coenvanwyk

How I Became A Travel Writer: Coen Van Wyk
How I got hooked on traveling and started writing about it: One of the poems we had to study at school was Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was...
Desert flowers
It rains, sometimes, in the Kalahari in spring. If that happens, you must leave your routine quickly, and take the long road west. For miles there is...
Namibia dreams
The Namib desert is the oldest desert on earth. Yet humans have been living here for longer than in almost any other area in the world, in these...
Up the Congo River
by Shahnaz Sayed van Wyk, The idea of going up the Congo River has been on our minds since we knew we were getting posted to the Democratic Republic...
Casablanca meatballs
This is a modified recipe of a tagine of meatballs we had in the medina of Casablanca, in a restaurant that was barely a hole in the wall. It cost...
Moroccan Harira soup
In many restaurants, at least popular ones, in Morocco they would have a huge pot near the door, and children would come in with a bowl, in the...
An African Safari, Conclusion
Africa is easy to travel in. People are friendly, roads sometimes difficult but passable if you stay on the main road. The greatest obstacle was the...
An African Safari, Part 4
More of the rain forest met us in Gabon, where we crossed the equator, going south, and once again we enjoyed empty, sun drenched beaches of powdery...
An African Safari, Part 3
The Dogon country is a capsule of a forgotten time, when people lived in harmony with nature, when crocodiles lived with villagers, and when tourists...
An African Safari, part 2: Sahara
Having stocked up on necessities in Morocco, we then headed south, into the Sahara. It concentrates the mind wonderfully on survival...
An African overland Safari part 1: Morocco
“Safari: A journey or trip: a sightseeing safari” We were six: more or less retired, too bored to sit and watch the paint dry. So we decided to...
Mysterious stones in West Africa
You find them in Senegal, Gambia and Mali: clumps of red stones, sometimes in circles, sometimes just in clumps. The local population just seem to...