of stuff behind to make room for 2kg in my carry on....

Getting an free rental upgrade is always a nice bonus, especially when you put 700km on it the first day driving a giant loop around northern Oman....

The 700km day trip was just a warm up for the next day's drive, which was almost exactly 1000km one-way from Muscat to Salalah - solely for the purpose of procuring a large quantity of the world's most prized frankincense. I wasn't going to repeat the same mistake I made in Harar four years previously....

One travel hack for dealing with the chaos of Cairo is using vodka for your morning instant coffees rather than water, as the granules will immediately dissolve, saving you an average of 10-15 seconds of stirring per cup!