• Ode to the fly

    When you visit Australia you can expect many interesting things, surprisingly gorgeous nature and animals of all sorts. Unfortunately amongst these animals bugs are inevitable, flies to be specific. In fact, there are over 30,000 different kinds of flies in Australia, all of them equally annoying. They are everywhere and come with their whole family. These uninvited buzzers can really ruin your nice camping trip or social picnic. They absolutely love the face, looking deep into your eyes, romantically blow your ear and lick your lips like a lollipop. The one arm salute is a well known fly repellent, but only helps for a second. Supermarkets offer a wide range of fly sprays, sticky traps and charming headnets. The last one might be the only thing that actually works, but of course nobody wears them for the obvious reasons. These…

  • Passport gate

    After we applied for a visa at the Mozambican embassy in Brussels four weeks ago, our passports were returned by registered mail. The package turned out to arrive in the Netherlands, however, addressed to a wrong (non-existent) house number and therefore: return to sender. We had already planned to drive to Brussels last Tuesday, but unfortunately, something went wrong at the distribution center in Brussels so the package was sent back to the non-existing address in the Netherlands. Again. Drama, I say. Error, says the Belgian B-post, who cannot do anything because the package is back in the Netherlands. Calling with B-post and calling with our Dutch PostNL, but no matter how friendly they are, there seems to be no one who can free the package from his infinite drama. It should be easy to solve, but no, our worst…

  • Missing in action: two passports

    It all seemed so easy… just apply for a visa for Mozambique. You can not apply for this visa at the border for a year now, but you must first request a visa at the consulate. We could have done this at the Mozambican consulate in South Africa, but that means that we have to stay in one place for one week and in addition we wouldn’t have our passports temporarily. Neh, too much hassle, as long as we can arrange this kind of business in advance, we’ll do. We checked a few months ago on the embassy website how it all works and also checked the prices, 50 euros per person for a multiple entry visa. A lot of money, but we have included this in our budget, so it has to be. The visa is valid for three…

  • Rescheduled flight hustle

    We booked a flight with Qatar Airways from Amsterdam to Capetown with a layover of four hours in Doha. Nice price, very ok airline, not too much time in between. We are happy. Then suddenly we got a disturbing e-mail from the airline: your flight has changed. This is never good news. Our first flight to Doha has been pushed back for a couple of hours for some vague reason, so now we have a layover of minus 3 hours. Perhaps we are missing something here in terms of local time? We call Qatar Airways, a friendly gentleman with a Middle Eastern accent explains our options but we cannot understand a word he’s saying. Finally we can make something out of his blabla… we have two options, we can move our second flight, which goes from Doha to Cape Town,…