But this is not representative of the country. Just a few hundred meters away you see a completely different world. The next photo was taken in a slum area which makes up a big chunk of the city. None of the houses have electricity or water. The UN estimates 70 percent of the population live below the poverty level, surviving on only $2 a day.

Equatorial Guinea’s new found wealth remains largely in the hands of the country’s long running ruler, President Obiang, and his family. Examples of how the money is being wasted are not hard to find. On the outskirts of Malabo, you come across a six lane highway with no cars. It was built for the Africa Summit in June 2011.

The highway takes you to a purpose built city that includes 52 luxury villas constructed for each of the African leaders attending the summit. The complex also includes a conference hall, artificial beach, luxury hotel and the county’s first 18-hole golf course as well as a landing strip, heliport, hospital and buildings for banquets and events. It is estimated to have cost over $800 million but when we visited the area only the hotel and golf course were in use. The rest, including the state of the art hospital, were closed.

This is the image of Equatorial Guinea the government does not want the outside world to see. It was not possible to film any of the complex and the photos had to be taken discretely to ensure we did not attract the attention of the authorities. Recently an AP photographer was arrested for taking photos in the local market and was only released when she agreed to delete the images.
Equatorial Guinea has also spent millions on co-hosting the Cup of nations, including building two new stadiums in Malabo and Bato. But it was not easy to find people who would openly criticise the government. The country has a poor human rights record. The authorities tend to take a hard line against anyone who speaks out against the government. The only major opposition party has just one member of parliament and President Obiang has managed to stay in power since 1979 by ruthlessly crushing his opponents.
The government is hoping to use the tournament to present a different image to the world. Some believe the president is mellowing in his old age and the oil money is beginning to trickle down to the rest of the population. But it remains to be seen if the more open approach adopted by the country during the tournament is only temporary or the start of a more tolerant phase in it’s history.

This is a photo of the theatre at Leptis Magna, one of Libya’s many undiscovered gems. My three week trip to the country with my colleagues, correspondent Mark Lowen, and shoot edit Ian Druce has come to an end. It coincided with a quiet time on the news front so we spent most of the time reporting on the state of play in the country, three months after the revolution ended.
We based ourselves in Tripoli and went on day trips out of the capital. Tripoli suffers from the same problems that currently affect much of the country. The infrastructure is badly in need of repair, building projects have stopped, rubbish is not being collected, there are no army or police, the court system is not working and the rebels still roam the streets.
Worrying signs are already emerging of tensions between the various militia which has resulted in deadly firefights in recent weeks. If the government does not find a way of dealing with this problem and persuading the rebels to join a national security force, the country runs the risk of falling into civil war. See my previous blog post for more on this.
On top of that, reconciliation seems a far way off in Libya. The UN estimates there are 7000, mostly pro-Gaddafi supporters stuck in prisons and detention facilities around the country. Many of them have been there since August, without being charged or getting access to a lawyer.  Human Rights organisations have also found evidence of torture and abuse in some of these facilities.
But it is not all doom and gloom.  Unlike Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Libya has a functioning government just three months after the end of the revolution that is beginning to grapple with the country’s many problems.  It is also encouraging to see that freedom of speech is on the increase. Hardly a day goes by that you don’t find a demonstration or strike in some part of the country. This would never have been tolerated under Gaddafi. And on the press side, although it can take frustratingly long time to organise interviews, most ministers were prepared to talk to us. That’s a far cry from the old regime, where no one ever spoke to the media.
Libya has many other factors in its favour. Aside from an abundance of high grade oil, it has a lot of potential as a tourist destination. The country’s vast Mediterranean coastline is made up of miles and miles of  sandy beaches. It also contains, ancient relics, the likes of which do not exist anywhere else in the world. We were fortunate enough to take a trip to Leptis Magna, the ancient roman city built on the edge of the Mediterranean, featured in the above photo. Unlike many other roman cities, sufficient traces remain to imagine what it was like in its heyday.
Back in the capital, Tripoli Zoo is another potential tourist gem. It is packed with a wide range of animals and birds, who are now in much better shape than they were when the city fell.  Read more here about our report on the zoo.
But the country has a lot of work to do before it can realise it’s tourism potential. The infrastructure needs to be restored, the mobile network does not accommodate international roaming, we battled to find good restaurants in the capital, the beaches are dirty and littered with rubbish and you can’t get alcohol, even in five star hotels.
This was my third visit to the country in the last six months. Each time I return, I fall more in love with Libya and it’s warm, hospitable people. I’m hoping I can come back again soon to see how it is getting on. Fingers crossed Libya becomes one of the success stories of the Arab Revolution.

My colleague Mark Lowen has more analysis on this story on the BBC website. You can read it here.

Libya is slowly returning to normal after the uprising that overthrew Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. One of the sites grinding back into action is Tripoli Zoo, which is hoping to re-open to the public in a few months time. But the battle is not over yet. Funding from international charities to feed the hundreds of birds and animals at the site is coming to an end and it is not certain whether the new government will foot the bill.
These images were taken at the zoo earlier this week, where we found the animals to be in a very good condition. It’s a far cry from the situation in August when many were in a desperate state as the Libyan capital found itself without food or water and the staff fled due to heavy fighting in the area. A large international aid effort was mobilised and several charities stepped in to alleviate the situation. Among them, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the British based charity, Four Paws, which helped pay for food and medical supplies. It costs around £1300 pounds ($2000 dollars) a day to feed all the zoo’s residents. Large carnivores, like lions and tigers, can eat 20-30 pounds of meat per day to satisfy their appetite. We filmed one of the lion’s receiving it’s daily meal. To see such as big beast just a few feet from you, is an experience I will never forget, especially when it roared at us when we came too close.
The zoo has had some good news since the fall of the Gaddafi regime. One of the lion’s gave birth to two baby cubs at the end of October. The mother came from a group of lions owned by Gaddafi’s third son, Saadi Gaddafi, which are now part of the zoo’s animal collection.
Although the animals are in a much better condition than they were a few months ago, the zoo is not yet out of the woods. The financial support provided by charities over the last few months is due to come to end at the start of 2012. The director of Tripoli Zoo, Dr Anas Ali, is counting on the new government picking up the bill. If that does not happen, he hopes the charities won’t leave him in the lurch.
But the government will also need to pay for badly needed repairs to the zoo before it can re-open. It closed two years ago for renovations and was due to open in June 2011, but the building work ground to a halt during the revolution.
Some of these images have been published on the BBC website. Click here to see them. You can also view a news report here by my colleague, Mark Lowen, on this remarkable gem in the middle of Tripoli.

You get some beautiful sunsets in Tripoli. This is the view of the sun dipping below the horizon from our hotel along on the Corniche. The city seems to go on for miles but much of it appears run down. It does not strike you as the capital of a country that is rich in high quality oil reserves. Despite that, Tripoli has a certain charm about it which appeals to me.
It’s been very quiet on the news front since we arrived on Monday. The original plan was to stay here for 3 weeks, holding the BBC fort over the festive season. But I think we will battle to keep ourselves busy.
After the revolution, interest in Libya from the outside world has died down. The interim government is still trying to set itself up and oversee the first phase of the transition to democracy. Many of the brigades that fought in the revolution are still armed and it remains to be seen if the various factions can achieve national unity.

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I’ve been in Athens for most of the past week, working as a producer and cameraman with the BBC’s new Athens correspondent, Mark Lowen. We have been covering the fallout from the economic crisis in Greece which has forced the Prime Minister, George Papandreou, to step down.
It’s my first deployment covering a story where I have been part of a large BBC news team. It has been fascinating to be involved and to see what can be achieved when you have a lot of resources.
During my deployment, the BBC has also been trying out some new gear to broadcast live from Athens and to feed material back to London. The days of hiring a sat truck or a flyaway satellite dish for big stories, is largely gone due to cost constraints. Technological advances have also introduced more practical alternatives via the internet.
Like many other broadcasters, the BBC relies a lot on using Inmarsat’s bgans out in the field. These small and portable satellite dishes are the size of a laptop and are very easy to set up. It allows journalists to cover stories anywhere in the world by providing access to the internet via the Inmarsat satellite network. Bgans have been used to great effect in Libya during the country’s recent revolution. On the night that Tripoli fell, Sky News used one of these to stream live pictures of the event to its viewers. But bgans can be very expensive to use as Inmarsat charges every time you connect to its satellite network. The price is based on the bandwidth and duration of the connection. Bgans are also not up to the task in places where broadcasters need to set up a temporary bureau to cover a story as the strength of the connection varies greatly, and is not strong enough for more than one user at a time.
Late last year Europe’s leading satellite operator, Eutelsat, launched KA-SAT, a high-capacity multi-beam satellite aimed at providing affordable high-speed internet access for people in remote areas with no internet services. The price and quality is similar to terrestrial broadband offers like ADSL-2 and cable. All you need is a satellite dish and a modem.
The service is marketed under the Tooway brandname. It is largely aimed at consumers and small businesses, but it has begun to grab the attention of broadcasters like CNN, Sky and the BBC. The connection is strong enough to offer high quality video steaming and to allow multiple users to access the internet at once. It is also a lot cheaper than a bgan as Eutelsat charges a fixed fee for the service. But Tooway has some practical disadvantages compared to a bgan. The dish is not very portable and coverage is limited to Europe and the Mediterranean basin. However, you can set up dishes in multiple locations and leave them there. When a crew needs to use a dish all they will have to bring along is a small Tooway decoder. Below is a photo of the dish and decoder that you need to operate the service.

Tooway can prove very useful for broadcasters in places like Athens. Up until recently, the BBC worked out of a local hotel using the room’s internet service or a bgan for live broadcasts and to file material back to London.
During our coverage of the confidence vote against Papandreou, we relied on a Tooway dish and modem instead. When the news broke, we were able to run two TV live positions and a radio live position simultaneously. With technological advances like these, the day is fast approaching when broadcasters will be able to offer high quality video streaming from anywhere in the world without breaking the bank.

Here are some more images I took in Ercis, the town worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck the southeast of Turkey on the 23 October 2011.
Covering the aftermath of this earthquake was tough. Things got off to a bad start when our connecting flight was advertised at the wrong time at Ankara airport. It meant we had to catch a later flight which only landed after midnight. On top of that Turkish Airlines managed to lose two of my suitcases, including the one containing all my clothes. The handle on my tripod also got smashed in the hold of the plane. Fortunately, I managed to borrow some warm clothes and a tripod from my BBC colleagues. But it did teach me a valuable lesson. In future I’ll split my clothes just in case my luggage gets lost again and I’ll use some of my clothes for padding around my tripod.
The first day we were in Ercis, was also very stessful. Our equipment kept on failing and it was difficult to find a good spot for doing lives or feeding material back to London as the place was swarming with media. There was no water or food available in the town, and we worked for nearly 12 hours straight before getting anything to eat or drink. The second day went a lot better. We found a spot away from the rest of the media which made it a lot easier to work. There were also some friendly locals nearby who generously supplied us with warm tea and food throughout the day. I will always remember the kindness they showed us in such tragic circumstances.
Here is Jonathan Head’s TV report for the BBC’s one o’clock news bulletin which I shot and edited on the second day of our trip.