West Coast box ticked, time for the East.

Posted by Mark Pearce

 See all the photos of the November Trans Africa on the African Trails’ Facebook page - “African Trails Overlands and Safaris”

WEEK 23

With a week off the truck we took the opportunity to take in the sights and sounds of Cape Town and its surrounds. Mark took a well deserved break from the driving and made most of his time off catching waves and freezing in the waters of the Atlantic. Table Mountain was conquered, the Cape of Good Hope visited and we met the penguins in Simonstown. We also made the most of Cape Town’s cuisine and had a celebratory dinner with all the crew before heading off for the next leg of the trip.

WEEK 24

The journey recommenced and we headed for Botswana, joined by two newcomers, Rachel and Simon, who quickly become part of the crew.  After a 3-day transit, readjusting to being back on the truck, we passed through Beauford West, Kimberley (hello to all our supporters in Kimberley!) and Mafikeng and arrive in Maun. 

From Maun we made our way to the Okavango Delta where Ches, Ren, Sue, Carrie, Jose and Rachel soon became professionals in poling the mokoros, the traditional wooden boats made from the wood of the sausage tree. The Delta treated us to elephants, wildebeest and abundant hippos. We also got to experience the delta on foot with a walking safari where Ren proved to be the resident expert in wildlife, with his knowledge even superseding the guide’s! A dip in the Delta finished the day, and the other tourists seemed to find this a little strange, making us the focus of their “wildlife” photography.

Lee, Simon and Joost visited the crocodile farm, and after some target practice discovered that the crocodiles in Botswana are quite fond of lemons. We ended our time here with a scenic flight over the Delta, which is nothing short of spectacular.

From the Delta, we drove to Kasane and Chobe National Park.  Chobe did not disappoint and we were greeted by elephants on arrival at the park.  We spent the afternoon cruising the Chobe River and spotting wildlife – crocodiles, elephants (including a very cute, but vertically challenged baby elephant), baboons, hippos and a rock monitor lizard, and ended the cruise with a spectacular “African” sunset.

From Chobe we crossed the ferry into Zambia and then arrived in Livingstone, the Zambian side of Victoria Falls.

WEEK 25

The “Smoke that Thunders” lived up to its reputation when we visited Victoria Falls, and we were soon soaked through while taking in the amazing views of this wonder of the world. With the highest water in 50 years flowing, the Falls were churning, which unfortunately meant that most of the activities on the river were cancelled. We did however manage to make the most of (and get our money’s worth from) the “booze cruise” where we celebrated Lee’s 25^th birthday.

Leaving Livingstone we had a 2-day drive and arrived at South Luangwa National Park.  Mark and Amy headed off for a night safari and were rewarded with a pride of 11 lions making an impala kill. The night proved quite eventful for the rest of us as well – we were visited by hippos in the middle of the night only inches from our tents! After an early breakfast where the topic of conversation was just how close those hippos came, we were out on more safaris and were not disappointed - herds of elephant, waterbuck, giraffes, hippos (both in and out of the water) and a variety of colourful birds.

After another eventful night of hippo visits, we awoke to vervet monkeys causing chaos in the campsite. Leaving South Luangwa we arrived at the Malawi border and camped at Lilongwe before heading to Kande Beach on the shores of Lake Malawi.

WEEK 26

We camped at Kande Beach, right on the shores of Lake Malawi, the 8^th largest lake in the world.  After a dip in the lake, we toured the local village and Ches, Joost and Sue made the most of the wood carving, making some interesting “trades” of clothing, tents and luggage in order to secure themselves a traditional Malawi chair each. Joost proved to be quite the negotiator and ended up with a huge bounty including 4 wooden bowls, 2 globes, 10 key chains and 2 additional chairs.  

Back at camp, Mark took advantage of the windy conditions on Lake Malawi and picked up some waves, a first for him surfing on a freshwater lake!

We were invited to the village chief’s house for a traditional dinner of beef, rice and beans, and were entertained by the local children singing and dancing. Joining in, we were well and truly shown some new moves and outdanced by the kids. 

Leaving Kande Beach, we made a stop at the Nkata Bay Junction woodcarving markets. Most of the group managed to leave with a souvenir or 2, but Joost outdid himself again and added a chess set and bookends to his haul. We spent our final night in Malawi camping at the north end of the lake, before making for the Tanzanian border.

WEEK 27

Arriving in Tanzania, we drove to Dar es Salaam and stayed at Mikadi Beach, where the truck is to be based, while we make a stop off in Zanzibar. After a 7am start, we crossed on the ferry arriving in Zanzibar around 9am. First up was a tour of the church and slave dungeons in Stone Town, before driving across the island for a spice tour. We visited a spice farm where we learned about the cooking and medicinal uses for a range of spices including mint, cinnamon, lemongrass, vanilla and cloves, which Zanzibar is famous for. We sampled some of the local produce, with fruits including jackfruit and mangoes, and some of the local spice teas. We are also treated to coconut milk and fruit, picked fresh from the tree, and palm-woven gifts of rings, bags and necklaces for the girls, and hats and ties for the boys.  Stopping for a traditional lunch of beef, rice and cassava leaves, we arrived at Nungwi beach late in the afternoon.

Nungwi beach is a great base for water activities. Mark, Amy and Sue made the most of the location and headed off for a days diving off Mnemba Island, where they spent their time underwater with brightly coloured tropical fish and turtles. The rest of the group made the most of the sunshine and sand, spending time lazing on the beach and watching the dhows passing as the sun sets. 

Ches made friends with one of the locals, went for a kayak along the coast, and scored herself a dinner invitation to try some of the local cuisine. We visited the local villages and the local bars, even trying out a few moves at the Island Bar with the locals.

An early start to the next morning for Lee, Ren and Simon, who headed off for a day of fishing. We were hoping for a big catch as we booked in for a cooking course at Langi Langi but unfortunately luck was not with them and their “catch” was not worthy of bringing back. That evening, we joined the “cooking class” and were introduced to the fabulous colours and flavours of local spices and produce. We learned how to mix all the spices and ingredients for a traditional Zanzibarian fare, which includes fish curry, beef and ginger, rice pilaf and spicy salad, which we then got to devour in a group dinner.

Leaving Nungwi Beach, we arrived back to Stone town where we learned about the architecture of the Zanzibar Museum and toured the Old Arab Fort.  After the cultural tour, we visited Mercury’s Bar – a tribute to Freddy Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar – for lunch.  Following  lunch we braved the markets where you can buy carvings, paintings, fabrics, jewellery and more of every colour and description, all “at a good price”.  All shopped out, and a bit hungry, we dined at the open markets along the waterfront – piles of seafood including fish, prawns, crab and lobster claws, all BBQ’d – and served fresh right in front of you.

Back on the ferry the next morning, we departed Dar es Salam on our way to Arusha.

WEEK 28

Arriving in Arusha, we went straight to the campsite – this was our base for the next few days while Mark worked on the truck and some of the group headed off on safari in the Serengeti.

On our way to the Serengeti, we stopped for the view at Lake Manyara and then entered the Ngorogoro Conservation Area, which borders the Serengeti National Park. With baboons in camp we decided to eat lunch in the safety of the vehicle, and then drove to the Serengeti National Park.

Serengeti is Swahili for “endless plain” and on entering the park you can understand why. The view was spectacular – grassy plains as far as the eye can see, dotted with plains animals including Thompson gazelle, zebra, ostrich, giraffe, buffalo and more. As we headed towards our campsite, we came across lions camped out on the rocks, and were swamped by wildebeest – we were visiting at the right time for the beginning of the annual migration and it was an amazing site to be amongst thousands of animals in continuous movement.

We arrived at Timbali camp where we were based for the night to be met by a herd of elephants who decided to have their dinner in our camp. With 5 elephants, including one baby in camp we had to be slightly wary, but it’s an amazing site to be so close to these gentle giants.

We woke early for another day of safari. Leaving camp and were greeted by a swarm of vultures feasting on the carcasses of some unfortunate wildebeest. We had planned a big day of game sighting, and weren’t disappointed.  We got to see an abundance of animals – zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, impala, waterbuck, ostrich, giraffe, buffalo, warthogs, jackals, hyenas, elephant, hippos, and a trio of cats – lions, cheetah and a leopard.  It was an amazing site to see all these animals in the one place, on top of the spectacular landscape of the Serengeti plains.

Our next campsite was on the rim of the Ngorogoro Crater, where we had another early (and cold) night in preparation for another day of game spotting. We woke early and were surrounded by shrouds of clouds on the Crater rim – not an auspicious start of a morning of spotting animals. But as we drove down into the Crater the fog disappeared and we were amongst the animals again.

Our luck from the previous day continued,  and we got to see herds of elephants, zebra, and wildebeest, hyenas following a cheetah stalking its prey, solitary lions, and 2 of the rarely sighted black rhino. We got to watch an elephant and a hippo sharing a water pool – the elephant lunching and the hippo rolling, and one of Ngorogoro’s amazing sights – the pink lake, which is actually a salt lake full of brilliantly coloured pink flamingos. The Crater scenery is amazing – from grasses and wildflowers, to covered forests and water pools.

Leaving the Crater, we arrived back in camp in preparation for crossing into Kenya the next day. Arriving in Nairobi, we have a quick dinner and some long goodbyes, we said farewell to Amy, Joost and Lee.

See all the photos of the November Trans Africa on the African Trails’ Facebook page - “African Trails Overlands and Safaris”

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Bogs, brazzaville, beer & bushbashing

Posted by Mark Pearce

WEEK 17

After finding out that the border crossing from Congo to Cabinda was closed to foreign vehicles, we had to take an alternative route through Gabon into the Republic of Congo, which meant we had to travel in convoy withanother truck on route to Capetown.

Our first drive day from Libreville was backtracking our way along the road from Yaounde. We turned off the main highway 40 kms north of Njole onto a lovely dirt road, and bush camped virtually on the side of the road, just in case of rain. The next day driving was not as easy with a few obstacles in our way. First being a downhill run through the rainforest on a wet slippery road, the second was an overloaded beer truck stuck side ways in the middle on the road.

Once he was pulled out we had to wait our turn on passing though a deep crevice in the road that other trucks had turned into slop. With Ruby’s great power she managed to get through on her first attempt. Just when we thought our luck had changed the beer truck overtook us and just up the road he was stuck again. With little effort we pulled him out, but he forgot to off load a crate of beer for us for our help, nothing is for free in Africa.

That afternoon we pulled into the Lope Hotel where they kindly let us stay for free, camping in the beautiful hotel grounds. The hotel was on the banks of the Ogooue River and ran walking safaris through the forest, where people saw some kind of monkeys in the trees and driving safaris with stunning scenery, elephants and buffalo.  Others spent the day relaxing by the pool. 

The most excitement in Lope was the rain and the winds.  Some of us were protected from the storm in the bar, most others soon joined us, after their tents failed to shelter them.   Many failed to reinforce their tents, and poor Daisuke suffered the most his tent flipping with him in it. 

We made the most of the facilities of Lope and then hit the road for a long stint of bush camping, stopping off on day one in Franceville for supplies.  We had the first of our daytime rains and watched the other overland truck washing off in the rain, we weren’t so desperate for a shower at this stage but no doubt should have joined them if we were.

One more bushcamp in Gabon before hitting the Congo and sand.  Crossing out of Gabon we watched 3 trucks getting pushed up a sandy hill by a huge front-end loader, who unfortunately didn’t wait around for us.  Both trucks managed to make it up this particular hill unassisted.

The road was slow going covering 200km in three days, who would have thought the Congo was so sandy.  We got stuck a lot, and we duga lot and got the sand mats out on numerous occasions, as were towed as well.  We discovered some great swimming spots, and entertained the locals who watched us cook, and sang and danced with us next the trucks.

Week 18

We were gratefulto hit the tarmac, after three days on the sand, and had one more bush camp at a catholic mission before getting to Brazzaville.  We took a stroll to the local bar and did what you do in the Congo, and drunk Primus, it was warm but if was great.

The next day we made much better progress and covered 350kmt hitting Brazzaville in the afternoon.  We had all been a little apprehensive about Brazzaville and were pleasantly surprised.  The City was easy to get around, very interesting with some nice sites to see and the people were fantastic.

We stayed at St Anne’s Catholic School, were the girls befriended Father Roderick, who would prove to be extremely helpful, along with the Nuns at the mission.  Also we discovered are bar which was very strangely in the Catholic compound, very handy!

We thought that we were going to spend 2 nights in Brazzaville, and got Ruby stocked up for a 2 nights in Democratic Republic of the Congo and a transit through Angola.  Things unfortunately didn’t go to plan, and trying to leave Brazzaville started a very testing time on Ruby.

We set off from Camp early heading down to start the formalities and purchase ferry tickets to cross the mighty Congo River which defines the border between Congo Brazzaville and Democratic Republic of the Congo.  All went well leaving the Congo, and all turned pear-shaped when we reached the other side.  We were all trying to find shade under non-existent trees. Before we knew it the immigration officials we’re calling out our names and handing back passports and pushing us onto the last ferry back to Brazza. On arriving back to Brazzaville we had another challenge getting stamped back into the Congo. Mark and Jose got a taxi ride to the chief of immigration’s head office to try and talk our way back into the country, it turned out for the best and all he wanted was to have a chat to us. We then made our way back to St Anne’s and our lovely nuns.

The next 2 days we’re spent going to the Angolan Consulate trying to get a visa or a letter from them to say that we will be given transit visa’s in Matadi. On our first visit we we’re told that the consular was not there and will not be back for 3 weeks. Our next consulate was the British, which was nowhere to be found.  The last was the DRC consulate, which told us that even though we had a full tourist visa for the DRC we still needed a letter from the Angolans, which he would make a phone call for us that costs us $15 US. The next morning we had an appointment with the consular of Angola, which we we’re told was not available. After the hour and a half meeting with him we still came out empty handed.

 On our walk back to St Anne’s we passed the USA embassy and asked for their help. They wrote us a letter to ask the DRC consular to provide assistance in getting us across the following day. The next day was to be a public holiday for the daughter of the President of the Congo who had passed away, so all borders we’re closed, so we had to stay put, the whole country came to a stand still.

We then chanced our luck at crossing through a smaller border post, with 3 nuns and 2 priests we set off on what would become a great weekend trip out of the city limits.  With the help of the priest and the nuns we managed to get the appropriate paperwork to get us across the border.  But we needed god himself to help us on the road. 

The convoy left us where the road started turning bad, and we were off on our own, on road that we soon discovered that hadn’t been used for a long time. We got 10kms down the road and hit a very steep hill where much of the road had been washed away.  The road proved all for much Ruby, and the prop shaft twisted into 2 parts.

Fortunately where we broke down was in a shady spot with a stunning river, which was perfect for swimming and bathing.  After assessing the problem, it was discovered that Ruby’s problems was not going to be an easy fix.  We prepared for the worst and started boiling water for drinking and making bread (after we sifted the weevils out of the flour using a mosquito net), it was however not needed, as the boys managed to get patch Ruby up to get us back on the road the following afternoon, and we limped back to Brazzaville.  Was a stressful trip back, with another flat tyre and clunking sounds getting louder as we approached the night lights of Brazzaville.

Week 19

It was all heads back to the drawing board for making plans on leaving Brazzaville again. 

Mark focussed on getting Ruby fixed and back on the road, and had some frustrating times with the mechanic who was sure that the prop shaft needed to be shorter than Ruby needed.  After several trips back and forth to the mechanic, he got it right, and Ruby was ready to go again.

Jose headed up operations to get us successfully across the river, and once again we were hitting our heads against a brick wall to get us across legitimately, and had to rely on alternative measures.

So on Wednesday morning we packed up once again to give the ferry crossing another try, and this time we were successful, YAH… with a little help from a friend, a letter and some money, we were through.

Thankfully we were escorted out of Kinshasa and hit the road to Matadi to chase the elusive Angolan Visa, bush camping along the way.

It was straight to the Angolan Embassy on arrival in Matadi.  A huge thank you needs to go out to our Portuguese speaking Jose, who managed to get us our visas on the following day, on a day that they don’t issue visas!  LEGEND!

So we finally had our visas, and had our last night at a campsite in Matadi, relaxing, before hitting Angola for our 5-day transit, as we only managed to obtain transit visas for the country.

Week 20

We got to the border at lunchtime, with Jose saying to Mark “Its all up to you now”.  The adventure was in full swing with 2000km to do in 5 days.  We did 12 hour drive days starting driving at 6am and stopping briefly for toilet stops and lunch.  We were under the assumption that most of the roads through were going to be great roads, recently completed by the Chinese.  We soon discovered that the roads were partially finished and built to taunt you, with large sections of the worst roads that we have been on, and small sections (that we kept fooling ourselves would take us right through to the border) of beautiful tarmac.

We did however see some of the most stunning scenery yet, and the people that we briefly met were very friendly.

The staple diet was the heaviest bread that most of us has ever come across, with laughing cow and a vast assortment of tinned meat.

We managed to get through Angola 5 minutes before the border closed on the sixth day of our visa (our visa was from the 28^th March to the 2^ndof April), and we think that the 31^st somehow got lost in translation.

Week 21

On reaching Namibia, we started to feel a huge sense of achievement as we began to see the end of the first leg of the trip, and began to see we were actually going to make it down the western side of Africa.  We began to appreciate what we had been through.

It wasn’t long before we all became ‘little kids at a candy store’ when we reached our first supermarket in Tsumeb, where most of us were able to draw money out at an ATM, and had SO MUCH variety at a supermarket, and things were reasonably priced in comparison to where we had come from.

We did 2 bush camps on our way to Etosha for our first game drive.  It’s hard to say whether we were most excited about the showers or the animals when we reached the park.

The park was showing signs of the large amounts of rain and flooding that Namibia had experienced prior to us arriving.  The park was relatively green with long grass, which made animal spotting a little more challenging; we were lucky enough to be greeted by a lioness on arrival though.

We did an afternoon game and a morning game drive the following morning, where we saw giraffe, zebra, springbok, more male and female lions, Oryx, and plains game.  Jose and Carrie were the only ones that made it through the night watching the watering hole at the campsite, where they waited along time and were awarded watching an elephant coming down for a drink.

From Etosha we headed to Cheetah Park, where we all got to pat a tame Cheetah, and Lee discovered that he was allergic to Cheetah breaking out in a rash after bring licked by one.  That afternoon we went out on the back of the ‘bakkie’ for the feeding of the Cheetahs, where a large piece of donkey was thrown out to each of the Cheetah.  We also got to hold an8 week old cub, very cool.

From Cheetah Park headed down the Skeleton Coast on our way to Swokopmund.  Nambia stunned us with its diverse and picturesque scenery that would continue to amaze us throughout the country.

In Swokopmund the adventure continued, with kayaking, dolphins watching cruises, sandboarding, skydiving, quadbiking, and a lot of celebrating at the bar.

From Swokopmund we drove to Sesriem, and were up early the following morning for a magical sunrise and hike up dune 45, and once again Namibia treated us to more magical scenery.

From Sesriem we did a bush camp and were up the following morning for a trip to Fish River Canyon, 2^nd only to the Grand Canyon.

WEEK 22

We entered into our last country on our journey down the western side of Africa, into South Africa, where we spent our first night bush camping. And thought that was the end of getting bogged, with not much effort we had Ruby out in know time.

We headed first to Lamberts Bay, where we stayed at our first Family Campground for the trip that felt very strange.  Joost, Dean and Willy decided to test the cold Atlantic sea, to find that it was freezing and Willy knee discovered that was quite rocky, and is still recovering now.

We had a fairly relaxing time in Lamberts Bay, in preparation for Stellenboosh and the wine tour.  On the wine tour we experienced 4 wineries, at least 20 wines, and a number a cheeses, everyone was well behaved and we had a nice enjoyable day, finishing off with a traditional South African Braai.

We had a short last day drive on Ruby before reaching our destination Cape Town.  Here we say a very sad goodbye to Walter, Andre, Lance, Daisuke, Dean, Iain, Laura and Rob.  It’s been a fantastic journey so far, and it’s been great travelling with everyone, and will look forward and keep you posted on the second half of the trip up the eastern side.

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The curious case of the clever Cercopithecinae

Posted by Mark Pearce

WEEK 14

Still been unsuccessful in obtaining visas for Angola but we are confident about obtaining them further along the way.  From Abuja we started heading up towards Wiki warm springs and started a 10-day stint of bush camping. 

At Wiki warm springs we rock climbed, swam, had close encounters with elephants, and fended off multiple baboon attacks.  We weren’t, however, completely successful at fending off the baboons, as a crack team managed to infiltrate the truck stealing Walter’s carrots and defecating on the cab.  Christy and Joost got a little too close to the elephants whilst taking photos and had to climb a building after being charged at.

We headed back towards Abuja and were rejoined by Amy and Chesley,. That nights bush camp was our last night with Christy and Ciara and we celebrated as only you do with that particular Irish pair, with lots of alcohol induced fun and frivolities. This did however cause quite a lot of chaos in the tents, with Carrie waking up lodged between Lance and Jose.

It was a tearful goodbye the next morning as we push started their taxi which was bound for Abuja.  We carried on and found a bush camp at a local school where we were greeted by the local chief complete with his big stick and local alcohol offerings (which he appeared to have had quite a few of). Subsequent conversations revealed he had spent between 37 years and 9 months and 39 years and 7 months in the Nigeria Army. 

Joost enjoyed a hastily organised soccer game with shirts verses no shirts. Joost, of course, was in the no shirts team and his glistening body collapsed on the ground at the end.  The locals were all concerned about our cleanliness and insisted that we had showers.

The following morning we witnessed the chief using his stick, with Lance saying “I get the impression that he uses that stick quite often”, as the stick went flying towards a group of amused children.  We were invited to enter the classroom and listened to them sing, and Chesley explained where we were all from.

We hit the road and took the long distance route.  We stopped at a town and did our housekeeping dutiesby getting the tents fixed, filled Ruby with diesel, and stocked up on supplies for the hard road ahead. We also paid a visit to the doctors where our first Malaria victim was diagnosed…….well done Amy.

WEEK 15

That night we changed our 4^th tyre in 10 days while staying at a school close to the Cameroon border.

The Cameroon border was a cruisey crossing and we started the long awaited logging road. We were not disappointed and within a half hour of leaving the border Ruby was firmly stuck for over an hour. We had bottomed out in several inches of sticky, wet mud.  The local bodybuilder-sized villagers, who were awarded with Whiskey, conveniently turned up within seconds to assist, and helped with advice and brute strength for pushing.

The fun continued for the next three days.  We pretty much walked the road, stopping to prepare for Rubys crossing, bucketing mud out of holes, pick axing mounds to smooth the road and fill holes, and sawing trees. 

We camped the last night on the logging road beside a big river where we all bathed, shaved, and washed clothing in the true African way. This was a welcome return to relative cleanliness after days of enduring a washing drought.

We finally emerged from the logging road at Nguti, and camped at another hospital where once again we made the most of the facilities.Joost and Lee went in and got tested for Malaria with their results coming out positive. Both guys also came out with various other ailments, including salmonella and throat infections.

From Nguti we made our way to Kumba, where a very dodgy bridge required our own sand mats to establish a semi stable crossing.  At Kumba we finally got some Cameroon currency, and stocked up on supplies.

Another bushcamp beside road works where we had an unexpected visitor at midnight, Prince Ali, who really wanted to meet and talk to us. Walter was the only one that was lucky enough to talk to him.  The Mount Cameroon climbers began organising their trip, and Willy got scared. Really scared.

We headed onto Limbe, where we thought we would be for 2 nights but ended up being for 5 nights after Mark was diagnosed with 3 illnesses. At this point Walter, Sue, Will, Carrie and Dean set off for their Mount Cameroon climb.  The rest remained at the campsite, conveniently just around the corner from a delightful French bakery.

Mount Cameroon was successfully scaled by all those who attempted her. The reports were that it was highly enjoyable with “simply breath-taking” scenery, but very windy. Well done to all those guys and girls. The highest mountain in west and central Africa (the sixth highest mountain in Africa)…… fact.

Joost, Renier and Amy ‘flew’ on to Yaounde on the local buseswith their eyes closed the whole way, to deny themselves the life threatening reality of travelling on African roads, in order to get Ren a new passport and obtain visas for the group for Gabon and the DRC.

WEEK 16

The truck arrived in Yaounde where we once again, conveniently, found a campsite around the corner from an even better local patisserie, and the search for Ruby’s DHL package of parts began.  After 5 days of waiting, and consuming lots of doughnuts (and lots of putting up and taking down of tents), we decided to head off towards Gabon leaving Amy behind (again….) to continue the search for our parts. After heading back to Douala and counting down many hours in the DHL office she finally took delivery of the much-needed parts.

We did 3 bush camps on our way to Libreville.  The first one was at another hospital where we sat around telling ghost stories.  Willy later surprised Lee coming out of the toilet by covering himself in his black sleeping bag liner. Lee (apparently) then screamed like a little girl to the great amusement of all those still awake at the time, although he claims to have noticed Willy’s odd coloured flip flops protruding out from underneath and was neither fooled nor scared by the whole event. The jury is still out as to whether or not we believe him.

The 2^ndbushcamp was very eventful. Our flapping ritual was interrupted by a rainstorm that didn’t stop until the middle of the night.  We woke up in a huge puddle of mud. After trying for 4 hours, in vain, to get Ruby out of the mud we were rescued by Andre and Chesley’s efforts to flag-down an empty logging truck. After a couple of strained towing efforts and some further digging we were pulled free and able to continue on our way. Much needed relief for our filthy bodies came in the form of a water pump at a nearby village.

Another bush camp; this time with no ghost stories, no rain, no mud and no drama. We then continued onto Libreville, and straight to the Angolan Embassy. We made it with minutes to spare before it closed, but were told to come back on Monday.  We also met our latest additions to the truck, and gained a new nationality at the same time, whenScots Iain and Laura joined.

Amy returned, after being held up at immigration for awhile, and the parts were installed on Ruby.

Our time in Libreville has been pretty lazy, mostly just trying to get out of the 45 degree centigrade heat during the day and the thunderstorms at night.  Good pizzas have been found along with a hidden ten-pin bowling alley.  Various assortments of meats have been sampled, with Rebecca once again being the most game and sampling chicken foot.  Andre also celebrated his birthday by eating alligator.  Much advantage has been taken of the toilet and shower facilities and lots of grooming has been done. Whilst everybody has their own individual grooming techniques Willy chose the most drastic route by temporarily adopting a new Crusty the Clown look, before shaving off the remaining famous curly blonde locks.

In a ridiculously expensive town like Libreville respite from the constant feeling you’re just burning money was much needed, and this thankfully came in the form of cheap beer found just metres from the campsite.  A sleepless night was had by all last night. With high humidity, no rain and complete lack of a breezesleeping was a luxury not many enjoyed a lot of.

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Week 10 - 12 Brenu Beach, Benin and Bureaucracy

Posted by Mark Pearce

WEEK 10
The rest of our time in Accra was spent at Kokrobite Beach at Big Millys Backyard, which was renamed Big Millys Blur by some who seriously started questioning if this trip was good for their health.  Hot humid nights required the body to be cooled by cold drinks and hot humid mornings, waking up cooking in your tent, you are also required to cool your body with cold drinks.

From Kokrobite we headed west along the coast to Cape Coast, where the Cape Coast Castle that was once one of the largest slave markets during slave trading humbled us.

From Cape Coast we headed further west to Brenu Beach, where we relaxed and enjoyed a nice beach, which we had pretty much to ourselves for the whole time. There was lots of swimming, body surfing, walks and even runs along the beach for the energetic.  We also watched the local chief be wined and dined by some people who are looking at the beach for a resort, which would dramatically change the place and be quite sad.  We also did shopping excursion further along the coast to Takaradi and also so Elmina which was also a large slave market.

From Brenu we started heading back to Accra.  We stopped off Kakum National Park where we went for wildlife walks and got rope burns from holding on for dear life as we walked on the suspension walkway.

We returned to Big Millys for two nights, where only a few slipped into the Big Milly Blur.  We fought through Accra traffic one last time and headed into Accra to pick up a new addition to the group Joost, who takes our Dutch count to two.
We started heading northeast, up to Lake Volta, the largest artificial lake in the world, where we marvelled at the Akosombo dam.  The scenery changed from what we had already seen of Ghana, becoming lush, green and hilly.   Lake Volta was unexpectedly quite beautiful.

WEEK 11
From Lake Volta we headed further East to Wli Falls, which were stunning.  Most people enjoyed the leisure walk to the first fall.  A few people tested their fitness, or lack of fitness, on what was more of a rock climb than a walk, to admire the top waterfall, and admire some beautiful scenery.  The brave people among us took shower under the waterfalls, which were extremely icy, and involved lots of shrieking and gasps for breath.

The border crossing from Ghana to Togo was an interesting experience.  It didn’t take long for us to find a spot to use up any remaining Ghanaian Cedi.  There was a bar at the border and the customs official was the barman.  We were stamped out of Ghana and arrived at the Togo border post, where we waited while the immigration official to be located.  From the paperwork we saw,it looked as though we were the second people to use this border post this year.

Our first days drive in Togo was extremely steep, narrow roads, with thick vegetation on either side of the roads, was a beautiful drive.  We liked the look of a mission hospital we looked down on, and decided to target it as a bush camp.  The Americans running the hospital warmly welcomed us, and it was a perfect place to stop have a few sick people, and quite a few people with infected wounds.

From the hospital we found a road leading in the bush that looked like a good bush camp, fortunately no traffic decided to use the road that night.  We did have a few people walking through the campsite carrying guns and machetes but they were friendly and didn’t even look that surprised to see us.

We then headed towards Lome the capital of Togo, which we explored for a couple of hours before heading to what we thought was going to be a campsite beside the beach in Aneho.  Turns out the campsite didn’t want us, so we established our own campsite beside the beach near a local village.  We were extremely interesting to the local village that studied us as we cooked dinner.  One of our washbowls went missing during the course of the night, which was later returned to us, and the person who took it was strongly reprimanded.

We set off towards Benin via a town that was meant to have one of the largest fetish markets on west Africa that we couldn’t seem to find, or didn’t exist?

WEEK 12
In Benin our first stop was in Grand Popo were some us went on a boat trip and had a look around a fetish village, and watched a family dispute unfold.

We were once again one Visa hunt when reaching Cotonou, were we obtained our Congo Visas, which was out easiest visa to obtain yet, successfully acquiring them in one morning.

Most of us enjoyed a ride on a taxi motorbike through town with one if not two us climbing on with no helmet.  Cotonou roads are dominated by the motorbikes and the rides where quite exhilarating.

We left Obsombo with a few less people than what we arrived with.  We said a tearful goodbye to Mich and Clare, who headed back to Australia.  Four boys of the trip took a holiday from the holiday and headed off to Lagos for a couple of days.  Ruby and the remainder of us headed northeast, to visit the stilt village of Ganvie, a boat trip on Lake Nokoue, where the guide told us 30 people lived but we think that he meant 30,000.

It was an interesting drive to the stilt village.  The main road was closed we had to take an alternative route through a villages with low powerlines that Ruby didn’t fit under.  Luckily the wires were not live and Walter stood in the beach (open roofed section of the truck) with a broom lifting the power lines for us to go under.

From the stilt village we went to the town of Abomey, where we admired the palaces, and got our paperwork together for crossing into Nigeria.

WEEK 13
The crossing into Nigeria went more smoothly than we expected, it was interesting nonetheless.  The boys who went to Lagos, had reported back on their experience of getting into Nigeria, where they had been completely drilled and told that they weren’t going to be allowed into Nigeria, even though they had been stamped out Benin, so e were expecting the worst.  On exiting Benin we found ourselves within a village of narrow dirt roads, we weaved or way through the tracks, until we stumped upon the deserted border post.  We located the officials, who were very accommodating, and got stamped into Nigeria.

From the border post we drove towards Abeokuta, approximately a 100km drive where we were passed about 15 police checks and were stopped about 10 times to have our passports inspected.  The police were all very friendly and seemed mostly just intrigued about what we were doing.  We stopped at a town, where we were a novelty and Ruby was soon surrounded by hundreds of locals, and a lot of us got our meat fix, after being vegetarian for quite some time.

We reached Abeokuta where we discovered just how expensive things were in Nigeria. We finally reached the golf club where we were staying for the night.  We were wrongly taken to a sports complex that seemed have every sport apart from golf.  This took our count of staying at golf complexes to 3 for the trip, one the night before at a mini golf course, the second mini golf course of the trip.  The boys returned from Lagos, who had had a good but testing and expensive time.
From here we started heading towards Abuja.  We did 2 bush camps along the way, and Marks driving was tested on some horrendous roads, where we all saw more trucks that we had ever seen in our lives, mainly petrol tankers.  The second bush camp was beside a village that were extremely surprised to see us, and we were once again quite the novelty, a head count of 115 spectators was counted over breakfast, they also didn’t seem to mind that we collapsed their bridge on our way in.

We were all pleased to reach the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja, where we could all make the most of the facilities after not having a shower for days when we had been in extreme temperatures.  Staying at the Sheraton isn’t quite as ritzy as it sounds, and we really felt that we were backpacking as we parked the truck in the staff carpark and pitched our tents.  It is however our first hot showers in about 2 months.

We had reason to believe that we were going to be successful in obtaining our Angolan Visas whilst in Abuja, and we all put on our backpacking best for the procedure, which brought out some interesting outfits, included sneakers and skirts.  We all returned from the Angolan embassy a little disappointed, feeling one step closer to obtaining visas but still miles away, being told that we needed to return with our passports in 2 weeks time, when they would have more of an idea whether they could issue visas.

Our plan of attack for the next wee while is still up in the air at the moment as we wait to here more about the visas, fingers crossed.

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Santa and the African elves - weeks 7, 8 & 9

Posted by Mark Pearce

WEEK 7

Santa visited the campsite on Christmas Eve and left us packages with labelled pegs filled with lollies; a lovely surprise to wake up to; he also left behind some ingenious Christmas decorations, thanks Santa!

Hung-over heads on Christmas day, Mark was up early putting one of the little pigs on the fire. 

Heads were cleared by a large cooked breakfast, which was leisurely prepared and ready for lunchtime.  The drinking started early and more food followed some Hors’deuves   of crustini hummus and salsa, thanks to Rebecca and Dave for crushing the chickpeas with a garlic crusher.

Secret Santa made an appearance in the afternoon, and everyone was well impressed with their gifts especially Mark who got to sing a Roxette solo, and also Daisuke who is still wearing his new T-Shirt.  Other big players for gifts were cigarettes, alcohol, chocolate and slingshots along with a headband and braid set (which was for a boy), an African club, a Dogon hat, shirts, headscarfs, jewellery and herbal Viagra!

Christmas was celebrated here much like it is at home with too much food, and too much alcohol.  Thank you to our ingenious wedding planner who made the most of what she could get and decorated our Christmas dinner table.

Boxing Day was a very quiet day sat around the truck doing English pub quizzes for about 6 hours, and eating the leftovers.  Eating the leftovers that had been left in the sun for the day may have not been the right thing to do, with all but 2 people getting sick over the next 2 weeks.  We well and truly overate pork, finishing it off with sweet and sour pork for dinner.

From Bandiagara we made our way to Burkina Faso, where we all turned a tinge of red from the red dust, especially Walter whose white beard turned ginger.

It was a fleeting visit to Burkina Faso, three nights four days.  Both border crossings were painless and quite fast which was a nice change.  Ouagadougou the Capital, is a great name to say, ( Wog-a-do-do?) and a fine modern city, where we enjoyed some air-conditioning, and caught up with administration jobs, and found pizza and a western supermarket with real cheese.

Burkina Faso is also a great clothes-shopping country, with people restocking their bags with new clothes, after discovering that white clothes don’t remain white out here.  So more white clothes were brought and we now have professional footballers and fishermen on the trip.

All and all Burkina Faso seemed like a really nice country with really nice people, clean, the majority of the buildings in the villages were made of mud and straw and just so beautiful.

WEEK 8

There were obvious changes as we crossed the border into Ghana, and we were all able to converse with the locals and read the signs along the road, with the official language being English.  There were also physical changes in the people becoming much wider and bigger. English breakfasts?

Our first stop was Tamale, where we discovered plastic bags of ice cream and water.  Grins came across Chesley and Amy’s faces as they went from store to store buying out Savannahs (South African Cider).  We were also enlightened about Ghanaian toilets which are generally long drops with no doors which when you pay you get a sheet of newspaper.

From Tamale we headed straight to Mole Game Reserve, and went on our worst road yet, travelling 80 kms in 4 ½ of continuous ruts and potholes.  On arriving we quickly started celebrating New Years Eve, and headed to the hotel bar where there was a DJ set up that was playing extremely loud distorted music. Warthogs joined us for dinner, and drunk from the washbowls. Ciara had a dance off with one of the guys at the bar that lasted 40 minutes and most people jumped in the pool at midnight, celebrations didn’t go too early into the morning with the bar closing early, but were picked up again the following day after a great cooked breakfast to start the year off.

We ended up staying in Mole for 3 nights.  Some people dropped down in the reserve and went for game walks, but the majority enjoyed the park and the views from the cliff edge were the campsite and hotel in set.  A lot of time was spent cooling down in the hotel pool, with day time temperatures getting up to 45degrees Celsius, we found ourselves putting on long sleeves at night to warm up as the temperatures dropped to 24degrees Celsius.

Baboons that stole bread and Laughing Cow cheese broke into ruby, and elephant also came to visit the campsite.

From Mole we headed back along the great road and started making our way towards Kintampo Waterfall where we camped for the night.  Humidity started to get mixed in with the heat, and the waterfall was a nice relief. From Kintampo we made our way to the crazy market town of Kumasi, which used to be the capital of Ghana. It has the largest markets of West Africa.

WEEK 9

The markets of Kumasi is a maze of craziness, with ridiculous amounts of people buying and selling pretty much everything that you can think off.  Renier and Rebecca bravely tried the tourist meal of Cane Rat, which is apparently very tasty, the rest decided to take their word for it.

We also got our first rain of the trip with a good tropical storm coming through, which was a welcome relief to the humidity.

Ruby’s horn got upgraded to an air horn; with the car horn she had not really cutting it with the crazy drivers in Ghana.

Was an early morning leaving Kumasi for Accra, to start another visa hunting adventure.  We were hoping for Angolan, Togo and Benin Visas while being here, but have only been successful with Togo and Benin.  The drive from Kumasi to Accra was a very long and tiring day, and the scene was soon set after we set off seeing large amounts of crashed vehicles along the sides of the roads, it wasn’t long before we saw a truck roll over beside us, which was extremely scary and eye opening to all, and left us feeling nauseous for the majority of the day.

We got to Accra and discovered that the Angolan Embassy is only open for 3 hours a day and we would have to come back the following day.  We started making our way to the beach, which involved a large detour through peak hour traffic and resulted in a 14-hour drive day, our longest yet.

We then headed to a South African shopping mall to enjoy air-conditioning for a few hours and stock up on supplies before joining the Accra traffic once again back to the beach.  A 32km trip from town, without the detour, seems to take an average time of 1.5hours.

Back to the Angolan Embassy the next day to be told that Angolan visas are only being issued in the country of bordering Angola, we shall keep trying.

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Weeks 5 & 6 - To infinity…and beyond. Well Timbuktu, at least.

Posted by Mark Pearce

WEEK 5

From Bamako we hit the road and started heading northeast towards Dogon country.  Our first stop along the way was Djenne the largest mud mosque in West Africa.  We had our first boat experience of the trip, and had children fighting over our fingers to hold, and wanted to admire photos of themselves in our cameras.

We had a bush camp before heading to Severe and Mopti (Port on the Niger for Timbuktu tours).  We went and inspected our boat/dug out canoe that would be our home for 3 days for our Timbuktu excursion, and were pleasantly surprised.  Mopti is a vibrant port town, and was well worth a wonder around, and we stocked up with supplies (beer and water) for the boat trip to Timbuktu.

After a night in Severe we jumped on our ‘canoe’ and set off for Timbuktu.  Perhaps a closer inspection of the boat should have been undertaken, as we were wet and cold within minutes.  We adapted to the situation and curled up in our sleeping bags are used each other as pillows.  The views were spectacular as we bobbed along, we saw the local activities at the mud villages built right next to the river.  We stopped at a couple the villages on the way up, where we were greeted like gods, and once again had children fighting over our fingers and demanding we took and showed them photos of themselves, we can only assume they have no mirrors?

The first night on the boat was a little daunting, still having not reached a suitable place to camp by nightfall, it was pitch black, a cloudy night with no moon.  We were all very pleased to be standing on the firm land at the end on the day, particularly Dave who suffered considerably on the rocky ride.

We managed to balance the boat a whole lot better on the second day.  The toilet (hole in a seat) was at the back on the boat, and everyone had to weight balance the boat, whenever anyone needed to go to the toilet, which was quite often as we were 21 people and some of them were drinking beer at 9 o clock in the morning.

Celebrations took place at camp on the 2^nd night, with Will taking out first place for the most outrageous on tour so far, he was very well looked after by the others.

Third day on the boat, we had our first close encounter with African wildlife, 2 hippos wallowing in the shallow waters on the Niger, they were quite close and when they disappeared under the water, we took off as fast as our 40 horse power engine would take us.

Timbuktu was all that we expected, we didn’t have overly high expectations.  It is another mud Malian village, but with a interesting history, which we enjoyed hearing from our local guide, and we will all proudly say and wear our T-Shirts that say we “Went to Timbuktu and Back”.

An interesting feature of Timbuktu, where the cats drying out on powerlines, which are supposably ground down for medicinal purposes (curing stomach problems).  Sand is also a staple in Timbuktu cuisine, and everything is overpriced.  And beware you will get mobbed by English speaking Mohammed’s, Mr Good Price, Mr Cheaper Prices, and Obamas, trying to sell an assortment of hand crafted goods.

After 2 nights in Timbuktu, in what must have been a stunning building in its time, we headed back to Severe to reconnect with Ruby.  We left Timbuktu in 5 4 wheel drives, who appeared to be rally car racing through the desert, not too surprisingly 2 of the vehicles did not make it all the way to Severe, and the remaining 3 vehicles became tightly packed with 25 people.  One vehicle broke its axle and the other blew its radiator.  Negotiations with the tour company are currently being undertaken to try and establish a fair price for the vehicles.

Despite the obstacles, all enjoyed the trip and fun was had!

We are having a housekeeping day today, before setting off to Bandiagara, where we will start our 3-day trek in Dogon country tomorrow.

WEEK 6

Negotiations to reduce the price of the vehicles from Timbuktu unfortunately didn’t go as well as we had hoped.  It was somehow our fault that the vehicles had broken down, and we were lucky that we didn’t get left on the side of the road.  Was well worth try though!

From Severe we had a short drive to Bandiagara, gateway to Dogon country.  We started organising ourselves for our Dogon trek, and our first bit of exercise for 6 weeks, was a quiet night around the campfire.

We opted for a 3 day 2 night Dogon Trek, and thought that it would be a fairly intensive three days of climbing up and down rocks.  We set off on the first day driving for a couple of hours, through horticultural farms along the river banks.  We arrived at our lunch spot where we parked up for 3 hours, during the heat of the day before we set off for our one and a half hour walk.  `The scenery was spectacular.  We arrived at a guesthouse, where we enjoyed the scenery, had dinner, and slept on mattresses on the roof of the guesthouse.  Was a fantastic place to sleep, spotting shooting stars before drifting off to sleep.  We were however, quite concerned that we were going to loose belongings in the winds, and were rudely awakened at 4.30am by donkeys and roosters.

The middle day was the most intensive of the three days, 5 hours walking broken up with a 3-hour lunch break.  The lunch break was very memorable; it was a cool little guesthouse, which had western toilets clean enough to sit on with toilet paper and sinks with soap, quite a treat.  We dropped down in the plateau and wondered through villages and looked up at the old villages in the rocky outcrops.

The last day was a very short walk heading back to the Ruby in Bandigara.  We had 2 vehicles, and once again realised that it was better to get into the older and less reliable looking vehicles, for a reliable ride home.  The better looking vehicle was a van that had potholes cut out of the sides, which didn’t have quite enough power to carry 10 people up the steep hills, and didn’t have a handbrake.  The sliding door was left open and when the hills were too much to handle everyone had to leap out and throw rocks under the wheels before it started sliding backwards.

We were treated to a dinner our once back in Bandigara, and were all pleased to have a break from rice with red sauce, and had a cold but delicious meal of chips and stewed meat. We once again climbed into our port holed van to get back to the campsite, which successfully delivered the first half and of the group, but only managed to get the second have of the group half way, backfiring and sparking and eventually dying on the way back.

Everyone is currently trying to gather some Christmas supplies to accompany our three little pigs that have been purchased that we will sacrificed and attached to spit poles for a feast tomorrow.  MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

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Week Four - Birthday, Beer and Burnt Kettle

Posted by Mark Pearce

Ruby was mended after 3 days hard work, and ready to hit the road for a transit through Mauritania.  We headed straight to Nouakchott, where we stayed by the sea and then said goodbye to it for a month.  We shall meet it again in Ghana, amongst the slaving castles on the Coast. 

We checked out the local fish market, apparently the largest in West Africa, where there were hundreds of cars that look like they should have been taken off the roads 50 years ago.  

Cars were completely loaded and covered in fish.  We had our first pocket picked whilst in the capital, and decided it was time to speed through the remainder of Mauritania. We drove through the desert for three days, seeing the diversity of the desert landscape.

We then ran the gauntlet of Mauritania on the last days, which started with a car stopping on the highway, and then decided to start backing up without consulting their mirrors, damaging poor Ruby’s front light.  It only got better from there, approaching the hundreds of corrupt police, leading up the border, we ran into further difficulties entering Mali.  The oasis of Mali met us after crossing the border where a kid on a bicycle led us to the first pub in Nioro, where we forced to “sign up” to the ‘Roxette Appreciation Society’, if caught singing and dancing along to the band…….. I’ll leave it to those of you who know us well to decide who are now members….for life…

.

So far we are all really enjoying Mali, the country and the people.  From Nioro, we bush camped in a rocky outcrop, where there was the first wild snake spotting, and were woken by bids chirping, which sounded slightly like car alarms, but nice car alarms. (Ed says “Is there such a thing?!?!”)  We are now in the capital of Mali, Bamako, we took the scenic route on arrival, not the lost route.  Staying in a campsite, right on the Niger River, and we have a swimming pool, which is fantastic, as the heat has definitely been turned up from our time in Morocco and Mauritania.

On our first night in Bamako, the majority of the group sampled Malian nightlife and hit a bar with live music and a brothel upstairs.  One member of the group spent his time, peering behind the curtains.  Another member entered into a “dance off” with a local, who is taking it as a loss.  Another member almost got himself and others involved in a local fight.  And they raced another overland group back to the campsite in local taxis, where the party continued, a good time was had by all involved.

We are waiting to get our Nigerian visas back today, which have stung some nationalities financially.  Whilst here we have also been organising our Timbuktu trip and Dogon trek, getting excited about the next 10 days which are going to be action packed.

Also a big “Happy Birthday” to our first celebrant of the trip, Chesley, who enjoyed a canoe trip for the day.  Also thanks to Mark for fixing the kettle whose handle didn’t hold up to the heat of the fire. Doh!

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Week Three - Sandstorms and Sweet Tea

Posted by Mark Pearce

Week 3

From Essaouira we went on to Agadir where we feasted on what we think will be our last western meal for awhile, some heading to good old McDonalds, and others to an English pub for breakfast.  Others snuck into a fancy hotel for a swim in the pool and a shower.  Carrie just about got left behind, with people slipping right into holiday mode and no longer being able to count to 20.  We also said a tearful goodbye to our beloved Marjane.

From Agadir, we made up for our leisurely drives and did a series of long driving days broken up by an assortment of bush camps.

On the first bush camp after leaving agadir we made an effort to consume any alcohol left on the truck in preparation for entering dry Mauritania.  Some people have been put off peach Vodka for life, and the tripod stools just become too much for most to handle, and, there was more confusion than normal on whose tent was whose.  We had a very nice camp dog, Rabies, who got stomped on by Dean and tried to sneak into Christy and Ciara’s tent for a comfortable nights sleep.

Another drive day which most people slept through.  Arrived at our bush camp and encountered our first wildlife, a green/yellow scorpion, and shoes were put on by all.  Some of the girls decided it was a smart idea to have a “bowl bath” in a sand storm, but felt better for it.

We broke the next day up stopping in Layounne, where Ruby got her first fill up of 2,500litres of diesel.  We all indulged in showers, and a new essence momentarily drifted through Ruby.  We then had to become a little more selective with our toilet stops entering into landmine filled terrain.

Another bush camp in the desert, the neighbouring military station (which became a lot more prevalent in the southern section of Morocco) came to greet us, and told us to come to them for help if we ran into any trouble.

Another drive day ended with a bush camp challenge, the first selection was vetoed because of howling winds and sand storms.  We sought refuge in the local road clearers station with a very friendly Saharawi, Ahmed, who kept us fully stocked with teeth rotting sweet tea.  A very enlightening and entertaining evening was had by all.  Some people went for a walk to the sea that continued to run away from them for 4kms, and then had to navigate their way back to the campsite with a moonless sky, and a campsite with limited lighting.  We ate our first camel this night, and have continued to eat it every night since…….

We finally reached our destination this day, arriving at the Moroccan/ Mauritanian border, which snuck up on us, 60kms before we expected.  Quite painless, but extremely time consuming taking about 5 hours.  Dean took the opportunity to get some sun baking in, and Walter poured yoghurt all over himself.  This year Ruby made it across no mans land without getting stuck; apparently she wasn’t so lucky last year.

We are currently parked up in Nouabhibou, where we thought we would spend just a day restocking the bags with clean washing, Ruby however had different plans, revealing she needed some relatively major renovations.  She is currently jacked up and missing her 2 front wheels and axle, we may be here for a few more days, maybe we can once again get ripped off by the lovely washing lady Maria who seems to have stained unstained clothing… once again people should not be lazy and do their own hand washing! 

 PS we have hot showers here, it just took us a day to work this one out!

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Week Two - Marrakech and the search for Stars

Posted by Mark Pearce

Still lurking in Rabat getting visas and instead of using the scruffy campsite we decided it was a good plan to head back to our fantastic beach bush camp.  This turned out to be a mistake when a phantom clapper started circling like a noisy vulture at 4.30am.  This continued until 6am during which time he managed to jump into Andre’s tent and start stroking his arm before being swiftly ejected, whereby he attempted the same feat with Alan.  By this point calls as to the whereabouts of the axe were being bandied around the camp.  As with all these exciting things, half the group managed to sleep through it blissfully unaware…..

So of course the next night we headed back to the campsite, for a little security and washing (done by ourselves this time) was not put out, and we were not offered hot showers again.  Bah Humbug.  On the bright side though our 5 night stay in Rabat has been successful and we have obtained our visas for Mauretania, the next country on the list, then Mali and Ghana. 

Rabat is the Capitol of the Kingdom of Morocco and although a beautiful Kasbah, twinned with Sale across the river, five days was getting to be too much for some.  So they took the short train journey down to Casablanca to visit the beautiful Hassan II mosque.  Finally completed in 1993 it has the highest minaret in the world standing at an impressive 689 feet with night lasers shining in the direction of Mecca.  There are also the fantastic fruit and vegetable markets which some visited, whilst others raided the huge Marjane (Moroccan Supermarket Chain), filling Ruby with all the essentials (and non essentials) ready for the many kilometres that stretch before us.

From Rabat we headed to the chaos of Marrakech (a Berber word meaning The Land of God), nestled near the foot of the snow capped High Atlas Mountains.  Here Ruby spent another three days parked up in a nice big secure car park.  We, on the other hand stayed in the centre of town, to experience the real Marrakech which comes alive between the hours of 5-12pm. The main square, the Djemaa el Fna, fills up with night markets, open-air movies, buskers, and thousands of people.   It is the largest square in Africa and also the world. It’s an assault on your senses with the smell of a hundred different yummy things cooking, the noise of all the musicians, story tellers and of course the traders on the edge of the square, all vying for your attention to make their sale.  The city centre during the day is clearly dominated by motorbikes firstly, closely followed by us unsuspecting tourists who have to beware of the many snakes being thrown over your shoulders, by their “charmers”, whilst a man with a camera catches your expression of shock! The winding streets of the Medina are a site to behold with the brightly coloured stalls selling everything from herbs to curly toed princess shoes.

We all had a local experience whilst in Marrakech, from sampling the many different foods with anything from kebabs to goat heads, to trying out a Hammam.  The Hammam is a Moroccan steam room bath, which resulted in 2 couples of the trip getting very familiar with each other and one “nearly nude” soaped up person, sliding across a tiled floor on her back.  Others turned down beds to sleep on a roof top terrace and enjoy the views smells and noises of the city.  For some their experience was a day, unsuccessfully, searching the city for somewhere that was playing the rugby.  They did however find the exclusive bars of Marrakech, claiming that they had met the “ginger headed” star from the movie ‘Titanic’ as they walked down the red carpet…..  Who could it have been we wonder???

We said goodbye to beds and hots showers, and returned to Ruby for a short drive to Essaouira, a complete contrast to Marrakech.  A relatively small coastal city that has a slightly hippy feeling, where one can leisurely walk in the markets without fear of being taken out by motorbikes, horse or donkeys.  We heard a rumour that Cat Stevens lives in Essaouira, but like Elvis, we had no sightings.

We discovered a bar that sold cheap cold beers, and indulged in large quantities of seafood.  The seafood frenzy continued again later, with the cook group preparing enough seafood for 60 people.  (Did they not learn with the 7 bags of pasta…?)  Some members seriously questioned the decision to prepare sardines for dinner as they found themselves covered in fish juice and contemplated what their clothing was going to smell like after a week in their wash bags.

From here on, we are about to pick up the pace to make our way to the Mauritanian border by the end of the week.  We will have one last stop at our beloved Marjane, and we’re all starting to look forward to the desert.  We have just a few more days along the coast of Morocco before we get there though.

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And We’re Off……

Posted by Mark Pearce

African Trails Trans November 08 acquired 24 passengers collected from Malaga and Gibraltar Airports.  We are, Australians (Mark (Driver), Mich, Clare, Rebecca, Robert), Americans (Carrie, Chesley, Alan), British (David, Lee, Sue, Dean), Canadian (Walter), Dutch (Andre), Irish (Ciara, Christy, Will) Japanese (Daisuke), New Zealanders (Lance, Amy), Portuguese (Josef), and South African (Renier).

We were greeted into Morocco watching a local tout (who had been helping us) get beaten up by the official parking wardens.  Was a long first day, but have been having leisurely days since.  Day one on the truck was a short drive, but was a good bonding exercise starting with push starting the newly christened “Ruby”.  We stayed in Chefchaouen for 2 nights, where the days were spent exploring the blue washed buildings and our first medina. Carrie and Dean went nightclubbing,  we laughed at Mark in his wizard suit (Jelaba), went food shopping in local markets, and discovered that our group can’t eat 7 packets of pasta.

From Chefchaouen we went to Fes, the Moroccan capital of handcrafts, where we took a guided tour of the Medina, that was very quiet as it was holy day.   On the tour we saw the tanneries, a small portion of the 300 mosques in Fes, went to a natural/herbal pharmacy and got the heavy sales pitch in a 5 storied carpet shops.  We declined the guided tour to the campsite and ended up camping in someone’s cauliflower paddock.  We returned to Fes and spent a free morning wandering the winding narrow streets, which were full with the markets, with everything from camels heads dripping blood to slipper stalls and successfully managed to avoid being trampled by mules and donkeys.

From Fes we had another short drive to Volubillis, home of the ancient Roman ruins famous for their intricate mosaic floors.  We camped in a quarry with spectacular views, and equally spectacular winds! We also had our first tent sabotage, as Will and Dean woke up sandwiched between the tent and the flysheet.  Had a great fire and did a massive fire wood collection clearing the dead branches within a olive orchard, patting ourselves on the back for doing the local farmer a massive favour……..  The “boys-only” cook group did a sterling effort and took out the best meal of the trip so far, with a tasty curry.  The following morning was spent exploring Volubillis, the oldest Roman Ruins in Morocco, truly amazing.

We did our biggest drive day yet, 200km, and set off for Rabat via Meknes.  Mark showed off his expert driving skills and manoeuvred Ruby through an entrance having only an inch on either side of the truck.  Hot showers were enjoyed by most, and backpacks were refilled with clean washing.  The lazy members of the group who put their washing in to be cleaned are now financially crippled and eating dry bread for lunches, lesson learnt.  Always establish the price first, and don’t believe when you are told its going to be cheap.  The dry bread however, is actually extremely good and one person on the tour has since been discovered rubbing the bread on his face, enjoying its softening affect as an exfoliator……

Ruby is now fully stocked (FOOD AND SUPPLIES) and ready to go, to take us deep into the heart of Africa.  Dave’s supermarket shelf stacking days have done him proud and there is no wasted space on the truck, and we are going back for more food.

 Had fantastic bush camp last night, our self proclaimed hard-arse Andre, slept on the beach, whilst the rest of us pitched our tents 10metres above, nestled into Ruby.  The real hard arses (now very cold…) took swims in the sea.  

It now looks as though we will be in Rabat for another 2 days to get visas sorted.  It was a public holiday yesterday, so no action on the visa front. 

We have now acquired our Mali Visas and Ghana and Mauritania in the pipeline, we have also had some positive news from the Angolan embassy here, that Angola is currently issuing tourist visas, but it will take 2 weeks, so we will hopefully be obtaining those further down the track.

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