Queen Elizabeth 2 - 2002

The Cape Town Line - Overview

Our cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 from Southampton down past Africa and round as far as Mauritius before returning to Southampton gave fascinating insights into an area of the world we knew little of. It seems to us to be a continent intent on destroying itself with the assistance of the World Banks and Aid Agencies. South Africa is perhaps an exception, but even it is now teetering on the brink of losing Nelson Mandela's vision and descending into the downward spiral gripping the rest of Africa. There is superb wildlife roaming free in vast national parks throughout Africa whilst man lives in small cages behind razor wire and protected by alarms with "Armed Response".

It is impossible to do justice in a single page to a journey of 37 days covering not only Africa but also ports and islands on the way down and back. The write-up is in several parts with navigation bars at top and bottom of each page allowing you to move from page to page. You will also find a number of icons at the end of sections which take you up to the top of the page and the navigation bars.

Firstly there is a comprehensive introduction to cruising on the QE2 writen by Peter - this may be skipped if you have read about our previous experiences. It has however been updated to include many details and cameos of life on board from this journey. That is where you will find information and pictures of everything from galas dinners to ice carving and tug of wars.

Secondly there are a number of sections are based round the ports we visited. They have been extracted from a daily log kept by Pauline and are make comprehensive use of photographs she took. All the small pictures (icons) give details of where they are if you hover the cursor over them and enlarged versions will pop up if you click them. The popup windows are reused and then tidied up when you leave the page.

There is a lot of detail, even with the small pictures, so the pages are large and slow to load the first time you visit them. You should have text in seconds but the last pictures may take over a minute to fill in and it is best to wait before clicking on the popups - you may have to refresh some browsers to get the last icons filled in if you interupt them.

We hope you will enjoy the write up as much as we enjoyed the journey

Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis Most recent significant revision: 30th December, 2002