It's a long way to the top

So, blog time aye. I had a blog once....I'd say I still have it. Started it when I first went travelling about 5 years ago (never thought I would still be a nomad....crap that's another overland company....an oasis then). I think my mum was one of the only readers.

But Grace and I have decided to try to get a blog going and try to keep it going for this amazing trip....Cape Town to Cairo in 4 months on a big yellow truck passing thru 14 countries on the way.
Now I will start by saying that Grace and I are both going to be adding to this so we may repeat each other, I'd say most know I can go on a bit and like to talk way too much so I'm sure I will write way to much and I also can't spell/ don't try too hard to sometimes.

For anyone reading this that doesn't know Grace and I work for Oasis overland, an overland company that operates in south america, africa, the middle east and asia. I have been working for them for 2 and a half years and Grace a year, all in africa. But this is going to be the first time for us on such a big long trip and we can't wait. I am the driver of the truck (named Tatonka by the group) and do my best to look after the maintenance and keep us on the road, or off the road if it looks better than the road. Grace is the tour leader and does almost everything else and is the boss!!! And the group of tourists take care of all the cooking and keeping us well feed.

So it all starts with a flight to Harare from London with three stops on the way. We are getting the truck ready in Harare, Zimbabwe before driving down to pick everyone up in Cape Town. As you can see from the photos I spend most of my time making a huge mess with nuts and bolts and pulling all the spare parts out of the truck, which there are many, this truck is ready for anything,
                                                                                                                                                                                       


but manage to get everything sorted and we hit the road for the 2700km drive down thru Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the border with South Africa. Now Grace and I don't have the best record with transits, I have been caught in Zimbabwe on expired papers for the truck (like being on an expired passport), we have got stuck at borders, stopped by burning rubbish on the road in Mozambique, got stuck at the end of a 14 hour drive thru Tanzania but we are hoping for a stress free one this time. First stop is Bulawayo in Zimbabwe to pick up a San bushman stature for mum and dad.

One of the many things to watch for on the roads in africa are suicidal goats,donkeys,elephants, antelope etc, they spend a large part of their day on the road.....but the amazing thing cows do is when they get close to crossing the road they stop and look both ways for traffic, it is ideal...if only they could speak to the other animals things would be a lot easier.

Transit down includes a lot of driving (the truck isn't made for speed but can just sit on 80km), camping on the side of the road and getting thru borders. Our first was into Botswana. We arrived at about 8pm and after getting out of Zimbabwe found a very long que, about 5 hours worth, to get into Botswana. We asked the police if we could just sleep in the truck at the border and go thru the next day but sleeping at the border is not allowed.

They close the gates at 10pm but continue to process everyone that is thru the gates by then. So we worked out that there was still going to be 2 hours of people adding to the que and rather than stand there for hours we would break the law, sleep in the truck until about 2am, then get up and que when there was much less people. But at 10pm we were woken up by the police who then told us truck drivers don't have to que (they wanted to get rid of all trucks as they can go home once all heavy vehicles are gone) so the policeman took us past maybe 400 people still in line and right to the front. When you are the only 2 white people at a border you stand out a lot, when you then push in front on everyone you really get some bad looks.
But we got thru and stopped to sleep in Bots. When then travel along the edge of the kalahari desert before crossing into Namibia.

We then had a large part of the roof blow off while in Namibia but were lucky enough that it didn't hit anyone, just got very funny looks for a road crew when we went back to get it, had to get one of them to help me put it in the back of the truck.
The rest of our transit included the most amazing stars and grace and I trying to work out how to take a photo of them and failing and a bus ride with 50 17 year old south african school kids for 10 hours, half of it with them playing and singing to very loud music.....I must be getting old.

But we made it to Cape Town and cant wait to start the 4 month, 20000km trip upto Cairo thru the most amazing and diverse continent in the world.