The Final leaving Party, Honestly

Well after one more final leaving party, any excuse for a contractor for a party, I slept like shit again and awoke at 4.10 feeling like death but with a heart full of joy at it being my last ever day in Equatorial stinking rotten Guinea, I have grown to dislike the place a lot, not for the place but how it has made me suffer with lack of sleep for the 8 month long trips I have been here. I was waiting outside my accommodation waiting for the bus and saw the Air France plane land and felt my heart lift even higher as my replacement was flying in on that very plane. Today was a day of sorting out how much money I would get paid for being in Peru and what hotel I would be staying in and anything else they would like to tell me before I fly in a weeks time. They seem to be very cagey with the information, god knows why, perhaps they are all so busy that I am not that important but it feels very important to me. All they keep banging on about is the necessity to get all my vaccinations and blood tests completed. Who cares, I want to know where I am going to sleep the night I fly in and how much I can spend on food that night while I have a choice and not have to accept the strange food being served by a guy in a string vest with a cigarette in his mouth, which is what it’ll be like in the jungle camp “Malvinas”, the name has a strange link for the Brits around the world as it is the name given by the Argentinians for the Falkland Islands. So that could be a bad start. But I think my hopeless attempts at Spanish should break the ice and start some laughter, that is good for me and could be great for the site. There is virually nobody on site from the contractors now and it sems a totally different place to when I arrived 13 months ago, a bustling hive of activity with more men than you could shake a stick at. I have many e-mail addresses and many fond memories of the place. I was told of a job in Kuwait that a guy went for as rotating equipment engineer , resident married status and they are paying $148,000 a year tax free with house and all benefits of medical and dental and school if needed, he got the job and his wife refused to go as it was very hot and too close to Iraq, I can imagine how he felt but jeez the money is great, sounds like I am going in the wrong direction for that money. So I am going to pack for the last time in 2 hours time, take a few beers and get aboard my plane and leave without a tear in my eye and a happy thought of getting home to my wife and kids for a new chapter in my adventures of The Travelling Engineer.

Nocturnal Activities

Nocturnal activities in Africa come in many different guises, having had to work night shifts regularly here I see quite a lot of what is going on around this neck of the woods. There is a huge rat problem on site with many rodents skittering around the place, I was walking around one of the turbines and saw one run up a 6 foot tall piece of 2 inch steel conduit and I didn’t think that was possible. It make you realise why they are so successful, there is a training centre on site and one night I caught a glimpse of maybe 20 or 30 rats that seemed to be playing tag on the veranda, just running around and skipping over each other, heaven only knows what the game was but it made me realize that there must be far more going on than what you see during the day. I have several rather large and beautiful lizards that bask in the heat of the compressors during the night and that did surprise me as I nearly stood on one and it frightened the hell out of me as it leapt into the air off a step to avoid me. I will put a picture of that one on the Blog. They are called rainbow lizards as they are so beautifully coloured all blues and yellows and a few dots of others. Around the accommodation we have a barn owl that I have seen many times probably looking for rats. One very interesting creature we have in abundance is the fruit bats, when some of the trees come into fruit maybe twice or three times a year the bats will swarm onto them. Being a nocturnal creature myself not being able to sleep in this environment and also working night shifts I was walking down to the gym this morning at 3.30 after waking at 3 and decided to do something useful I heard the bats fighting or maybe playing and they were so noisy and when I got near the tree I could see the road totally awash with the detritus from their feeding all over the road. There was just tons of leaf litter and a mountain of what can only be described as watery crap. When I was looking up into the tree the bats are huge compared to anything I have seen even in Costa Rica, they have a wind span of maybe 14-18 inches and are light brown in colour. I just am in awe at the amazing sight of them. There could have been up to 30-40 bats circling and landing and taking off a wonderful sight to behold. We have lots of geckos running around the trailers we are working out of and they several different species I think being different colours and some other small lizards with a mass of yellow dots on the heads, looks like a child’s paint game gone crazy. The insects here are plenty but the moths are just huge and fly crazily around the plant confused by high output halogen lamps. The other strange creature on site is the security guards, they seem to have a habit of peeping into trailers trying to see what is inside to steal I believe, what a bunch of utterly useless wasters to have on site, they sleep in the vehicles, and they seem to treat them like they are cruising the strip, hardly doing anything worthwhile and always on the lookout to take a car radio if is available. They also look very dangerous just like a bunch of private army guys who would love the opportunity to kill and eat anyone who got in their way. Finally the strangest of all is me, staggering around like a drunken sailor, desperately trying to keep awake and concentrate on the job in hand. But if all goes well then this could all change when peru changes my life and probably my Blog in a big way, it will be all wildlife and jungle training.

The Celebration Party All Alone

I am still feeling elated by my impending departure to what I think is going to be a wonderful and relaxing destination. I have only been on day shift for 5 days and I am still not sleeping properly yet, I have tried my valium but had only limited effect I did get a good sleep Friday night but after a lot of beer, which was my first in nearly 3 weeks, so I thought last night I would try it again. Friday was a reasonable night out with a good 15 people in the clubhouse so I was hoping to get one last good night in the clubhouse and when I got in there was 6 people and that drifted down to 4, but you would think that I would have a steady night in the bar, unfortunately it turned out that they were all far faster than me and I fancied drinking gin and Tonic, this was a mistake. I ended up drinking it like lemonade and by the time we were all leaving for an early night I was almost legless. I even had to leave a full glass almost. I staggered back to my room and slumped into bed with the last thought in my mind, “ I am going to get a good nights sleep”, this of course was a fantasy. I was wide awake at 4am feeling like shit with a horrendous taste in my mouth and a huge knot in my stomach, my head was Ok but my body felt like I had just been stomped by a horse. I ached all over and I felt like I had slept very badly, I knew as soon as a woke up that it was futile to try and get back to sleep, so I got dressed and found a bag of peanuts in my travel bag that I had ‘borrowed’ from the air France business lounge in Paris, the salt tasted delicious and my body was craving salt and water, I was gulping like a goldfish my bottled water and devouring the salty nuts, after I had finished my body still felt terrible, I caught the early bus to the canteen and decided to have the full fried breakfast all salty and greasy, it is a primal desire I think. I had everything on the fried food bar, bacon , lots of bacon and scrambled eggs and beans , stewed tomatoes and toast, a huge plateful, I was actually feeling very queasy whilst I was eating it, in fact I had doubts that I could keep it down after I had eaten it, I was wondering if I had made another tactical error eating so much. I walked back to the office feeling ill and full of greasy food with that huge knot still in my guts. I sat at my computer for another 3 hours trying to let the food do its job of getting some good things into my bloodstream. So what can I deduce from my night out in the clubhouse, alcohol doesn’t make me sleep any better, eating a big greasy meal for breakfast doesn’t cure a hangover and gulping lots of water can only induce vomiting if not carefully controlled, something I should never want to do ever again , until the next time of course.

E-mail Hell for Impending Peruvian Project

Today has been the never-ending stream of e-mails about my posting to Peru. Have I completed my medical questionnaire, have I printed all the documents for the trip, am I really sure I can get away with a business visa, will I be able to get all my vaccinations, which I have all of anyway, will I be able to get all my blood test, I am pretty sure I can get everything inCosta Rica as long as I pay. I found out my company credit card has finally arrived in Costa Rica and that means I don’t have to pay for an air ticket ever again. They have realized that I have to book my own tickets as they have no way of booking in Costa Rica and that is a good thing as I can do what I want now, I will be flying direct and only taking 3 and ½ hours to fly into Lima and that is fantastic and then I stay overnight in lima doing a little sight seeing and then next morning I fly on a small commuter plane up to the Andes, over some 15,000 foot mountains, higher than I though in fact a little bit worrying really as I was told about the pipeline helicopter that flew into a mountain in the fog, I don’t want that sort of thing to happen again. Trying to get organized for a new project is very exciting I find, making sure that everything is in place and I have all the relavant information , contact names and phone numbers, project numbers to charge expenses too very important that one, job number to book hours to is far more important, one thing that they haven’t told me yet is all the internal travel information for the Andes flight. But as I said it is all exciting stuff well as exciting as my tired body will allow me to get, as I have been sleeping terribly since I got off night shifts, last night I resorted to the old method of drinking yourself silly and slumping into bed dead drunk, the only problem I have with that is I rang then wife afterwards and I cant remember what the hell I said,, that is always a difficult one to try and get over, a colleague recently rang his wife the next day after a late night drunken phone call and she greeted him with a “its all booked and sorted”, he was scratching his head wondering what he ad agreed to, it turned out that after 15 years of living together with his girlfriend he had proposed on the phone in the drunken phone call and couldn’t remember the next morning, so its always worrying if I said something that I shouldn’t.

Visas are like trying to fill your pants with Jelly, feels great when done correctly

Well the organisation is up to its usual hideously poor level. I have been given the task of trying to get my trip organised from the deepest darkest corner of Africa. As you can imagine that is pretty difficult, I was told to try and get my visa application started, but how the hell can I do that whilst 5000 miles from any civilisation. It was a pretty silly comment to make to me, I was able to ask my wife to enquire about visa and vaccinations and blood tests and she has managed to get all the relevant information for me, which I presume is pretty standard but for some reason the office thinks it is impossible to get it done outside of the European capitols. A pretty condescending attitude to have, Costa Rica has a very efficient embassy system as it caters for all of South America. I have to have so many blood tests and have all this information on an international vaccination certificate, I have never seen one of these before but I will have to get one even if I have to bribe a doctor to get one for me, the customer will ban me from site if I don’t get one, so at least the mild corruption is good for getting things like that done in Costa Rica.
I am getting very excited about leaving this place and getting of those goddam night shifts, I am still suffering like a insomniac madman, I was falling asleep last night while waiting for my wife to get back from the gym to ring her but I couldn’t last and I took a valium to get to a long nights sleep but at midnight I was awake to got to the toilet for a pee as usual and I started waking up so I took another valium and I was whacked out until my room mate woke me up miserable bastard, at 4.30 and at 4.45 I got out of bed and started doing mail and checking the news, I have become an early riser, I cannot remember that last time I got up late other than when I was sleeping like a lord in Florence just before I got here, so it is possible to sleep normally given the right circumstances. So I am going to be leaving here hopefully next Wednesday if my replacement gets his visa organised and then I can get back to the holiday country of Costa Rica and get my arms filled with needles and start driving about like a nutcase and also try and be a father and husband for a short time without being too miserable with all the jetlag and lack of sleep I had on the journey home, but other than that I am getting pretty excited about flying into the jungle and living on the river, I hope there I wildlife all over the place as I am going to be like a child in a sweetie shop, there isn’t any perimeter fencing as it is so remote and you have ocelots and things wandering about the camp in the early mornings so I maybe an early waker to get the early morning bird song chorus. I think it is going to be a much more relaxing place to work, I will be sleeping like a baby, taking long walks around the site as if it were a eco holiday, lets hope I can get the internet as I will feel like my arms will have been chopped off at the elbow. We’ll see if the visa application is exactly as simple as told to my wife.

Normal Service Will Resume in Peru

Well normal life resumed with a bump, I was shocked to be told that the Peru job had just been signed up and I was due to travel out on the 3rd of July to get onsite on the 4th of July, which when I realised that I would only have 3 full days at home to see my wife and kids then that isn’t all that exciting. I was very happy to be leaving this place as I was getting concerned that I may end up here for more rotations but they have screwed me badly by making me come back to Malabo and then making me travel to Peru at their convenience and that is horse shit. The tried to get some of the other guys to come and give me a one-week holiday before I travel but the cost of the airfare was too great and are making me instead stay until the bitter end. I am dancing with the idea of going to Peru but the lack of a break is bad, I have to have time to recover from these miserable night shifts. I have been doing some gloating around the site, just slipping it into the conversation about me leaving to Peru but I have also just been very blatant and been laughing hysterically and shouting Peru and dancing round like a deranged llama herder. For the next 6 months I am going to be feeling like a new man, not night shifts and no overnight travelling and no jet lag, oh god what a wonderful feeling it is going to be, I may start skinny dipping in the local river before breakfast and doing yogic flying, Buddhist chanting at night, but they provoke some physical retribution from the other guys on site keeping them awake at night. Who cares I am free as a bird now and will be happy to do any thing I desire, what a huge relief it was to get that piece of news. They have asked me what vaccinations I have had and if it is in an international vaccination log, and I will need to have some blood tests to see if I am carrying some typical diseases like measles and chicken pox and scarlet fever and psittacosis, very strange I thought but it is to prevent me carry these to the local Indians who being very remote have no defences against these western diseases. Just take a look at how primitive they are from the pic i have added.
so I get three days at home to get a visa and get blood tests and any vaccinations I need, and I don’t think it is going to be possible. We’ll see how it all pans out but I think they have been too ambitious. Life is a challenge it is just a matter of taking it one slice at a time. Print Article
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The Misery of Night Shifts

My trips to Malabo always start on night shift, I think designed to make me miserable and depressed. There is something about night shift that is totally unnatural, especially 12-hour night shift, so much for the European 48 hour a week agreement. The main problem with night shift is not the fact that I am here all night whilst trying to stay alert and awake, but that there is nobody else here, apart from some miserable old twats who have worked shifts all there lives and I can see why they are so goddam miserable. I walk around looking after my turbines and see no one, I go to bed and get up and see no one in the rotator camp. It is like working on the moon but with less atmosphere. I spend at least 1 hour ringing my beautiful wife just to feel normal and part of something bigger than this tiny outcrop of volcanic rock. I trawl the Internet at night for thing to read, about work and conservation and anything that will drag my imagination away from the job. I wasn’t really aware of the sort of environment I would be working in when I signed for this contract here. I assumed that there would lots of people around to talk to and find out lots of interesting information about their lives and interests but oh no its nothing like that at all. I am removed from that and kept isolated. If I wasn’t as strong mentally I think it could send some guys over the top, its no wonder that only the miserable hardened old farts end up working on places like this, all brutal and toughened from years of abuse in shitty remote places without the normal amenities of life. I have nearly worked my entire night shift rotation and I am counting down the days until I get off not only the night shifts but the island here all together. Even the prospect of having to work in Nigeria doesn’t make me wince but I am delighted to get to someplace where will have contact with human life forms, and be able to laugh and joke and spend time developing relationships. This is how I have been working for the last 15 years and I have to get back to that. My first job as a young man was working in a factory with 1000 other people, mostly older women as it seemed but at least I could talk all day long and have some fun. This is what life is all about, enjoying oneself and lifting other peoples lives with your humour and wit, not growling at folks just because life is a bowl of maggoty bread, we all suffer from the exploitation of our employers but we can make life less of a struggle and more entertaining. Just counting down the shifts until normal service is resumed.

Departing hopefully for the Last Trip to Malabo

We woke late again like two rich tourist taking an easy life on the continental grand tour. Once more I stuffed myself with food I didn’t really need and that wasn’t that appetising, Jenny loved the croissants and ate a couple even though she is afraid of carbohydrates as she is trying to lose a few pounds. I had to go to the office to try and retrieve my tickets and do mail as it was my last chance for two full days while I was travelling, it was obvious that we didn’t have time to fit any more touring into our trip s Jenny had to be at the airport for 12 to check in, I was catching my flight at 6.55pm so I would have a long 5 hours before I could check in. I arrived in the office at 9.30 to be greeted by the tall Zofia who immediately handed me the tickets for my travel, I think it was a guilty conscience from making me wait in the office all Friday afternoon to get my tickets that didn’t arrive. I did mail and received a very interesting mail from the last installation manager in Malabo who I had kept in touch with for professional reasons. Nothing like networking to get the best jobs. He had been poached by Exxon to carry out testing for them in the Pignone factory for their new compressor projects. Anyhow I had mailed him the few days before I arrived in Florence and he had actually mailed me back to call him and arrange a meeting on the Monday morning. I was so excited that I nearly wet myself, this man is dealing with some big projects and I was hoping I could get on to them with him.We met at the little café near the factory gates and it was like seeing an old school friend, we shook hands and then he was asking about folks back in Malabo and I was telling him all the sordid details and making him laugh and then he started to tell me about the project he is working on. It turns out to be the biggest Liquid Natural Gas project the world has ever seen, with huge compressors never been built before and I was shocked about it, it sounded so exciting and I offered to work for him on this project and he said he would throw my name into the hat when the time came around, I have since found out that he has asked many of the guys here in Malabo already that he would get them all involved with the project as he likes keeping all his buddies around him. I felt like I was on cloud nine and we only stayed an hour as I was wanting to get back to the hotel and finish packing. He obviously had to get back to the sorting out this monster of a project, probably drinking coffee all day with the Italian managers of the project. I floated back to the hotel just thinking about the endless possibilities of it, the biggest drawback is that it is in Qatar, a very very hot part of the world, but it is quite civilised and does have alcohol, and westerners are treated like normal people unlike Saudi. So all in all I was very happy but I am not sure when this thing is going to kick off , maybe another year before anything happens. Jenny and myself were so happy with everything about the trip to Florence we had seen many nice things and I had spoken to a guy who may have a fantastic job for me and I was going to have my last trip to Malabo. We packed in the hotel and I waived Jenny off in departures and went and sat down in the business lunge now I have got my Air France Frequence plus card that gets me into business lounges almost anywhere, I stuffed my face with peanuts and drank a gallon of tomato juice while waiting for my flight. I left on time and arrived in Paris with about a 2-hour wait for my connection. I was hoping that it was going to be empty but the place was crowded with folks for boat crew changes, I went into the business lounge and again stuffed my face with cake and crisps and fruit juice. I read everything that was in English just to kill the time and unfortunately the free computers were out of action so no Internet. I kept killing time and could really relax as the place was more crowded than the departure area upstairs and even screaming babies which makes my hair stand on end. I eventually, out of desperation left the place and sat in the departure area looking round to see if could recognise anyone and not a soul did I see, I was feeling miserable knowing that all the contractors had left and I would be left without a laptop to piss about with and no DVD’s to copy. When I arrived after a reasonable flight I got to the office and saw nearly all the contractor back on site, it turned out they had all been requested to come back for one more trip as the project was far from completion. I felt better straight away. I was given the keys to my room and went for a well earned sleep.

The Final Day of our Walking Marathon in Old Florence

We awoke from our fantastic slumber and readied our worn and aching bodies for the toil of another days walking. We went down to breakfast to find a party of Indian tourists shouting in English at the waitress, who with the best will in the world had no idea what they were saying, I found it almost embarrassing listening to there stupid rants, pig ignorant and arrogant upper class Indians, typical of the most racist country in the world. There was no manners at all just demands and I wanted to tell the old fart who was the worst of the bunch to shut his stupid little face or I would fill it in for him. I hate rudeness and ill mannered people I just want to slap them about. I work as a supervisor and never talk to guys working for me in those terms. The poor waitress was so upset she even came to me and Jenny and was complaining in a nice way to us about their attitude even though it was all in Italian and Jenny was starting to pick up the language as it is a close relative of Spanish. I stuffed my face with as much of the fruit and croissants and yoghurt as I could stomach and then I had a few coffee’s to the point I was feeling sick, I have a bad habit of eating until I am full to bursting when the food is free, as I think of it. What a silly attitude to have, I know from my that eating lots is bad for you and will reduce my life expectancy but I cannot help it, I have even been ejected from pubs in England for picking up the food on a table meant for someone’s party when I haven’t been invited, I cannot help myself I am like a drug addict but with me it is food and the nicer the food the worst I am. When I am in a hotel, especially in the USA I will eat all the nice things and usually expensive things and then wash them down with a wine or a few beers and I have felt sick for hours and had indigestion for days after doing it, I know it isn’t healthy but I just love food. Anyhow, we got a bus into town and went straight to the Pitti palace


The posh residence of the Medici family and there was no queue to get the ticket. It was the 14.5 euros that I had heard the day before and we went into a reasonably quiet entrance to the house. We had been very lucky as there was an exhibition of Maria Medici, who was a very famous member of the family and she looked very pretty, from the portraits of her in the basement exhibition halls. She ended up marrying the king of France and mother of the wife of Charles the first of England. So very historically famous, there was lots of art work on loan from galleries around the world including the Louver. It was a great exhibition lots of fantastic paintings and art work and sculpture, but the rooms had nice ceilings but nothing to shout home about, we went to the main entrance to the state rooms and was knocked off our feet by the unbelievable ornate painted plasterwork of the ceilings and all painted with quite exquisite mythological scenes, and the plasterwork art was incredible with cherubs and other figure of human size sat on the picture rail and just mouth opening in its scale, the walls were hung with paintings by some of the most famous renaissance painters of the their day. Rubens was the most famous of all and there was not many but hundreds hung in rows along every wall. Staggering and this went on for room after room, galleries full of sculptures of larger than life proportions of Greek gods and wresters seemed to be quite popular and always naked, naked male wrestlers and for my sake all seemed to have disproportionately small gonads, I laughed a knowing laugh at that one. We spent maybe 3 hours touring the staterooms and to the final tour of the silver museum. There was lots of exquisite gold things usually religious artefacts crosses and alter goblets some very old, up to 700 years old. There was lots of things made out of hard stone and mosaic table tops and rock crystal and all covered in gold and silver. They also seemed very fond of Roman silver and gold objects of which there was plenty and Roman glass objects. We were walking on and on hour after hour round and round the many rooms and lingering on my feet is worse than walking the hard roads. Finally we went into the gardens for a relaxing sit down and to take in the fantastic sunshine of the Florence summer. It was a fantastic day and the smile we had on our faces after seeing all this wonderful art work was huge and was seen on all the photos we took, we had called this trip a honeymoon as we didn’t have the kids with us and to be honest it really felt like something very special for us both especially as it was unexpected and rushed after all the other things we had been doing. We took a long lazy stroll into town and had lunch after struggling to find somewhere that didn’t want to charge us 30 euros each to dine, I ended up with a wonderful Pizza and Jenny had some pasta. We got lost on the walk back to the bus station ending up almost back in the fort out of town but I found a quicker way back to the bus station. We had walked miles and miles again, but we had seen some fantastic things and we struggled back to the hotel and started packing but we were going to buy some snacks for supper but found every shop closed, we spent 45 minutes trying to find an open shop and found one selling some overcooked and expensive food which we had to have as we were desperate to eat. Once more we slumped into bed early as we were both travelling again next day and slept for a ridiculous amount of time again for an old fart like me.

My hopeless ability to judge walking distances

The Next day we awoke after a 10 hour sleep which for an old fart like me is amazing, I cannot remember sleeping like this for so many years. I must be feeling happy with the way things were going. We went down for breakfast continental style and ate croissants and fruits and yoghurt and lots of coffee, just high calorie filling stuff to help with the burn of the walking again through town, we decided to get the bus in and found the stop into town just up the road and jumped on the first bus, we looked around for where to pay and the driver had a screen around him and no way to pay him and then no machine that would take coins on the bus so we were stumped, lots of people jumped on and didn’t have tickets, it was obvious that you had to pay to get a ticket but where and how, we got off in town and walked away after our free ride and went straight to the science museum that Jenny had found out about in a guide, I am not one normally for science museums but it was Jenny’s choice and that’s OK with me, we went straight to it, an easy place to find as it was next to the Palazzo Vecchio, we paid our 7.50 euros and started looking around the floors to find it was dedicated to Galileo, the master mathematician and Astronomer , as I said the Medici’s were so fantastically rich and ruled the area like Kings and had there own art school and all the great people of the day in Italy worked for the Medici’s. Galileo’s own telescope was there and some other instruments of his and most ghoulishly was his middle finger in a reliquary jar like some saint. Weird stuff really, but it was fully of fantastic old telescopes and measuring devices and sextants and theodolites and clocks and surgical stuff from over the last 500 years, it was a great place. That took us passed 1 o’clock and we went for lunch and afterwards we decided to try the palazzo pitti the big palace over the river. It takes a while to get there by walking but my legs are numb and I don’t feel a thing, I could see Jenny was flagging but we only had this weekend and we wanted to see it all, I was taking pictures like a madman with my new camera, we got to the palace and found a large queue and stood like good children to get in and the time was ticking away, nearly 3 by my cheap watch. We were stood with crowds of Japanese and Americans and many French also, I was listening to the conversations of the folks buying tickets and it was all the same 14.50 euros and no mention of timed tickets, I thought it would take us at least 3 hours and maybe 5 to go around the Palace and gardens as it is huge, I had read on the internet about some 3 day tickets that would be cheaper and mean you could get in several days at a time, I attempted to buy a 3 day ticket when I got to the front but the guy just looked at me like I was an alien, I decided to come back in the morning and have a full day in the palace. Jenny wanted to do some shopping for souvenirs but she realised that this place was too damned expensive for that sort of game. And as a self confessed shoeaholic she was in heaven withy the fancy Italian style shoes on offer but as she says she has more that she can wear and only goes window shopping, luckily. But it is a great place for fashion shopping crazy stuff never seen in Costa Rica that is a fact. We walked around and around and found the market where they were selling stuff much cheaper including fake Rolex watches and Gucci watches and fake designer bags and loads of crappy souvenirs. I then asked if we could walk and have a quick look at the old fort as it wasn’t far by my reckoning, we walked about 2 kilometres out town and then my reckoning to get back to the bus station was about as bad again, another 3 or 4 kilometres, we were both about crying at the aching feet and legs, we got another taxi to take us home and once more slumped into a really firm and almost uncomfortable bed, to try and rest for another day of endless walking, but once again slept like babies.